THE ECONOMIC AND FISCAL IMPACTS OF A CHEESE PLANT AND DAIRIES IN THE PANHANDLE OF TEXAS

Agribusiness,

Columbia’s Newsblaster: New Features and Future Directions

Columbia's Newsblaster tracking and summarization system is a robust system that clusters news into events, categorizes events into broad topics and summarizes multiple articles on each event. Here we outline our most current work on tracking events over days, producing summaries that update a user on new information about an event, outlining the perspectives of news coming from different countries and clustering and summarizing non-English sources

Effects of Mega Dose Micronutrient Supplementation On Serum Zinc, Retinol and Immune Status of Adult Males and Females Diagnosed with and Without HIV, Malaria and TB in Western Kenya – An Unpublished Perspective as at The Year 2004

Background: The role of micronutrients in management of HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB remains poorly understood worldwide. Objectives: To assess differences in mega dose nutritional management between HIV-seronegative and seropositive adult males and females diagnosed with HIV at Voluntary Testing and Counseling Centers (VCT) in Western Kenya. Methods: This was a randomized controlled study in which 90 subjects were recruited on the basis of an HIV-seropositive result from a voluntary and counseling center (VCT) using rapid HIV test kits. They were evaluated at baseline and every 4 weeks for 3 months to establish their clinical, biochemical and immunological status. After 12 weeks, 74 clients were still in the study, 9 were lost to follow-up while 7 had died. Of the 74 who completed the study, confirmation of baseline HIV status by ELIZA revealed that 63 were HIV-seropositive while 11 were HIV-seronegative despite losing spouses to HIV/AIDS. Correlations between parameters at baseline, during and after intervention were determined; Spearman’s Rho Coefficients indicating the level of significance. Group means were used to compare continuous data while categorical data was compared using Chi-Square. Results: Significant reductions in the clinical manifestation of disease were noted in the cohort after intervention for 12 weeks. Despite the large and different micronutrient dosages used between the two study arms, the only difference by arm of intervention was in the serum vitamin E level at 4 weeks which was much higher in arm 1 than it was in arm 2 of the study (p = 0.005). This might have been occasioned by the significant repletion of zinc in both arms, probably because use of citric acid in both arms improved zinc up-take from the supplements, food and/or reserves enabling other nutrients to be appropriately restored in both arms, these supporting the decision to pool the study arms and compare differences by HIV-seronegative and seropositive, notwithstanding the small sample sizes recruited but which nonetheless were our study limitation. Independent of the intervention arms, reduction of viral load by more than 0.5 log10 copies/ml correlated with higher baseline optical densities of HIV antibodies (P = 0.016) and higher baseline viral loads (p = 0.0001). A lower optical density of HIV antibodies at baseline correlated with higher serum zinc levels at 12 weeks (p = 0.008) and a lower Body Mass Index (BMI) at baseline (p = 0.029). Independent of the arm of study, a significant increase in CD4 cells counts post intervention correlated with lower baseline viral loads (p = 0.010), lower baseline NK cell counts (p = 0.007

Imbalance in the response of pre- and post-synaptic components to amyloidopathy

Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-associated synaptic dysfunction drives the progression of pathology from its earliest stages. Aβ species, both soluble and in plaque deposits, have been causally related to the progressive, structural and functional impairments observed in AD. It is, however, still unclear how Aβ plaques develop over time and how they progressively affect local synapse density and turnover. Here we observed, in a mouse model of AD, that Aβ plaques grow faster in the earlier stages of the disease and if their initial area is > 500 µm2; this may be due to deposition occurring in the cloud part of the plaque. In addition, synaptic turnover is higher in the presence of amyloid pathology and this is paralleled by a reduction in pre- but not post-synaptic densities. Plaque proximity does not appear to have an impact on synaptic dynamics. These observations indicate an imbalance in the response of the pre- and post-synaptic terminals and that therapeutics, alongside targeting the underlying pathology, need to address changes in synapse dynamics

Genome structural variation in Escherichia coli O157:H7

The human zoonotic pathogen Escherichia coli O157:H7 is defined by its extensive prophage repertoire including those that encode Shiga toxin, the factor responsible for inducing life-threatening pathology in humans. As well as introducing genes that can contribute to the virulence of a strain, prophage can enable the generation of large-chromosomal rearrangements (LCRs) by homologous recombination. This work examines the types and frequencies of LCRs across the major lineages of the O157:H7 serotype. We demonstrate that LCRs are a major source of genomic variation across all lineages of E. coli O157:H7 and by using both optical mapping and Oxford Nanopore long-read sequencing prove that LCRs are generated in laboratory cultures started from a single colony and that these variants can be recovered from colonized cattle. LCRs are biased towards the terminus region of the genome and are bounded by specific prophages that share large regions of sequence homology associated with the recombinational activity. RNA transcriptional profiling and phenotyping of specific structural variants indicated that important virulence phenotypes such as Shiga-toxin production, type-3 secretion and motility can be affected by LCRs. In summary, E. coli O157:H7 has acquired multiple prophage regions over time that act to continually produce structural variants of the genome. These findings raise important questions about the significance of this prophage-mediated genome contingency to enhance adaptability between environments

