Determining Winter Hardy Apple Genotypes Prior to Seed Germination

The objective of this research was to find a method of eliminating a high percentage of the tender genotypes in a population of apples before planting the seed. The introduction of apple culture into the Great Plains and adjacent Canadian provinces confronted horticulturists with the problem of winter hardiness. Thousands of seedlings of standard varieties were planted in an attempt to find varieties sufficiently hardy for this region of North America. Fruit breeding to develop high quality apples adapted to the northern Great Plains is an important phase of horticulture. Each new variety developed must be subjected to long and expensive field tests for hardiness studies. A considerable amount of money is spent in growing large populations, only to find that a high percentage of the seedlings in the populations are not hardy. If these tender individuals could be eliminated prior to planting, the expense involved in land and labor could be greatly reduced, and more effort could be expended on the seedlings which would have the greatest chances of being winter hardy

Managed Entry Agreements : European Payers’ Experiences

The requested prices for novel medicines are continuously rising. This puts payer organisations into a difficult situation where they are trying to find a way to reimburse those medicines and, on the same time, have to stay within the limits of available resources. In addition to high costs, reimbursement decisions are difficult due to uncertainties related to clinical effectiveness, safety, cost-effectiveness and budget impact of novel medicines in routine clinical care. One tool used to enable access to those high-priced medicines when there are several uncertainties is a managed entry agreement (MEA). This is an arrangement between a manufacturer and a payer that enables access to a medicinal product subject to specified conditions. The two main types of agreements are finance-based and performance-based agreements. Although MEAs have some important benefits, like improved access to medicines, cost savings and collection of real-world data, they also have remarkable disadvantages, e.g. issues related to confidentiality of MEAs and high administrative workload. The focus of this review is experience with managed entry agreements in European countries. MEAs are mainly used for oncology products or orphan medicines. Based on available information, mostly financial agreements are used. Performance-based agreements are not that popular, although they are widely used in England and Italy. Performance-based agreements in the form of coverage with evidence development have previously been also used in Sweden and The Netherlands, but both countries came to a similar conclusion that the clinical evidence obtained from the schemes was poor. Although the use of managed entry agreements is widespread, payer organisations are increasingly unsure whether it is the best way to address the problem of high medicines prices and uncertainties related to their uptake. Therefore, payers are searching for an alternative solution to manage increasing costs of novel medicines

Classification of compromised DOFS data with LSTM neural networks

Distributed optical fiber sensors (DOFS) are gaining momentum for in-situ condition monitoring and damage detection purposes. Although DOFS are a versatile sensing method enabling high-resolution strain and temperature mapping, they are also sensitive to mechanical vibrations. Vibrations are typically created by the ambient environment (e.g acoustic background, rotating equipment) which can produce high levels of measurement noise. With physical access to DOFS installations, the principle of acoustic or mechanical vibrations can also be utilized for malicious sensor tampering. The current lack of anomaly-detection systems suggests that practical DOFS applications would benefit from an automated analysis to detect and classify compromised measurements. Noise classification makes it possible to identify its source and potentially remove its effects from the measurement in the future. This would expand the commercial applications of DOFS systems significantly. Neural networks have been used for error detection in cyber-physical applications in numerous studies with high-accuracy results. Specifically, long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network models have become popular in recent years to classify anomalies in sequential e.g time-series data. Our investigation conducted a series of physical experiments using magnitude-controlled mechanical disturbances on bare free-hanging DOFS. Both random low-frequency vibrations at large displacement amplitudes and a constant high-frequency acoustic source at a low amplitude were employed. Experiments revealed that strain patterns are visually different with varying types and levels of disturbances. For the numerical analysis, statistics and machine learningbased approaches were applied for DOFS vibration noise classification, and their accuracy is discussed in detail. Results from the post-processing of compromised DOFS data suggest that it is possible to develop a vibration detection or classification system based on off-the-shelf DOFS interrogation equipment coupled with LSTM numerical tools

Growing Raspberries in South Dakota

This publication is designed to assist raspberry growers obtain better yields from raspberry plantings. Winter injury is the most common limiting factor in raspberry growing. Because of the complex nature of the conditions associated with winter injury, a study was designed to evaluate management practices in South Dakota. Preliminary evaluation of some of the more generally planted varieties was made and a comparison of different cultural practices provides the source of information reported. Much information gained from other studies has been used extensively in this report

What do children understand? Communicating health behavior in a European multicenter study

Background: Diet and physical activity are important factors in the prevention of childhood overweight. This article stresses the importance of effective communication for health behavior. Methods: Transcription, description and analysis of standardized focus group discussions (FGD) in seven European countries using standardized questioning routes. Results: Parents are well informed about health-related topics for children, but seem to have difficulties understanding their role in promoting healthy behavior. They mentioned health-related rules, but our results show limited communication between parents and children, and no follow-up of rules. Consequently, children do not understand rules about good health and do not follow them. Conclusion: Effective and sustainable intervention programs should focus on educational methods and, using parental role modeling, facilitate parents' comprehension of their key role in setting rules and controlling them in order to communicate good health behavior to their children

A Comparative Cyberconflict Analysis of Digital Activism Across Post-Soviet Countries

