The Impact of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) on Hog, Pork, and Beef Prices: the Experience in Korea

Korea experienced two outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), one in the year 2000 and one in 2002. After the first outbreak, prices for hogs, pork, and beef dropped 15-20% before the government began an intervention program. The effects of these two outbreaks are examined using Box and Tiao's intervention analysis model and a GARCH model Although the second outbreak resulted in many times more animal deaths than the first outbreak, its effect on prices was much smaller. The reason may be because the government's response to the first outbreak set a precedent for the second one.Livestock Production/Industries,

Scalable particle-based alternatives to EM

(Neal and Hinton, 1998) recast the problem tackled by EM as the minimization of a free energy functional $F$ on an infinite-dimensional space and EM itself as coordinate descent applied to $F$. Here, we explore alternative ways to optimize the functional. In particular, we identify various gradient flows associated with $F$ and show that their limits coincide with $F$'s stationary points. By discretizing the flows, we obtain three practical particle-based algorithms for maximum likelihood estimation in broad classes of latent variable models. The novel algorithms scale well to high-dimensional settings and outperform existing state-of-the-art methods in experiments

Expression of ITGB1 and E-cadherin regulated by lncLSINCT5 sponging on miR-29c-3p in papillary thyroid cancer cells

Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most predominant subtype of thyroid cancer, contributing to more than 80% of all thyroid or endocrine malignancies. However, the role of Long noncoding RNA long stress induced non-coding transcripts (LSINCT5) in papillary thyroid cancer remains largely unknown. In the present study, we found that the expression of LSINCT5 in PTC cell line was higher than that in human normal thyroid cell HT-ori3. The proliferation and migration ability of PTC cell lines TPC-1 and KAT-5 cells were significantly decreased after transfection of siLSINCT5-1 and siLSINCT5-2 compared with siNC transfection. The dual luciferase reporter gene and RIP confirmed that LSINCT5 is capable of specifically binding to miR-29c. Compared with the transfected LSINCT5 group, the proliferation and migration ability of TPC-1 cells in the co-transfected LSINCT5 and miR-29c groups were significantly decreased, and the expression of ITGB1 mRNA and protein were down-regulated either. Taken together, our data indicated that LSINCT5 can inhibit the tumor suppressive effect of miR-29c-ITGB1 axis and promote the proliferation and metastasis of PTC by targeting miR-29c-ITGB1 axis

Cryogenic pipe flow simulation for liquid nitrogen with vacuum insulated pipe (VIP) and Polyurethane (PU) foam insulation under steady-state conditions

Cryogenics is concerned with working with fluids at very low temperatures; less than 120 K. Cryogenic pipe flow is very different compared to normal fluid pipe flow in terms of evaluation and analysis due to the fluid state change that is caused by a heat leak in cryogenics during transportation through the transfer line. As the cryogenic system is necessarily immersed in insulation, it becomes more difficult to access. Numerical solutions and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that are non-disruptive and relatively low in cost are an advanced alternative for studying cryogenic systems. The present study reports the liquid nitrogen pipe flow simulation for process pipe with vacuum insulated pipe (VIP) and with Polyurethane (PU) foam insulation to understand the temperature distribution in the pipe flow under steady-state conditions. The 3-dimensional liquid nitrogen pipe flow simulation has been conducted using ANSYS FLUENT software. The temperature distributions resulting from the liquid nitrogen pipe flow simulation with VIP are within the range of 77.0 K to 82.1 K for inlet volume flow rates from 250 LPH to 2000 LPH. The optimum result in terms of the temperature distributions was produced from the liquid nitrogen pipe flow simulation with VIP

COIL: Constrained optimization in learned latent space: learning representations for valid solutions

Constrained optimization problems can be difficult because their search spaces have properties not conducive to search, e.g., multimodality, discontinuities, or deception. To address such difficulties, considerable research has been performed on creating novel evolutionary algorithms or specialized genetic operators. However, if the representation that defined the search space could be altered such that it only permitted valid solutions that satisfied the constraints, the task of finding the optimal would be made more feasible without any need for specialized optimization algorithms. We propose Constrained Optimization in Latent Space (COIL), which uses a VAE to generate a learned latent representation from a dataset comprising samples from the valid region of the search space according to a constraint, thus enabling the optimizer to find the objective in the new space defined by the learned representation. Preliminary experiments show promise: compared to an identical GA using a standard representation that cannot meet the constraints or find fit solutions, COIL with its learned latent representation can perfectly satisfy different types of constraints while finding high-fitness solutions

