NUMERICAL APPROACHES FOR A MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF AN FCCU REGENERATOR

This work discusses a mathematical model of an FCCU (Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit) regenerator. The model assumes that the regenerator is divided into two regions: the freeboard and the dense bed. The latter is composed of a bubble phase and an emulsion phase. Both phases are modeled as a CSTR (Continuously Stirred Tank Reactor) in which ordinary differential equations are employed to represent the conservation of mass, energy and species. In the freeboard, the flow is considered to be onedimensional, and the conservation principles are represented by partial differential equations to describe space and time changes. The main aim ofthis work is to compare two numerical approaches for solving the set of partial and ordinary differential equations, namely, the fourth-order Runge-Kutta and implicit finite-difference methods. Although both methods give very similar results, the implicit finite-difference method can be much faster. Steady-state results were corroborated by experimental data, and the dynamic results were compared with those in the literature (Han and Chung, 2001b). Finally, an analysis of the model’s sensitivity to the boundary conditions was conducted

Transect walks : method sensitivity for on-farm welfare evaluation in turkeys

There is increasing consumer demands for livestock and poultry products that meet minimum animal welfare standards during their production cycle. Additionally, a growing number of farmers are aware about full compliance with the animal welfare standards that could play an important economic role in commercial intensive productions. Indeed, animal welfare assessment protocols have meaningful effects to promote and guarantee the on-farm safeguard animal standards. Transect walks method appeared to provide a practical approach to welfare assessment in broilers farms. Because of the similarities of meat poultry production, this method could be considered a reasonable approach for turkey welfare evaluation in terms of time demands, within costs and feasibility. The aim of this study was to determine the sensitivity of this method at 3 commercial turkey farms with similar facilities (Animal Welfare Indicators project, FP7-KBBE-2010-4). In this study, 10 commercial female-turkey flocks (6 houses with identical management), ranging from 3,212 to 6,000 birds and belonging to the same company were evaluated one week before slaughter. On turkey farms, walking through the house is a routine daily procedure to check the health status of the birds. Two previously trained assessors in performing the transect methodology and properly assessing the selected indicators, evaluated each paired house sequentially and independently within the same day by walking through predefined transect bands (1 to 4) in random order. The animal-based indicators considered were: immobility, lameness, wounds and featherless. The statistical model used was GLM in the GENMOD procedure (SAS V9). The results showed that this welfare assessment method highlights even small variation among houses for the considered variables. In fact, there were significant difference across houses (P=0.0021, P=0.0006, P=0.0081 and P=0.0003) for all the evaluated indicators respectively. Differences across observers were detected for wounds and featherless (P<0.0001). These results may be due to the difficulties in assessing equally these parameters while walking. On the contrary, lameness, probably the most important welfare problem in meat poultry, showed a good concordance between observers (P= 0.361). These preliminary findings suggest that this new approach has potential as a tool for on-farm welfare evaluation, which may be worthwhile to be further developed

Integrative Effect of Carvedilol and Aerobic Exercise Training Therapies on Improving Cardiac Contractility and Remodeling in Heart Failure Mice

The use of b-blockers is mandatory for counteracting heart failure (HF)-induced chronic sympathetic hyperactivity, cardiac dysfunction and remodeling. Importantly, aerobic exercise training, an efficient nonpharmacological therapy to HF, also counteracts sympathetic hyperactivity in HF and improves exercise tolerance and cardiac contractility; the latter associated with changes in cardiac Ca2+ handling. This study was undertaken to test whether combined b-blocker and aerobic exercise training would integrate the beneficial effects of isolated therapies on cardiac structure, contractility and cardiomyocyte Ca2+ handling in a genetic model of sympathetic hyperactivity-induced HF (alpha(2A)/alpha 2C(-)adrenergic receptor knockout mice, KO). We used a cohort of 5-7 mo male wild-type (WT) and congenic mice (KO) with C57Bl6/J genetic background randomly assigned into 5 groups: control (WT), saline-treated KO (KOS), exercise trained KO (KOT), carvedilol-treated KO (KOC) and, combined carvedilol-treated and exercise-trained KO (KOCT). Isolated and combined therapies reduced mortality compared with KOS mice. Both KOT and KOCT groups had increased exercise tolerance, while groups receiving carvedilol had increased left ventricular fractional shortening and reduced cardiac collagen volume fraction compared with KOS group. Cellular data confirmed that cardiomyocytes from KOS mice displayed abnormal Ca2+ handling. KOT group had increased intracellular peak of Ca2+ transient and reduced diastolic Ca2+ decay compared with KOS group, while KOC had increased Ca2+ decay compared with KOS group. Notably, combined therapies re-established cardiomyocyte Ca2+ transient paralleled by increased SERCA2 expression and SERCA2: PLN ratio toward WT levels. Aerobic exercise trained increased the phosphorylation of PLN at Ser16 and Thr17 residues in both KOT and KOCT groups, but carvedilol treatment reduced lipid peroxidation in KOC and KOCT groups compared with KOS group. the present findings provide evidence that the combination of carvedilol and aerobic exercise training therapies lead to a better integrative outcome than carvedilol or exercise training used in isolation.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG)Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e DesenvolvimentoConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Univ São Paulo, Sch Phys Educ & Sport, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Biosci, Santos, BrazilDept Circulat & Med Imaging, Trondheim, NorwayKG Jebsen Ctr Exercise Med, Trondheim, NorwayUniv Fed Minas Gerais, Dept Physiol & Biophys, Belo Horizonte, MG, BrazilUniv São Paulo, Heart Inst InCor, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Biosci, Santos, BrazilFAPESP: FAPESP:2010/50048-1FAPESP: 06/56123-0CNPq: 302201/2011-4Web of Scienc

