Effect of breed on thermal pain sensitivity in dogs : A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Zoology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

A problem in assessing pain sensitivity in animals is the variability among individuals within a species. Thermal nociceptive threshold (TNT) testing is used to measure pain sensitivity in animals. However, little research has been done on within species differences in pain sensitivity, with most studies focusing on the effectiveness of analgesics. This research was carried out to see if there was any variation in baseline TNTs in different dog breeds. To determine TNTs, a heat stimulus was applied to the leg of a dog using a new device that could be remotely activated. This removed the need to restrain the dogs. The time and temperature at which the dog responded behaviourally was recorded. The TNT of dog was recorded six times in a one-hour session, once a week, for four consecutive weeks. In the first experiment the repeatability of harrier hound (n= 11) TNTs over time and the effects of the initial thermode temperature were examined. The results indicated that TNTs were repeatable over the daily test, session however they were affected by week of testing, thermode and initial thermode temperature. It was concluded that using a consistent elevated initial thermode temperature was more consistent than the natural starting temperature. The aim of the second experiment was to investigate differences in TNTs between three dog breeds: harrier hounds, greyhounds, and huntaways (n=10 per breed). A breed effect was found whereby huntaways took significantly longer to respond than harrier hounds and responded at higher temperatures than greyhounds and harrier hounds. There were no differences between greyhounds and harrier hounds. This study provides the first scientific evidence of breed differences in pain sensitivity in dogs. It is concluded that there were differences in thermal pain thresholds between the three dog breeds tested. The study supported the use of TNT testing on dogs and offered new insight into ways to improve the reliability of threshold testing. Future work should use more breeds, evaluate pain sensitivity in other modalities, and assess the effect of analgesics on TNTs in dogs

Preliminary Investigation of Cyclic De-Icing of an Airfoil Using an External Electric Heater

An investigation was conducted in the NACA Lewis icing research tunnel to determine the characteristics and requirements of cyclic deicing of a 65,2-216 airfoil by use of an external electric heater. The present investigation was limited to an airspeed of 175 miles per hour. Data are presented to show the effects of variations in heat-on and heat-off periods, ambient air temperature, liquid-water content, angle of attack, and. heating distribution on the requirements for cyclic deicing. The external heat flow at various icing and heating conditions is also presented. A continuously heated parting strip at the airfoil leading edge was found necessary for quick, complete, and consistent ice removal. The cyclic power requirements were found to be primarily a function of the datum temperature and heat-on time, with the other operating and meteorological variables having a second-order effect. Short heat-on periods and high power densities resulted in the most efficient ice removal, the minimum energy input, and the minimum runback ice formations. The optimum chordwise heating distribution pattern was found to consist of a uniform distribution of cycled power density in the impingement region. Downstream of the impingement region the power density decreased to the limits of heating which, for the conditions investigated, extended from 5.7 percent chord on the upper surface of the airfoil to 8.9 percent chord on the lower surface. Ice removal did not take place at a heater surface temperature of 32 F; surface temperatures of approximately 50 to 100 F were required to effect removal. Better de-icing performance and greater energy savings would be possible with a heater having a higher thermal efficiency

Alien Registration- Bowden, James J. (Ashland, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/27426/thumbnail.jp

Adaptability potential of corn for groundcover cropping systems

Experiments were conducted from 2008-2010 to determine genetic adaptability potential of corn when grown in competition with cover crops or living mulches. Cover crops were grown simultaneously with corn crop. Genetic potential was identified in female inbred lines more so than in male inbred lines when tested in hybrid combination

Influences of Display Design and Task Management Strategy on Situation Awareness, Performance, and Workload in Process Control Environments

Process control environments demand well informed high performing human monitors to maintain effectual control of multiple processes. Most research aims to satisfy this requirement through the evaluation of competing heuristic-based display design constructs. Contrary to that method, this study takes a novel approach by examining both factors internal and external to the human observer to identify where beneficial outcomes actually reside. External factors explore the underlying design construct attributes, while internal factors focus on the effect of operator task management strategy, age, and experience. Results from this study present several key findings relative to operator situation awareness, performance, and workload. Findings suggest the specific manner in which external information is presented and oriented on a process control room display is inconsequential toward situation awareness and performance. Further, operator preferred task management strategy has a profound effect on their performance and experienced workload, while exhibiting only a mild effect on situation awareness. In most cases, an Adaptive Attack strategy produces desirable results, while an Adaptive Avoidance does not. Interleaving and Multitasking fall between these two extremes. Lastly, findings indicate subject variables, age and experience have negative effects on overall situation awareness and system deviation prediction times

West Chester University Zero Waste Atlas Campus Assessment 2021

In Spring 2021, West Chester University’s Office of Sustainability hired the Post- Landfill Action Network (PLAN) to support two Sustainability Peer Educators, Grace Bowden ‘21 and Andrew James ‘21, to conduct a holistic assessment of the University’s waste management system. WCU’s Climate Action Plan includes a goal of achieving zero waste (as defined by 90% diversion from landfills and incinerators), with no defined timeline for achievement. The plan also outlines a number of key next steps in working towards that goal, many of which have yet to be achieved as outlined in this report. WCU remains committed to reduce waste sent to landfill and to change the ways the campus purchases and manages goods to be in the best interests of the environment and WCU. The following report is intended to identify concrete steps that WCU can take to shift towards holistic zero waste systems

Response-adaptive designs for binary responses: How to offer patient benefit while being robust to time trends?

Response-adaptive randomisation (RAR) can considerably improve the chances of a successful treatment outcome for patients in a clinical trial by skewing the allocation probability towards better performing treatments as data accumulates. There is considerable interest in using RAR designs in drug development for rare diseases, where traditional designs are not either feasible or ethically questionable. In this paper, we discuss and address a major criticism levelled at RAR: namely, type I error inflation due to an unknown time trend over the course of the trial. The most common cause of this phenomenon is changes in the characteristics of recruited patients-referred to as patient drift. This is a realistic concern for clinical trials in rare diseases due to their lengthly accrual rate. We compute the type I error inflation as a function of the time trend magnitude to determine in which contexts the problem is most exacerbated. We then assess the ability of different correction methods to preserve type I error in these contexts and their performance in terms of other operating characteristics, including patient benefit and power. We make recommendations as to which correction methods are most suitable in the rare disease context for several RAR rules, differentiating between the 2-armed and the multi-armed case. We further propose a RAR design for multi-armed clinical trials, which is computationally efficient and robust to several time trends considered

Multi-armed Bandit Models for the Optimal Design of Clinical Trials: Benefits and Challenges.

Multi-armed bandit problems (MABPs) are a special type of optimal control problem well suited to model resource allocation under uncertainty in a wide variety of contexts. Since the first publication of the optimal solution of the classic MABP by a dynamic index rule, the bandit literature quickly diversified and emerged as an active research topic. Across this literature, the use of bandit models to optimally design clinical trials became a typical motivating application, yet little of the resulting theory has ever been used in the actual design and analysis of clinical trials. To this end, we review two MABP decision-theoretic approaches to the optimal allocation of treatments in a clinical trial: the infinite-horizon Bayesian Bernoulli MABP and the finite-horizon variant. These models possess distinct theoretical properties and lead to separate allocation rules in a clinical trial design context. We evaluate their performance compared to other allocation rules, including fixed randomization. Our results indicate that bandit approaches offer significant advantages, in terms of assigning more patients to better treatments, and severe limitations, in terms of their resulting statistical power. We propose a novel bandit-based patient allocation rule that overcomes the issue of low power, thus removing a potential barrier for their use in practice