scholarly journals Postembryonic developmental changes in ovarian histology and associated 17β-oestradiol and progesterone profiles in guinea hens (Numida meleagris)

Author(s):  
Ibn Iddriss Abdul-Rahman ◽  
Ian Jeffcoate

There is a paucity of information on the reproductive biology of guinea hens. A study was conducted to document postembryonic developmental changes in the ovarian histology and associated progesterone and 17β-oestradiol profiles until 32 weeks of age (WOA). Highly significant increases (p<0.001) were noticed in oocyte and follicular diameters beyond 16 WOA. Other ovarian follicular morphometric traits showed inconsistent increases until 16 WOA. The first phase of yolk deposition occurred between hatching and 20 WOA, the second phase between 20 and 26 WOA, and the third and final phase between 27 and 28 WOA. Peripheral 17β-oestradiol concentrations increased from 20 WOA until it peaked at 28 WOA, while peripheral progesterone concentrations fluctuated considerably during sexual development. Both oestradiol and progesterone concentrations were negatively and moderately correlated (p<0.01) with oocyte nuclei diameter, granulosa and theca layer heights. However, oestradiol concentrations were positively and strongly correlated (p<0.001) with oocyte and follicular diameters, and moderately with progesterone concentrations. Three phases of yolk depositions were found in the guinea hen, with the final phase terminating at 28 WOA, at a much smaller oocyte diameter than in the domestic chicken. Oestradiol might play a role in yolk deposition in this species.

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-77
Author(s):  
Peter Mercer-Taylor

The notion that there might be autobiographical, or personally confessional, registers at work in Mendelssohn’s 1846 Elijah has long been established, with three interpretive approaches prevailing: the first, famously advanced by Prince Albert, compares Mendelssohn’s own artistic achievements with Elijah’s prophetic ones; the second, in Eric Werner’s dramatic formulation, discerns in the aria “It is enough” a confession of Mendelssohn’s own “weakening will to live”; the third portrays Elijah as a testimonial on Mendelssohn’s relationship to the Judaism of his birth and/or to the Christianity of his youth and adulthood. This article explores a fourth, essentially untested, interpretive approach: the possibility that Mendelssohn crafts from Elijah’s story a heartfelt affirmation of domesticity, an expression of his growing fascination with retiring to a quiet existence in the bosom of his family. The argument unfolds in three phases. In the first, the focus is on that climactic passage in Elijah’s Second Part in which God is revealed to the prophet in the “still small voice.” The turn from divine absence to divine presence is articulated through two clear and powerful recollections of music that Elijah had sung in the oratorio’s First Part, a move that has the potential to reconfigure our evaluation of his role in the public and private spheres in those earlier passages. The second phase turns to Elijah’s own brief sojourn into the domestic realm, the widow’s scene, paying particular attention to the motivations that may have underlain the substantial revisions to the scene that took place between the Birmingham premiere and the London premiere the following year. The final phase explores the possibility that the widow and her son, the “surrogate family” in the oratorio, do not disappear after the widow’s scene, but linger on as “para-characters” with crucial roles in the unfolding drama.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sneha Shankar ◽  
Kelly Skinner ◽  
Melody E. Morton Ninomiya ◽  
Jasmin Bhawra

Abstract Background Measurement of what knowledge is taken-up and how that information is used to inform practice and policies can provide an understanding about the effectiveness of knowledge uptake and utilization processes. In 2007, the Knowledge Uptake and Utilization Tool (KUUT) was developed to evaluate the implementation of knowledge into practice. The KUUT has been used by numerous large health organizations despite limited validity evidence and a narrow understanding about how the tool is used in practice and interpreted by users. As such, the overall purpose of this protocol is to redevelop the KUUT and gather validity evidence to examine and support its use in various health-related organizations. This protocol paper outlines a validation and redevelopment procedure for the KUUT using the unitary view of validity. Methods The protocol outlined in this article proceeds through four phases, starting with redeveloping the tool, then evaluating validity evidence based on: test content, response processes and internal structure. The initial phase gathers information to redevelop the tool, and evaluates item content and response format. The second phase evaluates response process validity evidence by examining how a variety of users interact with the tool. In the third phase, the tool will be pilot tested with knowledge users and, in the final phase, psychometric properties of the tool will be examined and a final scoring structure will be determined. A knowledge translation plan described herein outlines where the final tool will be housed and how the information about the tool will be disseminated. Discussion This protocol outlines a procedure to gather different sources of validity evidence for the KUUT. By addressing limitations in the original KUUT, such as complexities with scoring, a redeveloped KUUT supporting validity evidence will enhance the ability of health-related organizations to effectively use this tool for its intended purpose.


Author(s):  
Sören Urbansky

This chapter reviews the affairs of frontier people from the first direct but sporadic encounters between Russians and Chinese. Relations between the Russian and Chinese empires on their shared steppe frontier can be divided into three phases. The first phase lasted through the late seventeenth century. During this time, Cossacks entered Transbaikalia and came in contact with Mongol nobles while the Qing established rule over Hulunbeir. The second phase, from roughly 1728 to 1851, was characterized by a balance of power between Beijing and Saint Petersburg, the establishment of permanent yet deficient border surveillance by both polities, and intensifying contacts on the border, in particular routed through Kiakhta, the year-round location for border trade. The third and final phase lasted from 1851 to the end of the nineteenth century. This period was marked by a shift of power in favor of Russia.


