Health disorders and their association with production and functional traits in Holstein Friesian cows

Logistic regression models were used for studying the relationships between milk yield, body condition score (BCS), somatic cell score and some disorders of periparturient cows (mammary edema and retained placenta) with the occur- rence of ovarian cysts, clinical mastitis and lameness. Data from milk recording (milk yield and somatic cell content) col- lected at nearly monthly intervals (time period: 35 ± 3 d) were merged with BCS recorded on the same dates of milk recording on periparturient heifers, lactating and dry cows, and with health disorders data (retained placenta, severe mammary edema, ovarian cysts and clinical mastitis and lameness) collected during regular herd activities over nearly 3.5 years. Data were from one commercial herd consisting of over 200 lactating dairy cows and exhibiting an average 305-d milk yield of nearly 10,000 kg. A total of 5,315 records from 728 lactations and 429 cows were used in the analy- ses. The time period incidence rate was 11.9%, 6.6% and 4.6% for ovarian cysts, lameness and mastitis, respectively, and the lactational incidence rate was 44.1%, 33.4% and 28.1% for ovarian cysts, lameness and mastitis, respectively. Occurrence of both ovarian cysts and mastitis was more common in the early lactation than afterwards, whereas lame- ness tended to occurr erratically during lactation. The risk of occurrence of mastitis and lameness was lower in primi- parous when compared to multiparous cows. The increase of milk yield increased the risk of occurrence of ovarian cysts (odds ratio: 1.32, P < 0.01) and of mastitis (odds ratio: 1.12, P < 0.10), whereas no significant relationship was found between milk yield and lameness. An increase of somatic cell score was found to be a risk factor for mastitis (odds ratio: 1.36, P<0.01) and for the occurrence of lameness (odds ratio: 1.06, P<0.05). The occurrence of relative risk of disor- ders was not related to BCS at calving, and monthly variation of BCS was related to the onset of mastitis only. Retained placenta did not appear to present a risk factor for the occurrence of diseases of concern, whereas the presence of severe mammary edema at calving increased the risk of mastitis occurrence by nearly 50%. Regular recording of herd health data seems advisable for a better understanding of the relationships between production and functional traits and the occurrence of health disorders

Exposure modelling of transmission towers using street-level imagery and a deep learning object detection model

Exposure modelling is a vital component of disaster risk assessments, providing geospatial information of assets at risk and their characteristics. Detailed information about exposure bring benefits to the spatial representation of a rapidly changing environment and allows decision makers to establish better policies aimed at reducing disaster risk. This work proposes and demonstrates a methodology aimed at linking together volunteered geographic information from OpenStreetMap (OSM), street-level imagery from Google Street View (GSV) and deep learning object detection models into the automated creation of exposure datasets of power grid transmission towers, an asset particularly vulnerable to strong wind among other perils. The methodology is implemented through a start-to-end pipeline that starting from the locations of transmission towers derived from the power grid layer of OSMs world infrastructure, can assign relevant features of the tower based on the identification and classification returned from an object detection model over street-level imagery of the tower, obtained from GSV. The initial outcomes yielded promising results towards the establishment of the exposure dataset. For the identification task, the YOLOv5 model returned a mean average precision (mAP) of 83.57% at intersection over union (IoU) of 50%. For the classification problem, although predictive performance varies significantly among tower types, we show that high values of mAP can be achieved when there is a sufficiently high number of good quality images with which to train the model. (c) 2022, National Technical University of Athens. All rights reserved

Deploying a Communicating Automatic Weather Station on an Alpine Glacier

The cost and effort of installing and maintaining an automatic weather station (AWS) on a glacier may be mitigated by the possibility of gathering sensor data in near real-time, and of controlling and programming the station remotely. In this paper we report our experience with upgrading an existing AWS, operating over an Italian glacier, from a mere datalogger into a networked sensing station. Design choices, energy constraints and power-aware programming of the station determined by harsh environment are discussed. Deployment operations and results are described. The upgraded AWS provides low-power connectivity from a remote location and is able to serve as a base station for a wireless sensor network working in the glacier