EGFR Assessment in Lung Cancer CT Images: Analysis of Local and Holistic Regions of Interest Using Deep Unsupervised Transfer Learning

Statistics have demonstrated that one of the main factors responsible for the high mortality rate related to lung cancer is the late diagnosis. Precision medicine practices have shown advances in the individualized treatment according to the genetic profile of each patient, providing better control on cancer response. Medical imaging offers valuable information with an extensive perspective of the cancer, opening opportunities to explore the imaging manifestations associated with the tumor genotype in a non-invasive way. This work aims to study the relevance of physiological features captured from Computed Tomography images, using three different 2D regions of interest to assess the Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation status: nodule, lung containing the main nodule, and both lungs. A Convolutional Autoencoder was developed for the reconstruction of the input image. Thereafter, the encoder block was used as a feature extractor, stacking a classifier on top to assess the EGFR mutation status. Results showed that extending the analysis beyond the local nodule allowed the capture of more relevant information, suggesting the presence of useful biomarkers using the lung with nodule region of interest, which allowed to obtain the best prediction ability. This comparative study represents an innovative approach for gene mutations status assessment, contributing to the discussion on the extent of pathological phenomena associated with cancer development, and its contribution to more accurate Artificial Intelligence-based solutions, and constituting, to the best of our knowledge, the first deep learning approach that explores a comprehensive analysis for the EGFR mutation status classification.The authors acknowledge the National Cancer Institute and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health for the free publicly available LIDC-IDRI Database used in this work. They also acknowledge The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) for the open-access NSCLC-Radiogenomics dataset publicly available. This work was supported in part by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization—COMPETE 2020 Program, and in part by the National Funds through the Portuguese Funding Agency, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), under Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030263

Substrate choice by turkeys differing in 3-point gait-scoring system in a mobility test

Assessment of pain in poultry flocks\u2019 production is one of the biggest welfare concerns. The aim of this study was to evaluate the walking ability and preferences for three types of substrates by turkeys with different degrees of lameness, in order to verify if birds with higher gait score experience pain and how their choices differ from healthy birds. An experimental test was conducted with 16 male-turkeys 116-day-old (B.U.T.6). Nine birds (56.25%) were considered normal (score 0) whereas 7 (43.75%) were evaluated as having mild to severe lameness (scores 1 or 2) according to 3-point gait-score assessment. A familiar (A: wet litter) and unfamiliar (B: plastic slat) substrate were distributed into three horizontal lines (L1, L2, and L3; each one measuring 150cm length x 60cm width) separated by three concrete empty areas of the same measures. L1 was divided into 75cm of A substrate and the same dimensions of B; L2 had 100cm of A and 50cm of B, while L3 had 50cm of A and 100cm of B. The turkeys\u2019 motivation to pass through the lines was triggered by the presence of conspecifics located at the end of the experimental area. Data were analyzed using ANOVA. There were no significant differences between normal and lame turkeys to the total time spent on three lines (215.00\ub161.59s), (233.57\ub174.81s);the total time spent on the empty area (385.22\ub183.70s), (557.71\ub1124.04s) and the total time to cross the testing areas (581.3\ub191.72s), (791.2\ub1154.44s),respectively. Substrate A was chosen by 71.4% of lame birds even in L1 as L2, while 55.6% of normal turkeys preferred substrate B in L1 and 77.8% chose substrate A in L2. All birds walked on substrate B in L3. According to these preliminary results, it seems that lame birds have no difference in substrate choice, or on the time spent in each part of the experiment