Far-off and close-up dry matter intake modulate indicators of immunometabolic adaptations to lactation in subcutaneous adipose tissue of pasture-based transition dairy cows

The common practice of increasing dietary energy density during the close-up dry period (last ～3 wk prepartum) has been recently associated with a higher incidence of metabolic disorders after calving. Despite these reports, over-feeding of metabolizable energy (ME) during the far-off, nonlactating period is a common management policy aimed at achieving optimum calving body condition score (BCS) in pasture-based systems, as cows are generally thinner than total mixed ration cows at the end of lactation. Our hypothesis was that both far-off and close-up overfeeding influence the peripartum adipose tissue changes associated with energy balance and inflammatory state. Sixty mid-lactation, grazing dairy cows of mixed age and breed were randomly allocated to 1 of 2 groups that were managed through late lactation to achieve a low and high BCS (approximately 4.25 and 5.0 on a 10-point scale) at dry-off. The low BCS cows were then overfed ME to ensure that they achieved the same BCS as the higher BCS group by calving. Within each rate of BCS gain treatment, cows were offered 65, 90, or 120% of their pre-calving ME requirements for 3 wk pre-calving in a 2 × 3 factorial arrangement of treatments (i.e., 10 cows/treatment). Subcutaneous adipose tissue was collected via biopsy at ?1, 1, and 4 wk relative to parturition. Quantitative PCR was used to measure mRNA and microRNA expression of targets related to adipogenesis and inflammation. Cows overfed in the far-off period had increased expression of miR-143 and miR-378 prepartum (?1 wk) indicating greater adipogenesis, consistent with their rapid gain in BCS following dry-off. Furthermore, the lower postpartum expression of IL6, TNF, TLR4, TLR9, and miR-145, and a higher abundance of miR-99a indicated lower body fat mobilization in early lactation in the same group. In the close-up period, feeding either 65 or 120% of ME requirements caused changes in FASN, IL1B, IL6R, TLR9, and the microRNA miR-143, miR-155, and miR-378. Their respective expression patterns indicate a tentative negative-feedback mechanism in metabolically compromised, feed-restricted cows, and a possible immune-related stimulation of lipolysis in apparently static adipocytes in overfed cows. Data from cows fed 90% of ME requirements indicate the existence of a balance between lipolytic (inflammatory-related) and anti-lipolytic signals, to prime the mobilization machinery in light of imminent lactation. Overall, results indicate that far-off dry cow nutrition influences peripartum adipose tissue metabolism, with neither strategy negatively affecting the physiological adaptation to lactation. Furthermore, to ensure a favorable transition, cows should be subjected to a small feed restriction in the close-up period, irrespective of far-off nutritional management.     

Water governance and scalar politics across multiple-boundary river basins: states,catchments and regional powers in the Iberian Peninsula

Karezes (qanats), historically vital sources of water for multiple uses in the driest parts of the world, have been deteriorating over the past five decades. This paper provides a review of the global literature on the status and potential of karezes, and offers country case studies for Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It offers syntheses of key issues, lessons, options and proposed interventions for re-vitalizing the karez systems. The paper identifies criteria for prioritizing karez systems for rehabilitation and outlines key conditions for their effective functioning and sustainability. The paper suggests that the benefits of restoring karez systems to local communities are large and some systems, such as the Ain Zubaida in the Makkah Al-Mukaramah Region, are of global importance.     

W-CDMA Uplink Capacity and Interference Statistics of a Long Tunnel Cigar-shaped Microcells Using the Hybrid Model of Propagation with Imperfect Power Control

The uplink capacity and the interference statistics (mean and variance) of the sectors of the cigar-shaped W-CDMA microcell are studied. A model with eighteen sectors is used to analyze the uplink. The microcells are assumed to exist in a long tunnel with at least nine base stations. The hybrid model of propagation is used in the calculations. The capacity and the interference statistics of the sectors are studied in terms of the most important parameters: sector radius, specific attenuation factor, antenna sidelobe levels, bend losses and the power control standard deviation error.     

Proposal of visual strength grading rules for Uruguayan pine timber

A previous database with bending and density data of 261 structural size specimens of currently produced Uruguayan slash pine and loblolly pine timber was adjusted to meet testing and characterization requirements of European standards. Visual parameters and mechanical properties for each specimen were evaluated and their relationship was statistically analyzed. Results suggested that all specimens can be grouped in one visual grade with engineered properties similar to those of European C14 strength class. Modulus of elasticity and characteristic bending strength were the defining properties for class assignation.     

