Consumption Risk and the Cross-Section of Government Bond Returns

Peer reviewed

Consumption Risk and the Cross-Section of Government Bond Returns

Peer reviewed

Trends in Water Quality within the Broward County Portion of the Biscayne Aquifer

Continuous and reliable monitoring of contaminants in drinking water, which adversely affect human health, is the main goal of the Broward County Well Field Protection Program. In this study the individual monitoring station locations were used in a yearly and quarterly spatiotemporal Ordinary Kriging interpolation to create a raster network of contaminant detections. In the final analysis, the raster spatiotemporal nitrate concentration trends were overlaid with a pollution vulnerability index to determine if the concentrations are influenced by a set of independent variables. The pollution vulnerability factors are depth to water, recharge, aquifer media, soil, impact to vadose zone, and conductivity. The creation of the nitrate raster dataset had an average RMS Standardized error close to 1 at 0.98. The greatest frequency of detections and the highest concentrations are found in the months of April, May, June, July, August, and September. An average of 76.4% of the nitrate intersected with cells of the pollution vulnerability index over 100.

Stream water‐quality monitoring conducted in support of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (2016)

Monitoring of nitrogen and phosphorus in streams and rivers throughout Iowa is an essential element of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS). Sampling and analysis of surface water is necessary to develop periodic estimates of the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus transported from Iowa. Surface and groundwater monitoring provides the scientific evidence needed to document the effectiveness of nutrient reduction practices and the impact they have on water quality. Lastly, monitoring data informs decisions about where and how best to implement nutrient reduction practices, by both point sources and nonpoint sources, to provide the greatest benefit at the least cost. The impetus for this report comes from the Water Resources Coordination Council (WRCC) which states in its 2014‐15 Annual Report “Efforts are underway to improve understanding of the multiple nutrient monitoring efforts that may be available and can be compared to the nutrient WQ monitoring framework to identify opportunities and potential data gaps to better coordinate and prioritize future nutrient monitoring efforts.” This report is the culmination of those efforts.

Anxiety-like Effects Of Meta-chlorophenylpiperazine In Paradoxically Sleep-deprived Mice.

Chlorophenylpiperazines (CPP) are psychotropic drugs used in nightclub parties and are frequently used in a state of sleep deprivation, a condition which can potentiate the effects of psychoactive drugs. This study aimed to investigate the effects of sleep deprivation and sleep rebound (RB) on anxiety-like measures in mCPP-treated mice using the open field test. We first optimized our procedure by performing dose-effect curves and examining different pretreatment times in naïve male Swiss mice. Subsequently, a separate cohort of mice underwent paradoxical sleep deprivation (PSD) for 24 or 48h. In the last experiment, immediately after the 24h-PSD period, mice received an injection of saline or mCPP, but their general activity was quantified in the open field only after the RB period (24 or 48h). The dose of 5mgmL(-1) of mCPP was the most effective at decreasing rearing behavior, with peak effects 15min after injection. PSD decreased locomotion and rearing behaviors, thereby inhibiting a further impairment induced by mCPP. Plasma concentrations of mCPP were significantly higher in PSD 48h animals compared to the non-PSD control group. Twenty-four hours of RB combined with mCPP administration produced a slight reduction in locomotion. Our results show that mCPP was able to significantly change the behavior of naïve, PSD, and RB mice. When combined with sleep deprivation, there was a higher availability of drug in plasma levels. Taken together, our results suggest that sleep loss can enhance the behavioral effects of the potent psychoactive drug, mCPP, even after a period of rebound sleep.

Quality of sugarcane in productive process of ethanol evaluated by INAA

Soil as an impurity in sugarcane is a serious problem for the ethanol industry, increasing production and maintenance costs and reducing the productivity. Fe, Hf, Sc and Th determined by INAA were used as tracers to assess the amount of soil in sugarcane from truckloads as well as in the juice extraction process. Quality control tools were applied to results identifying the need for stratification according to soil type and moisture. Soil levels of truckloads had high variability indicating potential for improving cut and loading operations. Samples from the juice extraction process allowed tracking the soil in the mill tandem.

