Interactions of porcine circovirus type 2 and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus

Porcine circovirus associated disease (PCVAD) has made an economic impact in global swine production, is caused by porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) and manifests in forms of multisystemic disease, wasting, pneumonia, diarrhea in growing pigs and reproductive failure in gilts and sows. PCVAD is enhanced by PRRSV co-infection alongside PCV2 infection in pigs and is not very well understood except that PRRSV potentiates PCV2 replication in the host. We characterized apoptosis in gnotobiotic pigs caused by both PCV2a and PCV2b and for the first time established that both PCV2a and PCV2b are able to promote cell death in the hepatocytes of gnotobiotes of clinically affected pigs leading to hepatic failure. We further delineated the role of PRRSV in affecting PCV2a and PCV2b apoptosis in specific pathogen free (SPF) pigs and demonstrated that PRRSV does not cause apoptosis induction in PCV2a and PCV2b infected pigs. We compared and demonstrated that in vitro differences in PCV2 or PRRSV replication or IFN gamma; and IL-10 release in porcine alveolar macrophages (PAMs) inoculated with several PCV2-PRRSV combinations are small and not dependent on ORF1 or ORF2 origin. We analyzed the shedding of both PCV2a and PCV2b in piglets co-infected with PRRSV and ascertained that PRRSV is capable of prolonging PCV2 viremia and subsequent shedding in the nasal, oral secretions and fecal excretion that can increase horizontal transmission of PCV2a and PCV2b in nayve herds. Finally we also verified if prior PRRSV exposure had any detrimental effect on PCV2 vaccines currently available in the US market. We were able to establish that the PCV2 vaccines are able to provide protective immunity to piglets that had prior PRRSV infection

The Effect of Age-related Declines in Inhibitory Control on Audiovisual Speech Intelligibility

Audiovisual: AV) speech perception is perception in which both auditory and visual information is available in order to understand a talker, compared to an auditory signal alone, during face-to-face communication. This form of communication yields significantly higher word recognition performance as compared to either sensory modality alone, constituting a general AV advantage for speech perception. Despite an overall AV advantage, older adults seem to receive less benefit from this bimodal presentation than do younger adults. However, there is evidence to suggest that not all age-related deficits in AV speech perception are of a sensory nature, but are also influenced by cognitive factors: e.g. Pichora-Fuller et al., 1995). In the current study, I extend an existing model of spoken-word recognition to the AV domain and refer to the new model as the Auditory-Visual Neighborhood Activation Model: AV-NAM). The primary goal of the current study was to examine the cognitive factors that contribute to age-related and individual differences in AV perception of words varying in lexical density: i.e. easy and hard words). Forty-nine younger and 50 older adults completed a series of cognitive inhibition tasks and several spoken word identification tasks. The words were presented in auditory-only, visual-only, and AV conditions. Overall, younger adults demonstrated better inhibitory abilities and higher word identification performance than older adults. However, whereas no relationship was observed between inhibitory measures and word identification performance in younger adults, there was a significant relationship between inhibition, as measured by Stroop interference, and intelligibility of lexically difficult words in older adults. These results are interpreted within the framework of the newly adapted AV-NAM and the implications for inhibitory deficits in older adults that contribute to impairments in speech perception

An HI perspective on galaxies 2.5 billion years ago

Galaxies are believed to have formed and evolved within clumps of dark matter (known as dark matter halos) through the merging of smaller, less complex systems, as explained by one of the most popular cosmological models known as Lambda CDM (ΛCDM). Thus, the properties of galaxies are shaped by their genesis (nature) and the influence of the environments in which they reside (nurture). Synergizing our knowledge of stellar population studies with the gas content of galaxies provides a more complete picture of how galaxies we see today evolved over time. In particular, the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies (HI) is a vital ingredient in star formation and provides unparalleled insights into the role of gas and environment in galaxy evolution. Unfortunately, not much is known about the behaviour of HI over cosmic time due to limitations in telescope sensitivity for deep HI observations.In this thesis, we presented the data and results of the Blind Ultra-Deep HI Environmental Survey (BUDHIES), which still provides some of the only blind observations of 166 galaxies detected over a range of cosmic environments at a redshift z~0.2 (~2.5 billion years in look-back time). this thesis also provides further insights into the time evolution of HI in galaxies using tools such as the HI mass function and the Tully-Fisher relation, along with the details on the data processing and optical counterpart identification with ancillary data. This thesis aims to provide a benchmark for next-generation HI surveys that will be able to overcome the limitations of current radio facilities

THREE ESSAYS ON “DOING CARE”, GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE WORK DAY, AND WOMEN’S CARE WORK IN THE HOUSEHOLD

