An Improved Method for Obtaining Small Pressed Powder Pellets for the Analysis by XRF

A rapid, very low cost of instrumentation and simple approach to specimen preparation for the analysis by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry is presented. This technique requires a few mg of powdered samples, which are compressed to produce pellets. This procedure is employed for determining major, minor and trace elements in muscovites and K-feldspars. Factors affecting measured intensities, such as particle size and distribution, surface texture, pelletizing pressure, etc, are considered. A description of the new sample preparation device, including technical characteristics, is also given. It is demonstrated that suitable specimen presentation to the X-ray beam is obtained by using our procedure.Fil: D`angelo, José Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; ArgentinaFil: Strasser, Edgardo. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia; ArgentinaFil: Marchevsky, Eduardo Jorge. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; ArgentinaFil: Perino, Ernesto. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia; Argentin

G95-1236 Developing Beef Quality Assurance

This Neb-Guide gives guidelines for developing a feedlot beef quality assurance program. The displacement of people from agriculture into other areas of employment has broken the relationship between most consumers and producers. The consumer\u27s lack of knowledge about agricultural production coupled with concern for misuse of technological advances in agriculture has created great concern for the safety of their food supply. Consumers are worried that their food will be contaminated by antibiotics, hormones, and agricultural chemicals. Recently, bacterial contamination of beef has been added to their fears. These concerns, combined with diet and health concerns for eating red meat and the cattlemen\u27s use of the land, place tremendous pressure on the beef industry

G97-1313 Designing Preventive Health Management Programs for Cattle Producers

The NebGuide details recommendations for a beef cattle herd immunization program. This NebGuide presents two flow sheets which detail the recommendations for a beef cattle herd immunization program: the Calf through Weaning Preventive Health Management Flow Sheet and the Heifers, Cows and Bulls Preventive Health Management Flow Sheet. While this NebGuide emphasizes the procedures conducted on cattle at each cattle handling opportunity, it is very important to note the role a high quality nutritional program plays in building a total herd health program. You are encouraged to work with a qualified beef cattle nutritionist and your veterinarian when developing your herd health program

Isolation of Pasteurella spp. from Sick and Healthy Feedlot Calves Using Four Different Sampling Techniques

Bovine respiratory disease is the most common disease complex of feedlot cattle. The peak incidence of the disease occurs within the first few weeks of arrival at the feedlot. Bovine respiratory disease is attributed to a complex interaction between bacteria, viruses, environment, stress, and managerial practices. Pasteurella hemolytica, and to a lesser extent Pasteurella multocida, are considered to be the most common bacterial isolates from cases of bovine respiratory disease. The purpose of this study was threefold: 1) compare the ability of four different sampling techniques to isolate Pasteurella spp. from the respiratory tract of calves, 2) compare the prevalence of Pasteurella spp. in the respiratory tract of sick calves and clinically normal cohorts, and 3) evaluate the feasibility and practicality of performing nonsurgical tracheal washes in a feedlot setting

PPFL: privacy-preserving federated learning with trusted execution environments

We propose and implement a Privacy-preserving Federated Learning (PPFL) framework for mobile systems to limit privacy leakages in federated learning. Leveraging the widespread presence of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in high-end and mobile devices, we utilize TEEs on clients for local training, and on servers for secure aggregation, so that model/gradient updates are hidden from adversaries. Challenged by the limited memory size of current TEEs, we leverage greedy layer-wise training to train each model's layer inside the trusted area until its convergence. The performance evaluation of our implementation shows that PPFL can significantly improve privacy while incurring small system overheads at the client-side. In particular, PPFL can successfully defend the trained model against data reconstruction, property inference, and membership inference attacks. Furthermore, it can achieve comparable model utility with fewer communication rounds (0.54x) and a similar amount of network traffic (1.002x) compared to the standard federated learning of a complete model. This is achieved while only introducing up to ~15% CPU time, ~18% memory usage, and ~21% energy consumption overhead in PPFL's client-side

Primary umbilical endometrioma: Analyzing the pathogenesis of endometriosis from an unusual localization

