Evlauation of Breeds and Breed Crosses for the Production of Weaning Weight in South Dakota

Records on 41,403 calves from 324 contemporary groups were studied to determine the effect of a calf\u27s breed background on its weaning weight. Calves with the heaviest weaning weights were crossbred, typically sired by Continental breed bulls and out of crossbred dams

Signatures of Coronal Loop Opening via Interchange Reconnection in the Slow Solar Wind at 1 AU

The opening of closed magnetic loops via reconnection with open solar flux, so called “interchange reconnection”, is invoked in a number of models of slow solar wind release. In the heliosphere, this is expected to result in local switchbacks or inversions in heliospheric magnetic flux (HMF). When observed at 1 AU, inverted HMF has previously been shown to exhibit high ion charge states, suggestive of hot coronal loops, and to map to the locations of coronal magnetic separatrices. However, simulations show that inverted HMF produced directly by reconnection in the low corona is unlikely to survive to 1 AU without the amplification by solar wind speed shear. By considering the surrounding solar wind, we show that inverted HMF is preferably associated with regions of solar wind shear at 1 AU. Compared with the surrounding solar wind, inverted HMF intervals have lower magnetic field intensity and show intermediate speed and density values between the faster, more tenuous wind ahead and the slower, denser wind behind. There is no coherent signature in iron charge states, but oxygen and carbon charge states within the inverted HMF are in agreement with the higher values in the slow wind behind. Conversely, the iron-to-oxygen abundance ratio is in better agreement with the lower values in the solar wind ahead, while the alpha-to-proton abundance ratio shows no variation. One possible explanation for these observations is that the interchange reconnection (and subsequent solar wind shear) that is responsible for generation of inverted HMF involves very small, quiet-Sun loops of approximately photospheric composition, which are impulsively heated in the low corona, rather than large-scale active region loops with enhanced first-ionisation potential elements. Whether signatures of such small loops could be detected in situ at 1 AU still remains to be determined

Genetic Correlations of Reproductive and Maternal Traits with Growth and Carcass Traits in Beef Cattle

Some genes may affect more than one trait. Therefore, the traits can be genetically correlated. Knowledge of genetic correlations among traits is useful for efficient selection of replacement bulls and heifers if the breeder considers more than one trait. In designed selection programs, emphasis to be placed on the various traits can depend, in part, on the genetic correlations among them. In addition, genetic correlations can be used to predict what is expected to happen to traits other than those used in selection as a result of that selection. This effect on traits other than those used in selection is referred to as correlated response. The objective of this study was to estimate from experimental data the genetic correlations between reproductive and maternal traits of beef females and growth and carcass traits of paternal half-sib steers. A more detailed account of the methodology and results can be found in the Journal of Animal Science, volume 58, pages 1171 to 1180

Genetic Correlations of Reproductive and Maternal Traits with Growth and Carcass Traits in Beef Cattle

Some genes may affect more than one trait. Therefore, the traits can be genetically correlated. Knowledge of genetic correlations among traits is useful for efficient selection of replacement bulls and heifers if the breeder considers more than one trait. In designed selection programs, emphasis to be placed on the various traits can depend, in part, on the genetic correlations among them. In addition, genetic correlations can be used to predict what is expected to happen to traits other than those used in selection as a result of that selection. This effect on traits other than those used in selection is referred to as correlated response. The objective of this study was to estimate from experimental data the genetic correlations between reproductive and maternal traits of beef females and growth and carcass traits of paternal half-sib steers. A more detailed account of the methodology and results can be found in the Journal of Animal Science, volume 58, pages 1171 to 1180

Triethyl orthoformate covalently cross-linked chitosan-(poly vinyl) alcohol based biodegradable scaffolds with heparin-binding ability for promoting neovascularisation

