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Physiology

Navy Clear on Causes of Physiological Events in Pilots; Final Recommendations Released for PE Mitigation – USNI News

Lt. Joshua Chester, a Navy pilot from Corton, West Virginia, poses in front of an F/A-18E Super Hornet, assigned to the Sunliners of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 81 on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) in the Atlantic Ocean. US Navy Photo

The Navy now understands what has been causing physiological events in aviators which spiked so sharply in 2017 that flight instructors refused to get into their jets to train new student pilots with a recently completed root cause analysis pointing to a complex relationship between aircrew, their flight gear and their aircraft.

Rear Adm. Fredrick Luchtman, the commander of the Naval Safety Center and the lead of the Physiological Episodes Action Team (PEAT), told reporters today that two root cause corrective action (RCCA) teams one looking at the T-45 Goshawk trainer jet and one looking at the F-18 family of fighters had completed their work in December and briefed naval aviation leaders in February on their findings. The teams spent three years and $50 million on this work, drafting more than 8,000 pages of technical documentation and proposing combined 567 recommendations for how to keep pilots and weapons officers safer in the cockpit in the future.

Ultimately, the teams found that there was no simple fix. Despite early theories, the PEs werent caused by contaminated air, a lack of oxygen or systems not designed well enough to keep humans safe in harsh environments.

The bad news is that theres no single causal factor that leads to physiological events, Luchtman told reporters today, though he noted that a string of pilot programs and early mitigation efforts to tackle contributing factors have already resulted in a 96-percent decrease in the PE rate in the T-45 fleet, and a 74-percent reduction in the PE rate in the F-18 fleet since 2017.

Physiological events fall in two main categories: those related to oxygen in the air, and those related to air pressure. Luchtman said its not as simple as the systems that control these two factors not working; rather, breathing concentrated oxygen in a small cockpit with restrictive flight gear is hard on the body, and something as simple as a mask not fitting quite right could lead to PE symptoms.

Though physiological episodes have long existed, Luchtman said with symptoms ranging from headaches to tingly fingers to dizziness to loss of consciousness around 2010 the naval aviation community started to see a rise in PEs believed to be related to aircraft malfunctions. That combination of a physiological episode related to an aircraft malfunction was dubbed a physiological event Luchtman noted and apologized for the confusion between the names of physiological episodes and the subcategory of physiological events. In 2017, physiological events skyrocketed with T-45s reaching their highest PE rates in March and F-18s in November.

After a comprehensive review was released in June 2017 and the RCCA teams were created shortly after, early theories emerged. One was that pilots were breathing in contaminated air from the Onboard Oxygen Generating System (OBOGS).

It was an early theory, its a valid theory and we needed to address it. And contamination could be a logical theory in both those aircraft, so we addressed it with both root cause corrective action teams. The bottom line is that the teams took over 21,000 samples of air from naval aircraft over the course of 20 months, and there were compounds identified, as you can imagine, but they were in such small amounts that a team of medical doctors and toxicologists concluded that the presence of those compounds in those amounts would not result in physiological symptoms, Luchtman said.

Sailors assigned to Aviation Survival Training Command, Norfolk operate a normobaric hypoxia trainer (NHT). An NHT allows for safer hypoxia training for pilots and aircrewman while providing a more realistic experience on Jan. 27, 2020. US Navy Photo

To be sure, the Navy asked a team from Johns Hopkins University to review the data, and they agreed: the air provided by Navy onboard oxygen generating systems, which we abbreviate OBOGS, is and was extremely clean, Luchtman said.

Another early theory was that aircrews werent getting enough oxygen, leading to hypoxia.

We took a hard, hard look at that, and after extensive testing this theory has been disproven, the rear admiral said.

A final theory questioned the basic design of OBOGS and the Environmental Control System (ECS) that controls air pressure in the F-18 cabin, suggesting that the systems were not suitable to protect human health while the jets flew challenging flight profiles. Luchtman said the testing proved the two systems were robust.

So what was causing the hundreds of PEs naval aviators reported?

On the F-18s the legacy F/A-18A-D Hornets, the newer F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and the electronic warfare EA-18G Growlers Luchtman said both oxygen- and pressure-related PEs had been occurring.

On the oxygen side, the air produced by OBOGS was found to be clean, and though aviators showed symptoms of hypoxia, it turned out they didnt actually have hypoxia where the bodys tissues are deprived of sufficient oxygen.