Author(s):  
Tim Jordan

Hacking is now a widely discussed and known phenomenon, but remains difficult to define and empirically identify because it has come to refer to many different, sometimes incompatible, material practices. This article proposes genealogy as a framework for understanding hacking by briefly revisiting Foucault’s concept of genealogy and interpreting its perspectival stance through the feminist materialist concept of the situated observer. Using genealogy as a theoretical frame, a history of hacking will be proposed in four phases. The first phase is the ‘prehistory’ of hacking in which four core practices were developed. The second phase is the ‘golden age of cracking’ in which hacking becomes a self-conscious identity and community and is for many identified with breaking into computers, even while non-cracking practices such as free software mature. The third phase sees hacking divide into a number of new practices even while old practices continue, including the rise of serious cybercrime, hacktivism, the division of Open Source and Free Software and hacking as an ethic of business and work. The final phase sees broad consciousness of state-sponsored hacking, the re-rise of hardware hacking in maker labs and hack spaces and the diffusion of hacking into a broad ‘clever’ practice. In conclusion, it will be argued that hacking consists across all the practices surveyed of an interrogation of the rationality of information technocultures enacted by each hacker practice situating itself within a particular technoculture and then using that technoculture to change itself, both in changing potential actions that can be taken and changing the nature of the technoculture itself.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 846-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
E Marian Scott ◽  
Gordon T Cook ◽  
Philip Naysmith

The Fifth International Radiocarbon Intercomparison (VIRI) continues the tradition of the TIRI (third) and FIRI (fourth) (Scott 2003) intercomparisons and operates in addition to any within-laboratory quality assurance measures as an independent check on laboratory procedures. VIRI is a phased intercomparison; results for the first phase, which employed grain samples, were reported in Scott et al. (2007). The second phase, involving bone samples, is reported here. The third and final phase, which includes samples of peat, wood, and shell, has also been completed and a companion paper appears in these proceedings.Five bone samples were made available and included Sample E: mammoth bone (>5 half-lives); Sample F: horse bone (from Siberia, excavated in 2001; and Samples H and I: whale bones (approximately 2 half-lives). Sample G (human bone) was accessible only to accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) laboratories because of the limited amount of sample available. More than 40 laboratories participated in Phase 2 and consensus values for the ages were as follows: Sample E = 39,305 14C yr BP (standard deviation [1 σ = 121 yr); Sample F = 2513 yr BP (1 σ = 5 yr); Sample G = 969 yr BP (1 σ = 5 yr); Sample H = 9528 yr BP (1 σ = 7 yr); and Sample I = 8331 yr BP (1 σ = 6 yr). Sample G had previously been dated by 4 laboratories and a weighted mean of 934 ± 12 yr BP had been quoted. Sample I had previously been dated at 8335 ± 25 yr BP and Sample H had been dated at 9565 ± 130 yr BP. Results for Sample H and Sample I are in good agreement with the previous results; Sample G results, however, give a value that is significantly older than the previously reported results.


In this modern era the clinical laboratory have greater attention to produce an accurate result for every test particularly in the area of leaf disease. The leaf disease is very essential to detect. For the identification of leaf disease three phases are used. First phase is the segmentation and the segmentation used here is the Otsu’s threshold based segmentation. While using the Otsu’s threshold based segmentation we get better result when compared to the previous method. Second phase is the feature extraction here the feature is extracted using the ABCD feature. And the third or final phase is the classification. SVM classifier which is used to categorize the leaf disease separately. The simulations are done on MATLAB application.


Author(s):  
Robert Horvath

The career of Aleksandr Sevast’ianov, a nationalist intellectual who became a leading apologist of far-right violence, is in focus here. In the first phase (1992–1997) of his revolutionary project, Sevast’ianov avoided overt statements on violence while he led the campaign against the repatriation of WWII ‘trophy art’. During the second phase (1998–2003), as leader of a radical nationalist party, he repeatedly affirmed his commitment to legality but hinted that violent militants also had a role to play. During the third phase (2004–2012), which coincided with a wave of racist killings committed by neo-Nazi gangs, he glorified this carnage as the beginning of a national revolution. During the final phase (2013–2016), Sevast’ianov shifted this framework to the Russian insurgents in the Donbas, whom he extolled as the vanguard of a revolution that would ultimately transform Russia itself.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Hasan Saragih

