Pathogenesis of feline enteric coronavirus infection.

Fifty-one specific pathogen-free (SPF) cats 10 weeks to 13 years of age were infected with a cat-to-cat fecal-oral passed strain of feline enteric coronavirus (FECV). Clinical signs ranged from unapparent to a mild and self-limiting diarrhea. Twenty-nine of these cats were FECV naïve before infection and followed sequentially for fecal virus shedding and antibody responses over a period of 8-48 months. Fecal shedding, as determined by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) from rectal swabs, appeared within a week and was significantly higher in kittens than older cats. FECV shedding remained at high levels for 2-10 months before eventually evolving into one of three excretion patterns. Eleven cats shed the virus persistently at varying levels over an observation period of 9-24 months. Eleven cats appeared to have periods of virus shedding interlaced with periods of non-shedding (intermittent or recurrent shedders), and seven cats ceased shedding after 5-19 months (average 12 months). There was no change in the patterns of virus shedding among cats that were excreting FECV at the time of a secondary challenge exposure. Four cats, which had ceased shedding, re-manifested a primary type infection when secondarily infected. Cats with higher feline coronavirus (FCoV) antibody titers were significantly more likely to shed virus, while cats with lower titers were significantly less likely to be shedding. Twenty-two kittens born to experimentally infected project queens began shedding virus spontaneously, but never before 9-10 weeks of age. Natural kittenhood infections appeared to be low grade and abortive. However, a characteristic primary type infection occurred following experimental infection with FECV at 12-15 weeks of age. Pregnancy, parturition and lactation had no influence on fecal shedding by queens. Methylprednisolone acetate treatment did not induce non-shedders to shed and shedders to increase shedding

Upper critical dimension of the KPZ equation

Numerical results for the Directed Polymer model in 1+4 dimensions in various types of disorder are presented. The results are obtained for system size considerably larger than that considered previously. For the extreme strong disorder case (Min-Max system), associated with the Directed Percolation model, the expected value of the meandering exponent, zeta = 0.5 is clearly revealed, with very week finite size effects. For the week disorder case, associated with the KPZ equation, finite size effects are stronger, but the value of seta is clearly seen in the vicinity of 0.57. In systems with "strong disorder" it is expected that the system will cross over sharply from Min-Max behavior at short chains to weak disorder behavior at long chains. This is indeed what we find. These results indicate that 1+4 is not the Upper Critical Dimension (UCD) in the week disorder case, and thus 4+1 does not seem to be the upper critical dimension for the KPZ equation

State Dependence of Stimulus-Induced Variability Tuning in Macaque MT

Behavioral states marked by varying levels of arousal and attention modulate some properties of cortical responses (e.g. average firing rates or pairwise correlations), yet it is not fully understood what drives these response changes and how they might affect downstream stimulus decoding. Here we show that changes in state modulate the tuning of response variance-to-mean ratios (Fano factors) in a fashion that is neither predicted by a Poisson spiking model nor changes in the mean firing rate, with a substantial effect on stimulus discriminability. We recorded motion-sensitive neurons in middle temporal cortex (MT) in two states: alert fixation and light, opioid anesthesia. Anesthesia tended to lower average spike counts, without decreasing trial-to-trial variability compared to the alert state. Under anesthesia, within-trial fluctuations in excitability were correlated over longer time scales compared to the alert state, creating supra-Poisson Fano factors. In contrast, alert-state MT neurons have higher mean firing rates and largely sub-Poisson variability that is stimulus-dependent and cannot be explained by firing rate differences alone. The absence of such stimulus-induced variability tuning in the anesthetized state suggests different sources of variability between states. A simple model explains state-dependent shifts in the distribution of observed Fano factors via a suppression in the variance of gain fluctuations in the alert state. A population model with stimulus-induced variability tuning and behaviorally constrained information-limiting correlations explores the potential enhancement in stimulus discriminability by the cortical population in the alert state.Comment: 36 pages, 18 figure

Ecological impact of herbicides associated with transgenic soybeans on spider mites

How do RoundUp® Ready soybeans affect the growth of fungi that may keep down the populations of some significant soybean pests? Experiments in the laboratory and soybean fields explored this question

Reliability of perceptions of voice quality: evidence from a problem asthma clinic population

<p>Introduction: Methods of perceptual voice evaluation have yet to achieve satisfactory consistency; complete acceptance of a recognised clinical protocol is still some way off.</p> <p>Materials and methods: Three speech and language therapists rated the voices of 43 patients attending the problem asthma clinic of a teaching hospital, according to the grade-roughness-breathiness-asthenicity-strain (GRBAS) scale and other perceptual categories.</p> <p>Results and analysis: Use of the GRBAS scale achieved only a 64.7 per cent inter-rater reliability and a 69.6 per cent intra-rater reliability for the grade component. One rater achieved a higher degree of consistency. Improved concordance on the GRBAS scale was observed for subjects with laryngeal abnormalities. Raters failed to reach any useful level of agreement in the other categories employed, except for perceived gender.</p> <p>Discussion: These results should sound a note of caution regarding routine adoption of the GRBAS scale for characterising voice quality for clinical purposes. The importance of training and the use of perceptual anchors for reliable perceptual rating need to be further investigated.</p&gt

The Ursinus Weekly, April 8, 1929

C. D. Yost, Jr., \u2730 elected editor-in-chief of Weekly at control board meeting • Commencement events keep originally scheduled dates • Tennis team to play thru thirteen match schedule • Philadelphia alumni banquet at Adelphia on Friday • Track season to open with inter-class meet • Color ceremony to take place in Bomberger tonight • Drexel Dragons down the bears by single run in opening fracas Saturday • Bears to open home season with Haverford Saturday • University tour of Indies and Central America July 6 • High school hero to show in gym Wednesday night • Dramatic Club to give skits in gym Friday • Recording orchestra booked for senior ball, April 26 • Young chosen cage leader for \u2729-\u2730 by letter men • New extinguishers placed • Facts and fancies of the faculty • Doyle survey shows facts concerning collegiateshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/2179/thumbnail.jp