AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF PASTURE-RAISED BEEF SYSTEMS IN APPALACHIA

Cow-calf operations are important enterprises for family farmers in Appalachia and provide significant opportunity for supplemental income. This analysis constitutes a thorough economic assessment of pasture-raised beef production, an alternative to traditional production that could benefit the region's producers in terms of profitability and mitigated risk. Stochastic budgeting was utilized for profitability and risk comparison between traditional and pasture-raised operations and accounted for seasonal variability in prices, pasture availability and animal performance. Pasture-raised systems, in relation to traditional ones, were shown to consistently yield higher returns over variable costs and were shown less likely to yield losses over total costs in typical production seasons. Economic risk for pasture-raised producers stems largely from production factors but, overall, is seemingly less pronounced than the market risk faced by traditional producers selling live cattle.Farm Management,

Orion Rendezvous, Proximity Operations, and Docking Design and Analysis

The Orion vehicle will be required to perform rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking with the International Space Station (ISS) and the Earth Departure Stage (EDS)/Lunar Landing Vehicle (LLV) stack in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) as well as with the Lunar Landing Vehicle in Low Lunar Orbit (LLO). The RPOD system, which consists of sensors, actuators, and software is being designed to be flexible and robust enough to perform RPOD with different vehicles in different environments. This paper will describe the design and the analysis which has been performed to date to allow the vehicle to perform its mission. Since the RPOD design touches on many areas such as sensors selection and placement, trajectory design, navigation performance, and effector performance, it is inherently a systems design problem. This paper will address each of these issues in order to demonstrate how the Orion RPOD has been designed to accommodate and meet all the requirements levied on the system

Concurrent Relations between Face Scanning and Language: A Cross-Syndrome Infant Study.

Typically developing (TD) infants enhance their learning of spoken language by observing speakers' mouth movements. Given the fact that word learning is seriously delayed in most children with neurodevelopmental disorders, we hypothesized that this delay partly results from differences in visual face scanning, e.g., focusing attention away from the mouth. To test this hypothesis, we used an eye tracker to measure visual attention in 95 infants and toddlers with Down syndrome (DS), fragile X syndrome (FXS), and Williams syndrome (WS), and compared their data to 25 chronological- and mental-age matched 16-month-old TD controls. We presented participants with two talking faces (one on each side of the screen) and a sound (/ga/). One face (the congruent face) mouthed the syllable that the participants could hear (i.e., /ga/), while the other face (the incongruent face) mouthed a different syllable (/ba/) from the one they could hear. As expected, we found that TD children with a relatively large vocabulary made more fixations to the mouth region of the incongruent face than elsewhere. However, toddlers with FXS or WS who had a relatively large receptive vocabulary made more fixations to the eyes (rather than the mouth) of the incongruent face. In DS, by contrast, fixations to the speaker's overall face (rather than to her eyes or mouth) predicted vocabulary size. These findings suggest that, at some point in development, different processes or strategies relating to visual attention are involved in language acquisition in DS, FXS, and WS. This knowledge may help further explain why language is delayed in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. It also raises the possibility that syndrome-specific interventions should include an early focus on efficient face-scanning behaviour

Post-Transplant Outcomes in High-Risk Compared with Non-High-Risk Multiple Myeloma: A CIBMTR Analysis.

Conventional cytogenetics and interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) identify high-risk multiple myeloma (HRM) populations characterized by poor outcomes. We analyzed these differences among HRM versus non-HRM populations after upfront autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation (autoHCT). Between 2008 and 2012, 715 patients with multiple myeloma identified by FISH and/or cytogenetic data with upfront autoHCT were identified in the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research database. HRM was defined as del17p, t(4;14), t(14;16), hypodiploidy (-Y) or chromosome 1 p and 1q abnormalities; all others were non-HRM. Among 125 HRM patients (17.5%), induction with bortezomib and immunomodulatory agents (imids) was higher compared with non-HRM (56% versus 43%, P \u3c .001) with similar pretransplant complete response (CR) rates (14% versus 16%, P .1). At day 100 post-transplant, at least a very good partial response was 59% in HRM and 61% in non-HRM (P = .6). More HRM patients received post-transplant therapy with bortezomib and imids (26% versus 12%, P = .004). Three-year post-transplant progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) rates in HRM versus non-HRM were 37% versus 49% (P \u3c .001) and 72% versus 85% (P \u3c .001), respectively. At 3 years, PFS for HRM patients with and without post-transplant therapy was 46% (95% confidence interval [CI], 33 to 59) versus 14% (95% CI, 4 to 29) and in non-HRM patients with and without post-transplant therapy 55% (95% CI, 49 to 62) versus 39% (95% CI, 32 to 47); rates of OS for HRM patients with and without post-transplant therapy were 81% (95% CI, 70 to 90) versus 48% (95% CI, 30 to 65) compared with 88% (95% CI, 84 to 92) and 79% (95% CI, 73 to 85) in non-HRM patients with and without post-transplant therapy, respectively. Among patients receiving post-transplant therapy, there was no difference in OS between HRM and non-HRM (P = .08). In addition to HRM, higher stage, less than a CR pretransplant, lack of post-transplant therapy, and African American race were associated with worse OS. In conclusion, we show HRM patients achieve similar day 100 post-transplant responses compared with non-HRM patients, but these responses are not sustained. Post-transplant therapy appeared to improve the poor outcomes of HRM