A framework for network quality monitoring in the VoIP environment

Monitoring speech quality in Voice over IP (VoIP) networks is important to ensure a minimal acceptable level of speech quality for IP calls running through a managed network. Information such as packet loss, codec type, jitter, end‐to‐end delay and overall speech quality enables the network manager to verify and accurately tune parameters in order to adjust network problems. The present article proposes the deployment of a monitoring architecture that collects, stores and displays speech quality information about concluded voice calls. This architecture is based on our proposed MIB (Management Information Base) VOIPQOS, deployed for speech quality monitoring purposes. Currently, the architecture is totally implemented, but under adjustment and validation tests. In the future, the VOIPQOS MIB can be expanded to automatically analyze collected data and control VoIP clients and network parameters for tuning the overall speech quality of ongoing calls. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhancing virtual environments with QoS aware resource management

Nowadays, the consolidation of application servers is the most common use for current virtualization solutions. Each application server takes the form of a virtual machine (VM) that can be hosted into one physical machine. In a default Xen implementation, the scheduler is configured to handle equally all of the VMs that run on a single machine. As a consequence, the scheduler shares equally all of the available physical CPU resources among the running VMs. However, when the applications that run in the VM dynamically change their resource requirements, a different solution is needed. Furthermore, if the resource usage is associated with service-level agreements, a predefined equal share of the processor power is insufficient for the VMs. Within the Xen’s primitives, even though it is possible to tune the scheduler parameters, there is no tool to achieve the dynamic change of the share of the processor power assigned to each VM. A combination of a number of primitives, however, appears to be suited as a base for achieving this. In this paper, we present an approach to efficiently manage the quality of service (QoS) of virtualized resources in multicore machines. We evaluate different alternatives within Xen for building an enhanced management of virtual CPU resources. We compare these alternatives in terms of performance, flexibility, and ease of use. We devise an architecture to build a high-level service that combines interdomain communication mechanisms with monitoring and control primitives for local resource management. We achieve this by our solution, a local resource manager (LRM), which adjusts the resources needed by each VM according to an agreed QoS. The LRM has been implemented as a prototype and deployed on Xen-virtualized machines. By means of experiments, we show that the implemented management component can meet the service-level objectives even under dynamic conditions by adapting the resources assigned to the virtualized machines according to demand. With the LRM, we therefore achieve both fine-grain resource allocation and efficient assignment.     

Every team deserves a second chance: an extended study on predicting team performance

Voting among different agents is a powerful tool in problem solving, and it has been widely applied to improve the performance in finding the correct answer to complex problems. We present a novel benefit of voting, that has not been observed before: we can use the voting patterns to assess the performance of a team and predict their final outcome. This prediction can be executed at any moment during problem-solving and it is completely domain independent. Hence, it can be used to identify when a team is failing, allowing an operator to take remedial procedures (such as changing team members, the voting rule, or increasing the allocation of resources). We present three main theoretical results: (1) we show a theoretical explanation of why our prediction method works; (2) contrary to what would be expected based on a simpler explanation using classical voting models, we show that we can make accurate predictions irrespective of the strength (i.e., performance) of the teams, and that in fact, the prediction can work better for diverse teams composed of different agents than uniform teams made of copies of the best agent; (3) we show that the quality of our prediction increases with the size of the action space. We perform extensive experimentation in two different domains: Computer Go and Ensemble Learning. In Computer Go, we obtain high quality predictions about the final outcome of games. We analyze the prediction accuracy for three different teams with different levels of diversity and strength, and show that the prediction works significantly better for a diverse team. Additionally, we show that our method still works well when trained with games against one adversary, but tested with games against another, showing the generality of the learned functions. Moreover, we evaluate four different board sizes, and experimentally confirm better predictions in larger board sizes. We analyze in detail the learned prediction functions, and how they change according to each team and action space size. In order to show that our method is domain independent, we also present results in Ensemble Learning, where we make online predictions about the performance of a team of classifiers, while they are voting to classify sets of items. We study a set of classical classification algorithms from machine learning, in a data-set of hand-written digits, and we are able to make high-quality predictions about the final performance of two different teams. Since our approach is domain independent, it can be easily applied to a variety of other domains.     

Protection by Thermal and Chemical Activation with Cerium Salts of the Alloy AA2017 in Aqueous Solutions of NaCl

A wide variety of anticorrosive treatments for aluminum alloys that can be employed as “green” alternatives to those based on Cr(VI) are currently under development. This article reports a study of the morphological and anticorrosive characteristics of surface layers formed on the Al–Cu alloy AA2017 by immersion treatment in baths of cerium salt, accelerated by increased temperature and the employment of hydrogen peroxide. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)/X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS) studies of the samples treated have demonstrated the existence of a heterogeneous layer formed by a film of aluminum oxide/hydroxide on the matrix, and a series of dispersed islands of cerium over the cathodic intermetallics. The protective efficacy has been evaluated using electrochemical techniques, linear polarizations (LP) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and salt spray tests. The results obtained indicate that the layer provided good resistance to corrosion in media with chlorides, and the method gives a considerable reduction of the time required for the immersion treatments.