The Feeding Value of High Dry Matter Corn Silage

The important of corn in dairy cattle feeding is generally acknowledged. A popular way of preserving the crop is to make corn silage, thus using the whole plant for feed and preserving maximum feed per acre. The increased utilization of corn silage by dairymen may be due to its high energy yields per acre, high acceptability by cattle, and ease with it is incorporated into automated systems of harvesting and feeding. The increasing importance of corn silage in the United State is evidenced by the increasing acreages harvested as corn silage. In 1950 there were 4,937,000 acres planted with a yield of 31,002,000 tons harvested as corn silage. In 1965 there were 8,035,000 across with a yield of 84,266,000 tons harvested (1). In South Dakota 56,691 acres of corn silage were planted in 1930 with a yield of 310,254 tons. In 1964 there were 952,883 acres harvested with a yield of 4,796,641 tons (41). With the large increase in corm yields in recent years, it appeared beneficial to examine some new techniques of handling and processing this crop. Because later harvest dates may be advantageous to work schedules and availability of silo storage space, this research was designed to investigate the effect of delaying harvest of corn silage beyond normal plant maturity in terms of changes in chemical composition with increasing plant maturity, field and nutrient losses, feeding value, and digestibility

Take an Accurate Forage Sample

Successful livestock production depends largely on the feeding program; and what you should feed depends on an accurate analysis of the forage portion of your ration. The accuracy of forage analysis depends on the sample that you send to the lab. Samples must be representative of the feeds being fed. Poor sampling will result in misleading values, higher feed costs, and reduced performance. In many feeding programs, the sample is the weak link. The results of the lab tests will be useful only if the sample accurately represents what your animals will be eating. Keep in mind that every field and every cutting will be different

Robust Machine Learning Applied to Astronomical Datasets I: Star-Galaxy Classification of the SDSS DR3 Using Decision Trees

We provide classifications for all 143 million non-repeat photometric objects in the Third Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) using decision trees trained on 477,068 objects with SDSS spectroscopic data. We demonstrate that these star/galaxy classifications are expected to be reliable for approximately 22 million objects with r < ~20. The general machine learning environment Data-to-Knowledge and supercomputing resources enabled extensive investigation of the decision tree parameter space. This work presents the first public release of objects classified in this way for an entire SDSS data release. The objects are classified as either galaxy, star or nsng (neither star nor galaxy), with an associated probability for each class. To demonstrate how to effectively make use of these classifications, we perform several important tests. First, we detail selection criteria within the probability space defined by the three classes to extract samples of stars and galaxies to a given completeness and efficiency. Second, we investigate the efficacy of the classifications and the effect of extrapolating from the spectroscopic regime by performing blind tests on objects in the SDSS, 2dF Galaxy Redshift and 2dF QSO Redshift (2QZ) surveys. Given the photometric limits of our spectroscopic training data, we effectively begin to extrapolate past our star-galaxy training set at r ~ 18. By comparing the number counts of our training sample with the classified sources, however, we find that our efficiencies appear to remain robust to r ~ 20. As a result, we expect our classifications to be accurate for 900,000 galaxies and 6.7 million stars, and remain robust via extrapolation for a total of 8.0 million galaxies and 13.9 million stars. [Abridged]Comment: 27 pages, 12 figures, to be published in ApJ, uses emulateapj.cl

The pseudophosphatase MK-STYX interacts with G3BP and decreases stress granule formation

MK-STYX [MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase) phospho-serine/threonine/tyrosine-binding protein] is a pseudophosphatase member of the dual-specificity phosphatase subfamily of the PTPs (protein tyrosine phosphatases). MK-STYX is catalytically inactive due to the absence of two amino acids from the signature motif that are essential for phosphatase activity. The nucleophilic cysteine residue and the adjacent histidine residue, which are conserved in all active dual-specificity phosphatases, are replaced by serine and phenylalanine residues respectively in MK-STYX. Mutations to introduce histidine and cysteine residues into the active site of MK-STYX generated an active phosphatase. Using MS, we identified G3BP1 [Ras-GAP (GTPase-activating protein) SH3 (Src homology 3) domain-binding protein-1], a regulator of Ras signalling, as a binding partner of MK-STYX. We observed that G3BP1 bound to native MK-STYX; however, binding to the mutant catalytically active form of MK-STYX was dramatically reduced. G3BP1 is also an RNA-binding protein with endoribonuclease activity that is recruited to ‘stress granules’ after stress stimuli. Stress granules are large subcellular structures that serve as sites of mRNA sorting, in which untranslated mRNAs accumulate. We have shown that expression of MK-STYX inhibited stress granule formation induced either by aresenite or expression of G3BP itself; however, the catalytically active mutant MK-STYX was impaired in its ability to inhibit G3BP-induced stress granule assembly. These results reveal a novel facet of the function of a member of the PTP family, illustrating a role for MK-STYX in regulating the ability of G3BP1 to integrate changes in growth-factor stimulation and environmental stress with the regulation of protein synthesis

Effects of Mavacamten on Measures of Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing Beyond Peak Oxygen Consumption: A Secondary Analysis of the EXPLORER-HCM Randomized Trial