Instead, even under benign conditions, the act of breathing highly concentrated air from a closed-loop system while encumbered by bulky flight gear in a cramped cockpit is not easy. And in the dynamic environment of a fighter cockpit, we also add to the equation temperature variance, exposure to continual changes in Gs and pressure, all while managing an overwhelming amount of sensory input. All this amounts to increased what we call work of breathing. Over time, increased levels of work of breathing can lead to fatigue and changes in breathing patterns, leading to inefficient gas exchange, and many of those symptoms look a lot like hypoxia, he said.

Aviation Structural Mechanic 3rd Class Jeffery Hendricks removes a screw from an Onboard Oxygen Generating System (OBOGS) while performing special maintenance in the airframes shop aboard the Nimitz-Class nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) on Jan. 5, 2008. US Navy photo.

Further, the F-18 RCCA team found that work of breathing could also be affected by improperly fit or worn flight gear, malfunctions in the oxygen mask, and malfunctions of the OBOGS unit itself, Luchtman added. Though OBOGS has an alert system to warn pilots if it malfunctions, there is no such alert for flight gear and masks that dont fit, arent being worn properly or have experienced some kind of malfunction. Luchtman said efforts to create some kind of gear alert system are immature at this point, but that the Navy is trying to explore this avenue to protect pilots against failures in the gear meant to protect their bodies.

In the meantime, based on everything weve learned about human physiology through research and testing, many of our training syllabi are under modification to address some of those shortfalls in training related to the flight gear and masks including a course that would teach maintainers how to properly pack parachutes and other gear with PE-avoidance in mind.

On the air pressure side, which Luchtman said tends to cause more severe PEs, the OBOGS design was fine, but components of it had been failing and causing pressure anomalies that might not affect some aircrew but did cause PE symptoms in others.

On the legacy Hornets, the Navy set strict limits on how long OBOGS components can be used in an aircraft before being replaced and mandated periodic inspections. Luchtman said this was the single most important thing the Navy did for legacy Hornets, leading to an 88-percent reduction in pressure-related PEs. Similar component replacement requirements have been put in place for the Super Hornets and Growlers, and the admiral said that redesign efforts are ongoing for many of the components the two most important being the primary and secondary bleed air valves to create new parts that are more reliable and can go longer between replacement.

He praised Naval Air Systems Command for sending aircrew up with a small slam stick to record air pressure, which after flights was downloaded and paired with aircraft maintenance data. Through data analytics, he said, NAVAIR has created a Hornet Health Assessment Readiness Tool (HhART) that can now identify components that are sub-performing and flag them for replacement before a failure and possible a PE ever occur.

Think of the significance of that: that is a tremendous paradigm shift in the way we do maintenance, we can actually identify parts that are sub-performing, replace those parts and prevent the PE from ever happening, he said.

Since the HhART pilot program kicked off in January 2019, pressure-related PEs in F-18s overall are down 80 percent.

Finally, he said, the F-18 RCCA team looked at aeromedical factors such as dehydration, fatigue, diet, hypoglycemia, stress, physical conditioning and more.

A T-45C Goshawk training aircraft assigned to Training Air Wing (TW) 2 lands on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) in the Atlantic Ocean on Dec. 9, 2019. US Navy Photo

We shouldnt be surprised that if you go flying dehydrated and youre breathing dry air from our OBOGS concentrator, that youre not going to feel well after awhile, Luchtman said.

On the T-45 side, Luchtman said the RCCA team came closer to a single root cause: with the PEs primarily being oxygen-related rather than pressure-related, the team narrowed in on the airflow from the engine to the OBOGS and then into the cockpit. While the air coming out of OBOGS was clean, in some flight profiles the engine wasnt putting out much air, meaning the OBOGS wasnt taking in much air to purify, and therefore the aircrewtemporarilywerent getting as much air out of OBOGS.

In two relatively simple changes, the RCCA team recommended straightening out what had been an angled pipe to bring air from the engine to the OBOGS, increasing overall air flow, as well as altering the engine to increase the rotations per minute so it would spin faster and provide more air to OBOGS.

Those two things, along with implementation of an ECS hygiene inspection regimen, has resulted in a 96-percent reduction in the PE rate across the T-45 fleet since its peak rate in March of 2017. So I think thats actually a pretty good news story, he said.

