Genetic Aspects of Female Longevity

Longevity of the breeding female has both economic and animal welfare implications for the swine industry. High culling levels lead to increased replacement rates and reduce lifetime productivity for individual breeding females and the breeding herd. Greater replacement rates increase production costs related to purchase (or development), isolation, and acclimation of replacement females. PigCHAMP [1-5] summaries (Table 1) from 1998 through 2003, report annualized replacement rates of \u3e 50% and average herd parity of only 2.5 litters. Breeding herd productivity and economic sustainability are compromised when females are culled early in life and prior to achieving a positive return on investment. Breeding program design and genetic selection decisions clearly influence sow longevity and establish the base for a profitable, sustainable breeding herd

The influence of shock pressure, pre-shock temperature, and host rock composition on the survival rate of endolithic microorganisms during impact ejection from Mars

Petrographic and biological analysis of shock recovery experiments confirms the possible life transport due to an impact from Mars to Earth

The Schrodinger Wave Functional and Closed String Rolling Tachyon

In this short note we apply Schrodinger picture description of the minisuperspace approach to the closed string tachyon condensation. We will calculate the rate of produced closed string and we will show that the density of high massive closed string modes reaches the string density in time of order one in string units.Comment: 12 page

Deep Eyes: Binocular Depth-from-Focus on Focal Stack Pairs

Human visual system relies on both binocular stereo cues and monocular focusness cues to gain effective 3D perception. In computer vision, the two problems are traditionally solved in separate tracks. In this paper, we present a unified learning-based technique that simultaneously uses both types of cues for depth inference. Specifically, we use a pair of focal stacks as input to emulate human perception. We first construct a comprehensive focal stack training dataset synthesized by depth-guided light field rendering. We then construct three individual networks: a Focus-Net to extract depth from a single focal stack, a EDoF-Net to obtain the extended depth of field (EDoF) image from the focal stack, and a Stereo-Net to conduct stereo matching. We show how to integrate them into a unified BDfF-Net to obtain high-quality depth maps. Comprehensive experiments show that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art in both accuracy and speed and effectively emulates human vision systems

Biased Social Perceptions of Knowledge: Implications for Negotiators' Rapport and Egocentrism

This study examines how people manage uncertain competitive social interactions. To achieve positive interaction outcomes, individuals may engage in a social perception process that leads them to believe they have obtained more information about others than these others gained about them. We investigate how asymmetric knowledge perceptions contribute to important aspects of negotiation, namely rapport building among strangers and egocentric beliefs about fairness of resource distribution. In Study 1, dyads completed measures of knowledge acquisition and partner evaluation after a rapport‐building exercise. Results showed that individuals believed they gained more information about their partner than vice versa; notably, the magnitude of this knowledge bias was associated with more positive partner evaluations. Study 2 showed that the magnitude of the knowledge bias predicted lower egocentrism in a commons dilemma task. Together, these results suggest knowledge asymmetries facilitate rapport among strangers and may have important implications for cooperation in competitive negotiation settings.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111124/1/ncmr12047.pd