The effect of various factors on the rate of diffusion in steeping sorghum grains

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Engaging the Community: Reflections on a STEAM Institute

Staff at an elementary school working with artists from a non-profit arts integration professional development organization developed a highly engaging full day STEAM Institute to engage the community in experiential STEAM learning practices and to leverage the experience for systemic impact. This reflection considers the outcomes that went well beyond the original goals

A comparison of rapid staining techniques for the cytological evaluation of canine intracranial neoplasms

Intracranial neoplasms represent a significant proportion of all tumours in dogs and cats. While many treatment modalities have been examined in order to treat them, efforts to evaluate success are hampered due to the relatively infrequent attempts at definitive antemortem diagnosis. In humans, stereotactic needle biopsy has become a common method of providing a definitive diagnosis of brain tumours with safety and reliability, and cytological techniques have been developed to aid intraoperative diagnosis from biopsy specimens. Stereotactic techniques have recently become available for use in dogs and cats, but little information has been published in the veterinary literature evaluating the normal cytological appearance of the brain or comparing different cytological techniques for intraoperative diagnosis. In order to evaluate the normal cytological appearance of the canine brain, smears were prepared from samples taken from a normal brain and stained with toluidine blue, following which the cytological appearance of different regions of the brain were described. Samples were also taken from a variety of lesions at post mortem from 10 dogs and 1 cat to evaluate 3 preparation techniques (touch impression, medium pressure impression and smear preparation) and 4 stains (Diff-Quik, May-Grunwald- Giemsa, toluidine blue and Zynostain). This study provides a useful guide to the normal cytological appearance of the canine brain, which was found to show similarities with the normal cytological appearance of the human brain. The preparation techniques and stains examined provided good diagnostic accuracy, with smear preparation and Diff-Quick stains showing slightly greater accuracy than other techniques. The greatest difficulty was encountered with diagnosis of inflammatory lesions, due to the potential for confusion with other pathological processes. The most important factors for diagnosis appeared to be the use of the smear preparation and the Diff-Quick stain, high overall slide quality and familiarity of the cytologist with the stain used. While further work needs to be performed to validate the stains and preparation methods that have shown most promising results, it is to be hoped that diagnostic accuracy will improve with increased familiarity with the stains and preparation methods examined

An investigation of telomerase-based diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in canine cancer

Recent research has shown that dogs represent a potentially valuable model in which to investigate novel anti-cancer strategies, and are genetically more similar to humans than existing mouse models. In addition, telomerase activity in humans is more closely paralleled by telomerase activity in dogs than mice, adding to the value of this model. For these reasons, this thesis aims to investigate the telomerase as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool in canine cancer. Several large studies have shown that 85-90% of all human tumours possess telomerase activity. Brain tumours represent an important subset of these because of the debilitating symptoms associated with their effects and because survival rates for the most malignant subtype, glioblastoma muitiforme, remain unchanged despite advances in anticancer treatment strategies over the past thirty years. Their canine counterparts show strikingly similar features both at the histological and genomic levels, and for this reason offer an attractive model for the development of novel therapies. Given the ubiquity of telomerase activity in other tumour types, telomerase activity in human brain tumours has been extensively examined as a potential prognostic indicator. However, there appears to be a wide variation in the reported incidence of telomerase activity in brain tumours which is likely to be the result of problems associated with the methods used to date. Studies have suggested that methods detecting telomerase activity in situ may resolve some of these problems. For this reason, we set out to investigate the immunohistochemical detection of telomerase activity using a number of antibodies directed at TERT. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)

Case report: A case of tetanus in a dog: cranial nerve involvement and imaging findings

An 11 years old male Labrador cross presented with unilateral vestibular signs, ipsilateral facial paresis, moderate obtundation, ptyalism, and paraparesis. MRI of the brain revealed diffuse, multifocal T2/FLAIR hyperintense changes throughout various regions of the brain including the medulla, midbrain, pons, thalamus and right cerebral hemisphere with mild multifocal contrast enhancement. The patient progressed to trismus with generalized increased extensor tone and risus sardonicus. A diagnosis of generalized tetanus was made and the patient was started on antibiotics, skeletal muscle relaxants and tetanus antitoxin and made a full recovery. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first reported case of canine tetanus in which the presenting signs involved cranial nerve dysfunction as well as the first report describing MRI changes in canine tetanus within the central nervous system

