Comparison of tiletamine-zolazepam and tiletamine-zolazepam-ketamine-xylazine administered intravenously in dogs

The anaesthetic effects of intravenous administration oftiletamine (2.5 mg/kg) - zolazepam (2.5 mg/kg) mixture (TZ), and tiletamine (0.5 mglkg) - zolazepam (0.5 mg/kg) - ketamine (1.6 mg/kg) - xylazine (0.4 mg/kg) mixture (TKX) were evaluated in ten dogs. Atropine sulphate at a dose rate ofO.05 mg/kg was administered concurrently with the anaesthetic mixtures. Both mixtures produced rapid, smooth induction, and allowed intubation. The TKX mixture produced longer skin clamp analgesia and immobilisation, better jaw relaxation, with shorter and smoother recovery compared to TZ injection. The TKX mixture induced significant but transient pallor of mucous membranes « 2 min). The TZ mixture resulted in increased heart rate and a higher respiratory rate compared to TKX mixture. Haemoglobin saturation was < 90% in some dogs following either mixture. The TKX mixture can be considered as an alternative injectable mixture to TZ for short and minimally invasive procedures in patients that have no cardiopulmonary dysfunction

Growth rate of YBCO single grains containing Y-2411(M)

Y-Ba-Cu-O (YBCO) single grains have the potential to generate large trapped magnetic fields for a variety of engineering applications, and research on the processing and properties of this material has attracted world-wide interest. In particular, the introduction of flux pinning centres to the large grain microstructure to improve its current density, Jc, and hence trapped field, has been investigated extensively over the past decade. Y 2Ba4CuMOx [Y-2411(M)], where M = Nb, Ta, Mo, W, Ru, Zr, Bi and Ag, has been reported to form particularly effective flux pinning centres in YBCO due primarily to its ability to exist as nano-size inclusions in the superconducting phase matrix. However, the addition of the Y-2411(M) phase to the precursor composition complicates the melt-processing of single grains. We report an investigation of the growth rate of single YBCO grains containing Y-2411(Bi) phase inclusions and Y2O3. The superconducting properties of these large single grains have been measured specifically to investigate the effect of Y2O3 on broadening the growth window of these materials

Acceleration effects of microbial inoculum on palm oil mill organic waste composting.

ABSTRACT The acceleration effects of inoculum in composting of empty fruit bunches were investigated. Composting of empty fruit bunches fibres in two sizes, 4 cm and 2 cm length, were treated with microbial inoculum consisting of Agromonas, Aspergillus, Azotobacter, Bacillus, Celhdomonas, Chaetomium, Clostridium, Coprinus, Microbispora, Penicillium, Pseudomonas, Thermoactinomyces, Trichoderma and Trichurus in separate laboratory scale in-vessel of 30 liters volume. A control without inoculum with 4 cm length empty fruit bunches was also conducted in parallel. The compost piles were shift-turned weekly. Parameters such as moisture content, temperature, pH, and electrical conductivity were used to monitor the composting processes. The carbon-nitrogen ratio, UV-vis spectrophotometer test, and germination test were used to assess the maturity of compost. The results showed that the inoculum was effective in reducing the C/N ratio by 54% compared to control 46% and rapidly increasing the UV-vis absorption ratio in first three weeks. By using functional microbes, the composting of empty fruit bunches was reduced to 5 weeks compared to 9 weeks for those without inoculation. The acceleration effect was more prominent for the 2 cm length samples

An Efficient Hardware-Oriented Dropout Algorithm

This paper proposes a hardware-oriented dropout algorithm, which is efficient for field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation. In deep neural networks (DNNs), overfitting occurs when networks are overtrained and adapt too well to training data. Consequently, they fail in predicting unseen data used as test data. Dropout is a common technique that is often applied in DNNs to overcome this problem. In general, implementing such training algorithms of DNNs in embedded systems is difficult due to power and memory constraints. Training DNNs is power-, time-, and memory- intensive; however, embedded systems require low power consumption and real-time processing. An FPGA is suitable for embedded systems for its parallel processing characteristic and low operating power; however, due to its limited memory and different architecture, it is difficult to apply general neural network algorithms. Therefore, we propose a hardware-oriented dropout algorithm that can effectively utilize the characteristics of an FPGA with less memory required. Software program verification demonstrates that the performance of the proposed method is identical to that of conventional dropout, and hardware synthesis demonstrates that it results in significant resource reduction

Socioeconomic Patterns of COVID-19 Clusters in Low-Incidence City, Hong Kong

Although coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreaks have been relatively well controlled in Hong Kong, containment remains challenging among socioeconomically disadvantaged persons. They are at higher risk for widespread COVID-19 transmission through sizable clustering, probably because of exposure to social settings in which existing mitigation policies had differential socioeconomic effects

Art, Artifact, Archive: African American Experiences in the Nineteenth Century

Angelo Scarlato’s extraordinary and vast collection of art and artifacts related to the Civil War, and specifically to the Battle of Gettysburg, the United States Colored Troops, slavery and the African American struggle for emancipation, citizenship and freedom has proved to be an extraordinary resource for Gettysburg College students. The 2012-14 exhibition in Musselman Library’s Special Collections, curated by Lauren Roedner ’13, entitled Slaves, Soldiers, Citizens: African American Artifacts of the Civil War Era and its corresponding catalogue provided a powerful and comprehensive historical narrative of the period. This fall, students in my course at Gettysburg College “Art and Public Policy”—Diane Brennan, Maura Conley, Abigail Conner, Nicole Conte, Victoria Perez-Zetune, Savannah Rose, Kaylyn Sawyer, Caroline Wood and Zoe Yeoh—selected additional objects of material and print culture from Angelo’s private collection and drew from Lauren’s expertise for the exhibition Art, Artifact, Archive: African American Experiences in the Nineteenth Century to investigate public representations of a newly freed population as well as their more personal perspectives. [excerpt]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/1015/thumbnail.jp

Simulation of Blood Flow and Nanoparticle Transport in a Stenosed Carotid Bifurcation and Pseudo-Arteriole

Numerical simulation of flow through a realistic bifurcated carotid artery geometry with a stenosis has been conducted for comparison to experimental measurements. The behaviour of simplified therapeutic nanoparticles in relatively low concentration was observed using a discrete particle approach. The role of size (diameters from 500 nm to 50 nm) in determining particle residence time and the potential for both desirable and undesirable wall interactions was investigated. It was found that mean particle residence time reduced with decreasing particle diameter, and the percentage of particles experiencing one or more wall interactions increased simultaneously. Further simulations were conducted on a scaled-down version of the geometry which approximated the size and flow conditions of an arteriole with capillary branches, and in this instance the mean residence time increased with decreasing particle diameter, owing largely to the greater influence of Brownian motion. 33% of all 50 nm particles were involved in wall interactions, indicating that smaller particles would have a greater ability to target, for instance, cancerous tumours in such regions