Modification and evaluation of a ruminant emission measurement system for assessing cattle metabolism

Respiratory gas exchanges may be monitored to assess heat production as an indication of metabolic performance. A Ruminant Emission Measurement System (REMS) was initially constructed to measure methane emission from cattle, and is located at the Beef Cattle and Sheep Field Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. REMS was modified to expand the capacity for measuring heat production, and methods for verifying system reliability were applied. Three recovery test approaches (alcohol combustion method, constant gas injection method, and gravimetric gas injection method) revealed opportunities for improving the system performance by reducing the impact of systematic errors. Approaches for the application of REMS were also explored to reduce the measurement variability be identifying an appropriate acclimation period for cattle

su(2) and su(1,1) displaced number states and their nonclassical properties

We study su(2) and su(1,1) displaced number states. Those states are eigenstates of density-dependent interaction systems of quantized radiation field with classical current. Those states are intermediate states interpolating between number and displaced number states. Their photon number distribution, statistical and squeezing properties are studied in detail. It is show that these states exhibit strong nonclassical properties.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

ENGINEERING INFORMATICS AND SYSTEMS MODELING FOR OPTIMIZATION OF ANIMAL MANURE MANAGEMENT

There is no doubt that animal feeding operations (AFO) significantly improve meat production at a lower cost. However, accumulative manure produced in AFOs cannot be efficiently utilized in a sustainable and economical way. How to develop the animal manure management strategy is a challenge for both the local agricultural production industry and the ecological system. The overall goal of this dissertation research is to develop decision support models that enhance AFO manure management in the pursuit of sustainability and profitability. A systematic approach is proposed to assist in informatics management, analysis, and decision-making through the graphical user interface, cyber map service, operation research, geographic information systems (GIS), and techno-economic analysis. To bridge existing information gaps between AFO productions, local conditions, and technologies, a cyber-map enabled decision support platform was developed. This platform integrates data for manure production, treatments, application regulations, agronomist recommendations, and local electronic maps with user interactions to examine potential alternative manure management plans. To address the manure management problem of a single farm in a region that lacks adequate crop land for manure spreading, we present a modeling approach (Analytic target cascading, ATC) to optimize the design and operation of a swine manure management system by formulating economic, engineering, and environmental objectives into individual tasks. The conceptual design of a manure management plan was conducted by the decision support platform. Then, the ATC-based model identifies optimal capacities of main components, and operations of manure and crop management sequentially through updating the targets and responses in each iteration. A case study in Hangzhou, China (a swine farm with Anaerobic Digestion process + Ectopic Fermentation) is presented to illustrate the decision process and the sensitivity of the economic parameters i.e., a configuration of mass flows in the system and the size of each process in different seasons under different economic scenarios. Additionally, the scenario analyses are discussed to provide further insights of opportunities and risks. Manure is generated, processed, transported, and utilized in various ways. Manure management requires the coordination of animal feeding operations (AFOs), centralized processing facilities (CPF), and crop farms. Such a manure utilization chain is more than an individual farm scale, and it is a complex nexus between different production systems. To minimize annual manure utilization costs and identify the optimal manure flow patterns, a mixed-mode manure utilization chain (RMUC model) was proposed to ensure sustainable manure utilization for distributed animal farms. The model was implemented to evaluate the manure utilization chain in Hangzhou, China. The scenario analyses are discussed to estimate that the average solid and slurry manure utilization costs under existed and optimal logistics configurations. The decision-making of management practices needs intensive knowledge and a scientific basis while accommodating unique local conditions. The RMUC model can be used to inspect potential configurations (numbers and capacities of facilities, transportation routes, crop farms), quantify performance (economic returns, available manure application lands, nutrient utilization efficiency), and analyze the synergies and trade-offs among different objectives. The scenario analysis suggests setbacks for manure land application and determines the availability of manure applicable lands. The slurry-manure RMUC model was modified to analyze the operational cost and operational greenhouse gas emission of the slurry manure utilization chain in Hangzhou, China. The Pareto-optimal results of baseline scenario demonstrated how the GHG emission constraints affect the optimal configuration of the manure utilization chain, and how the improvement of those practices could change manure utilization cost, increase nutrient utilization, and reduce overall cost and GHG emission. A scenario analysis was conducted to allow the manure nutrient contents to vary within specific ranges. The results conceptually approved the benefits of accurate measurement of nutrient composition in manure management. Finally, we compared four different transportation modes and the results showed that adding a secondary storage station in each village will improve animal manure utilization. This study is an example of dealing with systematic agricultural problems with social, environmental, and economic constraints. It assists in overcoming the barrier to implement high-quality analysis tools in optimization models for establishing an ideal approach to use the information and computational science

A unified multi-step wind speed forecasting framework based on numerical weather prediction grids and wind farm monitoring data

Wind speed forecasting is the basis of wind farm operation, which provides a reference for the future operation status evaluation of wind farms. For the wind speed forecast of wind turbines in the whole wind farm, a strategy combining unified forecast and single site error correction is proposed in this paper. The unified forecast framework is composed of a unified forecast model and multiple single site error correction models, which combines the forecasted grids of numerical weather prediction (NWP) with the monitoring data of wind farms. The proposed unified forecast model is called spatiotemporal conversion deep predictive network (STC-DPN), which is composed of temporal convolution network (TCN) and 2D convolution long short-term memory network (ConvLSTM). Firstly, the NWP forecasted grids are interpolated to the fan location, and the sequence matrix is composed of the NWP data and the monitored data of each wind turbine according to the time series, which is entered into the TCN network for time sequence feature extraction. Then, the output of the TCN network is converted into a regular spatio-temporal data matrix, which is entered into the ConvLSTM network for joint learning of spatio-temporal features to obtain the wind speed sequence forecasted in the whole wind farm. Finally, an independent TCN-LSTM error correction model is added for each site. Variational modal decomposition (VMD) is used to process data series, and different processing methods are adopted in unified forecast and single site error correction. In the 96 steps forecast test of a wind farm from Jining City, China, the proposed method is superior to several baseline methods and has important practical application value

The Relative Risk and Incidence of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Related Pneumonitis in Patients With Advanced Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Background: Recently, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been proved one of the most promising anti-cancer therapy, series clinical trials have confirmed their efficacy. But they are also associated with distinctive set of toxic effects, which are recognized as immune-related adverse events. Among those immune-related adverse events, pneumonitis is rare, but it is often clinically serious and potentially life-threatening. Although many clinical trial results of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors had been reported incidence of pneumonitis, the knowledge based on the individual cohort data from each clinical trial is limited. So we conducted a meta-analysis of trials of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in patients with advanced cancer and compared relative risk and incidence among different tumor types and therapeutic regimens. Such an analysis may provide important knowledge of this rare but clinically significant and potentially serious immune-related adverse event.Methods: Electronic databases were used to search eligible literatures, include randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing immune checkpoint inhibitors vs. standard therapies. All-grade (1–4) or high-grade (3–4) pneumonitis events were extracted. The summary relative risk, summary incidence, and 95% confidence intervals were calculated.Results: The incidence of all-grade and high-grade pneumonitis in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was significantly higher compared with other tumor types, such as Melanoma, urothelial carcinoma (UC), head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) (3.1% vs. 2.0%; p = 0.02, 1.4% vs. 0.6%; p = 0.03). The risk of all-grade pneumonitis was obtained from all patients in both experimental arm and control arm. Treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting PD-1/PD-L1 did significantly increase the risk of all-grade and high-grade pneumonitis compared with controls (fixed effects, RR: 4.70; 95% CI: 2.81–7.85; p < 0.00001, RR: 3.33; 95% CI: 1.68–6.59; p = 0.0006).Conclusion: The incidence of immune checkpoint inhibitors related pneumonitis was higher in NSCLC than other tumor types. Patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitor in experiment arms are more likely to experience any grade pneumonitis than control arms. These findings suggest that clinician need to draw more attention on this rare but serious adverse event

Aqueous Solution Preparation, Structure, and Magnetic Properties of Nano-Granular ZnxFe3−xO4 Ferrite Films

This paper reports a simple and novel process for preparing nano-granular ZnxFe3−xO4 ferrite films (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.99) on Ag-coated glass substrates in DMAB-Fe(NO3)3-Zn(NO3)2 solutions. The deposition process may be applied in preparing other cations-doped spinel ferrite films. The Zn content x in the ZnxFe3−xO4 films depends linearly on the Zn2+ ion concentration ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 mM in the aqueous solutions. With x increasing from 0 to 0.99, the lattice constant increases from 0.8399 to 0.8464 nm; and the microstructure of the films changes from the non-uniform nano-granules to the fine and uniform nano-granules of 50–60 nm in size. The saturation magnetization of the films first increases from 75 emu/g to the maximum 108 emu/g with x increasing from 0 to 0.33 and then decreases monotonously to 5 emu/g with x increasing from 0.33 to 0.99. Meanwhile, the coercive force decreases monotonously from 116 to 13 Oe

Structure and Luminescence Properties of Eu3+-Doped Cubic Mesoporous Silica Thin Films

Eu3+ ions-doped cubic mesoporous silica thin films with a thickness of about 205 nm were prepared on silicon and glass substrates using triblock copolymer as a structure-directing agent using sol–gel spin-coating and calcination processes. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy analysis show that the mesoporous silica thin films have a highly ordered body-centered cubic mesoporous structure. High Eu3+ ion loading and high temperature calcination do not destroy the ordered cubic mesoporous structure of the mesoporous silica thin films. Photoluminescence spectra show two characteristic emission peaks corresponding to the transitions of5D0-7F1 and 5D0-7F2 of Eu3+ ions located in low symmetry sites in mesoporous silica thin films. With the Eu/Si molar ratio increasing to 3.41%, the luminescence intensity of the Eu3+ ions-doped mesoporous silica thin films increases linearly with increasing Eu3+ concentration

The VEGF -634G>C promoter polymorphism is associated with risk of gastric cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Both TGF-β1 and VEGF play a critic role in the multiple-step process of tumorgenesis of gastric cancer. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the <it>TGFB1 </it>and <it>VEGF </it>genes have been associated with risk and progression of many cancers. In this study, we investigated the association between potentially functional SNPs of these two genes and risk of gastric cancer in a US population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The risk associated with genotypes and haplotypes of four <it>TGFB1 </it>SNPs and four <it>VEGF </it>SNPs were determined by multivariate logistic regression analysis in 171 patients with gastric cancer and 353 cancer-free controls frequency-matched by age, sex and ethnicity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Compared with the <it>VEGF</it>-634GG genotype, the -634CG genotype and the combined -634CG+CC genotypes were associated with a significantly elevated risk of gastric cancer (adjusted OR = 1.88, 95% CI = 1.24-2.86 and adjusted OR = 1.56, 95% CI = 1.07-2.27, respectively). However, none of other <it>TGFB1 </it>and <it>VEGF </it>SNPs was associated with risk of gastric cancer.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our data suggested that the <it>VEGF</it>-634G>C SNP may be a marker for susceptibility to gastric cancer, and this finding needs to be validated in larger studies.</p