7,660 research outputs found
Effects of Optaflexx alone or in combination with BoVantage on the performance and carcass merit of finishing heifers
Beta agonists, including Optaflexx (Elanco Animal Health, Greenfield, IN), are now routinely fed to finishing cattle as a means of increasing carcass weight and efficiency of carcass weight gain during the final 20 to 42 days on feed. BoVantage, a product recently introduced by Kent Nutrition Group (Muscatine, IA) for use in feedlot cattle, has been observed to improve efficiency of gain late in the finishing phase. This study was conducted to determine if the actions of BoVantage and Optaflexx are synergistic
Cutaneous Blood Flow and Percutaneous Absorption: A Quantitative Analysis Using a Laser Doppler Velocimeter and a Blood Flow Meter
Cutaneous blood flow has been directly quantitated in vivo for the first time without animal death utilizing the rat skin sandwich flap. This was accomplished by conducting experiments that made a direct correlation between two instruments: a laser Doppler velocimeter and an electromagnetic blood flow meter. Data demonstrate that the correlation between these two instruments is high and reproducible (r = 0.96) with a small (1.3%) coefficient of variation. Blood flow to skin in the unmanipulated state varies from 0.7 to 1.2 mls/min in an anesthetized rat. Application of the blood flow correlation to the determination of percutaneous absorption of caffeine across human skin and benzoic acid across rat skin demonstrates that assuming cutaneous blood flow is a particular value day to day in any skin type results in an apparent wide range of total compound absorbed across that skin on independent occasions. Utilizing actual blood flow measurements to calculate the amount of chemical absorbed reduces the range of variability in the total amount of chemical absorbed and provides a more accurate knowledge of events occurring during a particular time of the absorption process. Quantitation of cutaneous blood flow will be useful in physiologic and pharmacologic studies where actual cutaneous blood flow is likely to be important to the processes studied, e.g., delivery of drug to skin, metabolism within the skin, and disposition of drug to blood and skin following topical drug application
Pretransplant HLA typing revealed loss of heterozygosity in the major histocompatibility complex in a patient with acute myeloid leukemia
Introduction
Chromosomal abnormalities are frequent events in hematological malignancies. The degree of HLA compatibility between donor and recipient in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is critical.
Purpose of the study
In this report, we describe an acute myeloid leukemia case with loss of heterozygosity (LOH) encompassing the entire HLA.
Materials and methods
HLA molecular typing was performed on peripheral blood (PB) and buccal swabs (BS). Chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) was performed using a whole genome platform.
Results
Typing results on PB sample collected during blast crisis demonstrated homozygosity at the -A, -B, -C, -DR, and -DQ loci. A BS sample demonstrated heterozygosity at all loci. A subsequent PB sample drawn after count recovery confirmed heterozygosity. The CMA performed on PB samples collected during and after blast crisis revealed a large terminal region of copy-neutral LOH involving chromosome region 6p25.3p21.31, spanning approximately 35.9âŻMb. The results of the CMA assay on sample collected after count recovery did not demonstrate LOH.
Conclusions
LOH at the HLA gene locus may significantly influence the donor search resulting in mistakenly choosing homozygous donors. We recommend confirming the HLA typing of recipients with hematological malignancies when homozygosity is detected at any locus by using BS samples, or alternatively from PB when remission is achieved
Sovereign debt restructuring : the judge, the vultures and creditor rights
What role did the US courts play in the Argentine debt swap of 2005? What implications does this have for the future of creditor rights in sovereign bond markets?
The judge in the Argentine case has, it appears, deftly exploited creditor heterogeneity â between holdouts seeking capital gains and institutional investors wanting a settlement â to promote a swap with a supermajority of creditors. Our analysis of Argentine debt litigation reveals a âjudge-mediatedâ sovereign debt restructuring, which resolves the key issues of Transition and Aggregation - two of the tasks envisaged for the IMFâs still-born Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism.
For the future, we discuss how judge-mediated sovereign debt restructuring (together with creditor committees) could complement the alternative promoted by the US Treasury, namely collective action clauses in sovereign bond contracts
Spectral analyses, climatology, and interannual variability of Nimbus-7 TOMS version 6 total column ozone
This reference publication presents selected results from space-time spectral analyses of 13 years of version 6 daily global ozone fields from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS). One purpose is to illustrate more quantitatively the well-known richness of structure and variation in total ozone. A second purpose is to provide, for use by modelers and for comparison with other analysts' work, quantitative measures of zonal waves 1, 2, 3, and medium-scale waves 4-7 in total ozone. Their variations throughout the year and at a variety of latitudes are presented, from equatorial to polar regions. The 13-year averages are given, along with selected individual years which illustrate year-to-year variability. The largest long wave amplitudes occur in the polar winters and early springs of each hemisphere, and are related to strong wave amplification during major warning events. In low attitudes total ozone wave amplitudes are an order of magnitude smaller than at high latitudes. However, TOMS fields contain a number of equatorial dynamical features, including Rossby-gravity and Kelvin waves
How to Educate Entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurship education has two purposes: To improve studentsâ entrepreneurial skills and to provide impetus to those suited to entrepreneurship while discouraging the rest. While entrepreneurship education helps students to make a vocational decision its effects may conflict for those not suited to entrepreneurship. This study shows that vocational and the skill formation effects of entrepreneurship education can be identified empirically by drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior. This is embedded in a structural equation model which we estimate and test using a robust 2SLS estimator. We find that the attitudinal factors posited by the Theory of Planned Behavior are positively correlated with studentsâ entrepreneurial intentions. While conflicting effects of vocational and skill directed course content are observed in some individuals, overall these types of content are complements. This finding contradicts previous results in the literature. We reconcile the conflicting findings and discuss implications for the design of entrepreneurship courses
Incorporating Inductances in Tissue-Scale Models of Cardiac Electrophysiology
In standard models of cardiac electrophysiology, including the bidomain and
monodomain models, local perturbations can propagate at infinite speed. We
address this unrealistic property by developing a hyperbolic bidomain model
that is based on a generalization of Ohm's law with a Cattaneo-type model for
the fluxes. Further, we obtain a hyperbolic monodomain model in the case that
the intracellular and extracellular conductivity tensors have the same
anisotropy ratio. In one spatial dimension, the hyperbolic monodomain model is
equivalent to a cable model that includes axial inductances, and the relaxation
times of the Cattaneo fluxes are strictly related to these inductances. A
purely linear analysis shows that the inductances are negligible, but models of
cardiac electrophysiology are highly nonlinear, and linear predictions may not
capture the fully nonlinear dynamics. In fact, contrary to the linear analysis,
we show that for simple nonlinear ionic models, an increase in conduction
velocity is obtained for small and moderate values of the relaxation time. A
similar behavior is also demonstrated with biophysically detailed ionic models.
Using the Fenton-Karma model along with a low-order finite element spatial
discretization, we numerically analyze differences between the standard
monodomain model and the hyperbolic monodomain model. In a simple benchmark
test, we show that the propagation of the action potential is strongly
influenced by the alignment of the fibers with respect to the mesh in both the
parabolic and hyperbolic models when using relatively coarse spatial
discretizations. Accurate predictions of the conduction velocity require
computational mesh spacings on the order of a single cardiac cell. We also
compare the two formulations in the case of spiral break up and atrial
fibrillation in an anatomically detailed model of the left atrium, and [...].Comment: 20 pages, 12 figure
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