Despite the significant decreases in PEs since 2017, they havent ceased altogether. Luchtman told USNI News that between October 2019 and the end of May the first eight months of Fiscal Year 2020 the Navy had seen 27 PEs across all Navy aircraft types. Just one of those was in the T-45, with 20 coming from F-18s and six coming from other kinds of non-fighter aircraft.

This compares to 35 PEs in T-45s in FY 2016, 31 in 2017, six in 2018 and one in the first half of 2019, USNI News previously reported. In the F-18s, there had been 87 PEs in FY 2016, 73 in 2017, 65 in 2018, and 41 in the first half of FY 2019.

To continue working to eliminate PEs, Luchtman said several initiatives are ongoing. The PE Action Team, which he led for two years previously out of Arlington, Va., was recently pulled under the Naval Safety Center in Norfolk, Va. The relocated office has continued funding for several initiatives, he said.

Cmdr. Leslie Mintz, executive officer of the Blacklions of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 213, inspects an F/A-18F Super Hornet prior to her flight on board Naval Air Station Oceana, Va., on Feb 28, 2019. US Navy Photo

Soon the Navy will install a Cockpit Pressure and OBOGS Monitoring System (CPOMS) into all F-18s more than 1,000 jets, USNI News has previously reported which will record oxygen concentration levels and pressurization data from cockpit and alert air crew if either level is off.

Luchtman told USNI News in an interview last year that CPOMS involves some pretty significant engineering modification to the aircraft. That will be done by professionals from Boeing, and its going to take 10 to 14 days per aircraft, times over 1,000 aircraft. Weve never done anything of that scale before.

Additionally, a Life Support Systems Integration for the F-18s will include a new OBOGS concentrator, as well as the ability to electronically schedule oxygen delivery to the aircrew based on their altitude a capability the Navy wanted before but hadnt been able to achieve. LSSI, which will also bring additional data recording capabilities, is still several years from being operational.

On the T-45s, the OBOGS will get a new concentrator, though Luchtman said that was more of a routine modernization project rather than an attempt to address a specific PE concern. To address PEs, though, an automatic backup system will be installed where, if oxygen levels dip below a certain threshold, a liquid oxygen bottle will spray a bit of 100-percent oxygen into the cockpit for the aircrew.

Luchtman said Navy leadership has been very supportive of this effort and has fully funded all these modifications.

He added that at least 30 more studies are in the hopper for the Navy to continue to better understand aeromedical factors, and that hopefully monitoring systems could be developed to help aircrew identify when they may be on the cusp of a PE and prevent it from happening in the first place.

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Navy Clear on Causes of Physiological Events in Pilots; Final Recommendations Released for PE Mitigation - USNI News

Physiology

How to help your chickens beat the heat in summer – The Poultry Site

Last year we experienced record-breaking temperatures across the UK, peaking in Faversham, Kent at 35.3oC. With the expected rise in global temperatures those sweltering summer months could be beyond our current means of coping with the heat. Every summer we experience days when just spending a few minutes in a poultry house feels unbearable, and for many broilers reaching the end of the cycle it is with mortality soaring. Thankfully the poultry industry has made a great deal of progress in the area of ventilation and cooling. As chickens are reared in hot countries such as Saudi Arabia, the technology to deal with temperatures in excess of 40oC has already been well tested.

Chickens, in general, can cope with high temperatures. The domestic fowl has a healthy body temperature of between 40C and 41.7oC, chicks under three weeks of age being at the lower end. With the birds metabolism being quite high, its ability to lose heat is imperative and it does this by radiation, conduction and the evaporation of water. Chicks, being small, have a high surface area in comparison to their body mass, which means heat is lost from the body relatively easily; as the bird increases in size this ratio changes, though, and for the hefty 3kg broiler radiation of heat via the skin is not going to be enough to keep its temperature down.

When radiation is insufficient you will see other behaviours presented: the bird will increase its surface area by lifting its wings, exposing the less feathered parts of its body; the flock will also try to move to a cooler area, away from the heat source, perhaps into the shade; or the birds will clear soil and litter away to make a cool depression.

Heat loss via conduction can only occur if the chicken is in direct contact with a substance that is cooler than itself. This could be the ground, as seen in the hollow-digging behaviour. In the main, though, conduction will occur in a well-ventilated area where the skin can contact cooler air.