Objective: This report presents a rare case of symptomatic primary umbilical endometriosis and reviews the literature on the topic with the aim to clarify some questions on the origin of endometriosis. Case Report: A 33-year-old woman with cyclic umbilical bleeding was found to have umbilical endometriosis. She had no history of pelvic or abdominal surgery. There was no past history of endometriosis or endometriosis-associated symptoms. An omphalectomy was performed after explorative laparoscopy to carefully inspect the abdominopelvic cavity and assess any coexisting pelvic endometriotic lesions. Histological examination confirmed the diagnosis of umbilical endometriosis. Conclusion: Umbilical endometriosis is a rare but under-recognized phenomenon. Primary lesions are difficult to recognize, but probably represent an independent nosological entity. The possibility of endometriosis must be considered during the evaluation of an umbilical mass despite the absence of previous surgery. Complete excision and successive histology are highly recommended

Occupant-Centred Control strategies for Adaptive Facades: A preliminary study of the impact of shortwave solar radiation on thermal comfort

Adaptive facades have the potential to shape resource-efficient and occupant-centred spaces only when their control strategies are tailored to meet transient, local and personal demands. State-of-the-art control algorithms are currently failing to provide occupant thermal satisfaction because the data on occupant response to the thermal environment is not sufficiently granular. This paper presents a preliminary assessment of the use of the adjusted operative temperature, which accounts also for the additional effect of shortwave radiation on occupants, to dynamically devise learning control strategies that meet individual occupant comfort requirements. Shortwave effects of solar radiation on occupant comfort and operative temperature are compared to those considering only longwave radiation and two alternative occupant-centred control strategies are devised and assessed. Lastly, a combined occupant-centred control strategy is also proposed for an open space office

Potential impact of a nonavalent HPV vaccine on HPV related low-and high-grade cervical intraepithelial lesions: A referral hospital-based study in Sicily

While bivalent and quadrivalent HPV vaccines have been used for about 10 years, a nonavalent vaccine against HPV types 6/11/16/18/31/33/45/52 and 58 has been recently approved by FDA and EMA and is now commercially available. The objective of our study was to evaluate the potential impact of the nonavalent vaccine on HPV infection and related low- and high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL, HSIL), compared to the impact of the quadrivalent vaccine, in a female population living in Sicily (Italy). Low estimates of HPV vaccine impact were calculated as prevalence of HPV 6/11/16/18/31/33/45/52 and 58 genotypes, alone or in association, but excluding presence of other HPV types; high estimates were calculated as prevalence of HPV 6/11/16/18/31/33/45/52 and 58 genotypes alone or in association, in the presence of other HPV types. The nonavalent HPV vaccine showed increased impact, compared to the quadrivalent vaccine. Estimates of potential impact varied from 30.9% (low estimate) to 53.3% (high estimate) for LSIL, and from 56.9% to 81,0% for HSIL. The proportion of additional cases potentially prevented by the nonavalent vaccine was 14.4%\u201323.8% for LSIL, and 19.0%\u201332.8% for HSIL. The benefit of the nonavalent vaccine compared to the quadrivalent vaccine was more than 80% for both low and high impact estimates for LSIL and more than 50% for both low and high impact estimates for HSIL. The present study confirms that the switch from a first generation HPV vaccines to a nonavalent vaccine would increase the prevention of cervical HSIL in up to 90% of cases

Jamming and percolation in random sequential adsorption of straight rigid rods on a two-dimensional triangular lattice

Monte Carlo simulations and finite-size scaling analysis have been performed to study the jamming and percolation behavior of linear $k$-mers (also known as rods or needles) on the two-dimensional triangular lattice, considering an isotropic RSA process on a lattice of linear dimension $L$ and periodic boundary conditions. Extensive numerical work has been done to extend previous studies to larger system sizes and longer $k$-mers, which enables the confirmation of a nonmonotonic size dependence of the percolation threshold and the estimation of a maximum value of $k$ from which percolation would no longer occurs. Finally, a complete analysis of critical exponents and universality have been done, showing that the percolation phase transition involved in the system is not affected, having the same universality class of the ordinary random percolation.Comment: 6 figure