764 research outputs found
Evaluation of sealed storage silos for grain fumigation
Master of ScienceDepartment of Grain Science and IndustryDirk E. MaierFumigation of stored grain is a common way to kill stored-grain insect pests. However, fumigating in unsealed structures is the leading cause of control failures and subsequent development of insect resistance. Sealing the storage structure is the only practical way to ensure a complete kill of all insects at all life stages. The cost, effort, and feasibility of sealing a U.S. corrugated steel silo during construction was evaluated and compared against an Australian sealed silo designed for fumigation. Gas monitoring and thermosiphon recirculation equipment was installed on both silos. Fumigation efficacy was evaluated using pressure half-life decay times, fumigant concentrations, insect bioassays, and grain quality data. Three fumigations with phosphine (PH₃) pellets or tablets and two with VAPORPH₃OS® cylinderized PH₃ and ProFume® cylinderized sulfuryl fluoride (SF) were performed in each silo for a total of ten experimental treatments. The Australian silo required 266 man-hours to construct and cost 3,284 for constructing and sealing the U.S. silo. The Australian silo had a maximum pressure half-life decay time of 163 s versus 50 s for the U.S. silo. At application rates of 1.5 g/mᶟ of PH₃ both silos maintained an average concentration of approximately 0.28 g/mᶟ for 14 days. With thermosiphon recirculation the average minimum-to-maximum PH₃ concentration ratio in the U.S. silo was 0.52, compared to a ratio of 0.17 when fumigating without thermosiphon recirculation. Greater than 99% adult mortality was observed in all insect bioassays which included PH₃ resistant strains of R. dominica and T. castaneum. The average emergence from fumigated bioassays was 7 adult insects, compared to an average of 383 adults for the non-fumigated controls. Grain stored for 10 months in the sealed silos increased from approximately 11.5% to 17% m.c. in the top 0.3 m of grain, and decreased in test weight from approximately 77 to 65 kg/hL. Although the Australian silo retained higher fumigant concentrations than the U.S. silo, fumigations were successful in both. Long-term storage in sealed silos is a concern because grain quality can deteriorate due to condensation and mold in the top grain layer
A LEVEL INDICATOR FOR LIQUEFIED GASES
A capacitance instrument is described that indicates the level of liquefied gas in a closed container. The instrument has been used to indicate and control the level of liquid nitrogen, hydrogen, and methane. (auth
End of Life Care and Do Not Resuscitate Orders: How Much Does Age Influence Decision Making? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
With population aging, “do not resuscitate” (DNAR) decisions, pertaining to the appropriateness of attempting
resuscitation following a cardiac arrest, are becoming commoner. It is unclear from the literature whether using age
to make these decisions represents “ageism.” We undertook a systematic review of the literature using CINAHL,
Medline, and the Cochrane database to investigate the relationship between age and DNAR. All 10 studies fulfilling
our inclusion criteria found that “do not attempt resuscitation” orders were more prevalent in older patients; eight
demonstrated that this was independent of other mediating factors such as illness severity and likely outcome. In
studies comparing age groups, the adjusted odds of having a DNAR order were greater in patients aged 75 to 84
and ≥85 years (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.70, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.25, 2.33] and 2.96, 95% CI = [2.34,
3.74], respectively), compared with those <65 years. In studies treating age as a continuous variable, there was no
significant increase in the use of DNAR with age (AOR 0.98, 95% CI = [0.84, 1.15]). In conclusion, age increases the
use of “do not resuscitate” orders, but more research is needed to determine whether this represents “ageism.
B794: Weight Characteristics of Maine Adults
Obesity is an issue of state and national magnitude. Obesity is a form of malnutrition in which the total contribution of calories from the diet exceeds the body\u27s needs to such a degree that the physiological mechanism for food intake control (appetite/hunger) becomes imprecise and allows too much food to be consumed (overcompensation of energy intake).
This report expresses height and weight characteristics of Maine adults on a county basis (weighted means) for use locally. Weight distributions are compared according to both ideal weights and average weights of the national population. Comparisons are also made with respect to grouped urban and rural counties.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1114/thumbnail.jp
SCC: A Service Centered Calculus
We seek for a small set of primitives that might serve as a basis for formalising and programming service oriented applications over global computers. As an outcome of this study we introduce here SCC, a process calculus that features explicit notions of service definition, service invocation and session handling. Our proposal has been influenced by Orc, a programming model for structured orchestration of services, but the SCC’s session handling mechanism allows for the definition of structured interaction protocols, more complex than the basic request-response provided by Orc. We present syntax and operational semantics of SCC and a number of simple but nontrivial programming examples that demonstrate flexibility of the chosen set of primitives. A few encodings are also provided to relate our proposal with existing ones
A Graph Theoretic Approach for Object Shape Representation in Compositional Hierarchies Using a Hybrid Generative-Descriptive Model
A graph theoretic approach is proposed for object shape representation in a
hierarchical compositional architecture called Compositional Hierarchy of Parts
(CHOP). In the proposed approach, vocabulary learning is performed using a
hybrid generative-descriptive model. First, statistical relationships between
parts are learned using a Minimum Conditional Entropy Clustering algorithm.