Evaporation is the final key to cooling off. Like other animals that lack sweat glands, chickens main evaporative apparatus is the respiratory system and they will typically pant once temperatures become uncomfortable. Panting uses a lot of energy; this will be reflected in an increase in food consumption once the temperature starts moving toward 30oC.

Knowing how the physiology of the bird handles excess heat enables us to design environments and conditions that will support chickens in keeping cool. Space is an essential element when birds need to radiate heat, and therefore stocking densities should be reduced in the summer months. On a still day in naturally ventilated housing, you only have convection to pull the air across your birds and that is a fine balance steep roofs and tall chimneys will help increase air speed and throughput. You must maintain a minimum of ventilation rate at all times, and this can be calculated using feed consumption as a baseline, plus other factors including physiology of the birds and humidity.

Heat management in extensive systems is less of an issue, but a simple provision of shade and access to water will help tremendously. If local planning will allow, use light-coloured roofing materials. Its tricky but if you can check air speed in the house you will find that there is an optimum amount of inlet area to outlet. Too much inlet area can slow air movement in the house, so aim for a 1:1 ratio for inlet to outlet area as a guide. In a naturally ventilated building, consider placing the whole building in the shade of trees or orienting it so the sun is not blazing down on the broadside at noon. Where a source of power is available, place circulating fans around the house to get the air moving. Its important to stress that still air is a killer even in slightly elevated temperatures.

Another key element of hot-weather management is keeping the birds calm, so stick to your normal routine and avoid entering the house at the hottest part of the day. Activities such as weighing birds, routine maintenance and depletion should be postponed or relegated to early mornings.

Once you move into the realm of intensive production and complete environmental control, get it right and its plain sailing. Tweak a few buttons and gauges and the environment within the building can be optimised regardless of conditions outside. Get it wrong, though, and you could literally lose your entire flock through heat exhaustion and suffocation.

Modern intensive poultry farmers have a whole range of technologies and management tools they can use to mitigate the harshest of climatic conditions. Its important to start with the physiology and behaviour of the chicken. We can assist the chicken in optimising its body temperature by either supplying air at the right temperature or by enabling the chicken to effectively control its body temperature a combination of both will move us toward the most efficient system.

Air cooling is not widely used in the UK as it is very expensive. Air can be cooled by introducing cold water via a fine spray into the air inlet. This in principle sounds ideal; in reality there is a very fine balance between cooling the air sufficiently and not increasing the humidity to a point whereby the chickens are unable to effectively respire water away from themselves and consequently are unable to cool down. Increased humidity can also lead to an increase in moulds throughout the housing and a deterioration in the fabric of the building. Increasing the airs humidity also increases its mass, meaning that it will tend to hang around the birds rather than being lifted away from them. A better system is one in which air passes through a cooler, which is the same as a radiator only cold water is passed through the vanes cooling the air as it passes through.

Increasing air throughput to the house is the preferred method in our climate. This has been used to great effect in housing with tunnel ventilation, whereby the long broiler house becomes a tunnel with huge fans at one end and inlets covering the wall of the other end. There is, however, a limit to this system: if air speed through the flock exceeds 1.5m per second, it will create a significant wind chill, having a detrimental effect on the birds.

As summer temperatures rise and production is further challenged, other methods of keeping birds cool will no doubt come to the fore but ultimately it is the chickens physiology that will set the limits.

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How to help your chickens beat the heat in summer - The Poultry Site

Physiology

Nanotoxicology of Dendrimers in the Mammalian Heart: ex vivo and in vi | IJN – Dove Medical Press

Fawzi Babiker,1 Ibrahim F Benter,2 Saghir Akhtar3

1Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Health Science Center, Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait; 2Faculty of Medicine, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, North Cyprus, Republic of Cyprus; 3College of Medicine, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

Correspondence: Fawzi BabikerDepartment of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Health Science Center, Kuwait University, PO Box 24923, Safat 13110, Kuwait, Tel +965 24636360Fax +965 25338937Email Fawzi.b@hsc.edu.kwSaghir AkhtarCollege of Medicine, QU Health, Qatar University, PO Box 2713, Doha, QatarTel +974-4403 7865Email s.akhtar@qu.edu.qa

