Progress toward sonifying Napoleon’s march and fluid flow simulations through binaural horizons

Cross-modal data analytics—that can be rendered for experience through vision, hearing, and touch—poses a fundamental challenge to designers. Non-linguistic sonification is a well-researched means for non-visual pattern recognition but higher density datasets pose a challenge. Because human hearing is optimized for detecting locations on a horizontal plane, our approach recruits this optimization by employing an immersive binaural horizontal plane using auditory icons. Two case studies demonstrate our approach: A sonic translation of a map and a sonic translation of a computational fluid dynamics simulation

Mycoplasma bovis-induced inhibition of bovine peripheral blood mononuclear cell proliferation is ameliorated after blocking the immune-inhibitory programmed death 1 receptor

Mycoplasma bovis-induced immune suppression is a major obstacle faced by the host for controlling infections. M. bovis impairment of antigen-specific T-cell responses is achieved through inhibiting the proliferation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). This impairment may contribute to the persistence of M. bovis infection in various sites, including lungs, and its systemic spread to various organs such as joints, with the underlying mechanisms remaining elusive. Here, we elucidated the role of the immune-inhibitory receptor programmed death 1 (PD-1) and its ligand (PD-L1) in M. bovis infection. Flow cytometry (FCM) analyses revealed an upregulation of PD-L1 expression on tracheal and lung epithelial cell lines after M. bovis infection. In addition, we found increased PD-L1 expression on purified lung lavage macrophages following M. bovis infection by FCM and determined its localization by immunofluorescence analysis comparing infected and control lung tissue sections. Moreover, M. bovis infection increased the expression of the PD-1 receptor on total PBMCs and in gated CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell subpopulations. We demonstrated that M. bovis infection induced a significant decrease in CD4+ PD-1INT and CD8+ PD-1INT subsets with intermediate PD-1 expression, which functioned as progenitor pools giving rise to CD4+ PD-1HIGH and CD8+ PD-1HIGH subsets with high PD-1 expression levels. We blocked PD-1 receptors on PBMCs using anti-PD-1 antibody at the beginning of infection, leading to a significant restoration of the proliferation of PBMCs. Taken together, our data indicate a significant involvement of the PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitory pathway during M. bovis infection and its associated immune exhaustion, culminating in impaired host immune responses. - 2018 American Society for Microbiology.This work was made possible by financial support from the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency Ltd. and the Saskatchewan Agriculture Development Fund. We also thank Don Wilson and the VIDO Animal Care Unit for their invaluable help in obtaining blood and lung lavage samples.Scopu

Sonification of Flow Instabilities in CFD Aneurysm Models

Paper presented at 2018 Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers International Congress, 27-30 May 2018.Recent investigations using image-based computational flow dynamics (CFD) have revealed turbulent-like blood flow instabilities (hemodynamics) within intracranial cerebral aneurysms and surrounding vasculature, which may contribute to aneurysm initiation, growth, and rupture. We describe a method derived from spectral decomposition of flow for inspecting and characterizing these “turbulent-like” hemodynamic structures in intracranial aneurysms by sonification of CFD generated data. Motivated by auscultation techniques, the current research seeks to address the limitations of conventional CFD animations by allowing the user to listen to complex flow patterns that are often difficult to discern visually. In the process, the proposed method of sonification is successfully applied to a series of datasets resulting from highfidelity numerical simulations of intracranial aneurysms. The resulting framework is shown to be highly efficient in performing parametric sonification in real time

Advances in prevention and therapy of neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea : a systematical review with emphasis on colostrum management and fluid therapy

Neonatal calf diarrhoea remains the most common cause of morbidity and mortality in preweaned dairy calves worldwide. This complex disease can be triggered by both infectious and non-infectious causes. The four most important enteropathogens leading to neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea are Escherichia coli, rota-and coronavirus, and Cryptosporidium parvum. Besides treating diarrhoeic neonatal dairy calves, the veterinarian is the most obvious person to advise the dairy farmer on prevention and treatment of this disease. This review deals with prevention and treatment of neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea focusing on the importance of a good colostrum management and a correct fluid therapy

