Do Beef Production Conferences Affect Beef Producers\u27 Perceptions of Applied Research and Extension Programs?

Decreased visibility and awareness of what Washington State University (WSU) was doing for the beef industry was a critical issue raised by beef industry leaders and WSU faculty. Statewide conferences have been used to distribute information to beef producers. However, these conferences require large commitments of labor, time, and financial resources, and it was not known whether they are effective given that so much information is easily obtained electronically. Therefore, we surveyed beef producers at WSU Beef Production Conferences in 2014 and 2016. Recommendations for improving translation of information include maintaining beef conferences, publishing more articles in beef trade magazines, and increasing information on WSU Internet sites. Applying similar activities elsewhere and with other agricultural producer audiences may prove useful

Right HTML, Wrong JSON: Challenges in Replaying Archived Webpages Built with Client-Side Rendering

Many web sites are transitioning how they construct their pages. The conventional model is where the content is embedded server-side in the HTML and returned to the client in an HTTP response. Increasingly, sites are moving to a model where the initial HTTP response contains only an HTML skeleton plus JavaScript that makes API calls to a variety of servers for the content (typically in JSON format), and then builds out the DOM client-side, more easily allowing for periodically refreshing the content in a page and allowing dynamic modification of the content. This client-side rendering, now predominant in social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, is also being adopted by news outlets, such as CNN.com. When conventional web archiving techniques, such as crawling with Heritrix, are applied to pages that render their content client-side, the JSON responses can become out of sync with the HTML page in which it is to be embedded, resulting in temporal violations on replay. Because the violative JSON is not directly observable in the page (i.e., in the same manner a violative embedded image is), the temporal violations can be difficult to detect. We describe how the top level CNN.com page has used client-side rendering since April 2015 and the impact this has had on web archives. Between April 24, 2015 and July 21, 2016, we found almost 15,000 mementos with a temporal violation of more than 2 days between the base CNN.com HTML and the JSON responses used to deliver the content under the main story. One way to mitigate this problem is to use browser-based crawling instead of conventional crawlers like Heritrix, but browser-based crawling is currently much slower than non-browser-based tools such as Heritrix.Comment: 20 pages, preprint version of paper accepted at the 2023 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL

Numerical Observation of a Tubular Phase in Anisotropic Membranes

We provide the first numerical evidence for the existence of a tubular phase, predicted by Radzihovsky and Toner (RT), for anisotropic tethered membranes without self-avoidance. Incorporating anisotropy into the bending rigidity of a simple model of a tethered membrane with free boundary conditions, we show that the model indeed has two phase transitions corresponding to the flat-to-tubular and tubular-to-crumpled transitions. For the tubular phase we measure the Flory exponent $\nu_F$ and the roughness exponent $\zeta$. We find $\nu_F=0.305(14)$ and $\zeta=0.895(60)$, which are in reasonable agreement with the theoretical predictions of RT --- $\nu_F=1/4$ and $\zeta=1$.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, REVTEX, final published versio

The influence of left ventricular hypertrophyon survival in patients with coronaryartery disease: do race and gender matter?

AbstractObjectivesWe sought to determine the overall prognostic importance of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) among patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), as well as to determine whether this risk varies as a function of race or gender.BackgroundLeft ventricular hypertrophy is more prevalent among blacks and women than their counterparts. Blacks and women also have higher mortality with coronary disease.MethodsWe studied records of 2,461 patients (19% black, 42% women) diagnosed with CAD at cardiac catheterization between 1990 and 1998 from a single academic center. Left ventricular hypertrophy was defined using standard echocardiographic measures. Cox proportional hazards models were used for adjusted survival analyses. Mean patient follow-up was three years.ResultsPatients with LVH were older (68 vs. 65 years, p < 0.01), more often women (54% vs. 36%, p < 0.01), and black (25% vs. 16%, p < 0.01), and had higher unadjusted three-year mortality rates than patients without LVH (42% vs. 34%, p < 0.01). Left ventricular hypertrophy remained an independent predictor of mortality after adjusting for other clinical risk factors (hazard ratio 1.56, 95% confidence interval 1.35 to 1.80) with prognostic importance equivalent to that of left ventricular ejection fraction. Although the relative risk of LVH did not vary by race or gender, the attributable risk of LVH was greater in blacks and women.ConclusionsClinicians should consider the prognostic importance of LVH when assessing risk in patients with CAD. Because LVH is more common among black and women patients with CAD, it partially accounts for racial and gender differences in survival

Role of the anterior insula in task-level control and focal attention

In humans, the anterior insula (aI) has been the topic of considerable research and ascribed a vast number of functional properties by way of neuroimaging and lesion studies. Here, we argue that the aI, at least in part, plays a role in domain-general attentional control and highlight studies (Dosenbach et al. 2006; Dosenbach et al. 2007) supporting this view. Additionally, we discuss a study (Ploran et al. 2007) that implicates aI in processes related to the capture of focal attention. Task-level control and focal attention may or may not reflect information processing supported by a single functional area (within the aI). Therefore, we apply a novel technique (Cohen et al. 2008) that utilizes resting state functional connectivity MRI (rs-fcMRI) to determine whether separable regions exist within the aI. rs-fcMRI mapping suggests that the ventral portion of the aI is distinguishable from more dorsal/anterior regions, which are themselves distinct from more posterior parts of the aI. When these regions are applied to functional MRI (fMRI) data, the ventral and dorsal/anterior regions support processes potentially related to both task-level control and focal attention, whereas the more posterior aI regions did not. These findings suggest that there exists some functional heterogeneity within aI that may subserve related but distinct types of higher-order cognitive processing

Molecular assays for the detection of microRNAs in prostate cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs (about 21 to 24 nucleotides in length) that effectively reduce the translation of their target mRNAs. Several studies have shown miRNAs to be differentially expressed in prostate cancer, many of which are found in fragile regions of chromosomes. Expression profiles of miRNAs can provide information to separate malignancies based upon stage, progression and prognosis. Here we describe research prototype assays that detect a number of miRNA sequences with high analytical sensitivity and specificity, including miR-21, miR-182, miR-221 and miR-222, which were identified through expression profiling experiments with prostate cancer specimens. The miRNAs were isolated, amplified and quantified using magnetic bead-based target capture and a modified form of Transcription-Mediated Amplification (TMA).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Analytical sensitivity and specificity were demonstrated in model system experiments using synthetic mature microRNAs or <it>in vitro </it>miRNA hairpin precursor transcripts. Research prototype assays for miR-21, miR-182, miR-221 and miR-222 provided analytical sensitivities ranging from 50 to 500 copies of target per reaction in sample transport medium. Specific capture and detection of mature miR-221 from complex samples was demonstrated in total RNA isolated from human prostate cancer cell lines and xenografts.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Research prototype real-time TMA assays for microRNAs provide accurate and reproducible quantitation using 10 nanograms of input total RNA. These assays can also be used directly with tissue specimens, without the need for a preanalytic RNA isolation step, and thus provide a high-throughput method of microRNA profiling in clinical specimens.</p