The relationship between local scalp skin temperature and cutaneous perfusion during scalp cooling

Cooling the scalp during administration of chemotherapy can prevent hair loss. It reduces both skin blood flow and hair follicle temperature, thus affecting drug supply and drug effect in the hair follicle. The extent to which these mechanisms contribute to the hair preservative effect of scalp cooling remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to establish a relationship between local scalp skin temperature and cutaneous blood flow during scalp cooling. We measured skin temperature and cutaneous perfusion during a cooling and re-warming experiment. Experiments on a single subject showed that the measurements were reproducible and that the response was identical for the two positions that were measured. Inter-subject variability was investigated on nine subjects. We found that for the first 10 °C of cooling, perfusion of the scalp skin decreases to below 40%. Perfusion can be further reduced to below 30% by a few degrees more cooling, but a plateau is reached after that. We found that a generally accepted relation in thermal physiology between temperature and perfusion (i.e. Q10 relation) does not describe the data well, but we found an alternative relation that describes the average behavior significantly better

Design and fabrication of a juice extractor

This paper focused on addressing the problem of inadequate preservation of farm produce in Nigeria by designing and fabricating a manually  operated citrus fruit juice extractor using locally available materials. The extractor produced has the capacity to process 3.8kg of oranges at  76.32% efficiency. The extractor is user friendly, easy to manipulate, maintain and affordable. It is expected that with this machine, the wastage of our farm produce (particularly fruits) will be greatly  minimised, thus enhancing improvement in the income generating capacity of fruit farmers, while meeting customers’ needs of fresh fruits rich in quality and at affordable prices.Keywords: Extraction, shaft design, volume of hopper, belt selection, juice

Measurement of residual stresses induced by sequential weld buttering and cladding operations involving a 2.25Cr-1Mo substrate material

Dissimilar metal welds are necessary in high-pressure subsea systems and in cases where forged components must be welded to pipelines. F22 (2.25Cr-1Mo) steel is often used in such forged steel components and, since this steel cannot enter service without undergoing post-weld heat treatment (PWHT), the components are usually prepared for field welds through the application of a buttering layer. Furthermore, a weld overlay is deposited for the purpose of mitigating corrosion. This combination of multiple welding tasks and dissimilar materials leads to the possibility of developing substantial residual stresses. This study aims to provide insights to the evolution of residual stresses at each stage of the welding operation. The assessment has been undertaken on laboratory-scale weld mock-ups using the contour method for residual stress measurement, and incremental centre hole drilling. It was found that both buttering and cladding introduce near-yield levels of tensile residual stresses, but that these stresses are successfully relieved upon PWHT

Abundance and Habitat Preference of the Genus Euplectes in Protected and Non protected Habitats of Jos East Plateau State, Nigeria

The knowledge on the factors influencing habitat selection is of uttermost importance because it guides the development of conservation action plan for species. Till date, there is no baseline study on the genus Euplectes in Northern Nigeria thus, an attempt to investigate the habitat preference of the genus was carried out in Amurum Forest Reserve and the nonprotected habitats of Fobur. Line transects of 200m were randomly laid across the study sites. The abundance of Bishop species was highest in farmland compared to grassland and rocky outcrop. Therefore, the number of the species was significantly different between habitats (F2, 573 = 5.454, P = 0.0015). There was a significant relationship between flock size and number of seeds across habitat types. Number of individual birds increased with increase in seed number (F1, 57 = 21687.786, P < 0.001). With the exception of grass height, there was a highly significant difference in relation to vegetation variables taken between plots where Bishop species were sighted and the random points where they were not seen (P < 0.001). The finding suggests that farmlands should be integrated into conservation plan in the nonprotected area based on the high population of the genus recorded

Two spatially distinct posterior alpha sources fulfill different functional roles in attention

