Nutritional quality of large round bale silage as affected by compaction, color of wrap, or preservative in Southcentral Alaska

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2007Large round bale silage (LRBS), fermented hay, baled at 45-65% moisture content might be a better product than air-dried hay for farmers and ranchers in Southcentral Alaska. Variable weather and sometimes unfavorable conditions for drying hay to the required 18% moisture content makes high quality hay production unpredictable. Our study was designed to determine what practices might produce the highest nutritional quality LRBS. Treatments included using black and white plastic bale wrap, two different baler compaction levels, and application of a buffered propionic acid preservative. The study used four different forage fields over a two year period. Three fields were harvested on each cutting date. We measured dry matter (DM), neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, lignin, acid detergent insoluble nitrogen, crude protein, and digestible energy. Fermentation analysis measured levels of lactic, acetic, propionic and butyric acids, ammonia and pH on LRBS. The denser bales, bales wrapped in black plastic, and those treated with preservative produced highest quality forage. Dense bales had lower DM, lower pH, and also had the highest lactic acid. Ammonia levels declined when moisture content decreased.1. Literature review on nutritional quality of large round bale silage (LRBS) from compaction, color of wrap, and additives -- Introduction -- Fermentation process -- Baling compaction -- Plastic wrap -- Additives -- Nutritional value -- References -- 2. Fiber analysis of large round bale silage as affected by compaction, color of wrap, or preservative in Southcentral Alaska -- Abstract -- Materials and methods -- Site description -- Field history -- Experimental design -- Harvest equipment -- Bale temperature measurement -- Sampling method -- Chemical analysis -- Statistical analysis -- Results and discussion -- Compaction -- Fields -- Plastic wrap color -- Preservative -- Conclusion -- References -- 3. Fermentation characteristics of large round bale silage as affected by compaction, color of wrap, or preservative in Southcentral Alaska -- Abstract -- Materials and methods -- Site description -- Field history -- Experimental design -- Harvest equipment -- Bale temperature measurement -- Sampling method -- Chemical analysis -- Statistical analysis -- Results and discussion -- Compaction -- Plastic wrap color -- Preservative -- Conclusion -- References -- 4. Nutritional quality of large round bale silage as affected by compaction, color of wrap, or preservative in Southcentral Alaska -- Conclusion

A Statistically-Based Method for Predicting Fog and Stratus Dissipation

The method is a success in producing forecasts for ceiling and visibility criteria that had never previously been examined. It is suggested that the 15 OWS incorporate this methodology into their operational forecasting routine. Ceiling forecasts at Dover AFB and McGuire AFB show improvements over conditional climatology ranging from 1-51% with an average improvement of 19.2% when verified against an independent data set. McGuire AFB visibility forecasts show an average improvement over conditional climatology of 3%. These findings are of particular importance to the Air Force in general and specifically to the 15th Operational Weather Squadron (15 OWS) who produces forecasts for these airfields. Demonstrating a method superior to conditional climatology is expected to provide improved forecasts and flight operations in this region. The two forecasts for Andrews AFB show relatively low mean square errors, but are unable to consistently improve on conditional climatology, demonstrating an average decrease in forecasting skill of 42%. Small samples of data could be the reason for the decrease in skill. The Dover visibility forecast also shows negative forecast skill, with an average decrease of 39%. The method is a success in producing forecasts for ceiling and visibility criteria that had never previously been examined. Further research into the forecasts could produce a powerful tool consistently able to defeat conditional climatology. It is suggested that the 15 OWS incorporate this methodology into their operational forecasting routine

Molecular characterization and expression of DERL1 in bovine ovarian follicles and corpora lutea

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is a major site of protein synthesis and facilitates the folding and assembly of newly synthesized proteins. Misfolded proteins are retrotranslocated across the ER membrane and destroyed at the proteasome. DERL1 is an important protein involved in the retrotranslocation and degradation of a subset of misfolded proteins from the ER. We characterized a 2617 bp cDNA from bovine granulosa cells that corresponded to bovine DERL1. Two transcripts of 3 and 2.6 kb were detected by Northern blot analysis, and showed variations in expression among tissues. During follicular development, DERL1 expression was greater in day 5 dominant follicles compared to small follicles, ovulatory follicles, or corpus luteum (CL). Within the CL, DERL1 mRNA expression was intermediate in midcycle, and lowest in late cycle as compared to early in the estrous cycle. Western blot analyses demonstrated the presence of DERL1 in the bovine CL at days 5, 11, and 18 of the estrous cycle. Co-immunoprecipitation using luteal tissues showed that DERL1 interacts with class I MHC but not with VIMP or p97 ATPase. The interaction between DERL1 and MHC I suggests that, in the CL, DERL1 may regulate the integrity of MHC I molecules that are transported to the ER membrane. Furthermore, the greater expression of DERL1 mRNA is associated with the active follicular development and early luteal stages, suggesting a role of DERL1 in tissue remodeling events and maintenance of function in reproductive tissues

How essential are unstructured clinical narratives and information fusion to clinical trial recruitment?