This article analyses digital activism comparatively in relation to three Post-Soviet regions: Russian/anti-Russian in Crimea and online political deliberation in Belarus, in juxtaposition to Estonia’s digital governance approach. The authors show that in civil societies in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, cultural forms of digital activism, such as internet memes, thrive and produce and reproduce effective forms of political deliberation. In contrast to Estonia, in authoritarian regimes actual massive mobilization and protest is forbidden, or is severely punished with activists imprisoned, persecuted or murdered by the state. This is consistent with use of cultural forms of digital activism in countries where protest is illegal and political deliberation is restricted in government-controlled or oligarchic media. Humorous political commentary might be tolerated online to avoid mobilization and decompress dissent and resistance, yet remaining strictly within censorship and surveillance apparatuses. The authors’ research affirms the potential of internet memes in addressing apolitical crowds, infiltrating casual conversations and providing symbolic manifestation to resistant debates. Yet, the virtuality of the protest undermines its consistency and impact on offline political deliberation. Without knowing each other beyond social media, the participants are unlikely to form robust organisational structures and mobilise for activism offline

The principal inferior olivary nucleus in aging and Alzheimer's disease

Neuronal degeneration is a commanding event in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Neuronal loss is one of the major hallmarks and is frequently reported in regions with presence of neuritic plaques (NPs) and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) The causative role of â-amyloid (Aâ) and tau protein in neurofibrillary pathology is controversial, and the main trigger for neurodegeneration in AD is still unknown. Thus we investigated neuronal and glial changes in the principal inferior olivary nucleus (PO) in normal aging and AD. This region is known not to develop NPs or NFTs in sporadic AD, although a few diffuse Aâ accumulations can be found. To obtain a precise number of cells an unbiased quantitative methodology should be applied. In the first study using a stereological method, optical fractionator, we estimated the total number of neurons in PO, where we reported a significant neuronal loss of up to 34% in AD group compared to age-matched controls. It is well established that neurons are in very close contact and cohabitation with glial cells. Whether neurons in PO die solely or other cells are involved was not known. In the second study we expanded a quantitative analysis and estimated a total number of oligodendrocytes and astrocytes in PO in AD and control brains. The total number of astrocytes remained unchanged, but oligodendroglial cell number was diminished by 46% indicating interdependent degeneration among neurons and oligodendrocytes. We could conclude that neurodegeneration takes place in AD brains, even in absence of neurofibrillary pathology. The patomechanisms sins behind the neuronal loss are still unknown. In the third study we applied immunohistochemistry with unbiased quantification and ELISA method to analyse astroglial markers (S100B, GFAP and vimentin) known to be involved in neurodegeneration. A 2-fold significant increase of S100B was found by immunohistochemistry and by ELISA in AD vs. age-matched controls. Due to the fact that S100B can have both beneficial and toxic effects, depending on its concentration, we performed additional immunostaining for iNOS and NT-3, as downstream markers for oxidative stress and neurotoxicity. In AD brains remarkably stronger and widespread staining pattern was noted both in neurons and glial cells compared to controls indicating predominantly neurotoxic events. These results strongly pointed toward oxidative damage to be involved in neuronal and glial degeneration. In the last study we investigated the presence of [Ca2+]i related neuronal markers, calcium binding proteins (calbindin-CB, calretinin-CR, parvalbumin-PV) as pivotal molecules in understanding Cadependent neurodegeneration. We observed a significant reduction of CB and CR up to 65% in AD brains. Thus loss of the calcium binding proteins can play an additional role in neuronal and glial degeneration in PO. In summary, using a quantitative approach based on stereology we would be able to obtain a neurodegeneration in the region of AD brain not affected by neurofibrillary pathology. PO in particular can be used as a model to investigate the diverse pathomechanisms involved in neuronal and glial pathology

EVALUATION OF STIFFNESS AND DAMAGE OF LAMINAR COMPOSITES

The elastic constants of laminated composites are required for modelling of structures or components made from these materials. The variability in manufacturing can result in different composite material properties than intended. Therefore, reliable properties are typically not just estimated, or known from experience, but measured directly from representative physical specimens. Today, the elastic characterization is still conducted by employing numerous quasi-static test methods, which require various test specimens and test set-ups, due to the inherent anisotropy of the material. Meanwhile, decades of research and development with advances in sensor technology and computing power have resulted in advanced characterization methods, e.g. based on vibration or Lamb wave propagation measurements. Several elastic constants can be measured from a single test. Application of these advanced methods makes composite elastic characterization both faster and cheaper. This research has been conducted to compare how three independent methods can be applied for the evaluation of stiffness and damage of laminar composites. In the central part, the elastic constants of composite laminates are measured by quasi-static, natural frequency and Lamb wave propagation based methods. Then, the results from individual test methods are compared. The comparison yields good agreement for virgin laminates, but shows some discrepancies for laminates with fatigue damage. Both static and vibration measurements of cross plied laminates provide the investigator with effective tensile or flexural stiffnesses of laminates. However, the basic building block to be characterized is a ply. Literature is scarce about systematic methods for the back-calculation of ply moduli from laminate stiffnesses. As a part of this work, a systematic approach was developed for the back-calculation of ply moduli for symmetric cross plied laminates. Both, the mean values and the coefficients of variation of moduli are evaluated, as shown by calculated examples. The input data for these calculations was obtained from quasi-static experiments

Evaluation of Stiffness and Damage of Laminar Composites. Komposiitlaminaatide j\ue4ikuse ja kahjustuste hindamine

Submitted for the doctoral degree at Tallinn University of Technology and Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Doktorit\uf6\uf6 on valminud Norra Tehnika\ufclikooli ja TT c vahel s\uf5lmitud rahvusvahelise \ufchisjuhendamise lepingu raames