Endothelial cells, endoplasmic reticulum stress and oxysterols

Oxysterols are bioactive lipids that act as regulators of lipid metabolism, inflammation, cell viability and are involved in several diseases, including atherosclerosis. Mounting evidence linked the atherosclerosis to endothelium dysfunction; in fact, the endothelium regulates the vascular system with roles in processes such as hemostasis, cell cholesterol, hormone trafficking, signal transduction and inflammation. Several papers shed light the ability of oxysterols to induce apoptosis in different cell lines including endothelial cells. Apoptotic endothelial cell and endothelial denudation may constitute a critical step in the transition to plaque erosion and vessel thrombosis, so preventing the endothelial damaged has garnered considerable attention as a novel means of treating atherosclerosis. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is the site where the proteins are synthetized and folded and is necessary for most cellular activity; perturbations of ER homeostasis leads to a condition known as endoplasmic reticulum stress. This condition evokes the unfolded protein response (UPR) an adaptive pathway that aims to restore ER homeostasis. Mounting evidence suggests that chronic activation of UPR leads to cell dysfunction and death and recently has been implicated in pathogenesis of endothelial dysfunction. Autophagy is an essential catabolic mechanism that delivers misfolded proteins and damaged organelles to the lysosome for degradation, maintaining basal levels of autophagic activity it is critical for cell survival. Several evidence suggests that persistent ER stress often results in stimulation of autophagic activities, likely as a compensatory mechanism to relieve ER stress and consequently cell death. In this review, we summarize evidence for the effect of oxysterols on endothelial cells, especially focusing on oxysterols-mediated induction of endoplasmic reticulum stress

The Effect of Ethanol Evaporation on the Properties of Inkjet Produced Liposomes

Background: Inkjet method has been used to produce nano-sized liposomes with a uniform size distribution. However, following the production of liposomes by inkjet method, the solvent residue in the product could have a significant effect on the properties of the final liposomes. Objective: This research paper aimed to find a suitable method to remove ethanol content and to study its effect on the properties of the final liposomal suspension. Method: Egg phosphatidylcholine and lidocaine were dissolved in ethanol; and inkjet method at 80 kHz was applied to produce uniform droplets, which were deposited in an aqueous solution to form liposomes. Dry nitrogen gas flow, air-drying, and rotary evaporator were tested to remove the ethanol content. Liposome properties such as size, polydispersity index (PDI), and charge were screened before and after ethanol evaporation. Results: Only rotary evaporator (at constant speed and room temperature for 2 hours) removed all of the ethanol content, with a final drug entrapment efficiency (EE) of 29.44 ± 6.77%. This was higher than a conventional method. Furthermore, removing ethanol led to liposome size reduction from approximately 200 nm to less than 100 nm in most samples. Additionally, this increased the liposomal net charge, which contributed to maintain the uniform and narrow size distribution of liposomes. Conclusion: Nano-sized liposomes were produced with a narrow PDI and higher EE compared to a conventional method by using an inkjet method. Moreover, rotary evaporator for 2 hours reduced effectively the ethanol content, while maintaining the narrow size distribution

Longitudinal phase-space manipulation with beam-driven plasma wakefields

The development of compact accelerator facilities providing high-brightness beams is one of the most challenging tasks in field of next-generation compact and cost affordable particle accelerators, to be used in many fields for industrial, medical and research applications. The ability to shape the beam longitudinal phase-space, in particular, plays a key role to achieve high-peak brightness. Here we present a new approach that allows to tune the longitudinal phase-space of a high-brightness beam by means of a plasma wakefields. The electron beam passing through the plasma drives large wakefields that are used to manipulate the time-energy correlation of particles along the beam itself. We experimentally demonstrate that such solution is highly tunable by simply adjusting the density of the plasma and can be used to imprint or remove any correlation onto the beam. This is a fundamental requirement when dealing with largely time-energy correlated beams coming from future plasma accelerators