There is a need to develop pro-angiogenic biomaterials to promote wound healing and to assist in regenerative medicine. To this end, various growth factors have been exploited which have the potential to promote angiogenesis. However, these are generally expensive and labile which limits their effectiveness. An alternative approach is to immobilize heparin onto biocompatible degradable hydrogels. The heparin in turn will then bind endogenous proangiogenic growth factors to induce formation of new blood vessels.In this study, we continue our development of hydrogels for wound healing purposes by exploring covalently cross-linking chitosan and polyvinyl alcohol hydrogels using triethyl orthoformate. Two concentrations of triethyl orthoformate (4 and 16%) were compared for their effects on the structure of hydrogels - their swelling, pore size, and rate of degradation and for their ability to support the growth of cells and for their heparin-binding capacity and their effects on angiogenesis in a chick chorioallantoic membrane assay.Hydrogels formed with 4 or 16% both triethyl orthoformate cross-linker were equally cyto-compatible. Hydrogels formed with 4% triethyl orthoformate absorbed slightly more water than those made with 16% triethyl orthoformate and broke down slightly faster than non-cross-linked hydrogels. When soaked in heparin the hydrogel formed with 16% triethyl orthoformate showed more blood vessel formation in the CAM assay than that formed with 4% triethyl orthoformate

Isolation of murine cementoblasts: unique cells or uniquely‐positioned osteoblasts?

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109660/1/j.1600-0722.1998.tb02197.x.pd

Age and growth of an outbreaking Acanthaster cf. solaris population within the Great Barrier Reef

Despite having been studied for more than 40 years, much about the basic life history of crown-of-thorns starfish (CoTS; Acanthaster spp.) remains poorly understood. Size at age-a key metric of productivity for any animal population-has yet to be clearly defined, primarily due to difficulties in obtaining validated ages and potentially indeterminate growth due to factors such as starvation; within-population variability is entirely unknown. Here we develop age and growth estimates for an outbreaking CoTS population in Australian waters by integrating prior information with data from CoTS collected from multiple outbreaking reefs. Age estimates were made from un-validated band counts of 2038 individual starfish. Results from our three-parameter von Bertalanffy Bayesian hierarchical model show that, under 2013-2014 outbreak conditions, CoTS on the GBR grew to a 349 ( 326, 380) mm (posterior median (95% uncertainty interval)) total diameter at a 0.54 (0.43, 0.66) intrinsic rate of increase. However, we also found substantial evidence (Delta DIC > 200) for inter-reef variability in both maximum size (SD 38 (19, 76)) and intrinsic rate of increase (SD 0.32 (0.20, 0.49)) within the CoTS outbreak initiation area. These results suggest that CoTS demography can vary widely with reef-scale environmental conditions, supporting location-based mechanisms for CoTS outbreaks generally. These findings should help improve population and metapopulation models of CoTS dynamics and better predict the potential damage they may cause in the future

Anomaly Detection in Social Media Using Recurrent Neural Network

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. In today’s information environment there is an increasing reliance on online and social media in the acquisition, dissemination and consumption of news. Specifically, the utilization of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter has increased as a cutting edge medium for breaking news. On the other hand, the low cost, easy access and rapid propagation of news through social media makes the platform more sensitive to fake and anomalous reporting. The propagation of fake and anomalous news is not some benign exercise. The extensive spread of fake news has the potential to do serious and real damage to individuals and society. As a result, the detection of fake news in social media has become a vibrant and important field of research. In this paper, a novel application of machine learning approaches to the detection and classification of fake and anomalous data are considered. An initial clustering step with the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) algorithm is proposed before training the result with a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). The results of a preliminary application of the KNN phase before the RNN phase produces a quantitative and measureable improvement in the detection of outliers, and as such is more effective in detecting anomalies or outliers against the test dataset of 2016 US Presidential Election predictions

Are Amphipod invaders a threat to the regional biodiversity? Conservation prospects for the Loire River

The impact of invasions on local biodiversity is well established, but their impact on regional biodiversity has so far been only sketchily documented. To address this question, we studied the impact at various observation scales (ranging from the microhabitat to the whole catchment) of successive arrivals of non-native amphipods on the amphipod assemblage of the Loire River basin in France. Amphipod assemblages were studied at 225 sites covering the whole Loire catchment. Non-native species were dominant at all sites in the main channel of the Loire River, but native species were still present at most of the sites. We found that the invaders have failed to colonize most of tributaries of the Loire River. At the regional scale, we found that since the invaders first arrived 25 years ago, the global amphipod diversity has increased by 33% (from 8 to 12 species) due to the arrival of non-native species. We discuss the possibility that the lack of any loss of biodiversity may be directly linked to the presence of refuges at the microhabitat scale in the Loire channel and in the tributaries, which invasive species have been unable to colonize. The restoration of river quality could increase the number of refuges for native species, thus reducing the impact of invader