This classroom research was conducted on the autocad instructions to the first grade of mechinary class of SMK Negeri 1 Stabat aiming at : (1) improving the student’ archievementon autocad instructional to the student of mechinary architecture class of SMK Negeri 1 Stabat, (2) applying Quantum Learning Model to the students of mechinary class of SMK Negeri 1 Stabat, arising the positive response to autocad subject by applying Quantum Learning Model of the students of mechinary class of SMK Negeri 1 Stabat. The result shows that (1) by applying quantum learning model, the students’ achievement improves significantly. The improvement ofthe achievement of the 34 students is very satisfactory; on the first phase, 27 students passed (70.59%), 10 students failed (29.41%). On the second phase 27 students (79.41%) passed and 7 students (20.59%) failed. On the third phase 30 students (88.24%) passed and 4 students (11.76%) failed. The application of quantum learning model in SMK Negeri 1 Stabat proved satisfying. This was visible from the activeness of the students from phase 1 to 3. The activeness average of the students was 74.31% on phase 1,81.35% on phase 2, and 83.63% on phase 3. (3) The application of the quantum learning model on teaching autocad was very positively welcome by the students of mechinary class of SMK Negeri 1 Stabat. On phase 1 the improvement was 81.53% . It improved to 86.15% on phase 3. Therefore, The improvement ofstudent’ response can be categorized good.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Klein ◽  
Roseli de Deus Lopes ◽  
Rodrigo Suigh

BACKGROUND EasySeating is a mobile health (mHealth) app that supports the prescription of wheelchair and postural support devices (WPSD). It can be used by occupational therapists (OT) and physiotherapists (PT) who prescribe WPSD. The app offers a standardization of the prescription procedure, showing images, metrics and details that guide the prescriber to decide on the best equipment. It was developed with an iterative mixed-methods evaluation approach. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the processes involved in the prescription of WPSD and to propose, develop and evaluate a mHealth to support OT and PT prescribers. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the processes involved in the prescription of WPSD and to propose, develop and evaluate a mHealth to support OT and PT prescribers. METHODS This study was divided into three phases and was carried out as an iterative process composed of user consulting/testing (using a mixed-methods evaluation approach), system (re)design and software development. The first phase consisted of the collection of qualitative and quantitative data to map and understand the users requirements and of the development of the first prototype (v1) of the app. This data collection was performed through semi-structured interviews with 14 OT and PT prescribers, 5 specialized technicians and 5 WPSD users. The second phase aimed at improving the overall functionality of the app and consisted in the development, test and evaluation of the prototypes v1, v2, v3 and v4. A total of 59 prescribers tested and evaluated these prototypes by means of open interviews, semi-structured questionnaires and focus groups. The third phase focused in the usability aspects of the app. It consisted in the development and test of the prototype v5. Eight technology specialists assessed its usability through heuristics evaluation. RESULTS Data collected in phase one indicated there is a lack of standardization on the prescription of postural support devices (PSD). A divergent nomenclature for the PSDs was also found and classified in eight categories. These information guided the development of the first prototype of the EasySeating app. Phase two results pointed that the prescribers value the insertion of the app into their clinical practice, as it accelerates and increases the quality of the evaluation process and improves the organization of the prescription information. Significant suggestions for the improvement of the app were given during the users tests, including the use of images to represent the PSDs. The usability tests from the third phase revealed two strong issues that must be solved: the need of greater feedback and failures in the persistence of the input data. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrated that there is a lack of systematization of the WPSD prescription process. The evaluation of the developed EasySeating app demonstrated that there is a potential to standardize, integrate and organize the WPSD prescription information, supporting and facilitating the decision making process of the prescribers. CLINICALTRIAL This study was approved by the Research Ethics Board of the Universidade de São Paulo (registered protocol n°53929516.6.0000.0065) URL - http://plataformabrasil.saude.gov.br/login.jsf


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-125

Three phases in Foucault’s examination of authorship and free speech were essential to him throughout his life. They can be linked to such texts as the three lectures “What is an Author?” (first phase), “What is Critique?,” and “What is Revolution?” (second phase), and the two lecture courses, “Fearless Speech,” and “The Courage of Truth” (third phase). Initially, Foucault merely describes the founders of discursivity (hence, “superauthors”), among whom he reckoned only Marx and Freud, as the sole alternative to his own conceptualization of the author function, which is exhibited en masse in contemporary society. He then modifies his views on superauthorship by making Kant the paradigm and by linking his own concept of free speech to a Kan-tian critical attitude. However, Foucault claims only the half of Kant’s philosophical legacy that is related to the study of the ontology of the self.The article advances the hypothesis that the sovereign power of speech, which can be found in Marx and Heidegger and in generally in the concept of “superauthorship,” becomes unacceptable for Foucault. During the third phase, the danger of a tyrannical use of free speech compels Foucault to make a number of fruitful but questionable choices in his work. He focuses on a single aspect of free speech in which a speaker is in a weaker position and therefore has to overcome his fear in order to tell the truth. Foucault associates this kind of free speech with the ancient Greek notion of parrhesia, which according to his interpretation means “fearless speech”; however, this reading is not always supported by the ancient Greek sources. Foucault’s deliberations bring him to the radical conclusion that free speech transforms into performative “aesthetics of existence.” Foucault’s main motivation for pursuing this line of thought all through his life was to investigate his own abilities and powers as an author


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document