749 research outputs found
Effect of different adjuvants on PCV2-associated lesions
Ninety, 12-14 day old pigs were randomly assigned to five groups. Group 1 (n=19) pigs were vaccinated with a Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae (M. hyopneumoniae) vaccine with an oil-in-water adjuvant (RespiSure®; Pfizer Animal Health, Inc.). Group 2 (n=17) pigs were vaccinated with a commercial M. hyopneumoniae vaccine with an aqueous adjuvant (Carbopol) (Suvaxyn® Respifend® MH; Fort Dodge Animal Health, Inc.). Group 3 (n=18) pigs were vaccinated using an oil-in-water adjuvanted vaccine containing the same amount and type of M. hyopneumoniae antigen as in group 2. Group 4 (n=18) pigs were vaccinated using an aluminum hydroxide adjuvanted vaccine containing the same amount and type of M. hyopneumoniae antigen as in group 2. Group 5 (n=18) pigs served as the controls and were sham-vaccinated with saline. Pigs were injected with 2 mL of one of the four M. hyopneumoniae vaccines at four and again at six weeks of age. PCV2 was inoculated intranasally on the day of the second vaccination at 6 weeks of age. Half of the pigs were necropsied at 21 days post inoculation (DPI). The remaining pigs were necropsied at 35 DPI.
There were no differences among groups in clinical disease scores. At 21 DPI all vaccinated groups had significantly (p\u3c0.05) more severe lymphoid depletion than the saline injected group. At 35 DPI group 1 pigs had significantly (p\u3c0.05) higher amounts of PCV2 DNA in serum than pigs in groups 2, 4, and 5 as determined by quantitative real-time PCR. There was a significant (p\u3c0.05) increase in the severity of lymphoid depletion in the lymph nodes, tonsil, and spleen in groups 1 and 3 compared to groups 2, 4, and 5. Group 3 had significantly (p\u3c0.05) higher amounts of PCV2 antigen within lymph nodes, tonsil, and spleen compared to groups 2, 4 and 5. The results confirm that all adjuvants tested enhanced PCV2-induced lesions and oil-in-water products used in this study had a more severe effect
Alcohol and Prescription Drug Safety in Older Adults
BACKGROUND: The objectives of this study were to investigate older adults\u27 knowledge of prescription drug safety and interactions with alcohol, and to identify pharmacists\u27 willingness to disseminate prescription drug safety information to older adults.
METHODS: The convenience sample consisted of 48 older adults aged 54-89 years who were recruited from a local pharmacy and who completed surveys addressing their alcohol consumption, understanding of alcohol and prescription drug interactions, and willingness to change habits regarding alcohol consumption and prescription drugs. To address pharmacist willingness, 90 pharmacists from local pharmacies volunteered and answered questions regarding their willingness to convey prescription drug safety information to older adults.
RESULTS: Older adults reported low knowledge of alcohol and prescription drug safety, with women tending to be slightly more knowledgeable. More importantly, those who drank in the previous few months were less willing to talk to family and friends about how alcohol can have harmful interactions with prescription drugs, or to be an advocate for safe alcohol and prescription drug use than those who had not had a drink recently. Pharmacists reported that they were willing to convey prescription drug safety information to older adults via a variety of formats, including displaying or distributing a flyer, and directly administering a brief intervention.
CONCLUSION: In this study, older adults were found to have inadequate knowledge of prescription drug safety and interactions with alcohol, but pharmacists who regularly come in contact with older adults indicated that they were ready and willing to talk to older adults about prescription drug safety. Future research should focus on interventions whereby pharmacists disseminate prescription drug safety information to older adults in order to improve healthy prescription drug and alcohol behavior and reduce medical and health costs associated with interactions between alcohol and prescription drugs
Estimating nitrogen fluxes at the European scale by upscaling INTEGRATOR model outputs from selected sites
A comparison was made between upscaled model results of nitrogen (N) fluxes to air and water from 450 sites within the EU-27 and results derived for the entire EU-27 area using the model INTEGRATOR. The 450 sites were selected using stratified random sampling, dividing the EU-27 into 150 strata and selecting three sites at random within each stratum. The strata were based on important environmental factors influencing N fluxes. Hierarchical divisive cluster analysis was used to reduce the numerous combinations of environmental factors to the required total of 150, such that the heterogeneity of environmental factors within strata was as small as possible. Modelled NH<sub>3</sub>, N<sub>2</sub>O and NO<sub>x</sub> emissions and N leaching/runoff obtained were scaled up from the 450 sites to the entire EU-27 and were within 10% of results obtained by running the model for the whole of the EU-27 using about 36 500 sites. This implies that a reliable estimate of N fluxes for EU-27 can be made by upscaling results of the 450 selected sites suggesting that dramatic reduction in computation time can be achieved without substantial deterioration of result
Monte Carlo Renormalization of the 3-D Ising model: Analyticity and Convergence
We review the assumptions on which the Monte Carlo renormalization technique
