Influenza A virus infection in dogs: Epizootiology, evolution and prevention — A review

Canine influenza virus (CIV) is an enveloped virus belonging to the genus Influenza virus A within the family Orthomyxoviridae. Prior to 2004, only sporadic outbreaks of canine influenza had been observed in dog populations around the world. However, in 2004 an H3N8 influenza virus of equine origin caused severe respiratory disease in racing greyhounds in Florida; subsequently, cases of dogs affected with various subtypes of CIV have been reported in many countries. Here, we performed a structured review of CIV, including its emergence, evolution and epizootiology. Although CIV causes a disease of low mortality, the potential public health threat it poses due to close contact between dogs and humans highlights the necessity of promoting surveillance for this virus

Improved Multi-Population Differential Evolution for Large-Scale Global Optimization

Differential evolution (DE) is an efficient population-based search algorithm with good robustness, however, it is challenged to deal with high-dimensional problems. In this paper, we propose an improved multi-population differential evolution with best-and-current mutation strategy (mDE-bcM). The population is divided into three subpopulations based on the fitness values, each of subpopulations uses different mutation strategy. After crossover, mutation and selection, all subpopulations are updated based on the new fitness values of their individuals. An improved mutation strategy is proposed, which uses a new approach to generate base vector that is composed of the best individual and current individual. The performance of mDE-bcM is evaluated on a set of 19 large-scale continuous optimization problems, a comparative study is carried out with other state-of-the-art optimization techniques. The results show that mDE-bcM has a competitive performance compared to the contestant algorithms and better efficiency for large-scale optimization problems

Atmospheric turbulence and land - atmosphere energy transfer characteristics in the surface layer of the Northern slope of Mt. Qomolangma area : abstract

Based on the turbulent data collected at Quzong site, on the northern slope of Mt. Qomolangma, from April 2005 to March 2006, macro-scale turbulent statistical characteristics and land-atmosphere energy transfer before and after the onset of southwest monsoon were acquired by the eddy correlation method. It was found that Monin-Obukhov similarity theory is applicable for Mt. Qomolangma area. The relationship between normalized wind speed standard deviation and atmospheric stability, variances of normalized temperature and humidity standard deviation with atmospheric stability were simulated in the study. It was also found that energy balance components (net radiation flux, sensible heat flux, latent heat flux and soil heat flux) and surface heating filed had evident diurnal and seasonal changes. Especially under the influence of southwest monsoon, the sensible heat flux and latent heat flux in Quzong area have evident opposite changing trends. The variation characteristics of other surface parameters (surface reflectance and Bowen ratio) is very clear before and after the breakout of southwest monsoon

Charge Measurement of Cosmic Ray Nuclei with the Plastic Scintillator Detector of DAMPE

One of the main purposes of the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is to measure the cosmic ray nuclei up to several tens of TeV or beyond, whose origin and propagation remains a hot topic in astrophysics. The Plastic Scintillator Detector (PSD) on top of DAMPE is designed to measure the charges of cosmic ray nuclei from H to Fe and serves as a veto detector for discriminating gamma-rays from charged particles. We propose in this paper a charge reconstruction procedure to optimize the PSD performance in charge measurement. Essentials of our approach, including track finding, alignment of PSD, light attenuation correction, quenching and equalization correction are described detailedly in this paper after a brief description of the structure and operational principle of the PSD. Our results show that the PSD works very well and almost all the elements in cosmic rays from H to Fe are clearly identified in the charge spectrum.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure

Study on sensory properties and efficacy evaluation of whole wheat biscuits supplemented with peony seed oil and chia seed

Abstract Nowadays, peony seed oil (PSO) and chia seed (CS) provide a vast potential in the industries of animal feed, food, nutraceutical, pharmaceuticals, and health. In this paper, study on PSO and CS were added into biscuits, and improvement in the nutraceutical properties of biscuits. The studies indicated that biscuits of acceptable overall quality could be prepared using the content of incorporation of PSO (15 g) and CS (12 g) formulations. The total dietary fiber content was positively correlated with different content of PSO and CS. The body weight of the mice in high dose group was lower than that of control group and other groups, indicating that the components PSO and CS in the biscuits could significantly control the body weight of the mice. From the fourth week, average daily food intake of mice in high dose group was significantly lower compared to control group. However, the grasping power of mice in high dose group increased significantly. With the increase in the content of PSO and CS of biscuits, the DPPH radical scavenging activity increased, too. Thus, the results indicated that whole wheat biscuits supplemented with PSO and CS could be considered as dietary fiber-enriched food, and have antioxidant properties

The cosmic ray test of MRPCs for the BESIII ETOF upgrade

In order to improve the particle identification capability of the Beijing Spectrometer III (BESIII),t is proposed to upgrade the current endcap time-of-flight (ETOF) detector with multi-gap resistive plate chamber (MRPC) technology. Aiming at extending ETOF overall time resolution better than 100ps, the whole system including MRPC detectors, new-designed Front End Electronics (FEE), CLOCK module, fast control boards and time to digital modules (TDIG), was built up and operated online 3 months under the cosmic ray. The main purposes of cosmic ray test are checking the detectors' construction quality, testing the joint operation of all instruments and guaranteeing the performance of the system. The results imply MRPC time resolution better than 100$ps$, efficiency is about 98$\%$ and the noise rate of strip is lower than 1$Hz/$($scm^{2}$) at normal threshold range, the details are discussed and analyzed specifically in this paper. The test indicates that the whole ETOF system would work well and satisfy the requirements of upgrade