Kirkwood Community College Terminal Sire Demonstration Project

Nine different terminal sire lines were a Yorkshire/landrace sow herd at the Kirkwood Community College over a 30-month time span to determine production and economic merits of different sire lines. 1 The lowest backfat of the progeny came from the Danbred sire line. Premier T-Max sire line gave the progeny the largest loin muscle area and the highest per cent lean. The Waldo Duroc sire line produces the lowest selling age, lowest days to 250 lb., highest terminal sire index and highest overall economic value. The data indicate all the mated sire lines can provide positive contributions to commercial swine production. The use of a particular sire line within a herd will depend on the compliments of the sow herd, the desired progeny results, and the anticipated marketing outlet

Academic Chemistry Inputs and Outcomes Data

The Academic Chemistry Inputs and Outcomes Data assembles panel data on academic chemistry inputs and outputs for 147 universities from 1989 through 2009. Each observation represents a single university-year and includes information on numbers of publications, citations to these publications, levels of federal and non-federal R&D funding, numbers of faculty, postdoctoral researchers, doctorates awarded and institutional characteristics. The data were compiled for the analysis of the determinants of university publication behavior and its relationship to research funding as reported in Joshua L. Rosenbloom, Donna K. Ginther, Ted Juhl and Joseph Heppert, "The Effects of Research & Development Funding on Scientific Productivity: Academic Chemistry, 1990-2009," Public Library of Science One, available in KU ScholarWorks at http://hdl.handle.net/1808/20057. As described in the Data Description and Code Book, these data were assembled by linking together information from a number of publicly available data sources and combining them with proprietary data on publications and citations provided by Thomson Reuters from their Web of Science database. These data are available to download as a text file (.csv) and as a STATA (.dta) data file. Anyone is free to use these data for scholarly purposes, but must include a citation to this user guide in any papers or published articles that employ these data

Organic-Silica Interactions in Saline:Elucidating the Structural Influence of Calcium in Low-Salinity Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract Enhanced oil recovery using low-salinity solutions to sweep sandstone reservoirs is a widely-practiced strategy. The mechanisms governing this remain unresolved. Here, we elucidate the role of Ca2+ by combining chemical force microscopy (CFM) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We probe the influence of electrolyte composition and concentration on the adsorption of a representative molecule, positively-charged alkylammonium, at the aqueous electrolyte/silica interface, for four electrolytes: NaCl, KCl, MgCl2, and CaCl2. CFM reveals stronger adhesion on silica in CaCl2 compared with the other electrolytes, and shows a concentration-dependent adhesion not observed for the other electrolytes. Using MD simulations, we model the electrolytes at a negatively-charged amorphous silica substrate and predict the adsorption of methylammonium. Our simulations reveal four classes of surface adsorption site, where the prevalence of these sites depends only on CaCl2 concentration. The sites relevant to strong adhesion feature the O− silica site and Ca2+ in the presence of associated Cl−, which gain prevalence at higher CaCl2 concentration. Our simulations also predict the adhesion force profile to be distinct for CaCl2 compared with the other electrolytes. Together, these analyses explain our experimental data. Our findings indicate in general how silica wettability may be manipulated by electrolyte concentration

Coiled phononic crystal with periodic rotational locking: subwavelength bragg band gaps

Phononic crystals (PnC) are spatially periodic materials with band gaps that form by Bragg scattering of elastic waves. Within the frequency range of a band gap, wave propagation is not admitted. A long-standing limitation of this class of materials is that the wavelength for band-gap formation must be on the order of the unit-cell size. This restricts the presence of band gaps to relatively high frequencies for a given lattice spacing. Locally resonant metamaterials, on the other hand, enable the opening of low-frequency, subwavelength band gaps through resonance hybridization. However, their band gaps are characteristically narrow and require large or massive local resonators to form. Here, we break both limitations using beam-based PnCs by (1) locking the rotation degree of freedom at the edges of the primitive unit cell, and (2) coiling the PnC by applying full beam-axis rotations at the locked locations. These respective kinematic and geometric transformations convert a conventional beam PnC from its extended form with a nominal lattice constant to an extremely compact coiled configuration with a greatly reduced lattice constant. With the periodic rotational locking, the band gaps remain intact and are still large, and in fact increase noticeably in size. With the subsequent coiling, the band gaps remain based on Bragg scattering and are quantitatively conserved except now appearing at lower frequencies as dictated by the ratio of the extended-to-coiled lattice constants. This ratio defines a coiling factor, which is a measure of the reduction in the PnC unit-cell length in the direction of wave transmission while maintaining the band structure of its original extended form except for the favorable changes induced by the periodic rotational locking. A coiling factor of ß lowers, by construction, the location of the normalized central frequency of any given band gap by a factor of ß . The only limitation is the need for lateral space to accommodate the coiling of the beam segments. The vibration behavior of a finite version of the coiled structure is experimentally tested demonstrating a matching band-gap response, despite the reduction in length, to that obtained by finite-element analysis of the extended rotationally locked version. This concept creates effectively subwavelength Bragg band gaps. It clears the path for PnCs to serve in applications that are orders-of-magnitude smaller in scale than are currently possible, while featuring band gaps that are significantly larger than those generated by locally resonant metamaterials.This research is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant number 20RXCOR058.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Stepwise, Pilot Study of Bovine Colostrum to Supplement the First Enteral Feeding in Preterm Infants (Precolos):Study Protocol and Initial Results

STUDY PROTOCOL: The optimal feeding for preterm infants during the first weeks is still debated, especially when mother’s own milk is lacking or limited. Intact bovine colostrum (BC) contains high amounts of protein, growth factors, and immuno-regulatory components that may benefit protein intake and gut maturation. We designed a pilot study to investigate the feasibility and tolerability of BC as the first nutrition for preterm infants. The study was designed into three phases (A, B, and C) and recruited infants with birth weights of 1,000–1,800 g (China) or gestational ages (GAs) of 27 + 0 to 32 + 6 weeks (Denmark). In phase A, three infants were recruited consecutively to receive BC as a supplement to standard feeding. In phase B, seven infants were recruited in parallel. In phase C (not yet complete), 40 infants will be randomized to BC or standard feeding. Feeding intolerance, growth, time to full enteral feeding, serious infections/NEC, plasma amino acid profile, blood biochemistry, and intestinal functions are assessed. This paper presents the study protocol and results from phases A and B. RESULTS: Seven Danish and five Chinese infants received 22 ± 11 and 22 ± 6 ml·kg(−1)·day(−1) BC for a mean of 7 ± 3 and 7 ± 1 days which provided 1.81 ± 0.89 and 1.83 ± 0.52 g·kg(−1)·day(−1) protein, respectively. Growth rates until 37 weeks or discharge were in the normal range (11.8 ± 0.9 and 12.9 ± 2.7 g·kg(−1)·day(−1) in Denmark and China, respectively). No clinical adverse effects were observed. Five infants showed a transient hypertyrosinemia on day 7 of life. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The three-phased study design was used to proceed with caution as this is the first trial to investigate intact BC as the first feed for preterm infants. BC supplementation appeared well tolerated and resulted in high enteral protein intake. Based on the safety evaluation of phases A and B, the randomized phase C has been initiated. When complete, the Precolos trial will document whether it is feasible to use BC as a novel, bioactive milk diet for preterm infants. Our trial paves the way for a larger randomized controlled trial on using BC as the first feed for preterm infants with insufficient access to mother’s own milk