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La fundación de un convento novohispano: el Real Convento de la Purísima Concepción en San Miguel el Grande
No full textContemporary educational issues in Kosovo: a : voices from the field
No full textReports on "poster conferences" held in Prishtina [Pristina] and Prizren, Kosovo, during November-December 2001. The poster presentations documented action research projects undertaken at schools throughout Kosovo, an initiative launched at a seminar series designed and delivered in the summer of 2001, "to help school directors, education officers, senior education officers, and municipal education directors ... initiate and implement education reform." -- p. 8-9
Recognition of stress levels in hospitalized equine patients during various veterinary procedures
No full textEquine patients admitted into hospital settings can experience varying levels of emotional stress due to changes in environment and handling. They undergo various routine treatment procedures that are not always recognized as stressful. The primary objectives of this study were to determine whether horses were stressed during procedures conducted when hospitalized, and to determine a method for recognizing and quantifying the severity of their stress. Stress severity of a cohort of equine in-patients was examined using observations of video footage to identify behavioural responses, heart rate variability and salivary cortisol measurements taken at baseline and following physical examination, venipuncture, and weighing. Physiological measurements indicated that horses experienced stress during hospitalization, but they did not indicate significant differences between clinical procedures. Comparing physiological measurements to various stress behaviours, indicated that ear flicking behaviour was correlated with heart rate and heart rate variability parameters. Using this data, a behaviour scale was created by first ranking physiological and behavioural measurements to categorize horses based on the severity of their stress responses and then counts of ear flicking were used to create ranges for quantifying stress severity. By utilizing this behaviour scale in clinical practice, it is proposed that handlers can determine whether horses are experiencing stress, and to what extent, and act to mitigate their stress. In doing so, they will improve the ease and efficacy of administering treatments, as well as improve the overall welfare of their equine patients
Remote symptom practice guides for adults on cancer treatments: Of the Pan-Canadian oncology symptom triage and remote support (COSTaRS) team January 2020
No full textHealth and growth of veal calves provided a fatty acid supplement and a dry teat
No full textVeal calves are at a high risk of disease early in life, which can lead to poor growth. Research is needed to determine interventions that can reduce disease and promote the growth of veal calves. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of fatty acid supplementation and the provision of a dry teat on the incidence of bovine respiratory disease (BRD), navel inflammation, and diarrhea, as well as calf growth. Upon arrival to a commercial veal facility (d 0), 240 Holstein bull calves from 2 cohorts were randomly assigned to 4 treatments using a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement (n = 60/treatment): (1) milk replacer (MR) without fatty acid supplementation and without access to a dry teat (control), (2) MR with fatty acid supplementation (NeoTec5g, Provimi, Brookville, OH) and without access to a dry teat (FAS), (3) MR without fatty acid supplementation and with access to a dry teat (TT), or (4) MR with fatty acid supplementation and with access to a dry teat (FAS+TT). Calves were housed in individual pens from 0 to 9 wk and then paired by treatment at wk 9. Milk replacer was fed twice daily using a step-up program. Fatty acid supplement was added to milk replacer at a feeding rate of 0.5 g/kg of body weight per head per day for the FAS and FAS+TT groups. Health exams were conducted twice weekly for 6 wk to diagnose BRD, navel inflammation, and diarrhea. Body weight, body condition score (BCS), and structural measurements were recorded at wk 0, 5, and 10. Average daily gain (ADG) was calculated for wk 1 to 5, wk 5 to 10, and wk 1 to 10. Health data were analyzed using logistic regression and are reported as relative risk. Body weight, BCS, and structural measurements were analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVA, and ADG was analyzed using a generalized linear model. There was no effect of FAS, TT, or their interaction on body weight or BCS. There was no effect of FAS on ADG wk 1 to 5, wk 5 to 10, or wk 1 to 10. There was a tendency for TT to decrease ADG from wk 1 to 5 but not from wk 5 to 10 or wk 1 to 10. There was a tendency for the interaction of FAS and TT to decrease ADG for wk 1 to 5 but not for wk 5 to 10 and wk 1 to 10. There was no effect of FAS, TT, or their interaction on the risk of BRD, diarrhea, or navel inflammation. We saw no effect of our interventions on calf health or growth. More research is needed to determine whether other factors, such as failure of passive transfer, poor ventilation, barren housing, and low milk allowance in the first few weeks after arrival, may have affected the efficacy of our interventions
Endothelin-1-induced ischemic damage and functional impairment is mediated primarily by NR2B-containing NMDA receptors
No full textIschemic stroke accounts for 70–80% of stroke cases worldwide and survivors are frequently left with compromising sensorimotor deficits localized to one or more body regions. Most animal models of stroke involve transient or permanent occlusion of one or more major vessels such as the middle cerebral artery and are characterized by widespread damage to cortical and subcortical structures that result in deficits that can confound studies of neuroprotection and neurorehabilitation. Localized microinjections of the vasoconstricting peptide endothelin-1 (ET-1) into specific brain regions are becoming increasingly popular for such studies, but the pharmacology of endothelin-induced ischemic damage is poorly understood. To test the hypothesis that NMDA receptors, and particularly those containing the NR2B subunit, are involved in ET-1-mediated excitotoxicity and functional impairment, male CD1 rats (N = 32) were pre-treated with either the non-competitive NMDA antagonist MK-801 or the NR2B-selective antagonist Ro25-6981 (or vehicle) prior to unilateral microinjections of endothelin-1 into the somatosensory cortex and striatum. Rats were then tested using 4 established tests of sensory and/or motor function over 14 days. Lesion volumes were quantified post-mortem using standard histology and image analysis. Results confirmed reproducible lesions and significant deficits in all tests in vehicle-treated rats that were significantly reduced in both drug groups but were not different between drugs, providing evidence that endothelin-induced ischemic damage is mediated almost exclusively by NR2B-containing NMDA receptors