Aim: The effects of polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers on the mammalian heart are not completely understood. In this study, we have investigated the effects of a sixth-generation cationic dendrimer (G6 PAMAM) on cardiac function in control and diabetic rat hearts following ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury.Methods: Isolated hearts from healthy non-diabetic (Ctr) male Wistar rats were subjected to ischemia and reperfusion (I/R). LV contractility and hemodynamics data were computed digitally whereas cardiac damage following I/R injury was assessed by measuring cardiac enzymes. For ex vivo acute exposure experiments, G6 PAMAM was administered during the first 10 mins of reperfusion in Ctr animals. In chronic in vivo studies, nondiabetic rats (Ctr) received either vehicle or daily i.p. injections of G6 PAMAM (40 mg/kg) for 4 weeks. Diabetic (D) animals received either vehicle or daily i.p. injections of G6 PAMAM (10, 20 or 40 mg/kg) for 4 weeks. The impact of G6 PAMAM on pacing-postconditioning (PPC) was also studied in Ctr and D rats.Results: In ex vivo studies, acute administration of G6 PAMAM to isolated Ctr hearts during reperfusion dose-dependently impaired recovery of cardiac hemodynamics and vascular dynamics parameters following I/R injury. Chronic daily i.p. injections of G6 PAMAM significantly (P< 0.01) impaired recovery of cardiac function following I/R injury in nondiabetic animals but this was not generally observed in diabetic animals except for CF which was impaired by about 50%. G6 PAMAM treatment completely blocked the protective effects of PPC in the Ctr animals.Conclusion: Acute ex vivo or chronic in vivo treatment with naked G6 PAMAM dendrimer can significantly compromise recovery of non-diabetic hearts from I/R injury and can further negate the beneficial effects of PPC. Our findings are therefore extremely important in the nanotoxicological evaluation of G6 PAMAM dendrimers for potential clinical applications in physiological and pathological settings.

Keywords: PAMAM, postconditioning, diabetes, ischemia, reperfusion

This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License.By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.

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Nanotoxicology of Dendrimers in the Mammalian Heart: ex vivo and in vi | IJN - Dove Medical Press

Physiology

Climate-driven risks to the climate mitigation potential of forests – Science Magazine

Risks to mitigation potential of forests

Much recent attention has focused on the potential of trees and forests to mitigate ongoing climate change by acting as sinks for carbon. Anderegg et al. review the growing evidence that forests' climate mitigation potential is increasingly at risk from a range of adversities that limit forest growth and health. These include physical factors such as drought and fire and biotic factors, including the depredations of insect herbivores and fungal pathogens. Full assessment and quantification of these risks, which themselves are influenced by climate, is key to achieving science-based policy outcomes for effective land and forest management.

Science, this issue p. eaaz7005

Forests have considerable potential to help mitigate human-caused climate change and provide society with a broad range of cobenefits. Local, national, and international efforts have developed policies and economic incentives to protect and enhance forest carbon sinksranging from the Bonn Challenge to restore deforested areas to the development of forest carbon offset projects around the world. However, these policies do not always account for important ecological and climate-related risks and limits to forest stability (i.e., permanence). Widespread climate-induced forest die-off has been observed in forests globally and creates a dangerous carbon cycle feedback, both by releasing large amounts of carbon stored in forest ecosystems to the atmosphere and by reducing the size of the future forest carbon sink. Climate-driven risks may fundamentally compromise forest carbon stocks and sinks in the 21st century. Understanding and quantifying climate-driven risks to forest stability are crucial components needed to forecast the integrity of forest carbon sinks and the extent to which they can contribute toward the Paris Agreement goal to limit warming well below 2C. Thus, rigorous scientific assessment of the risks and limitations to widespread deployment of forests as natural climate solutions is urgently needed.

Many forest-based natural climate solutions do not yet rely on the best available scientific information and ecological tools to assess the risks to forest stability from climate-driven forest dieback caused by fire, drought, biotic agents, and other disturbances. Crucially, many of these permanence risks are projected to increase in the 21st century because of climate change, and thus estimates based on historical data will underestimate the true risks that forests face. Forest climate policy needs to fully account for the permanence risks because they could fundamentally undermine the effectiveness of forest-based climate solutions.

Here, we synthesize current scientific understanding of the climate-driven risks to forests and highlight key issues for maximizing the effectiveness of forests as natural climate solutions. We lay out a roadmap for quantifying current and forecasting future risks to forest stability using recent advances in vegetation physiology, disturbance ecology, mechanistic vegetation modeling, large-scale ecological observation networks, and remote sensing. Finally, we review current efforts to use forests as natural climate solutions and discuss how these programs and policies presently consider and could more fully embrace physiological, climatic, and permanence uncertainty about the future of forest carbon stores and the terrestrial carbon sink.