IMPORTANCE: Mavacamten, a cardiac myosin inhibitor, improved peak oxygen uptake (pVO2) in patients with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in the EXPLORER-HCM study. However, the full extent of mavacamten's effects on exercise performance remains unclear. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of mavacamten on exercise physiology using cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Exploratory analyses of the data from the EXPLORER-HCM study, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial that was conducted in 68 cardiovascular centers in 13 countries. In total, 251 patients with symptomatic obstructive HCM were enrolled. INTERVENTIONS: Patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to mavacamten or placebo. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: The following prespecified exploratory cardiovascular and performance parameters were assessed with a standardized treadmill or bicycle ergometer test protocol at baseline and week 30: carbon dioxide output (VCO2), minute ventilation (VE), peak VE/VCO2 ratio, ventilatory efficiency (VE/VCO2 slope), peak respiratory exchange ratio (RER), peak circulatory power, ventilatory power, ventilatory threshold, peak metabolic equivalents (METs), peak exercise time, partial pressure of end-tidal carbon dioxide (PETCO2), and VO2/workload slope. RESULTS: Two hundred fifty-one patients were enrolled. The mean (SD) age was 58.5 (11.9) years and 59% of patients were male. There were significant improvements with mavacamten vs placebo in the following peak-exercise CPET parameters: peak VE/VCO2 ratio (least squares [LS] mean difference, -2.2; 95% CI, -3.05 to -1.26; P < .001), peak METs (LS mean difference, 0.4; 95% CI, 0.17-0.60; P < .001), peak circulatory power (LS mean difference, 372.9 mL/kg/min × mm Hg; 95% CI, 153.12-592.61; P = .001), and peak PETCO2 (LS mean difference, 2.0 mm Hg; 95% CI, 1.12-2.79; P < .001). Mavacamten also improved peak exercise time compared with placebo (LS mean difference, 0.7 minutes; 95% CI, 0.13-1.24; P = .02). There was a significant improvement in nonpeak-exercise CPET parameters, such as VE/VCO2 slope (LS mean difference, -2.6; 95% CI, -3.58 to -1.52; P < .001) and ventilatory power (LS mean difference, 0.6 mm Hg; 95% CI, 0.29-0.90; P < .001) favoring mavacamten vs placebo. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Mavacamten improved a range of CPET parameters beyond pVO2, indicating consistent and broad benefits on maximal exercise capacity. Although improvements in peak-exercise CPET parameters are clinically meaningful, the favorable effects of mavacamten on submaximal exertional tolerance provide further insights into the beneficial impact of mavacamten in patients with obstructive HCM. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03470545

Substitution of adeno-associated virus Rep protein binding and nicking sites with human Chromosome 19 sequences

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2) preferentially integrates its DNA at a ~2 kb region of human chromosome 19, designated <it>AAVS1 </it>(also known as <it>MBS85</it>). Integration at <it>AAVS1 </it>requires the AAV2 replication (Rep) proteins and a DNA sequence within <it>AAVS1 </it>containing a 16 bp Rep recognition sequence (RRS) and closely spaced Rep nicking site (also referred to as a terminal resolution site, or <it>trs</it>). The AAV2 genome is flanked by inverted terminal repeats (ITRs). Each ITR contains an RRS and closely spaced <it>trs</it>, but the sequences differ from those in <it>AAVS1</it>. These ITR sequences are required for replication and packaging.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study we demonstrate that the <it>AAVS1 </it>RRS and <it>trs </it>can function in AAV2 replication, packaging and integration by replacing a 61 bp region of the AAV2 ITR with a 49 bp segment of <it>AAVS1 </it>DNA. Modifying one or both ITRs did not have a large effect on the overall virus titers. These modifications did not detectably affect integration at <it>AAVS1</it>, as measured by semi-quantitative nested PCR assays. Sequencing of integration junctions shows the joining of the modified ITRs to <it>AAVS1 </it>sequences.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The ability of these <it>AAVS1 </it>sequences to substitute for the AAV2 RRS and <it>trs </it>provides indirect evidence that the stable secondary structure encompassing the <it>trs </it>is part of the AAV2 packaging signal.</p

High-throughput sequence alignment using Graphics Processing Units

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The recent availability of new, less expensive high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies has yielded a dramatic increase in the volume of sequence data that must be analyzed. These data are being generated for several purposes, including genotyping, genome resequencing, metagenomics, and <it>de novo </it>genome assembly projects. Sequence alignment programs such as MUMmer have proven essential for analysis of these data, but researchers will need ever faster, high-throughput alignment tools running on inexpensive hardware to keep up with new sequence technologies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>This paper describes MUMmerGPU, an open-source high-throughput parallel pairwise local sequence alignment program that runs on commodity Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in common workstations. MUMmerGPU uses the new Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) from nVidia to align multiple query sequences against a single reference sequence stored as a suffix tree. By processing the queries in parallel on the highly parallel graphics card, MUMmerGPU achieves more than a 10-fold speedup over a serial CPU version of the sequence alignment kernel, and outperforms the exact alignment component of MUMmer on a high end CPU by 3.5-fold in total application time when aligning reads from recent sequencing projects using Solexa/Illumina, 454, and Sanger sequencing technologies.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>MUMmerGPU is a low cost, ultra-fast sequence alignment program designed to handle the increasing volume of data produced by new, high-throughput sequencing technologies. MUMmerGPU demonstrates that even memory-intensive applications can run significantly faster on the relatively low-cost GPU than on the CPU.</p

Boundary work: becoming middle class in suburban Dar es Salaam

Suburban space provides a useful window onto contemporary class practices in Africa, where it is difficult to identify social classes on the basis of income or occupation. In this article I argue that the middle classes and the suburbs are mutually constitutive in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. Using interviews with residents and local government officials in the city's northern suburbs, I discuss the material and representational practices of middle-class boundary work in relation to land and landscape. If the middle classes do not presently constitute a coherent political-economic force, they are nevertheless transforming the city's former northern peri-urban zones into desirable suburban residential neighbourhoods