The Grizzly, April 11, 1986

Collegeville Water: Poison • Toombs Speaks on Real Estate • The Time has Come • Wismer, be Realistic! • Letter: Administration Housing Plans are Unfair • Former U.C. Graduate Plays Important Role in Recovery of Challenger Debris • Hair Sneak Preview • Take C and C and See the Progress of Humanity • Greeks Flail Booze Curtail • Looking for Alternatives to the Joys of Alcohol • Women\u27s Lacrosse Wins Five in a Row • Linksters Off to a Great Start • Bears Drop to 4-8 • Women\u27s Track • Profile: Marc Dervishian • Women\u27s Softball Season Heats Up • Women\u27s Tennis Falls to 1-4 • Profile: Leigh Garrison • Gung Ho for Howard • Music: It gets the Irish in me Goinghttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1163/thumbnail.jp

The development of sentence-interpretation strategies in monolingual German-learning children with and without specific language impairment

Previous research on sentence comprehension conducted with German-learning children has concentrated on the role of case marking and word order in typically developing children. This paper compares, the performance of German-learning children with language impairment (age 4-6 years) and without language impairment (aged 2-6, 8-9 years) in two experiments that systematically vary the cues animacy, case marking; word-order, and subject-verb agreement. The two experiments differ with regard to the choice of case marking: in the first it is distinct but in the second it is neutralized. The theoretical framework is the competition model developed by Bates and Mac Whinney and their collaborators, a variant of the parallel distributed processing models. It is hypothesized that children of either population first appreciate the cue animacy that can be processed locally, that is, "on the spot," before they turn to more distributed cues leading ultimately up to subject-verb agreement, which presupposes the comparison of various constituents before an interpretation can be established. Thus agreement is more "costly" in processing than animacy or the (more) local cue initial NP. In experiment I with unambiguous case markers it is shown that the typically developing children proceed from animacy to the nominative (predominantly in coalition with the initial NP) to agreement, while in the second experiment with ambiguous case markers these children turn from animacy to the initial NP and then to agreement. The impaired children also progress from local to distributed cues. Yet, in contrast to the control group, they do not acknowledge the nominative in coalition with the initial NP in the first experiment but only in support of agreement. However, although they do not seem to appreciate distinct case markers to any large extent in the first experiment, they are irritated if such distinctions are lacking: in experiment II all impaired children turn to. animacy (some in coalition with the initial NP and/or particular word orders). In the discussion, the relationship between short-term memory and processing as well as the relationship between production and comprehension of case markers and agreement are addressed. Further research is needed to explore in more detail "cue costs" in sentence comprehension

A Transient Sub-Eddington Black Hole X-ray Binary Candidate in the Dust Lanes of Centaurus A

We report the discovery of a bright X-ray transient, CXOU J132527.6-430023, in the nearby early-type galaxy NGC 5128. The source was first detected over the course of five Chandra observations in 2007, reaching an unabsorbed outburst luminosity of 1-2*10^38 erg/s in the 0.5-7.0 keV band before returning to quiescence. Such luminosities are possible for both stellar-mass black hole and neutron star X-ray binary transients. Here, we attempt to characterize the nature of the compact object. No counterpart has been detected in the optical or radio sky, but the proximity of the source to the dust lanes allows for the possibility of an obscured companion. The brightness of the source after a >100 fold increase in X-ray flux makes it either the first confirmed transient non-ULX black hole system in outburst to be subject to detailed spectral modeling outside the Local Group, or a bright (>10^38 erg/s) transient neutron star X-ray binary, which are very rare. Such a large increase in flux would appear to lend weight to the view that this is a black hole transient. X-ray spectral fitting of an absorbed power law yielded unphysical photon indices, while the parameters of the best-fit absorbed disc blackbody model are typical of an accreting ~10 Msol black hole in the thermally dominant state.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Planning for Sustainability in Small Municipalities: The Influence of Interest Groups, Growth Patterns, and Institutional Characteristics

How and why small municipalities promote sustainability through planning efforts is poorly understood. We analyzed ordinances in 451 Maine municipalities and tested theories of policy adoption using regression analysis.We found that smaller communities do adopt programs that contribute to sustainability relevant to their scale and context. In line with the political market theory, we found that municipalities with strong environmental interests, higher growth, and more formal governments were more likely to adopt these policies. Consideration of context and capacity in planning for sustainability will help planners better identify and benefit from collaboration, training, and outreach opportunities