Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A survey of ectoparasites on cattle in central alberta, november 1984-july 1985.

on the prevalence ofthe various species have been published (1, 2, 3) and most deal with cattle from eastern Canada. Some ectoparasites can cause a severe dermatitis, especially in animals confined in feedlots. The differences in pathogenicity make it essential to be able to identify the various species of bovine ectoparasites. The objective of this survey was to investigate the prevalence of ectoparasites on cattle in Alberta. From November 1984, to July 1985, 113 cattle (l00 beef,13 dairy) submitted to the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, Alberta Agriculture, Edmonton were examined for ectoparasites. The cattle
Electron scattering in HCl: An improved nonlocal resonance model

We present an improved nonlocal resonance model for electron-HCl collisions. The short-range part of the model is fitted to ab initio electron-scattering eigenphase sums calculated using the Schwinger multichannel method, while the long-range part is based on the ab initio potential-energy curve of the bound anion HCl-. This model significantly improves the agreement of nonlocal resonance calculations with recent absolute experimental data on dissociative electron attachment cross sections for HCl and DCl. It also partly resolves an inconsistency in the temperature effect in dissociative electron attachment to HCl present in the literature. Finally, the present model reproduces all qualitative structures observed previously in elastic scattering and vibrational-excitation cross sections.
A prospective study of job strain and risk of breast cancer.

BACKGROUND There is conflicting evidence on whether stress is a risk factor for breast cancer. The present study examined prospectively the relationship between stress at work and risk of breast cancer. METHODS Participants comprised 26 936 postmenopausal women in the Nurses' Health Study ages 46-72 who were in paid employment, and who had no previous history of cancer. Multivariate-adjusted regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between job strain (measured by the Karasek Job Content Questionnaire in 1992) and risk of incident invasive and in situ breast cancer. RESULTS From 1992 through 1994, 219 women were diagnosed with breast cancer. No evidence was found for a relationship between job stress and risk of breast cancer. Compared with women in low strain jobs, the multivariate-adjusted relative risks of breast cancer were RR = 0.78 (95% CI : 0.52-1.16) for high-strain jobs; RR = 0.76 (95% CI : 0.49-1.17) for active jobs; and RR = 0.94 (95% CI : 0.67-1.34) for passive jobs. Although job strain was related to less breast cancer screening among women in highly demanding jobs, it was not associated with tumour size. CONCLUSIONS Job stress was not related to an increase in the incidence of breast cancer in the present cohort of nurses.
Characterizing Evoked Hemodynamics with fMRI

We describe an implementation of the general linear model that facilitates the characterization of evoked hemodynamic responses to sensorimotor or cognitive processing, when the exact form of these responses is not known. The importance of this approach is that one can test for differential responses among tasks that may elude more conventional analyses. In particular, we suppose that an evoked response has early and late components and that a differential response may involve (i) both components to the same degree, as in a conventional "activation" or (ii) differential expression of the early and late components in two tasks, as might be seen in differential adaptation, or differences associated with the tasks (e.g., requiring and not requiring sustained attention). Using this approach we were able to demonstrate that the anterior cingulate differentiates, in terms of its response, between two motor tasks that did and did not require sustained attention. This differential response was observed even though there was no classical "activation" (i.e., there was no difference in the mean activity associated with the two conditions). It is suggested that these demonstration results point to the possibility of making greater use of the temporal resolution afforded by fast fMRI techniques.
Association of NCAM1 polymorphisms with autism and parental age at conception in a Chinese Han population.

