Experience of some Iowa farmers with cattle feeding

The cattle feeder’s main purpose is to get the largest possible returns from his cattle with the amount of feed, capital and labor that he has available. Naturally, returns from the farm as a whole are more important than the success of any one enterprise, but the management of the entire farm involves many more questions than we can discuss adequately in this short bulletin. Therefore we shall simply present information obtained in 1938 and 1939 on the more common methods of Iowa cattle feeders. Results will be discussed solely on the basis of the cattle-feeding enterprise itself

Mass Flow Control in a Magnesium Hall-effect Thruster

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/83626/1/AIAA-2010-6861-269.pd

Additively manufacturable micro-mechanical logic gates.

Early examples of computers were almost exclusively based on mechanical devices. Although electronic computers became dominant in the past 60 years, recent advancements in three-dimensional micro-additive manufacturing technology provide new fabrication techniques for complex microstructures which have rekindled research interest in mechanical computations. Here we propose a new digital mechanical computation approach based on additively-manufacturable micro-mechanical logic gates. The proposed mechanical logic gates (i.e., NOT, AND, OR, NAND, and NOR gates) utilize multi-stable micro-flexures that buckle to perform Boolean computations based purely on mechanical forces and displacements with no electronic components. A key benefit of the proposed approach is that such systems can be additively fabricated as embedded parts of microarchitected metamaterials that are capable of interacting mechanically with their surrounding environment while processing and storing digital data internally without requiring electric power

Preparing an Election Petition in Missouri

Initiative and referendum petitions provide citizens with the power to make and overturn existing laws. Through the initiative petition, the people can compel an election on the question of enacting an amendment to the Missouri Constitution or enacting a proposed law. Through the referendum petition, the people can compel an election to decide whether an existing law should be retained. The procedure to be followed in drafting these petitions is specified in the Constitution and Statutes of Missouri.Reviewed October 1993

The role of nω-nitro-L-arginine in modulation of pulmonary vascular tone in the maturing newborn pig

AbstractCurrent therapeutic modalities for treatment of newborn pulmonary hypertensive crisis include but are not limited to the administration of nitric oxide (endothelium-derived relaxing factor). However, few data are available on the role of endogenously produced endothelium-derived relaxing factor in the modulation of pulmonary vascular tone in the neonate. In the current study, we investigated the acute effects of Nω-nitro- L -arginine (a potent competitive inhibitor of endothelium-derived relaxing factor synthase) on the pulmonary vasculature of anesthetized open-chest 48-hour-old ( n = 8) and 2-week-old ( n = 7) Yorkshire pigs. After baseline data were acquired, all animals received a 10 mg/kg per minute infusion of Nω-nitro- L -arginine for 10 minutes. To discern distal and proximal pulmonary arterial vessel changes, input mean and characteristic impedance were respectively determined. Pulmonary vascular resistance was also calculated (units determined in dyne • sec • cm -5 plus or minus the standard errorof the mean). Results showed Nω-nitro- L -arginine infusion did not significantly alter baseline pulmonary arterial pressure (22,370 ±1473 dyne/cm2 ), pulmonary vascular resistance (5171 ±805 dyne • sec • cm -5 ), input impedance (6343 ±806 dyne • sec • cm -5 ), or characteristic impedance (2073 ±418 dyne • sec • cm -5 ) in 48-hour-old pigs. In 2-week-old pigs, infusion of Nω-nitro- L -arginine elevated pulmonary arterial pressure (18,162 ±1415 dyne/cm 2 versus 23,838 ±1810 dyne/cm 2 , p = 0.015), pulmonary vascular resistance (810 ±137 dyne • sec • cm -5 versus 1519 dyne • sec • cm -5 , p = 0.030), and input impedance (2302 ±251 dyne • sec • cm -5 versus 2900 ±255 dyne • sec • cm -5 , p = 0.018). Characteristic impedance was not altered in 2-week-old pigs. These data indicate that Nω-nitro- L -arginine infusion resulted in pulmonary arteriolar vasoconstriction in 2-week-old pigs, but not in 48-hour-old pigs. This finding suggests that endothelium-derived relaxing factor does not modulate basal pulmonary arteriolar tone during the early newborn period, but does play a significant role in 2-week-old pigs. These data also suggest that the functional role for endothelium-derived relaxing factor is confined to the distal arteriolar pulmonary bed and does not extend to the larger proximal arterial vessels. (J THORAC CARDIOVASC SURG 1995;110:1486-92

A review of health utilities across conditions common in paediatric and adult populations