Online STI information seeking behaviour and condom use intentions among young Facebook users in Malaysia

The Internet has opened pathways for youth to find sexual health information which was not easily available to them in the past. Studies have shown that seeking sexual health information online may potentially influence an individuals' decision-making to change their sexual health behaviours. However, there is a gap in research on the associations of seeking online sexually transmitted infection (STI) information with STI prevention among young people, particularly in Malaysia. This study investigated the associations of seeking STI information online with the intentions of condom use among young adult online users in Malaysia. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among Malaysian youth aged 18-25 years old who were recruited through Facebook. In total, 1530 respondents completed the survey, identifying 874 respondents who had sought STI information online. The majority of respondents had intentions to use condoms as protection against STI. Respondents who sought online STI information were significantly more likely to have the intention to use condoms compared to respondents who did not seek online STI information (OR = 1.33, 95% CI = 1.01-1.76, p = 0.040). Online STI information has the potential to increase access to STI information among young online users in Malaysia amid the stigma surrounding sex-related issues. Providing accurate STI information online from reliable sources may equip young people who have Internet access with awareness of sexual health protective behaviours such as condom use. It is recommended to facilitate Internet access to reach sectors of the population that currently do not have access, as the Internet is useful in STI prevention

The Techno–Barbie Speaks Back: Experiments with Gendered Hormones

In Testo Junkie, Preciado briefly introduces the figure of the ‘techno-Barbie’. Contrasted with his own Testogel-fuelled pornographic experiments, the possibilities of oestrogen or progesterone seem somewhat uncharitably foreclosed upon. Though Preciado draws our attention to the gendered politics of chemical enhancement and hormonal justice, it begs the question: where do we draw the line between experimentation and chemical domination? We engage with the figure of the techno-Barbie to explore our own experiments with hormones and gendered agency in the boundaries of advanced biocapitalism. Drawing on a range of allied texts, we explore the ambivalences of our own hormonal experimentation. What kinds of hormonal experiments are allowed to be cast as such? In response to this all-encompassing theory of domination, we ask: how might the techno-Barbie speak back

Phytol-based novel adjuvants in vaccine formulation: 2. assessment of efficacy in the induction of protective immune responses to lethal bacterial infections in mice

BACKGROUND: Adjuvants are known to significantly enhance vaccine efficacy. However, commercial adjuvants often have limited use because of toxicity in humans. The objective of this study was to determine the comparative effectiveness of a diterpene alcohol, phytol and its hydrogenated derivative PHIS-01, relative to incomplete Freund's adjuvant (IFA), a commonly used adjuvant in augmenting protective immunity in mice against E. coli and S. aureus, and in terms of inflammatory cytokines. METHODS: Vaccines, consisting of heat-attenuated E. coli or S. aureus and either of the two phytol-based adjuvants or IFA, were tested in female BALB/c mice. The vaccines were administered intraperitoneally at 10-day intervals. The efficacy of the phytol and PHIS-01, as compared to IFA, was assessed by ELISA in terms of anti-bacterial antibody and inflammatory cytokines. We also examined the ability of the vaccines to induce specific protective immunity by challenging mice with different doses of live bacteria. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: IFA, phytol, and PHIS-01 were equally efficient in evoking anti-E. coli antibody response and in providing protective immunity against live E. coli challenges. In contrast, the antibody response to S. aureus was significant when PHIS-01 was used as the adjuvant. However, in terms of the ability to induce protective immunity, phytol was most effective against S. aureus. Moreover, during challenges with live E. coli and S. aureus immune mice produced much less IL-6, the mediators of fatal septic shock syndromes. CONCLUSION: Our results show that vaccine formulations containing phytol and PHIS-01 as adjuvants confer a robust and protective immunity against both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria without inducing adverse inflammatory cytokine due to IL-6