Directing attention helps extracting relevant information and suppressing distracters. Alpha brain oscillations (8-12Hz) are crucial for this process, with power decreases facilitating processing of important information and power increases inhibiting brain regions processing irrelevant information. Evidence for this phenomenon arises from visual attention studies (Worden et al., 2000b), however, the effect also exists in other modalities, including the somatosensory system (Haegens et al., 2011) and inter-sensory attention tasks (Foxe and Snyder, 2011). We investigated in human participants (10 females, 10 males) the role of alpha oscillations in focused (0/100%) vs. divided (40/60%) attention, both across modalities (visual/somatosensory; Experiment 1) and within the same modality (visual domain: across hemifields; Experiment 2) while recording EEG over 128 scalp electrodes. In Experiment 1 participants divided their attention between visual and somatosensory modality to determine the temporal/spatial frequency of a target stimulus (vibrotactile stimulus/Gabor grating). In Experiment 2, participants divided attention between two visual hemifields to identify the orientation of a Gabor grating. In both experiments, pre-stimulus alpha power in visual areas decreased linearly with increasing attention to visual stimuli. In contrast, pre-stimulus alpha power in parietal areas was lower when attention was divided between modalities/hemifields, compared to focused attention. These results suggest there are two alpha sources, where one reflects the ‘visual spotlight of attention’ and the other reflects attentional effort. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that attention recruits two spatially distinct alpha sources in occipital and parietal brain regions, acting simultaneously but serving different functions in attention

A cohort study of post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome and PCV2 in 178 pigs from birth to 14 weeks on a single farm in England

Our hypothesis was that pigs that develop post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) are detectable from an early age with signs of weight loss and other clinical and serological abnormalities. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the temporally varying and fixed events linked with the clinical incidence of PMWS by comparing affected and unaffected pigs in a cohort of 178 male piglets. Piglets were enrolled at birth and examined each week. Samples of blood were collected at regular intervals. The exposures measured were porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) antibody titres in all 178 and PCV2 antigen in a subset of 75 piglets. We also observed piglet health and measured their weight, and a post-mortem examination was performed by an external laboratory on all pigs between 6 and 14 weeks of age that died. From the cohort, 14 (8%) pigs died from PMWS and 4% from other causes. A further 37 pigs between 6 and 14 weeks of age died from PMWS (30) and ileitis and other causes (7). PMWS was only apparent in pigs from 1 to 2 weeks before death when they wasted rapidly. There were no other characteristic clinical signs and no obvious gross clinical lesions post-mortem. There was no strong link with PCV2 antibody throughout life but PCV2 antigen level was higher from 4 to 6 weeks of age in pigs that died from PMWS compared with pigs that died from other causes

Constraints on early dark energy from CMB lensing and weak lensing tomography

Dark energy can be studied by its influence on the expansion of the Universe as well as on the growth history of the large-scale structure. In this paper, we follow the growth of the cosmic density field in early dark energy cosmologies by combining observations of the primary CMB temperature and polarisation power spectra at high redshift, of the CMB lensing deflection field at intermediate redshift and of weak cosmic shear at low redshifts for constraining the allowed amount of early dark energy. We present these forecasts using the Fisher-matrix formalism and consider the combination of Planck-data with the weak lensing survey of Euclid. We find that combining these data sets gives powerful constraints on early dark energy and is able to break degeneracies in the parameter set inherent to the various observational channels. The derived statistical 1-sigma-bound on the early dark energy density parameter is sigma(Omega_d^e)=0.0022 which suggests that early dark energy models can be well examined in our approach. In addition, we derive the dark energy figure of merit for the considered dark energy parameterisation and comment on the applicability of the growth index to early dark energy cosmologies.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables; v2: very minor additions, updated to match version to be published in JCA

Structure of Plants across Habitat Types in Amurum Forest Reserve, Plateau State Nigeria

The Amurum Forest Reserve is one of the nature reserves in Plateau State North central Nigeria. Strict Nature reserve is prominent among the methods for in situ conservation of biodiversity in Nigeria and also the world at large. A study was conducted in the Forest across three habitat types in order to measure tree height and diameter at breast height (dbh) of trees. 50m x 50m plots were marked across the habitat types by simple random sampling technique. Trees and shrubs were identified to species level. Measurement were limited to all woody plants with diameter at breast height (dbh) of ≥ 10cm. Data collected was analyzed in excel. A total of 397 woody species were identified during the study period. 87.7 of the plants were shrubs while 12.3% were trees. The gallery forest had the highest diameter class(30-35cm) followed by the savanna(25-30cm) and lastly the rocky outcrop with the diameter class of 20-25cm.The rocky outcrop had the highest number of trees with the lowest dbh (10-15cm) while the gallery forest had more trees in the highest diameter class (30-35) (Figure 2). The highest mean height distribution in the Gallery forest shows that the plant communities in this habitat type has grown over the years without disturbance since the place is a protected site. Therefore, other surrounding bushes should be protected in order to preserve species from local extinction