Calf health from birth to weaning. III. housing and management of calf pneumonia

Calfhood diseases have a major impact on the economic viability of cattle operations. A three part review series has been developed focusing on calf health from birth to weaning. In this paper, the last of the three part series, we review disease prevention and management with particular reference to pneumonia, focusing primarily on the pre-weaned calf. Pneumonia in recently weaned suckler calves is also considered, where the key risk factors are related to the time of weaning. Weaning of the suckler calf is often combined with additional stressors including a change in nutrition, environmental change, transport and painful husbandry procedures (castration, dehorning). The reduction of the cumulative effects of these multiple stressors around the time of weaning together with vaccination programmes (preconditioning) can reduce subsequent morbidity and mortality in the feedlot. In most studies, calves housed individually and calves housed outdoors with shelter, are associated with decreased risk of disease. Even though it poses greater management challenges, successful group housing of calves is possible. Special emphasis should be given to equal age groups and to keeping groups stable once they are formed. The management of pneumonia in calves is reliant on a sound understanding of aetiology, relevant risk factors, and of effective approaches to diagnosis and treatment. Early signs of pneumonia include increased respiratory rate and fever, followed by depression. The single most important factor determining the success of therapy in calves with pneumonia is early onset of treatment, and subsequent adequate duration of treatment. The efficacy and economical viability of vaccination against respiratory disease in calves remains unclear

Data-Driven Sonification of CFD Aneurysm Models

A novel method is presented for inspecting and characterizing turbulent-like hemodynamic structures in intracranial cerebral aneurysms by sonification of data generated using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The intention of the current research is to intuitively communicate flow complexity by augmenting conventional flow visualizations with data-driven sound, thereby increasing the ease of interpretation of dense spatiotemporal data through multimodal presentation. The described implementation allows the user to listen to flow fluctuations thought to indicate turbulent-like blood flow patterns that are often visually difficult to discriminate in conventional flow visualizations

Determining the IgG concentrations in bovine colostrum and calf sera with a novel enzymatic assay

Abstract Background Immune protection in newborn calves relies on a combination of the timing, volume and quality of colostrum consumed by the calf after birth. Poor quality colostrum with inadequate immunoglobulin concentration contributes to failed transfer of passive immunity in calves, leading to higher calf morbidity and mortality. Therefore, estimating colostrum quality and ensuring the transfer of passive immunity on farm is of critical importance. Currently, there are no on-farm tools that directly measure immunoglobulin content in colostrum or serum. The aim of this study was to apply a novel molecular assay, split trehalase immunoglobulin G assay (STIGA), to directly estimate immunoglobulin content in dairy and beef colostrum and calf sera, and to examine its potential to be developed as on-farm test. The STIGA is based on a split version of trehalase TreA, an enzyme that converts trehalose into glucose, enabling the use of a common glucometer for signal detection. In a first study, 60 dairy and 64 beef colostrum and 83 dairy and 84 beef calf sera samples were tested with STIGA, and the resulting glucose production was measured and compared with radial immunodiffusion, the standard method for measuring immunoglobulin concentrations. Results Pearson correlation coefficients between the methods were determined and the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the test were calculated for different colostrum quality and failed transfer of passive immunity cut-off points. The correlations of the STIGA measured by colorimetric enzymatic reaction compared to radial immunodiffusion for dairy and beef colostrum were 0.72 and 0.73, respectively, whereas the correlations for dairy and beef sera were 0.9 and 0.85, respectively. Next, STIGA was tested in a blinded study with fresh colostrum and serum samples where the correlation coefficient was 0.93 and 0.94, respectively. Furthermore, the performance of STIGA followed by glucometer readings resulted in correlations with radial immunodiffusion of 0.7 and 0.85 for dairy and beef colostrum and 0.94 and 0.83 for dairy and beef calf serum. Conclusions A split TreA assay was validated for measurement of the immunoglobulin content of colostrum and calf sera using both a lab-based format and in a more user-friendly format compatible with on-farm testing