AIMS The neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) has been reported to be involved in the development of the central nervous system and its mRNA level might decrease in the serum of autistic patients. However, there was no evidence of the association of the NCAM1 gene polymorphisms with autism. In the present study, we enrolled 237 children with autism and 451 healthy control subjects. Then, we used the direct DNA sequencing for genotyping five tag single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the NCAM1 gene. RESULTS By using case-control association analyses, we found that three SNPs at the NCAM1 gene were associated with autism (rs 4937786, p=0.015; rs 12418058, p=0.0076; rs 1436109, p=0.0023). Two of them remained significant after the Bonferroni multiple testing correction (rs 12418058, P(corrected) =0.038; rs 1436109, P(corrected) =0.012). Moreover, two of the SNPs were associated with the parental age at conception in autism (rs 12418058, p=0.037; rs 1436109, p=0.01). CONCLUSION These results showed that NCAM1 might play an important role in the pathogenesis of autism.
Realistic Animation of Fluid with Splash and Foam

In this paper we describe a method for modeling and rendering dynamic behavior of fluids withsplashes and foam. A particle system is built into a fluid simulation system to represent an ocean wavecresting and spraying over another object. We use the Cubic Interpolated Propagation (CIP) method asthe fluid solver. The CIP method can solve liquid and gas together in the framework of fluid dynamicsand has high accuracy in the case of relatively coarse grids. This enables us to simulate the fluids in ashort time and describe the motion of splashes in the air that is associated with the liquid motion well.The foam floating on the water also can be described using the particle system. We integrate the rigidbody simulation with the fluid and particle system to create sophisticated scenes including splashes andfoam. We construct state change rules that are used with the particle system. This controls the generation,vanishing and transition rule of splashes and foam. The transition rule makes the seamless connection betweena splash and foam. We employed a fast volume rendering method with scattering effect for particles.One of the important features of our method is the combination of fast simulation and rendering techniques,which provides dynamic and realistic scenes in a short time.
Growth, bone mineralization and mineral excretion in broiler starter chicks fed varied concentrations of cholecalciferol

An experiment was conducted to study the growth performance, bone mineralization and mineral excretion in broiler starter chicks fed high levels of cholecalciferol (CC) at sub-optimal levels of calcium (Ca) and non-phytate phosphorus (NPP). Five hundred and sixty day-old Vencobb female broiler chicks were housed in raised wire floor stainless steel battery brooder pens (24"x30"xl8") at the rate of five chicks per pen. A maize-soyabean meal basal diet was supplemented with dicalcium phosphate, oyster shell powder and synthetic CC to arrive at two levels each of Ca (0.50 and 0.60%), and NPP (0.25 and 0.30%) and four levels of CC (200, 1,200, 2,400 and 3,600 ICU/kg) in a 2x2x4 factorial design. Each diet was fed ad libitum to chicks in 7 pens from 2 to 21 days of age. Body weight gain, feed intake and bone weight increased (p<0.05) with increase in level of CC at both the Ca and NPP levels tested. The CC levels required to obtain significant improvement in body weight gain and feed intake reduced (2,400 ICU/kg vs. 1,200 ICU/kg) with increase in levels of P in diet (0.25% vs. 0.3%, respectively). The feed conversion ratio was significantly improved (p<0.05) with increase in level of CC from 200 to 1,200 ICU/kg diet at 0.5% Ca, while at 0.6% Ca, the level of CC in diet did not influence the feed efficiency. Tibia mineralization (density, breaking strength and ash content) and Ca and P contents in serum increased significantly (p<0.05) with increase in levels of CC in diet. The CC effect on these parameters was more pronounced at lower levels of Ca and NPP (0.5 and 0.25%, respectively). The data on body weight gain and feed intake indicated that NPP level in diet can be reduced from 0.30 to 0.25% by increasing CC from 200 to 2,400 ICU/kg. Similarly, the bone mineralization (tibia weight, density and ash content) increased non-linearly (p<0.01) with increase in CC levels in diet. Concentrations of P and Mn in excreta decreased (p<0.01), by increasing CC level from 200 to 2,400 ICU/kg diet. It can be concluded that dietary levels of Ca and NPP could be reduced to 0.50 and 0.25%, respectively by enhancing the levels of cholecalciferol from 200 to 2,400 ICU/kg with out affecting body weight gain, feed efficiency and bone mineralization. Additionally, phosphorus and manganese excretion decreased with increase in levels of CC in broiler diet.
Prognostics of Embedded Planar Capacitors Under Temperature and Voltage Aging