This dissertation provides a theoretical perspective on why women’s responsibility for care work lengthens their workday relative to men due to subsistence requirements, and draws attention to the relevance of other female family members. Building from theories of institutional bargaining research insights from “doing gender”, I develop a theoretical perspective on “doing care” that considers both bargaining power and social norms as determinants of differences in time allocation across and within gender. Conventional bargaining models predict that women who earn incomes can substitute hours of paid work for unpaid work. Using qualitative field work from India, and my theory of “doing care”, I argue, that women have limited ability to trade income-earning work for care work by persuading their husbands to do more. The immediacy of family needs and strong cultural obligations compel women to devote time to care work. This is particularly evident among the Adivasi (a low income social group with less binding gender norms than other groups), especially their ability to do less care work. Older women are also able to reduce care work with the presence of younger women, especially daughters-in-laws. In households without a co-resident daughter-in-law, the presence of older daughters lightens mother’s hours of direct and indirect care more than the presence of older sons. In this regard, I build on the work of Barcellos, Carvalho and Muney (2014), which examines whether sons receive more childcare than daughters, by considering how “doing care” complicates the occurrence of son preference in practice. As daughters may provide their mothers with more assistance with care work than sons, mothers’ in particular may not be as swayed by son preference in the allocation of time to care. Results from multivariate regression using information of married couples\u27 as well as of mothers’ without co-resident daughters-in-law from the Indian Time Use Survey 1998-99 confirms my hypotheses. My results indicates that research on women’s care work in South Asia as well as on parents\u27 differential treatment of boys and girls in terms of care-giving needs to consider the reliance of women on daughters-in-law and daughters respectively

The Interaction of Crystallized and Fluid Abilities in Aging and Speech Perception

In a series of studies, I examined the degree to which fluid and crystallized abilities contribute to and interact during speech perception. During the aging process, crystallized abilities (e.g., linguistic and word knowledge) are largely preserved, while fluid abilities involved in the online manipulation of information (e.g., working memory and inhibitory control) decline with age. Importantly, these two components are critical for successful speech perception and comprehension. While prior research has proposed that older adults rely on crystallized knowledge to compensate for cognitive deficits in difficult listening conditions, this hypothesis has not been directly tested. Younger and older adults completed a series of speech-in-noise identification tasks, in which they were presented with single-words and sentences in a noisy background and asked to identify key targets. Critically, I concurrently manipulated variables reflecting fluid demands (working memory and inhibitory demands) and crystallized support (linguistic knowledge in the form of semantic context and word frequency) across trials. The results showed that age differences in performance were greatly reduced for conditions in which linguistic support, i.e., predictable semantic context and highly frequent words, were present. That is, high linguistic support appeared to moderate increased cognitive task demands, showing a direct demonstration of linguistic compensation. In some cases, older adults\u27 performance even exceeded that of younger adults. These results are the first to directly demonstrate how older adults use linguistic knowledge to mitigate the effects of increased cognitive difficulty associated with challenging listening situations during speech perception. The results further shed light on the complex mechanisms underlying cognitive aging and the factors which contribute to speech processing across the lifespan

Penerapan Pendekatan Pakem Untuk Meningkatkan Keaktifan Mahasiswa Pgsd Pada Mata Kuliah Perkembangan Peserta Didik

Keaktifan mahasiswa selama proses pembelajaran merupakan salah satu indikator adanya keinginan atau motivasi mahasiswa untuk belajar. Oleh karena itu saat dosen melaksanakan pembelajaran dibutuhkan proses pembelajaran yang dapat meningkatkan keaktifan mahasiswa. Salah satu cara dengan menggunakan pendekatan PAKEM. Pembelajaran dengan menerapkan pendekatan PAKEM dapat membuat mahasiswa lebih berani dan mampu mengungkapkan ide dengan memberikan argumen yang rasional terhadap topik yang sedang dibahas. Selain itu, mahasiswa mampu mengajukan pertanyaan yang bersifat kritis, mulai mampu mengungkapkan pendapat dan pernyataan serta saling menanggapi dan memberi komentar terhadap pendapat dan pernyataan dari dosen atau teman-temannya sehingga mahasiswa tidak lagi hanya sebagai pendengar tetapi terlibat aktif dalam pembelajaran. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui penerapan pendekatan PAKEM dalam meningkatkan keaktifan mahasiswa di kelas. Subyek penelitian adalah 45 mahasiswa PGSD Unika Atma Jaya. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan pendekatan PAKEM dalam pembelajaran dapat meningkatkan keaktifan mahasiswa di kelas. Suasana yang tercipta lebih menarik sehingga mahasiswa tidak mudah cepat bosan, dapat membangkitkan minat dan penguasaan mahasiswa terhadap materi kuliah serta membangkitkan minat untuk berperan aktif dalam pembelajaran. Dengan terlibatnya mahasiswa dalam pembelajaran