The Unique Effects of Hope, Optimism, and Self-efficacy on Subjective Well-being and Depression in German Adults

Positive thinking is a source of mental health. Hope, optimism, and self-efficacy are three factors of positive thinking that are strongly correlated but distinct. Each construct independently relates to measures of mental health such as subjective well-being (SWB) and depression. However, research on the unique impact of hope, optimism, and self-efficacy on both SWB and depression is limited, and robust research on the distinctiveness of these factors and their independent contributions to predicting SWB and depression is needed. The present study used confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling in a large (n = 6,077), older (above 40), German sample and found the following. First, the three factors of hope, optimism, and general self-efficacy better accounted for their individual items than a single overarching factor of positive thinking. However, because hope and self-efficacy were not identifiable as distinct latent constructs in this sample, they were modeled as one construct in subsequent analyses. Second, combined hope/self-efficacy and optimism had a strong positive relationship among themselves and a weak to moderate positive relationship with higher SWB and lower self-rated depression symptoms. Third, hope/self-efficacy and optimism in separate models had significant moderate to strong latent effects on SWB and depression. Fourth, and finally, hope/self-efficacy and optimism in the same model had unique weak to moderate latent effects on SWB and depression. The fact that hope and self-efficacy were not distinguishable in this sample ran contrary to the existing literature and greatly restricted the conclusions from this study. This limitation may be due to the measures being administered inappropriately. However, in general, the positive thinking factors were highly correlated with each other and were found to be significant predictors of higher well-being and lower depression.  Psychology, Department o

Vitamin D to prevent lung injury following esophagectomy: A randomized, placebo-controlled trial

Objectives: Observational studies suggest an association between vitamin D deficiency and adverse outcomes of critical illness and identify it as a potential risk factor for the development of lung injury. To determine whether pre-operative administration of oral high-dose cholecalciferol ameliorates early acute lung injury post-operatively in adults undergoing elective esophagectomy. Design: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Setting: Three large UK university hospitals. Patients: Seventy-nine adult patients undergoing elective esophagectomy were randomized. Intervention: A single oral preoperative (3-14 days) dose of 7.5mg (300,000IU; 15mls) cholecalciferol or matched placebo. Measurements and Main Results: Primary outcome was change in extravascular lung water index (EVLWI) at the end of esophagectomy. Secondary outcomes included PaO2:FiO2 ratio, development of lung injury, ventilator and organ-failure free days, 28 and 90 day survival, safety of cholecalciferol supplementation, plasma vitamin D status (25(OH)D, 1,25(OH)2D and vitamin D binding protein), pulmonary vascular permeability index (PVPI) and EVLWI day 1 postoperatively. An exploratory study measured biomarkers of alveolar-capillary inflammation and injury. Forty patients were randomized to cholecalciferol and 39 to placebo. There was no significant change in EVLWI at the end of the operation between treatment groups (placebo median 1.0[IQR 0.4 – 1.8] vs cholecalciferol median 0.4[IQR 0.4 – 1.2] ml/kg, p=0.059). Median PVPI values were significantly lower in the cholecalciferol treatment group (placebo 0.4[IQR 0 – 0.7] vs cholecalciferol 0.1[IQR -0.15 -0.35], p=0.027). Cholecalciferol treatment effectively increased 25(OH)D concentrations but surgery resulted in a decrease in 25(OH)D concentrations at day 3 in both arms. There was no difference in clinical outcomes. Conclusions: High-dose preoperative treatment with oral cholecalciferol was effective at increasing 25(OH)D concentrations, and reduced changes in postoperative PVPI but not EVLWI

Early Influences and Entrepreneurial Intent: Examining the Roles of Education, Experience, and Advice Networks

The independent effects of education, personal experience, and advice networks in the development of new venture creation intent is of considerable interest to educators, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Little research, however, has systematically considered the possibility that the relative importance of these factors varies in the early stages of entrepreneurial intent formation. Using a unique dataset (n=963), this study investigates these key relationships at two different points in time. Our results suggest that personal start-up experience and advice networks are particularly influential on the formation of intent to start a new venture, and that a marked shift in significance occurs from the former to the latter

Re-operation of idiopathic full-thickness macular holes after initial surgery with internal limiting membrane peel

Background/aims: A retrospective consecutive case series to evaluate the efficacy of re-operation in patients with persistent or recurrent idiopathic full-thickness macular hole after initial surgery with internal limiting membrane peel (ILM). Methods: 491 patients underwent surgery for fullthickness macular hole from January 2004 to November 2007. Fifty-five patients either did not close or reopened during the follow-up period. Thirty patients with initial ILM peel underwent repeat surgery involving vitrectomy, enlargement of ILM rhexis and gas tamponade. Results: Anatomical closure rate was 88.8% for primary surgery and 46.7% (14/30) for re-operation. There was a statistically significant improvement in overall best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) from re-operation baseline BCVA (p=0.02) within 1 year. For holes that did not close after the second surgery, visual acuity did not worsen. Conclusion: Re-operation has a reduced success rate of anatomical closure. However, BCVA is statistically significantly improved from re-operation baseline, so even though we cannot return vision to pre-pathological baseline, re-operation can improve on this new baseline.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex