Abstract
The present study investigated the effects of adding wheat straw treated with exogenous fibrolytic enzymes (EFE) and a probiotic supplement to finely ground starters on growth performance, ...rumen fermentation, behavior, digestibility, and health of dairy calves. A total of 48 Holstein dairy calves (39.8 ± 1.67 kg body weight) were randomly assigned to one of 4 nutritional treatments (n = 12 calves per treatment). The experiment was conducted in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments consisting of two diets with or without EFE-treated wheat straw (2 g/day/calf) and diets with or without probiotics (2 g/day/calf). All calves were weaned on day 63 and remained in the study until day 84. The addition of EFE to wheat straw had no effect on starter feed intake, increased neutral detergent fiber (NDF) digestibility and recumbency, but decreased average daily gain (ADG) after weaning (240 g/d). The addition of probiotics to the diet had no effect on starter feed intake, improved feed efficiency, ADG (150 g/d), final weight (11.3 kg), and NDF digestibility, and decreased the ratio of acetate to propionate in the rumen. The addition of probiotics to starter feed for calves could improve their growth.
In Iraq, war contamination is the result of dispensed bombs, bullets, detonation of chemical and conventional weapons, and burn-pit emissions by US bases. Increases in congenital anomalies were ...reported from Iraqi cities post-2003. These cities were heavily bombed and encircled by US bases with burn-pits. Thorium is a radioactive compound and a direct depleted-uranium decay-product. Radioactive materials, including depleted uranium, are routinely stored in US bases and they have been shown to leak into the environment. We conducted a case-control study to investigate associations of residential proximity to Tallil Air Base, a US military base near Nasiriyah, as well as levels of uranium and thorium in hair and deciduous teeth with congenital anomalies. The study was based on a sample of 19 cases and 10 controls who were recruited during late Summer and early Fall of 2016. We developed mixed effects logistic regression models with village as the random effect, congenital anomaly as the outcome and distance to the US base and hair metal levels (one at a time) as the predictor variable, controlling for child's age, sex and paternal education. We also explored the mediation of the association between proximity to the base and congenital anomalies by hair metal levels. We found an inverse association between distance to Tallil Air Base and risk of congenital anomalies and hair levels of thorium and uranium. The results of our mediation analyses were less conclusive. Larger studies are necessary to understand the scope of war contamination and its impact on congenital anomalies in Iraq.
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•Our study has established the presence of uranium and of thorium, a direct depleted-uranium decay-product, in Nasiriyah children.•We also report on an association between residential proximity to a US army base,Tallil Air Base, and the risk of congenital anomaly.•We show that such proximity is associated with higher levels of uranium and thorium in the biological samples of the study participants.•At the same time, we found an increased risk of congenital anomalies associated with higher hair levels of these metals.
We present a weak-lensing study of the cluster A520 based on Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) data. The excellent data quality provides a mean source density of ~109 arcmin super(-2), which improves ...both resolution and significance of the mass reconstruction compared to a previous study based on Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) images. We take care in removing instrumental effects such as the charge trailing due to radiation damage of the detector and the position-dependent point-spread function. This new ACS analysis confirms the previous claims that a substantial amount of dark mass is present between two luminous subclusters where we observe very little light. The centroid of the dark peak in the current ACS analysis is offset to the southwest by ~1' with respect to the centroid from the WFPC2 analysis. Interestingly, this new centroid is in better agreement with the location where the X-ray emission is strongest, and the mass-to-light ratio estimated with this centroid is much higher (813 + or - 78 M sub(middot in circle)/L sub(R) sub(middot in circle)) than the previous value; the aperture mass with the WFPC2 centroid provides a consistent mass. Although we cannot provide a definite explanation for the dark peak, we discuss a revised scenario, wherein dark matter with a more conventional range (sigma sub(DM)/m sub(DM) < 1 cm super(2) g super(-1)) of self-interacting cross-section can lead to the detection of this dark substructure. If supported by detailed numerical simulations, this hypothesis opens up the possibility that the A520 system can be used to establish a lower limit of the self-interacting cross-section of dark matter.
Physical representations of data offer physical and spatial ways of looking at, navigating, and interacting with data. While digital fabrication has facilitated the creation of objects with ...data‐driven geometry, rendering data as a physically fabricated object is still a daunting leap for many physicalization designers. Rendering in the scope of this research refers to the back‐and‐forth process from digital design to digital fabrication and its specific challenges. We developed a corpus of example data physicalizations from research literature and physicalization practice. This survey then unpacks the “rendering” phase of the extended InfoVis pipeline in greater detail through these examples, with the aim of identifying ways that researchers, artists, and industry practitioners “render” physicalizations using digital design and fabrication tools.
Virtually all massive galaxies, including our own, host central black holes ranging in mass from millions to billions of solar masses. The growth of these black holes releases vast amounts of energy ...that powers quasars and other weaker active galactic nuclei. A tiny fraction of this energy, if absorbed by the host galaxy, could halt star formation by heating and ejecting ambient gas. A central question in galaxy evolution is the degree to which this process has caused the decline of star formation in large elliptical galaxies, which typically have little cold gas and few young stars, unlike spiral galaxies.
Background
Endothelial dysfunction plays an important role in pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Considering the importance of serum soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 as the ...most abundant of the circulating adhesion molecules increased as a result of endothelial dysfunction and the role of endothelin-1 in pathophysiology of SLE, this study aimed to evaluate serum soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 and endothelin-1 levels in SLE patients compared to healthy subjects.
Methods
In this cross-sectional study, 60 SLE patients according to the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics classification criteria for SLE and 40 age and sex-matched healthy controls were included. In patients, clinical examination was performed and SLE disease activity index was assessed. Serum endothelin-1 and soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 levels were measured using ELISA kits.
Results
The mean ± standard deviation age of patients and controls was 31.91 ± 7.66 and 33.20 ± 10.08 years, respectively. Compared to healthy controls, serum soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (1023.8 ± 352.96 vs. 866.06 ± 109.91) and endothelin-1 (77.83 ± 16.27 vs. 54.45 ± 12.01) was significantly higher in SLE patients (P = 0.003 and P < 0.001, respectively). The most common organs involved in patients were skin, joint and kidney. There were no significant differences in serum soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 and endothelin-1 levels according to organ involvement, activity of disease and the conventional serum markers of disease activity (P > 0.05). There was no significant correlation between disease activity, organ involvement and negative or positivity of autoantibodies as well as serum complement with endothelin-1 and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 levels (P > 0.05).
Conclusions
Although our study revealed higher serum soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 and endothelin-1 levels in SLE patients compared to healthy controls, there were no significant correlations between their serum levels with organ involvement and disease activity.
Clove bud (Syzygium aromaticum) extract was added at concentrations of 0, 35, 75, and 115μg/ml to ovine semen extenders in order to investigate the antioxidant activities of clove bud extract and its ...effects on semen quality parameters after cryopreservation of ram spermatozoa. The basic extender was composed of Tris, egg yolk, and glycerol. Two other extenders were prepared by substitution of egg yolk with either LDL or egg yolk+SDS. The DPPH inhibition test was employed to assess the antioxidant activity of clove bud extract. Results showed that, compared to vitamin E, clove bud extract had a higher antioxidant activity. Better sperm motility and movement characteristics (P<0.05) were observed in the semen diluted with medium containing egg yolk+SDS than in that containing egg yolk and LDL. Progressive motility and movement characteristics of the sperm were significantly improved (P<0.05) by adding 35 and/or 75μg/ml of clove bud extract to semen extenders. Sperm viability and plasma membrane integrity were also higher (P<0.05) in the semen exposed to medium containing egg yolk+SDS and 75μg of clove buds extract after cryopreservation processes. Higher levels of clove bud extract, however, had adverse effects on all the sperm quality parameters and significantly reduced (P<0.05) the motility, movement parameters, viability, and plasma membrane integrity of ovine sperm. It was concluded that the clove bud extract had an antioxidant potential that makes it useful for addition to semen extenders and that the best results are obtained with a maximum clove bud extract of 75μg/ml. Moreover, the combination of egg yolk and a detergent was found to improve sperm quality after the cooling and freeze–thawing processes.
Landscape models of geospatial regions provide an intuitive mechanism for exploring complex geospatial information. However, the methods currently used to create these scale models require a large ...amount of resources, which restricts the availability of these models to a limited number of popular public places, such as museums and airports. In this paper, we have proposed a system for creating these physical models using an affordable 3D printer in order to make the creation of these models more widely accessible. Our system retrieves GIS relevant to creating a physical model of a geospatial region and then addresses the two major limitations of affordable 3D printers, namely the limited number of materials and available printing volume. This is accomplished by separating features into distinct extruded layers and splitting large models into smaller pieces, allowing us to employ different methods for the visualization of different geospatial features, like vegetation and residential areas, in a 3D printing context. We confirm the functionality of our system by printing two large physical models of relatively complex landscape regions.
Using a uniform analysis procedure, we measure spatially resolved weak gravitational lensing and hydrostatic X-ray masses for a sample of 18 clusters of galaxies. We find a radial trend in the X-ray ...to lensing mass ratio: at r2500, we obtain a ratio MX/ML= 1.03 ± 0.07 which decreases to MX/ML= 0.78 ± 0.09 at r500. This difference is significant at 3σ once we account for correlations between the measurements. We show that correcting the lensing mass for excess correlated structure outside the virial radius slightly reduces, but does not eliminate this trend. An X-ray mass underestimate, perhaps due to non-thermal pressure support, can explain the residual trend. The trend is not correlated with the presence or absence of a cool core. We also examine the cluster gas fraction fgas and find no correlation with ML, an important result for techniques that aim to determine cosmological parameters using fgas.
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