SP701-A-Growing and Harvesting Switchgrass for Ethanol Production in Tennessee

Switchgrass is a warm-season perennial grass native to North America. The plant can reach heights up to 10 feet with an extensive root system. Once established, switchgrass well-managed for biomass should have a productive life of 10-20 years. Within the stand, switchgrass is an extremely strong competitor. However, it is not considered an invasive plant. Switchgrass adapts well to a variety of soil and climatic conditions. It is most productive on moderately well to well-drained soils of medium fertility and a soil pH at 5.0 or above. The high cellulosic content of switchgrass makes it a favorable feedstock for ethanol production. It is anticipated that switchgrass can yield sufficient biomass to produce approximately 500 gallons of ethanol per acre. While the Tennessee Biofuels Initiative includes a demonstration plant to make ethanol from switchgrass, the market for switchgrass as an energy crop remains limited. Producers will likely need to be located within 30 to 50 miles of a cellulosic ethanol plant. Producing switchgrass for energy generally occurs under some form of contractual arrangement with the end-user. To reap potential benefits from using switchgrass for cellulosic ethanol production, the system of production must be profitable for farmers and energy producers, as well as cost effective for consumers

New Measure of Insulin Sensitivity Predicts Cardiovascular Disease Better than HOMA Estimated Insulin Resistance

10.1371/journal.pone.0074410PLoS ONE89-POLN

Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Anthropocene Series: Where and how to look for potential candidates

International audienc

Omecamtiv mecarbil in chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, GALACTIC‐HF: baseline characteristics and comparison with contemporary clinical trials

Aims: The safety and efficacy of the novel selective cardiac myosin activator, omecamtiv mecarbil, in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is tested in the Global Approach to Lowering Adverse Cardiac outcomes Through Improving Contractility in Heart Failure (GALACTIC‐HF) trial. Here we describe the baseline characteristics of participants in GALACTIC‐HF and how these compare with other contemporary trials. Methods and Results: Adults with established HFrEF, New York Heart Association functional class (NYHA) ≥ II, EF ≤35%, elevated natriuretic peptides and either current hospitalization for HF or history of hospitalization/ emergency department visit for HF within a year were randomized to either placebo or omecamtiv mecarbil (pharmacokinetic‐guided dosing: 25, 37.5 or 50 mg bid). 8256 patients [male (79%), non‐white (22%), mean age 65 years] were enrolled with a mean EF 27%, ischemic etiology in 54%, NYHA II 53% and III/IV 47%, and median NT‐proBNP 1971 pg/mL. HF therapies at baseline were among the most effectively employed in contemporary HF trials. GALACTIC‐HF randomized patients representative of recent HF registries and trials with substantial numbers of patients also having characteristics understudied in previous trials including more from North America (n = 1386), enrolled as inpatients (n = 2084), systolic blood pressure < 100 mmHg (n = 1127), estimated glomerular filtration rate < 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 (n = 528), and treated with sacubitril‐valsartan at baseline (n = 1594). Conclusions: GALACTIC‐HF enrolled a well‐treated, high‐risk population from both inpatient and outpatient settings, which will provide a definitive evaluation of the efficacy and safety of this novel therapy, as well as informing its potential future implementation

Diseño e implementación de un scanner digital con aplicación médica

Éste trabajo trata basicamente en diseñar un dispositivo que permita capturar, almacenar y mostrar la imagen de una radiografía en el PC, para lo que se requiere de: un sensor óptico, que trabaja en el rango de la luz infrarroja; el lenguaje de programación, Visual Basic 5 para el diseño del software y el manejo de puerto paralelo de dicho lenguaje; una impresora; una base de datos. Éste proyecto sirve exclusivamente para fines académicos debido a las limitaciones de resolución y rapidez.GuayaquilIngeniero en Electricidad Especialización Electrónic

Towards Trustworthy Virtualisation Environments: Xen Library OS Security Service Infrastructure

trusted computing, virtualization, Xen hypervisor New cost effective commodity PC hardware now includes fully virtualisable processors and the Trusted Computing Group's trusted platform module (TPM). This provides the opportunity to combine virtualisation, trusted computing and open source software development to tackle the security challenges modern computing faces. We believe that leveraging this technology to partition critical operating system services and applications into small modules with strictly controlled interactions is a good way to improve trustworthiness. To support the development of small applications running in Xen domains we built a library OS. We ported the GNU cross-development tool chain and standard C libraries to the small operating system kernel included with the Xen distribution, and wrote an inter-domain communications (IDC) library for communications between Xen domains. To confirm the usability of our library OS we ported a software TPM to run on it as a typical application. We evaluated the performance of our IDC system and showed that it has good performance for the applications we envisage. We have shown that a lightweight library OS offers a convenient and practical way of reducing the trusted computing base of applications by running security sensitive components in separate Xen domains