This paper presents the application of model-based and data-driven approaches for prognostics and health management (PHM) of embedded planar capacitors under elevated temperature and voltage conditions. An embedded planar capacitor is a thin laminate that serves both as a power/ground plane and as a parallel plate capacitor in a multilayered printed wiring board (PWB). These capacitors are typically used for decoupling applications and are found to reduce the required number of surface mount capacitors. The capacitor laminate used in this study consisted of an epoxy-barium titanate (BaTiO3 ) composite dielectric sandwiched between Cu layers. Three electrical parameters, capacitance, dissipation factor, and insulation resistance, were monitored in-situ once every hour during testing under elevated temperature and voltage aging conditions. The failure modes observed were a sharp drop in insulation resistance and a gradual decrease in capacitance. An approach to model the time-to-failure associated with these failure modes as a function of the stress level is presented in this paper. Model-based PHM can be used to predict the time-to-failure associated with a single failure mode, consisting of a drop in either insulation resistance or capacitance. However, failure of an embedded capacitor could occur due to either of these two failure modes and was not captured using a single model. A combined model for both these failure modes can be developed but there was a large variance in the time-to-failure data of failures as a result of a sharp drop in insulation resistance. Therefore a data-driven approach, which utilizes the trend and correlation between the parameters to predict remaining life, was investigated to perform PHM. The data-driven approach used in this paper is the Mahalanobis distance (MD) method that reduces a multivariate data set to a single parameter by considering correlations among the parameters. The Mahalanobis distance method was successful in predicting the failures as a result of a gradual decrease in capacitance. However, prediction of failures as a result of a drop in insulation resistance was generally challenging due to their sudden onset. An experimental approach to address such sudden failures is discussed to facilitate identifying any trends in the parameters prior to failure. © 2010 ASME
Uterine And Umbilical Blood Flow During Cesarean Section Under Epidural Anesthesia

Umbilical and uterine blood flow velocity waveforms were studied in 22 women undergoing elective cesarean section under epidural anesthesia. The measurements were taken prior to initiation of anesthesia (baseline levels), after the appropriate level of anesthesia had been achieved (prior to the onset of surgery), and intraoperatively immediately prior to the uterine incision and after the delivery (uterine blood flow). Achievement of the therapeutic level of epidural anesthesia was not associated with altered umbilical and uterine blood flow. Intraoperatively, however, 2/3 of the women manifested increased resistance in the utero‐fetal circuit, judging by the rise in S/D ratios. Under normal circumstances (absence of fetal distress and maternal complications prior to the cesarean section, adequate maternal hydration and oxygenation, etc.) these changes did not cause any neonatal compromise as evidenced by normal Apgar scores and freedom from complications during the neonatal period.
Parallel Multilevel series k-Way Partitioning Scheme for Irregular Graphs

In this paper we present a parallel formulation of a multilevel k-way graph partitioning algorithm. A key feature of this parallel formulation is that it is able to achieve a high degree of concurrency while maintaining the high quality of the partitions produced by the serial multilevel k-way partitioning algorithm. In particular, the time taken by our parallel graph partitioning algorithm is only slightly longer than the time taken for re-arrangement of the graph among processors according to the new partition. Experiments with a variety of finite element graphs show that our parallel formulation produces high-quality partitionings in a short amount of time. For example, a 128-way partitioning of graphs with one million vertices can be computed in a little over two seconds on a 128-processor Cray T3D. Furthermore, the quality of the partitions produced is comparable (edge-cuts within 5%) to those produced by the serial multilevel k-way algorithm. Thus our parallel algorithm makes it feasible to perform frequent repartitioning of graphs in dynamic computations without compromising the partitioning quality.
MPC based robust stabilization of uncertain plants

The paper is devoted to dynamic state feedback robust stabilization of uncertain polytopic systems. The dynamic state feedback is obtained using the MPC strategy, where input and state constraints are taken into account. The dynamic feedback controllers are designed as P or PI controllers. The possibility to stabilize uncertain polytopic systems using designed dynamic feedback controllers is verified by simulations.
Energy-efficient Task Scheduling in Data Centers

A data center is often also a Cloud center, which delivers its computational and storage capacity as services. To enable on-demand resource provision with elasticity and high reliability, the host machines in data centers are usually virtualized, which brings a challenging research topic, i.e., how to schedule the virtual machines (VM) on the hosts for energy efficiency. The goal of this Work is to ameliorate, through scheduling, the energy-efficiency of data center. To support this work a novel VM scheduling mechanism design and implementation will be proposed. This mechanism addresses on both load-balancing and temperature-awareness with a final goal of reducing the energy consumption of a data centre. Our scheduling scheme selects a physical machine to host a virtual machine based on the user requirements, the load on the hosts and the temperature of the hosts, while maintaining the quality of the service. The proposed scheduling mechanism on CloudSim will be finally validated, a well-known simulator that models data centers provisioning Infrastructure as a Service. For a comparative study, we also implemented other scheduling algorithms i.e., non power control, DVFS and power aware ThrMu. The experimental results show that the proposed scheduling scheme, combining the power-aware with the thermal-aware scheduling strategies, significantly reduces the energy consumption of a given Data Center because of its thermal-aware strategy and the support of VM migration mechanisms.
A 12 Bit Direct Level-Signal Transition Based Pipelined Analog-to-Digital Converter

This paper presents a 12-bit 100-MS/s pipelined analog-to-digital converter designed in a 0.18-mum CMOS process. Unlike conventional pipelined analog-to-digital converters, we use a direct level-signal transition technique to replace the traditional digital-to-analog converter. The designed ADC consumes 43 mW power from a 1.8 V power supply. Simulated static DNL and INL errors are 0.5 LSB and 0.73 LSB, respectively. Compared with the traditional ADCs, our method can reduce up to 80% of transistor numbers.
Industrial Contamination of Soil Related to Some Active and Closed Mine Facilities in the Republic of Macedonia

Several industrial pollution sources at the territory of the Republic of Macedonia, were studied, one Pb-Zn mine with mill, one copper mine with mill and copper leaching facility, as well as one former Pb-Zn smelting facility near the city of Veles and one Fe-Ni smelting facility near the city of Kavadarci. The concentrations of heavy metals at Veles hot-spot were in the range: 20÷1823 mg kg1Pb, 29÷2395 mg kg-1Zn, 28÷65 mgkg-1Cd, 27÷82 mg kg-1 Cu, 39÷164 mg kg-1Ni, 508÷938 mgkg-1Mn and 1.6÷3.8% Fe, all of them being above Dutch standard optimal values. The vicinity of the Feni plant displayed concentrations of heavy metals as follows: 16÷31 mg kg-1 Pb, 117÷286 mgkg-1 Zn, 13÷24 mg kg-1Co, 42÷119 mg kg-1 Cu, 158÷292 mg kg-1Ni, 119÷236 mg kg-1 Cr and 2.24÷3.79% Fe. Airborne dust measurements around the Zletovo mine displayed multiplexed above standard values, with an exception of nickel, there enrichment factors ranged from mediate ones such were those for copper of 20.8, cadmium of 28.7, arsenic of 32.5 up to high ones for zinc with 341.7 and lead 925. Soil samples around the Zletovo mine displayed: 19.3-76.9 g kg-1 Fe, 643-28000 mg kg-1 Mn, 42.3-529.66 mg kg-1 Pb and 138-3240 mg kg-1 Zn. Finally around the Bucim copper mine the results displayed the following findings: 13.1÷225 mg kg-1 As, 0.67÷17.9 mg kg-1 Cd, 30.1÷171 mg kg-1 Cr, 17.8÷1734 mg kg-1 Cu, 9.8÷69.4 mg kg-1 Ni, 46÷3456 mg kg-1 Pb, 88÷3438 mg kg-1 Zn, 169÷998 mg kg-1 Mn, 0.73÷5.02% Fe.
SELECTIVE PRIMING OF T CELLS BY CHEMICALLY ALTERED CELL ANTIGENS

At least three different types of cells are needed for a humoral response to most antigens. The bone marrow-derived lymphocyte (B cell) produces the humoral antibody (1, 2) and is triggered by a cooperating thymus-derived lymphocyte (T cell) to do so (3). A phagocytic cell, the macrophage (M4), is often needed to "process" or "handle" the antigen (4, 5) for this cooperation. The details of these cell interactions are not complete and several models have been proposed (6-9) for them. We have tried to interfere with some aspects of antigen processing by M~b to see whether such processed antigen is necessary for T cell priming, B cell priming, or for both and for the cooperating events between B and T cells. To do this, we treated erythrocytes with formaldehyde or glutaraldehyde and tested their immunogenicity in vivo and in vitro. Chicken erythrocytes (CRBC) so treated show no gross changes in antigenicity judged by their agglutination patterns with antibody prepared against native CRBC. Table I shows that CRBC fixed with formaldehyde (F-CRBC) have the same agglutinability with anti-CRBC antibody as untreated ceils, while somewhat higher titers were usually found with glutaraldehyde-fixed CRBC (G-CRBC), probably because they tend to clump spontaneously. But untreated and fixed red cells probably are processed or handled differently by M~b. I Recently it has been shown that M~b readily phagocytose formalinized sheep erythrocytes (SRBC) (10), although they do not phagocytose untreated SRBC or CRBC (11), unless anti-red cell antibody is present. When M4~ from animals immunized with red cells are incubated with the same red cells overnight, they release in a soluble form a material (4) which is immunogenic in Mishell-Dutton type cultures (12).
Flex Sensors: Possibility of Detecting Improper Posture of a Runner’s Arm

According to sports coaches, the upper body posture is an important factor in running. This paper shows it is possible to detect an improper posture of a runner’s arm using a flex sensor. It does this by showing how accurately a flex sensor can describe an angle. It also shows in which location on the arm the sensor should be placed. Lastly, it is shown how the sensor performed in actual running exercises, although the accuracy during these runs was not calculated due to limited resources and time.
Electronic Commerce, Spatial Arbitrage, and Market Efficiency

Electronic commerce can improve market efficiency by helping buyers and sellers find and transact with each other across geographic distance. We study the effect of two distinct forms of electronic commerce on market efficiency, which we measure via the existence and exploitation of spatial arbitrage opportunities. Spatial arbitrage represents a more precise measure of market efficiency than does price dispersion, which is typically used, because it accounts for the transaction costs of trading across distance and for unobserved product heterogeneity. One of the forms of electronic commerce that we study is a webcast channel that allows electronic access to the traditional physical market, while the other is a standalone electronic market. Both forms provide traders with expanded reach to find and transact with each other across geographic distance, but only one allows traders to conduct transactions immediately, at any time. This variance helps us isolate the effect of these mechanisms (reach and transac.
1-Gb/s/pin multi-gigabit DRAM design with low impedance hierarchical I/O architecture

A low impedance hierarchical I/O architecture designed to realize both high-speed and low-voltage DRAMs is presented. In this architecture, use of the divided I/O lines over the memory cells reduces the load of I/O lines by 50% and enables a 2.2 ns reduction of the read/write cycle time. By combining the distributed data transfer scheme, we achieved a 4 ns reduction of the access time to 8 ns and 1-Gb/s/pin operation with a 1.8-V power supply in a multi-Gb DRAM.
Towards Automatic Service Discovery and Monitoring in WS-Resource Framework

We present a general framework intended to support automatic service discovery and monitoring in the WS- resource framework (WSRF). The framework describes the metadata of WS-resources using ontology and provides an efficient mechanism to aggregate and maintain the ontology instances. The mechanism utilizes the constructs and message exchanges defined by the WSRF specifications so that it is applicable in any WSRF implementation.