Then, selection of descriptive parts is defined as a frequent subgraph
discovery problem, and solved using a Minimum Description Length (MDL)
principle. Finally, part compositions are constructed by compressing the
internal data representation with discovered substructures. Shape
representation and computational complexity properties of the proposed approach
and algorithms are examined using six benchmark two-dimensional shape image
datasets. Experiments show that CHOP can employ part shareability and indexing
mechanisms for fast inference of part compositions using learned shape
vocabularies. Additionally, CHOP provides better shape retrieval performance
than the state-of-the-art shape retrieval methods.Comment: Paper : 17 pages. 13th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV
2014), Zurich, Switzerland, September 6-12, 2014, Proceedings, Part III, pp
566-581. Supplementary material can be downloaded from
http://link.springer.com/content/esm/chp:10.1007/978-3-319-10578-9_37/file/MediaObjects/978-3-319-10578-9_37_MOESM1_ESM.pd
A missense mutation (c.184C>T) in ovine CLN6 causes neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis in Merino sheep whereas affected South Hampshire sheep have reduced levels of CLN6 mRNA
AbstractThe neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs, Batten disease) are a group of fatal recessively inherited neurodegenerative diseases of humans and animals characterised by common clinical signs and pathology. These include blindness, ataxia, dementia, behavioural changes, seizures, brain and retinal atrophy and accumulation of fluorescent lysosome derived organelles in most cells. A number of different variants have been suggested and seven different causative genes identified in humans (CLN1, CLN2, CLN3, CLN5, CLN6, CLN8 and CTSD). Animal models have played a central role in the investigation of this group of diseases and are extremely valuable for developing a better understanding of the disease mechanisms and possible therapeutic approaches. Ovine models include flocks of affected New Zealand South Hampshires and Borderdales and Australian Merinos. The ovine CLN6 gene has been sequenced in a representative selection of these sheep. These investigations unveiled the mutation responsible for the disease in Merino sheep (c.184C>T; p.Arg62Cys) and three common ovine allelic variants (c.56A>G, c.822G>A and c.933_934insCT). Linkage analysis established that CLN6 is the gene most likely to cause NCL in affected South Hampshire sheep, which do not have the c.184C>T mutation but show reduced expression of CLN6 mRNA in a range of tissues as determined by real-time PCR. Lack of linkage precludes CLN6 as a candidate for NCL in Borderdale sheep
Parametrization and Classification of 20 Billion LSST Objects: Lessons from SDSS
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be a large, wide-field
ground-based system designed to obtain, starting in 2015, multiple images of
the sky that is visible from Cerro Pachon in Northern Chile. About 90% of the
observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will
observe a 20,000 deg region about 1000 times during the anticipated 10
years of operations (distributed over six bands, ). Each 30-second long
visit will deliver 5 depth for point sources of on average.
The co-added map will be about 3 magnitudes deeper, and will include 10 billion
galaxies and a similar number of stars. We discuss various measurements that
will be automatically performed for these 20 billion sources, and how they can
be used for classification and determination of source physical and other
properties. We provide a few classification examples based on SDSS data, such
as color classification of stars, color-spatial proximity search for wide-angle
binary stars, orbital-color classification of asteroid families, and the
recognition of main Galaxy components based on the distribution of stars in the
position-metallicity-kinematics space. Guided by these examples, we anticipate
that two grand classification challenges for LSST will be 1) rapid and robust
classification of sources detected in difference images, and 2) {\it
simultaneous} treatment of diverse astrometric and photometric time series
measurements for an unprecedentedly large number of objects.Comment: Presented at the "Classification and Discovery in Large Astronomical
Surveys" meeting, Ringberg Castle, 14-17 October, 200
Disease-specific, neurosphere-derived cells as models for brain disorders
There is a pressing need for patient-derived cell models of brain diseases that are relevant and robust enough to produce the large quantities of cells required for molecular and functional analyses. We describe here a new cell model based on patient-derived cells from the human olfactory mucosa, the organ of smell, which regenerates throughout life from neural stem cells. Olfactory mucosa biopsies were obtained from healthy controls and patients with either schizophrenia, a neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorder, or Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disease. Biopsies were dissociated and grown as neurospheres in defined medium. Neurosphere-derived cell lines were grown in serum-containing medium as adherent monolayers and stored frozen. By comparing 42 patient and control cell lines we demonstrated significant disease-specific alterations in gene expression, protein expression and cell function, including dysregulated neurodevelopmental pathways in schizophrenia and dysregulated mitochondrial function, oxidative stress and xenobiotic metabolism in Parkinson's disease. The study has identified new candidate genes and cell pathways for future investigation. Fibroblasts from schizophrenia patients did not show these differences. Olfactory neurosphere-derived cells have many advantages over embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells as models for brain diseases. They do not require genetic reprogramming and they can be obtained from adults with complex genetic diseases. They will be useful for understanding disease aetiology, for diagnostics and for drug discovery
Linear stability analysis of retrieval state in associative memory neural networks of spiking neurons
We study associative memory neural networks of the Hodgkin-Huxley type of
spiking neurons in which multiple periodic spatio-temporal patterns of spike
timing are memorized as limit-cycle-type attractors. In encoding the
spatio-temporal patterns, we assume the spike-timing-dependent synaptic
plasticity with the asymmetric time window. Analysis for periodic solution of
retrieval state reveals that if the area of the negative part of the time
window is equivalent to the positive part, then crosstalk among encoded
patterns vanishes. Phase transition due to the loss of the stability of
periodic solution is observed when we assume fast alpha-function for direct
interaction among neurons. In order to evaluate the critical point of this
phase transition, we employ Floquet theory in which the stability problem of
the infinite number of spiking neurons interacting with alpha-function is
reduced into the eigenvalue problem with the finite size of matrix. Numerical
integration of the single-body dynamics yields the explicit value of the
matrix, which enables us to determine the critical point of the phase
transition with a high degree of precision.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
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