Fertilizing capacity and ultrastructure of fowl and turkey spermatozoa before and after freezing

The fertilizing capacity, motility and ultrastructure of fowl and turkey spermatozoa were examined at various stages of the freezing process. For both species, fertility and motility were depressed after equilibration with dimethylsulphoxide at 5 °C. After freezing, motility was maintained at 55% for fowl spermatozoa and 40% for turkey spermatozoa; however, fertility was 55% for the fowl and 0% for the turkey. Qualitatively, the damage to the spermatozoa of both species was nearly identical, as revealed by scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The plasmalemma was the primary site of damage. \u27Bent\u27 spermatozoa, coiled tails and swollen mitochondria were also present. Damage to the acrosome was only observed in spermatozoa which had been frozen to -180 ° or -196 °C. These changes were attributed to adverse osmotic conditions. Binding of cationic ferritin to the plasmalemma of spermatozoa from both species remained unaltered

Gender Differences in Urothelial Bladder Cancer: Effects of Natural Killer Lymphocyte Immunity

Men are more likely to develop cancer than women. In fact, male predominance is one of the most consistent cancer epidemiology findings. Additionally, men have a poorer prognosis and an increased risk of secondary malignancies compared to women. These differences have been investigated in order to better understand cancer and to better treat both men and women. In this review, we discuss factors that may cause this gender difference, focusing on urothelial bladder cancer (UBC) pathogenesis. We consider physiological factors that may cause higher male cancer rates, including differences in X chromosome gene expression. We discuss how androgens may promote bladder cancer development directly by stimulating bladder urothelium and indirectly by suppressing immunity. We are particularly interested in the role of natural killer (NK) cells in anti-cancer immunity

On the stability of high-speed milling with spindle speed variation

Spindle speed variation is a well-known technique to suppress regenerative machine tool vibrations, but it is usually considered to be effective only for low spindle speeds. In this paper, the effect of spindle speed variation is analyzed in the high-speed domain for spindle speeds corresponding to the first flip (period doubling) and to the first Hopf lobes. The optimal amplitudes and frequencies of the speed modulations are computed using the semidiscre- tization method. It is shown that period doubling chatter can effectively be suppressed by spindle speed variation, although, the technique is not effective for the quasiperiodic chatter above the Hopf lobe. The results are verified by cutting tests. Some special cases are also discussed where the practical behavior of the system differs from the predicted one in some ways. For these cases, it is pointed out that the concept of stability is understood on the scale of the principal period of the system—that is, the speed modulation period for variable spindle speed machining and the tooth passing period for constant spindle speed machining

Scalar Glueball Mass Reduction at Finite Temperature in SU(3) Anisotropic Lattice QCD

We report the first study of the glueball properties at finite temperatures below T_c using SU(3) anisotropic lattice QCD with beta=6.25, the renormalized anisotropy xi \equiv a_s/a_t = 4 and 20^3 \times N_t (N_t=35,36,37,38,40,43,45,50,72) at the quenched level. From the temporal correlation analysis with the smearing method, about 20 % mass reduction is observed for the lowest scalar glueball as m_G(T)=1250 \pm 50MeV for 0.8 T_c < T < T_c in comparison with m_G \simeq 1500 \sim 1700MeV at T \simeq 0.Comment: This is the second revised version using more gauge configurations. 5 pages, Latex2e, 5 figure

Exotic Quarkonia from Anisotropic Lattices

We study in detail the spectrum of heavy quarkonia with different orbital angular momentum along with their radial and gluonic excitations. Using an anisotropic formulation of Lattice QCD we achieved an unprecedented control over statistical errors and were able to study systematic errors such as lattice spacing artefacts, finite volume effects and relativistic corrections. First results on the spin structure in heavy hybrids are also presented.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Semantic aware Bayesian network model for actionable knowledge discovery in linked data

The majority of the conventional mining algorithms treat the mining process as an isolated data-driven procedure and overlook the semantic of the targeted data. As a result, the generated patterns are abundant and end users cannot act upon them seamlessly. Furthermore, interdisciplinary knowledge can not be obtained from domain-specific silo of data. The emergence of Linked Data (LD) as a new model for knowledge representation, which intertwines data with its semantics, has introduced new opportunities for data miners. Accordingly, this paper proposes an ontology-based Semantic-Aware Bayesian network (BN) model. In contrast to the existing mining algorithms, the proposed model does into transform the original format of the LD set. Therefore, it not only accommodates the semantic aspects in LD, but also caters to the need of connecting different data-sets from different domains. We evaluate the proposed model on a Bone Dysplasia dataset, Experimental results show promising performance

Performance-based building and innovation: Balancing client and industry needs

One reason for the interest in performance-based building is that it is commonly advocated as a powerful way of enhancing innovation performance by articulating building performance outcomes, and by offering relevant procurement actors the discretion to innovate to meet these performance requirements more effectively and/or efficiently. The paper argues that the current approach to performance-based building assumes that relevant actors have the capacity, ability and motivation to innovate from a business perspective. It is proposed that the prevailing conceptualization of PBB is too restrictive and should be broadened explicitly to accommodate the required business logic that must be in place before actors will innovate. The relevant performance-based building and innovation literature is synthesized to support the assertion. The paper concludes with an innovation-focused definition of performance-based building

Accelerating the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm

An algorithm for separating the high- and low-frequency molecular dynamics modes in Hybrid Monte Carlo simulations of gauge theories with dynamical fermions is presented. The separation is based on splitting the pseudo-fermion action into two parts, as was initially proposed by Hasenbusch. We propose to introduce different evolution time-scales for each part. We test our proposal in realistic simulations of two-flavor O(a) improved Wilson fermions. A speed-up of more than a factor of three compared to the standard HMC algorithm is observed in a typical run.Comment: 6 pages, late

The Weakly Coupled Gross-Neveu Model with Wilson Fermions

The nature of the phase transition in the lattice Gross-Neveu model with Wilson fermions is investigated using a new analytical technique. This involves a new type of weak coupling expansion which focuses on the partition function zeroes of the model. Its application to the single flavour Gross-Neveu model yields a phase diagram whose structure is consistent with that predicted from a saddle point approach. The existence of an Aoki phase is confirmed and its width in the weakly coupled region is determined. Parity, rather than chiral symmetry breaking naturally emerges as the driving mechanism for the phase transition.Comment: 15 pages including 1 figur