The scientific community agrees that forests can contribute to global efforts to mitigate human-caused climate change. The community also recognizes that using forests as natural climate solutions must not distract from rapid reductions in emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Furthermore, responsibly using forests as natural climate solutions requires rigorous quantification of risks to forest stability, forests carbon storage potential, cobenefits for species conservation and ecosystem services, and full climate feedbacks from albedo and other effects. Combining long-term satellite records with forest plot data can provide rigorous, spatially explicit estimates of climate changedriven stresses and disturbances that decrease productivity and increase mortality. Current vegetation models also hold substantial promise to quantify forest risks and inform forest management and policies, which currently rely predominantly on historical data.

A more-holistic understanding and quantification of risks to forest stability will help policy-makers effectively use forests as natural climate solutions. Scientific advances have increased our ability to characterize risks associated with a number of biotic and abiotic factors, including risks associated with fire, drought, and biotic agent outbreaks. While the models that are used to predict disturbance risks of these types represent the cutting edge in ecology and Earth system science to date, relatively little infrastructure and few tools have been developed to interface between scientists and foresters, land managers, and policy-makers to ensure that science-based risks and opportunities are fully accounted for in policy and management contexts. To enable effective policy and management decisions, these tools must be openly accessible, transparent, modular, applicable across scales, and usable by a wide range of stakeholders. Strengthening this science-policy link is a critical next step in moving forward with leveraging forests in climate change mitigation efforts.

Leveraging cutting-edge scientific tools holds great promise for improving and guiding the use of forests as natural climate solutions, both in estimating the potential of carbon storage and in estimating the risks to forest carbon storage.

Forests have considerable potential to help mitigate human-caused climate change and provide society with many cobenefits. However, climate-driven risks may fundamentally compromise forest carbon sinks in the 21st century. Here, we synthesize the current understanding of climate-driven risks to forest stability from fire, drought, biotic agents, and other disturbances. We review how efforts to use forests as natural climate solutions presently consider and could more fully embrace current scientific knowledge to account for these climate-driven risks. Recent advances in vegetation physiology, disturbance ecology, mechanistic vegetation modeling, large-scale ecological observation networks, and remote sensing are improving current estimates and forecasts of the risks to forest stability. A more holistic understanding and quantification of such risks will help policy-makers and other stakeholders effectively use forests as natural climate solutions.

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Climate-driven risks to the climate mitigation potential of forests - Science Magazine

Physiology

Swine it #42 Back to the basics in gilt development – Dr Kara Stewart – The Pig Site

I think for a while the gilt development was a forgotten piece of the sow system and I think it is our greatest potential for improvements in sow reproduction and lifetime performance. We need to start paying more attention there

- Boar exposure in gilt development

- Optimal weight, age, and number of estruses at first breeding

- Acclimation to the breeding crate

- Out-of-feed events in GDUs

- Space requirements and number of gilts per pen

- Have gilt development units and gilt research been forgotten?

Our guest is Dr Kara Stewart. Dr Stewart received her bachelors degree from Purdue University in 2001 and her masters and a doctorate from North Carolina State University in 2004 and 2008, respectively. Dr Stewart taught in the Department of Animal Science at NC State for two years before returning to Indiana to work for Cook Inc., a human medical device company. In 2013, she accepted a faculty position in reproductive physiology in the Department of Animal Science at Purdue University.

Listen to the podcast here: https://podtail.com/en/podcast/swine-it/back-to-the-basics-in-gilt-development-dr-kara-ste/

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Swine it #42 Back to the basics in gilt development - Dr Kara Stewart - The Pig Site

Physiology

Medical Biosensors Market 2020: Potential Growth, Challenges, and Know the Companies List Could Potentially Benefit or Loose out From the Impact of…

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Medical Biosensors Market 2020: Potential Growth, Challenges, and Know the Companies List Could Potentially Benefit or Loose out From the Impact of...

Anatomy

Anatomy of a 21st century recording studio: how Real World is adapting and thriving in a harsh recording climate – MusicRadar

Over the last couple of decades, most recording studios have already had the big wake up call: to diversify or die.