Relating physicochemical and microbiological safety indicators during processing of linguiça, a Portuguese traditional dry-fermented sausage

Linguiça is a Portuguese traditional fermented sausage whose microbiological quality and safety can be highly variable. In order to elucidate risk factors and the particularities of the manufacturing technology that explain the between-batch variability in total viable counts (TVC), Enterobacteriaceae, Staphylococcus aureus and Listeria monocytogenes in the product; microbiological and physicochemical characterisation of linguiça at five stages of production (i.e., raw pork meat, mixed with ingredients, macerated, smoked and ripened) was carried out. A total of six production batches were surveyed from two factories; one utilised curing salts and polyphosphate in their formulation (Factory II). The delayed fermentation in the nitrite-formulated sausages was partly responsible for the increase (p < 0.01) in Enterobacteriaceae, S. aureus and L. monocytogenes from raw meat (3.21logCFU/g, 1.30logCFU/g and 22.2CFU/g, respectively) to the end of maceration (4.14logCFU/g, 2.10logCFU/g and 140CFU/g, respectively) while the better acidification process in the nitrite-free sausages (Factory I) led to lower counts of S. aureus (2.64logCFU/g) and L. monocytogenes (10CFU/g) in the finished products. In Factory II, although L. monocytogenes entered the chain at the point of mixing, it became steadily inactivated during smoking and ripening ( < 50CFU/g), despite the initially-delayed fermentation. Nitrite had a strong effect on reducing Enterobacteriaceae throughout smoking (r=-0.73) and ripening (r=-0.59), while it failed to control the growth of S. aureus. The main hurdle preventing the development of S. aureus in linguiça is the pH, and other factors contributing to its control are: longer ripening days (p=0.019), low S. aureus in raw meat (p=0.098), properly-washed casings (p=0.094), and less contamination during mixing (p=0.199). In the case of L. monocytogenes, at least three hurdles hinder its development in linguiça: low a w (p=0.004), low pH (p=0.040) and nitrite (p=0.060), and other factors contributing to its control are: longer ripening (p=0.072) and maceration (p=0.106) periods, lower a w at the end of smoking (p=0.076) and properly-washed casings (p=0.099). Results have shown that there is a need to standardise the productive process of linguiça, to optimise the initial acidification process, and to reinforce proper programmes of quality control of ingredients and good hygiene practices, so as to minimise the introduction of Enterobacteriaceae and pathogens from external sources.This research was supported through the project PTDC/AGR-TEC/3107/2012, awarded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), European Regional Development Funds (ERDF). Dr. Gonzales-Barron also acknowledges the financial support provided by FCT through the award of a five-year Investiginfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Enhancement of feline immunodeficiency virus infection after immunization with envelope glycoprotein subunit vaccines.

Cats were immunized three times with different recombinant feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) candidate vaccines. Recombinant vaccinia virus (rVV)-expressed envelope glycoprotein with (vGR657) or without (vGR657 x 15) the cleavage site and an FIV envelope bacterial fusion protein (beta-Galactosidase-Env) were incorporated into immune-stimulating complexes or adjuvanted with Quil A. Although all immunized cats developed antibodies against the envelope protein, only the cats vaccinated with the rVV-expressed envelope glycoproteins developed antibodies which neutralized FIV infection of Crandell feline kidney cells. These antibodies failed to neutralize infection of thymocytes with a molecularly cloned homologous FIV. After the third immunization the cats were challenged with homologous FIV. Two weeks after challenge the cell-associated viral load proved to be significantly higher in the cats immunized with vGR657 and vGR657 x 15 than in the other cats. The cats immunized with vGR657 and vGR657 x 15 also developed antibodies against the Gag proteins more rapidly than the cats immunized with beta-Galactosidase-Env or the control cats. This suggested that immunization with rVV-expressed glycoprotein of FIV results in enhanced infectivity of FIV. It was shown that the observed enhancement could be transferred to naive cats with plasma collected at the day of challenge