A highly-underactuated robotic hand with force and joint angle sensors

This paper describes a novel underactuated robotic hand design. The hand is highly underactuated as it contains three fingers with three joints each controlled by a single motor. One of the fingers ("thumb") can also be rotated about the base of the hand, yielding a total of two controllable degrees-of-freedom. A key component of the design is the addition of position and tactile sensors which provide precise angle feedback and binary force feedback. Our mechanical design can be analyzed theoretically to predict contact forces as well as hand position given a particular object shape

Case report: Atlantoaxial instability and subluxation in a dog with Ehlers–Danlos syndrome

Ehlers–Danlos syndrome is a rare, heritable connective tissue disorder characterized by soft, hyperextensible skin, joint hypermobility, and tissue fragility, the severity of which can range from mild to severe. A 9-month-old male entire miniature Dachshund was presented following peracute tetraparesis. Neurological examination was suggestive of intracranial vestibular disease or high cervical myelopathy. MRI revealed atlantoaxial instability and subluxation, resulting in marked spinal cord compression at C1–C2, which was surgically stabilized. On discharge from the hospital, skin fragility was noted as the result of skin tearing during tape removal. A piece of full-thickness antebrachial skin was submitted for histopathology which showed changes consistent with Ehlers–Danlos syndrome. This case report describes the first case of atlantoaxial instability and subluxation in a dog as the result of a confirmed underlying collagenopathy

Ongoing Development of a Series Bosch Reactor System

Future manned missions to deep space or planetary surfaces will undoubtedly require highly robust, efficient, and regenerable life support systems that require minimal consumables. To meet this requirement, NASA continues to explore a Boschbased carbon dioxide reduction system to recover oxygen from CO2. In order to improve the equivalent system mass of Bosch systems, we seek to design and test a "Series Bosch" system in which two reactors in series are optimized for the two steps of the reaction, as well as to explore the use of in situ materials as carbon deposition catalysts. Here we report recent developments in this effort including assembly and initial testing of a Reverse WaterGas Shift reactor (RWGSr) and initial testing of two gas separation membranes. The RWGSr was sized to reduce CO2 produced by a crew of four to carbon monoxide as the first stage in a Series Bosch system. The gas separation membranes, necessary to recycle unreacted hydrogen and CO2, were similarly sized. Additionally, we report results of preliminary experiments designed to determine the catalytic properties of Martian and Lunar regolith simulant for the carbon deposition step

An Application of Deep Learning for Sweet Cherry Phenotyping using YOLO Object Detection

Tree fruit breeding is a long-term activity involving repeated measurements of various fruit quality traits on a large number of samples. These traits are traditionally measured by manually counting the fruits, weighing to indirectly measure the fruit size, and fruit colour is classified subjectively into different color categories using visual comparison to colour charts. These processes are slow, expensive and subject to evaluators' bias and fatigue. Recent advancements in deep learning can help automate this process. A method was developed to automatically count the number of sweet cherry fruits in a camera's field of view in real time using YOLOv3. A system capable of analyzing the image data for other traits such as size and color was also developed using Python. The YOLO model obtained close to 99% accuracy in object detection and counting of cherries and 90% on the Intersection over Union metric for object localization when extracting size and colour information. The model surpasses human performance and offers a significant improvement compared to manual counting.Comment: Published in 25th International Conference on Image Processing, Computer Vision, & Pattern Recognition (IPCV'21

External Workloads Vary by Position and Game Result in US-based Professional Soccer Players

International Journal of Exercise Science 16(6): 688-699, 2023. Professional soccer is a physically demanding sport that requires players to be highly trained. Advances using GPS allow the tracking of external workloads for individual players in practice and competition, however, there is a lack of evidence on how these measures impact match results. Therefore, we analyzed external workloads by player position and determined if they vary depending on the result of competitive matches. External workloads were analyzed in professional soccer players (n = 25) across 28 competitive games. One-way ANOVA determined if workloads varied by position (striker – ST, wide midfielder - WM, central midfielder – CM, wide defender - WD, central defender – CD) or across games won (n = 8), lost (n = 13) or tied (n = 7). Repeated-measures ANOVA assessed differences in workloads specific to each position in each of the result categories. Statistical significance was set at p \u3c 0.05. Across all games, more high-speed and very-high speed running was done by ST and WD compared to CD (p \u3c 0.001) and CM (p \u3c 0.001 - 0.02). Whole-team data showed no differences in any external workload variable with respect to match result (p \u3e 0.05), however, in games won ST did more very high-speed running than in losing games (p = 0.03) and defending players did more high and very high-speed running in games tied vs. those won or lost (p \u3c 0.05). Whole-team external workloads do not vary depending on the match result; however, high speed running may be a differentiating factor at the positional level. Coaches should consider position-specific analysis when examining player workloads