MODELLING AND CONTROL OF ERSW PROCESSES BY NEURONAL NETWORK

A study on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for the modelling and subsequent control of an electric resistance spot welding process (ERSW) is presented. The ERSW process is characterized by the coupling of thermal, electrical, mechanical, and metallurgical phenomena. For this reason, early attempts to model it using computational methods established as the methods of finite differences, finite element, and finite volumes, ask for simplifications that lead the model obtained far from reality or very costly in terms of computational costs, to be used in a real-time control system. In this sense, the authors have developed an ERSW controller that uses fuzzy logic to adjust the energy transferred to the weld nugget. The proposed control strategies differ in the speed with which it reaches convergence. Moreover, their application for a quality control of spot weld through artificial neural networks (ANN) is discussed.

Diagnostic errors and repetitive sequential classifications in on-line process control by attributes

The procedure of on-line process control by attributes, known as Taguchi`s on-line process control, consists of inspecting the mth item (a single item) at every m produced items and deciding, at each inspection, whether the fraction of conforming items was reduced or not. If the inspected item is nonconforming, the production is stopped for adjustment. As the inspection system can be subject to diagnosis errors, one develops a probabilistic model that classifies repeatedly the examined item until a conforming or b non-conforming classification is observed. The first event that occurs (a conforming classifications or b non-conforming classifications) determines the final classification of the examined item. Proprieties of an ergodic Markov chain were used to get the expression of average cost of the system of control, which can be optimized by three parameters: the sampling interval of the inspections (m); the number of repeated conforming classifications (a); and the number of repeated non-conforming classifications (b). The optimum design is compared with two alternative approaches: the first one consists of a simple preventive policy. The production system is adjusted at every n produced items (no inspection is performed). The second classifies the examined item repeatedly r (fixed) times and considers it conforming if most classification results are conforming. Results indicate that the current proposal performs better than the procedure that fixes the number of repeated classifications and classifies the examined item as conforming if most classifications were conforming. On the other hand, the preventive policy can be averagely the most economical alternative rather than those ones that require inspection depending on the degree of errors and costs. A numerical example illustrates the proposed procedure. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.

Detection of the TLR4 1196C > T Polymorphism by Mismatched-Polymerase Chain Reaction Using Plasmid DNA as Internal Control in Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Assays

Background: Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) is a common molecular assay used for genotyping, and it requires validated quality control procedures to prevent mistyping caused by impaired endonuclease activity. We have evaluated the usefulness of a plasmid-based internal control in RFLP assays. Results: Blood samples were collected from 102 individuals with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and 108 non-AMI individuals (controls) for DNA extraction and laboratory analyses. The 1196C> T polymorphism in the toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) gene was amplified by mismatched-polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Amplicons and pBluescript II SK-plasmid were simultaneously digested with endonuclease HincII. Fragments were separated on 2% agarose gels. Plasmid was completely digested using up to 55.2 nmL/L DNA solutions and 1 mu L PCR product. Nevertheless, plasmid DNA with 41.4 nM or higher concentrations was incompletely digested in the presence of 7 mL PCR product. In standardized conditions, TLR4 1196C> T variant was accurately genotyped. TLR4 1196T allele frequency was similar between AMI (3.1%) and controls (2.0%, p = 0.948). TLR4 SNP was not associated with AMI in this sample population. In conclusion, the plasmid-based control is a useful approach to prevent mistyping in RFLP assays, and it is validate for genetic association studies such as TLR4 1196C> T.

Brazilian flavonoid database: Application of quality evaluation system

Much information on flavonoid content of Brazilian foods has already been obtained; however, this information is spread in scientific publications and non-published data. The objectives of this work were to compile and evaluate the quality of national flavonoid data according to the United States Department of Agriculture`s Data Quality Evaluation System (USDA-DQES) with few modifications, for future dissemination in the TBCA-USP (Brazilian Food Composition Database). For the compilation, the most abundant compounds in the flavonoid subclasses were considered (flavonols, flavones, isoflavones, flavanones, flavan-3-ols, and anthocyanidins) and the analysis of the compounds by HPLC was adopted as criteria for data inclusion. The evaluation system considers five categories, and the maximum score assigned to each category is 20. For each data, a confidence code (CC) was attributed (A, B, C and D), indicating the quality and reliability of the information. Flavonoid data (773) present in 197 Brazilian foods were evaluated. The CC ""C"" (as average) was attributed to 99% of the data and ""B"" (above average) to 1%. The main categories assigned low average scores were: number of samples; sampling plan and analytical quality control (average scores 2, 5 and 4, respectively). The analytical method category received an average score of 9. The category assigned the highest score was the sample handling (20 average). These results show that researchers need to be conscious about the importance of the number and plan of evaluated samples and the complete description and documentation of all the processes of methodology execution and analytical quality control. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.