Electronic health records capture patient information using structured controlled vocabularies and unstructured narrative text. While structured data typically encodes lab values, encounters and medication lists, unstructured data captures the physician's interpretation of the patient's condition, prognosis, and response to therapeutic intervention. In this paper, we demonstrate that information extraction from unstructured clinical narratives is essential to most clinical applications. We perform an empirical study to validate the argument and show that structured data alone is insufficient in resolving eligibility criteria for recruiting patients onto clinical trials for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and prostate cancer. Unstructured data is essential to solving 59% of the CLL trial criteria and 77% of the prostate cancer trial criteria. More specifically, for resolving eligibility criteria with temporal constraints, we show the need for temporal reasoning and information integration with medical events within and across unstructured clinical narratives and structured data.Comment: AMIA TBI 2014, 6 page

Advantages of genomic complexity: bioinformatics opportunities in microRNA cancer signatures

MicroRNAs, small non-coding RNAs, may act as tumor suppressors or oncogenes, and each regulate their own transcription and that of hundreds of genes, often in a tissue-dependent manner. This creates a tightly interwoven network regulating and underlying oncogenesis and cancer biology. Although protein-coding gene signatures and single protein pathway markers have proliferated over the past decade, routine adoption of the former has been hampered by interpretability, reproducibility, and dimensionality, whereas the single molecule–phenotype reductionism of the latter is often overly simplistic to account for complex phenotypes. MicroRNA-derived biomarkers offer a powerful alternative; they have both the flexibility of gene expression signature classifiers and the desirable mechanistic transparency of single protein biomarkers. Furthermore, several advances have recently demonstrated the robust detection of microRNAs from various biofluids, thus providing an additional opportunity for obtaining bioinformatically derived biomarkers to accelerate the identification of individual patients for personalized therapy

Antiferromagnetism and Superconductivity in UPt_3

The short ranged antiferromagnetism recently seen in UPt_3 is proved incompatible with two dimensional (2D) order parameter models that take the antiferromagnetism as a symmetry breaking field. To adjust to the local moment direction, the order parameter twists over very long length scales as per the Imry-Ma argument. A variational solution to the Ginzburg-Landau equations is used to study the nature of the short ranged order. Although there are still two transitions, the lower one is of first order -- in contradiction to experiments. It is shown that the latent heat predicted by the 2D models at the lower transition is too large not to have been seen. A simple periodic model is numerically studied to show that the lower transition can not be a crossover either.Comment: To appear in Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. 9 pages, 2 figure

Immune Checkpoint Blockade: Subjugation of the Masses

Osteosarcoma remains the most common form of bone cancer in adolescents. Standard of care treatment for osteosarcoma includes chemotherapy combined with limb-salvage surgery or amputation. Survival rates for compliant patients are 60–80% for those with localized tumors and 15–30% if the tumor metastasizes or reoccurs. Given the successes of monoclonal antibody blockades in other cancers, clinical trials for applying immunotherapies to osteosarcoma are underway. Antibody blockades reinvigorate T cells to eliminate cancer cells thereby leading to decreased tumor burden and long-term regression. Single monoclonal antibody therapy has shown modest efficacy compared to standard of care. However, treating with only a single antibody can ultimately result in immune evasion by heterogeneous tumors via selection of cells expressing other inhibitory ligands. Hence, combination immunotherapies have yielded the most promising results for eliminating tumors or preventing reoccurrence in other cancer types and will likely be the most efficacious strategy for treating osteosarcoma. Here, we review current immunotherapies for other cancers and their potential application to osteosarcoma

Equine CTNNB1 and PECAM1 nucleotide structure and expression analyses in an experimental model of normal and pathological wound repair

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Wound healing in horses is fraught with complications. Specifically, wounds on horse limbs often develop exuberant granulation tissue which behaves clinically like a benign tumor and resembles the human keloid in that the evolving scar is trapped in the proliferative phase of repair, leading to fibrosis. Clues gained from the study of over-scarring in horses should eventually lead to new insights into how to prevent unwanted scar formation in humans. cDNA fragments corresponding to <it>CTNNB1 </it>(coding for β-catenin) and <it>PECAM1</it>, genes potentially contributing to the proliferative phase of repair, were previously identified in a mRNA expression study as being up-regulated in 7 day wound biopsies from horses. The aim of the present study was to clone full-length equine <it>CTNNB1 </it>and <it>PECAM1 </it>cDNAs and to study the spatio-temporal expression of mRNAs and corresponding proteins during repair of body and limb wounds in a horse model.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The temporal pattern of the two genes was similar; except for <it>CTNNB1 </it>in limb wounds, wounding caused up-regulation of mRNA which did not return to baseline by the end of the study. Relative over-expression of both <it>CTNNB1 </it>and <it>PECAM1 </it>mRNA was noted in body wounds compared to limb wounds. Immunostaining for both β-catenin and PECAM1 was principally observed in endothelial cells and fibroblasts and was especially pronounced in wounds having developed exuberant granulation tissue.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study is the first to characterize equine cDNA for <it>CTNNB1 </it>and <it>PECAM1 </it>and to document that these genes are expressed during wound repair in horses. It appears that β-catenin may be regulated in a post-transcriptional manner while PECAM1 might help thoracic wounds mount an efficient inflammatory response in contrast to what is observed in limb wounds. Furthermore, data from this study suggest that β-catenin and PECAM1 might interact to modulate endothelial cell and fibroblast proliferation during wound repair in the horse.</p