Art Inspired by Eastern Box Research for UNG Gainesville’s Sciences, Engineering, and Technology Building

Biology professors, Dr. Natalie Hyslop, and Dr. Jennifer Mook, have studied Eastern Box Turtle habitat use at the Tumbling Creek Nature Preserve adjacent to the University of North Georgia’s Gainesville Campus. Art instructor, Heather Foster, was drawn to the Box Turtles’ highly individualistic patterns. The three professors joined forces invited students to observe and make art about Eastern Box Turtles as they were extracted for their Summer 2018 checkup. After winning UNG’s Faculty Undergraduate Summer Engagement Grant, Dr. Hyslop, Dr. Mook, and Prof. Foster hired two UNG students, Kati Hornick, and Aida Alarcon, to create Eastern Box Turtle artwork for UNG’s Science, Engineering, and Technology Building. Aida Alarcon was entranced by the beautiful, bright colors on the Eastern Box turtle’s eyes, shells, and skin. Since she raised pet Red Eared Slider turtles as a child, she felt a similar fondness for the native Box Turtle and wanted to help the peaceful, sweet creatures. Alarcon created bold, visually outspoken paintings in hopes of inspiring the same love she felt for the turtles in students, faculty and staff. Her aim was to encourage viewers to become better stewards of the environment and maintain a healthy ecosystem for UNG’s Eastern Box Turtle neighbors. Kati Hornick grew up camping, catching salamanders in the American Midwest and studied Biology extensively. A fervid outdoors-person, Hornick was thrilled to track turtles and bring the quiet, hidden wonders of the forest floor to UNG students, faculty and staff by making a ceramic diorama. Using clay, Hornick sculpted Eastern Box Turtles at various life stages along with dead leafs and rotting logs. She also made tiles that represented the Eastern Box Turtle’s relationship with the Tumbling Creek Nature Preserve’s many ecosystems. Below is a link to a video that highlights Alarcon and Hornick’s work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g2WZni8bC

3D freeform surfaces from planar sketches using neural networks

A novel intelligent approach into 3D freeform surface reconstruction from planar sketches is proposed. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network is employed to induce 3D freeform surfaces from planar freehand curves. Planar curves were used to represent the boundaries of a freeform surface patch. The curves were varied iteratively and sampled to produce training data to train and test the neural network. The obtained results demonstrate that the network successfully learned the inverse-projection map and correctly inferred the respective surfaces from fresh curves

IMPACT OF THE USE OF A PROBIOTIC (Enterococcus faecium) ON ZOOTECHNIC PERFORMANCE AND LIPIDID PROFILE IN BROILER CHICKEN

This study was conducted to determine the effect of probiotic Enterococcus faecium DSM 7134 feed supplementation on animal performance of broilers poultry when compared to control animals. The determination of lipid status parameters on day 51 was performed on 5 chicks randomly selected in each group.. Biochemical analyzes included total cholesterol, triglycerides, high density lipoproteins (HDL) and low density lipoproteins (LDL). Individual live weight, consumption index and mortality rate were measured at the end of the rearing phases. The results obtained showed that the addition of Enterococcus faecium significantly improved live weight throughout the rearing period without significant charge on FCR and mortality rate. The experimental group had significantly higher cholesterol, triglyceride and HDL levels.

Six years survival on imatinib with no disease progression after diagnosis of metastatic duodenal gastrointestinal stromal tumour: a case report

Introduction: A duodenal Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumour (GIST) is a rare finding and until recently advanced disease had a poor prognosis. A PubMed search revealed no reports of more than five years survival of inoperable GIST on chemotherapy with WHO performance status zero. Case Presentation: A 68 year old female was diagnosed with unresectable GIST in the duodenum with metastasis to liver, pancreas and omentum in November 2001. She was commenced on imatinib mesylate (Glivec) chemotherapy. This case report was prepared from the medical records and radiology reports. She had good tolerance with stable disease. After six years her CT scan showed no disease progression and her WHO performance status was zero. Conclusion: This report supports the view that imatinib is a safe and effective drug in controlling disease progression in advanced metastatic GIST and plays an important role in improving the patient's quality of life

How much of the intraaortic balloon volume is displaced toward the coronary circulation?

This is a post-print version of the published article. Copyright @ 2010 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Objective: During intraaortic balloon inflation, blood volume is displaced toward the heart (Vtip), traveling retrograde in the descending aorta, passing by the arch vessels, reaching the aortic root (Vroot), and eventually perfusing the coronary circulation (Vcor). Vcor leads to coronary flow augmentation, one of the main benefits of the intraaortic balloon pump. The aim of this study was to assess Vroot and Vcor in vivo and in vitro, respectively. Methods: During intraaortic balloon inflation, Vroot was obtained by integrating over time the aortic root flow signals measured in 10 patients with intraaortic balloon assistance frequencies of 1:1 and 1:2. In a mock circulation system, flow measurements were recorded simultaneously upstream of the intraaortic balloon tip and at each of the arch and coronary branches of a silicone aorta during 1:1 and 1:2 intraaortic balloon support. Integration over time of the flow signals during inflation yielded Vcor and the distribution of Vtip. Results: In patients, Vroot was 6.4% ± 4.8% of the intraaortic balloon volume during 1:1 assistance and 10.0% ± 5.0% during 1:2 assistance. In vitro and with an artificial heart simulating the native heart, Vcor was smaller, 3.7% and 3.8%, respectively. The distribution of Vtip in vitro varied, with less volume displaced toward the arch and coronary branches and more volume stored in the compliant aortic wall when the artificial heart was not operating. Conclusion: The blood volume displaced toward the coronary circulation as the result of intraaortic balloon inflation is a small percentage of the nominal intraaortic balloon volume. Although small, this percentage is still a significant fraction of baseline coronary flow.This article is available through the Open Access Publishing Fund

A mathematical model for correcting patient setup errors using a tilt and roll device

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134812/1/mp8797.pd

A tilt and roll device for automated correction of rotational setup errors

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135033/1/mp8355.pd

A missing dimension in measures of vaccination impacts

Immunological protection, acquired from either natural infection or vaccination, varies among hosts, reflecting underlying biological variation and affecting population-level protection. Owing to the nature of resistance mechanisms, distributions of susceptibility and protection entangle with pathogen dose in a way that can be decoupled by adequately representing the dose dimension. Any infectious processes must depend in some fashion on dose, and empirical evidence exists for an effect of exposure dose on the probability of transmission to mumps-vaccinated hosts [1], the case-fatality ratio of measles [2], and the probability of infection and, given infection, of symptoms in cholera [3]. Extreme distributions of vaccine protection have been termed leaky (partially protects all hosts) and all-or-nothing (totally protects a proportion of hosts) [4]. These distributions can be distinguished in vaccine field trials from the time dependence of infections [5]. Frailty mixing models have also been proposed to estimate the distribution of protection from time to event data [6], [7], although the results are not comparable across regions unless there is explicit control for baseline transmission [8]. Distributions of host susceptibility and acquired protection can be estimated from dose-response data generated under controlled experimental conditions [9]–[11] and natural settings [12], [13]. These distributions can guide research on mechanisms of protection, as well as enable model validity across the entire range of transmission intensities. We argue for a shift to a dose-dimension paradigm in infectious disease science and community health