Modeling pathogen dispersal in marine fish and shellfish
No full textIn marine ecosystems, oceanographic processes often govern host contacts with infectious agents. Consequently, many approaches developed to quantify pathogen dispersal in terrestrial ecosystems have limited use in the marine context. Recent applications in marine disease modeling demonstrate that physical oceanographic models coupled with biological models of infectious agents can characterize dispersal networks of pathogens in marine ecosystems. Biophysical modeling has been used over the past two decades to model larval dispersion but has only recently been utilized in marine epidemiology. In this review, we describe how biophysical models function and how they can be used to measure connectivity of infectious agents between sites, test hypotheses regarding pathogen dispersal, and quantify patterns of pathogen spread, focusing on fish and shellfish pathogens.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaDalhousie UniversityCooke Aquaculture (Canada
Development of a smart variable rate sprayer using deep convolutional neural networks for site-specific application of agrochemicals
No full textPotato production in Canada typically involves approximately 20 uniform applications (UA) of agrochemicals during a growing season, while usually ignoring spatial and temporal variations in the occurrence of weeds and diseased plants within potato fields. However, UA poses a serious threat to the environment and substantially increases the cost of crop production. Spatial distribution of weeds and diseased plant patches within potato fields emphasizes the need to develop a smart variable rate sprayer (SVRS). Innovations in development of precision agriculture technologies have enabled Engineers
to develop SVRS using machine vision (MV) and deep learning (DL) to accurately identify and encounter the targets (weeds and diseased plants) in real-time for within-fields variable rate application (VA) of herbicides and fungicides. Five potato fields were selected to collect images of spatially and temporally variable healthy potato plants, diseased potato plants, weeds and their combinations among them and with bare soil patches. The images were collected using a Canon PowerShot SX540 HS camera and Logitech C270 HD Webcam under varying natural light conditions and shadow effects. An image database was constructed by resizing, labeling, processing, and categorizing the above-mentioned images for real-time identification of weed, diseased and healthy plants using DL algorithms. Results of DL models showed > 80% accuracy in detecting targets. The tiny-YOLOv3 models were deployed and integrated into hardware to develop an innovative SVRS (cameras, nozzles, flowmeters, computer, valves and control system). Operational components of the sprayer were calibrated prior to testing in lab and potato fields. The results of lab and field testing revealed that the SVRS was accurate in detecting weeds and diseased plants in real-time and applied agrochemicals on an as-needed basis. Experiments were designed under two-factor factorial arrangements with two treatments (UA and VA) and three levels of weather conditions (cloudy, partly cloudy, and sunny) in a 2x3 factorial design. The spraying techniques and weather conditions were the two independent variables and/or factors of interest with the spray volume consumption as a response variable. A two-way ANOVA test indicated a non-significant effect of the levels of factors of interest on volume consumption of spraying liquid under different weather conditions (cloudy, partly cloudy and sunny); e.g., the spraying application techniques (VA and UA) for both lab and field evaluations had p-values respectively 0.329 and 0.156 for lab testing and 0.968 and 0.751 for field testing during weeds and diseased plant detection experiments. However, there was a significant effect of spraying application techniques on volume consumption (p-value < 0.01). The SVRS was able to save 47 and 51% of agrochemicals for weeds and diseased plant detection experiments, respectively, under all weather conditions. Results indicated that the SVRS was capable of significantly reducing the use of agrochemicals, when compared with UA, both in lab and field environments. The results of this study suggested that the developed SVRS has a great potential to reduce the use of agrichemicals, lower environmental risks, and ultimately improve farm profitability of potato producers
Marginals and the product strong lifting problem
No full textWe study the permanence of strong liftings for products of topological probability spaces. We get results to the positive for the 'usual product' or for the product σ-algebra obtained from it by adjoining the two-sided nil-null sets under assumptions implying that the product topology is contained in this product σ-algebras. For the construction of strong liftings in the product the application of marginals is basic as well as that of the fundamental properties of lifting topologies
Exergoeconomic and multi-objective optimization of a solar thermochemical hydrogen production plant with heat recovery
No full textA solar hydrogen production plant based on a four-step copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) thermochemical cycle is presented and analyzed in this paper. The integrated system includes a pressurized solar power tower, gas turbine unit, phase change material (PCM) for thermal energy storage (TES), Cu-Cl cycle, regenerative steam Rankine cycle (SRC), and a heat recovery unit. A predictive model is developed for energy, exergy, and exergo-economic analyses of the proposed system. A parametric study is also conducted to investigate the effect of major parameters on the system performance. The system is optimized with a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) considering exergy efficiency and product cost per unit exergy as the two objective functions. The results indicate that the energy and exergy efficiencies of the overall system are 48.2% and 45%, respectively, while the total product cost per unit of exergy is found to be 11.94/GJ, respectively