is based, in particular the analyticity of the block spin transformations. On
this basis, we select an optimized Kadanoff blocking rule in combination with
the simulation of a d=3 Ising model with reduced corrections to scaling. This
is achieved by including interactions with second and third neighbors. As a
consequence of the improved analyticity properties, this Monte Carlo
renormalization method yields a fast convergence and a high accuracy. The
results for the critical exponents are y_H=2.481(1) and y_T=1.585(3).Comment: RevTeX, 4 PostScript file
Gigahertz pulse source by compression of mode-locked VECSEL pulses coherently broadened in the normal dispersion regime
Waternood-toepassing voor het gebied Einderbeek-Schoorkuilen; de reconstructie van een vennen-ecosysteem
Voor het voormalige vennengebied Einderbeek - Schoorkuilen is met het Waternoodinstrument berekend hoe kansrijk de plannen zijn om in dat gebied een vennenecosysteem in oude luister te herstellen. Het herstellen van het ven houdt in de praktijk in afgraven van het zand, afkomstig uit het Kanaal Wessem - Nederweert, dat er begin 20ste eeuw in is gedeponeerd. Tezamen met het verhogen van het grondwaterpeil door het opzetten van het peil in de Einderbeek resulteert dit in de vorming van plassen. Hierin ontstaat als het goed is vanuit de zaadbank, die nog in de oorspronkelijke venbodem aanwezig is, de gewenste watervegetatie van de Fonteinkruidklasse en het Oeverkruidverbond (Littorellion). In het hydrologische model dat voor het gebied bestond zijn kleine aanpassingen aangebracht om de geplande situatie beter te modelleren. Uit de berekeningen blijkt dat in het ven en de zeer directe omgeving ervan het beoogde natuurdoeltype een grote kans van slagen heeft; de doelrealisaties liggen tegen de 100%. Dit wordt bevestigd door de ontwikkelingen in het `Schoorwater¿, een proefplas die is gegraven aan de oostkant van het gebied waarin binnen enkele jaren het Oeverkruidverbond is verschenen. De overige beoogde natuurdoeltypen hebben weinig kans van slagen. Voor de landbouwpercelen die rondom het gebied liggen blijken de hydrologische maatregelen die nodig zijn om het vennen-ecosysteem te realiseren niet tot grote schades te leide
WW Cross-sections and Distributions
We present the results obtained by the "WW Cross-sections and Distributions"
working group during the CERN Workshop "Physics at LEP2" (1994/1995)Comment: 61 pages, tar'ed gzip'ed uuencoded files, LaTeX, 4 Postscript
figures. To appear in "Physics at LEP2", G.Altarelli and F.Zwirner eds., CERN
Report 199
Stable Calculations for Unstable Particles: Restoring Gauge Invariance
We discuss theoretical and phenomenological aspects of the use of boson
propagators with energy-dependent widths in predictions for high-energy
scattering processes. In general, gauge invariance is violated in such
calculations. We discuss several approaches to restore gauge invariance,
necessary for a reliable result. The most promising method is the addition of
the relevant parts of the fermionic corrections, which fulfills all Ward
identities. The numerical difference between this and other approaches is
studied. A number of recommendations are given for LEP2 computations.Comment: 13 pages LaTeX inc 1 figure, uses epsf, axodraw. The ps file is
available as ftp://rulgm4.leidenuniv.nl/pub/preprints/stable.ps or on
http://rulgm4.leidenuniv.nl/ under preprints. Added two reference
175 GHz, 400-fs-pulse harmonically mode-locked surface emitting semiconductor laser
We report a harmonically mode-locked vertical external cavity surface emitting laser (VECSEL) producing 400 fs pulses at a repetition frequency of 175 GHz with an average output power of 300 mW. Harmonic mode-locking was established using a 300 µm thick intracavity single crystal diamond heat spreader in thermal contact with the front surface of the gain sample using liquid capillary bonding. The repetition frequency was set by the diamond microcavity and stable harmonic mode locking was achieved when the laser cavity length was tuned so that the laser operated on the 117th harmonic of the fundamental cavity. When an etalon placed intracavity next to the gain sample, but not in thermal contact was used pulse groups were observed. These contained 300 fs pulses with a spacing of 5.9 ps. We conclude that to achieve stable harmonic mode locking at repetition frequencies in the 100s of GHz range in a VECSEL there is a threshold pulse energy above which harmonic mode locking is achieved and below which groups of pulses are observed
I=2 Scattering Phase Shift with two Flavors of Improved Dynamical Quarks
We present a lattice QCD calculation of phase shift including the chiral and
continuum extrapolations in two-flavor QCD. The calculation is carried out for
I=2 S-wave scattering. The phase shift is evaluated for two momentum
systems, the center of mass and laboratory systems, by using the finite volume
method proposed by L\"uscher in the center of mass system and its extension to
general systems by Rummukainen and Gottlieb. The measurements are made at three
different bare couplings , 1.95 and 2.10 using a renormalization
group improved gauge and a tadpole improved clover fermion action, and
employing a set of configurations generated for hadron spectroscopy in our
previous work. The illustrative values we obtain for the phase shift in the
continuum limit are (deg.) , and for , and , which are
consistent with experiment.Comment: 40 page
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