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cost-utility analyses are commonly used in economic evaluations of interventions or conditions that have an impact on health-related quality of life. However, evaluating utilities in children presents several challenges since young children may not have the cognitive ability to complete measurement tasks and thus utility values must be estimated by proxy assessors. Another solution is to use utilities derived from an adult population. To better inform the future conduct of cost-utility analyses in paediatric populations, we reviewed the published literature reporting utilities among children and adults across selected conditions common to paediatric and adult populations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An electronic search of Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library up to November 2008 was conducted to identify studies presenting utility values derived from the Health Utilities Index (HUI) or EuroQoL-5Dimensions (EQ-5D) questionnaires or using time trade off (TTO) or standard gamble (SG) techniques in children and/or adult populations from randomized controlled trials, comparative or non-comparative observational studies, or cross-sectional studies. The search was targeted to four chronic diseases/conditions common to both children and adults and known to have a negative impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After screening 951 citations identified from the literature search, 77 unique studies included in our review evaluated utilities in patients with asthma (n = 25), cancer (n = 23), diabetes mellitus (n = 11), skin diseases (n = 19) or chronic diseases (n = 2), with some studies evaluating multiple conditions. Utility values were estimated using HUI (n = 33), EQ-5D (n = 26), TTO (n = 12), and SG (n = 14), with some studies applying more than one technique to estimate utility values. 21% of studies evaluated utilities in children, of those the majority being in the area of oncology. No utility values for children were reported in skin diseases. Although few studies provided comparative information on utility values between children and adults, results seem to indicate that utilities may be similar in adolescents and young adults with asthma and acne. Differences in results were observed depending on methods and proxies.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This review highlights the need to conduct future research regarding measurement of utilities in children.</p

Electronic Medical Records as a Research Tool: Evaluating Topiramate Use at a Headache Center.

Background.—Electronic medical records (EMRs) are used in large healthcare centers to increase efficiency and accuracy of documentation. These databases may be utilized for clinical research or to describe clinical practices such as medication usage. Methods.—We conducted a retrospective analysis of EMR data from a headache clinic to evaluate clinician prescription use and dosing patterns of topiramate. The study cohort comprised 4833 unique de-identified records, which were used to determine topiramate dose and persistence of treatment. Results.—Within the cohort, migraine was the most common headache diagnosis (n = 3753, 77.7%), followed by tension-type headache (n = 338, 7.0%) and cluster or trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias (n = 287, 5.9%). Physicians prescribed topiramate more often for subjects with migraine and idiopathic intracranial hypertension (P \u3c .0001) than for those with other conditions, and more often for subjects with coexisting conditions including obesity, bipolar disorder, and depression. The most common maintenance dose of topiramate was 100 mg/day; however, approximately 15% of subjects received either less than 100 mg/day or more than 200 mg/day. More than a third of subjects were prescribed topiramate for more than 1 year, and subjects with a diagnosis of migraine were prescribed topiramate for a longer period of time than those without migraine. Conclusions.—Findings from our study using EMR demonstrate that physicians use topiramate at many different doses and for many off-label indications. This analysis provided important insight into our patient populations and treatment patterns

Quasar Clustering from SDSS DR5: Dependences on Physical Properties

Using a homogenous sample of 38,208 quasars with a sky coverage of $4000 {\rm deg^2}$ drawn from the SDSS Data Release Five quasar catalog, we study the dependence of quasar clustering on luminosity, virial black hole mass, quasar color, and radio loudness. At $z<2.5$, quasar clustering depends weakly on luminosity and virial black hole mass, with typical uncertainty levels $\sim 10$ for the measured correlation lengths. These weak dependences are consistent with models in which substantial scatter between quasar luminosity, virial black hole mass and the host dark matter halo mass has diluted any clustering difference, where halo mass is assumed to be the relevant quantity that best correlates with clustering strength. However, the most luminous and most massive quasars are more strongly clustered (at the $\sim 2\sigma$ level) than the remainder of the sample, which we attribute to the rapid increase of the bias factor at the high-mass end of host halos. We do not observe a strong dependence of clustering strength on quasar colors within our sample. On the other hand, radio-loud quasars are more strongly clustered than are radio-quiet quasars matched in redshift and optical luminosity (or virial black hole mass), consistent with local observations of radio galaxies and radio-loud type 2 AGN. Thus radio-loud quasars reside in more massive and denser environments in the biased halo clustering picture. Using the Sheth et al.(2001) formula for the linear halo bias, the estimated host halo mass for radio-loud quasars is $\sim 10^{13} h^{-1}M_\odot$, compared to $\sim 2\times 10^{12} h^{-1}M_\odot$ for radio-quiet quasar hosts at $z\sim 1.5$.Comment: Updated version; accepted for publication in Ap