The idyllic Real World Studios in Box near Bath, UK created by Peter Gabriel in the late 1980s actually took on this mantra pretty much from the start, and began as a three-pronged operation with the studio running alongside Real World Records and the hugely popular live event, WOMAD.

But over the last few years, as recording budgets have been squeezed, the studio has had to become even more innovative, adding a number of diverse activities to its operation: from education to remix competitions, intimate gigs to virtual mixing. It has also become something of a studio hub, with half a dozen satellite recording and mixing rooms surrounding the main Big Room and Wood Room studios.

Producers and engineers including Ali Staton (Madonna, Seal, Turin Brakes) and Cameron Jenkins (The Verve, John Cale, The Charlatans, Everything But The Girl) have taken up residency, bringing a co-operative approach to west country recording in the UK.

The Big Room studio is also large enough to be a great place for gear launches, with Audio Technica and Universal Audio among the big names who've used it.

The main Big Room studio is also large enough to be a great place for corporate gear launches, with Audio Technica and Universal Audio among the big name companies who have made use of this stunning building.

There have also been live gigs held at the studio with names like Ethan Johns, Big Big Train and Les Amazones d'Afrique offering intimate sessions for devoted fans. And over the last few years, education has also played a significant role in the studio operation, as Head Engineer Oli Jacobs details.

We do a lot of student-led projects here and probably have between eight and ten regular universities and institutions from local Bath colleges to Berklee College of Music in the US that come every year.

"It works really well because you can get a lot of people in the Big Room and then a band in the Wood Room, so a lot of people can participate in what is effectively a hands-on studio training session.

It's kind of an accelerated learning zero to complete thing in three days!

eMixing is another very 21st century addition to Real World's portfolio, a way to get your tracks mixed at one of the best facilities in the world and by a top recording engineer. You can opt for anything from a monitor mix to full-on tweaked master, paying from 120 for each track.

Then there's the more hands-on experience of Producer Camp where you get to spend time with fellow producers at the studio and get to use all of the facilities Real World has to offer.

It's a two- or three-day residential session where people come and stay and record a song at the studio, says Senior Consulting Engineer Tim Oliver.

They get paired up and collaborate as producers and work in the Big Room with all the gear, and with a variety of session musicians, established guest producers and technicians. Over the weekend each pair of producers creates a song which gets published and released the following week.

It's a really positive weekend, the fact that you can stay here and get the Real World experience, Oli adds. They get to meet and work with a lot of other people and with great musicians rather than samples so, for example, we have the Wood Room set up with an amazing drum kit, drummer and engineer. It's kind of an accelerated learning zero to complete thing in three days!

So while the recording sessions at Real World remain an important part of its income, diversification is something that has become second nature to it over the last four decades. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that the facility has been quick to adapt to the challenges brought with the Coronavirus crisis.

Real World is developing new ways in which we might well be recording and enjoying music well beyond the crisis.

Indeed, Real World is developing new ways in which we might well be recording and enjoying music well beyond the crisis, with remote mixing being just one of the new options on offer.

We've been lucky in that we have been able to use the studio one person at a time, Oli explains. We were pretty quick to figure out how to have people virtually 'attend' sessions, being able to hear what we're doing straight away and in high quality, and to be able to feed back to us.

"We now have the remote mixing experience as good as you can get it, without the person being sat next to you, with a combination of Zoom or Google Meet for the communication and using Audiomovers for the hi-res audio transfer.

"We have also built a system that auto-mutes the talkback so either party doesn't hear the audio repeated.

An extension of all of these innovations is the studio's latest development: UnReal World, a 'virtual studio' as Tim explains.

There are a lot of collaboration ideas around at the moment but they tend to be fairly chaotic as they are musician led, whereas the idea of UnReal World is that it is producer led.

"There is a virtual studio with the producer at the helm of that studio, with the seed of an idea, a style brief and a playlist of references. They then ask musicians to download their audio stem ideas, play along and add something and then upload their ideas along the lines of what the producer has called for; so maybe they have said, 'I need some weird synth stuff on this track, give me some ideas'. The producer then stems out what they like, and then that evolves into something else.

We're trialling it with the producer John Reynolds, Tim continues. There are two tracks: a drum track where he is adding layer upon layer and another which is a Damien Dempsey acoustic guitar and voice.

"We're testing the water to see if there's any merit in the idea and to see if it creates anything at the end which is musically valid.

Finally we turn to the end product, the music itself, and perhaps the most exciting of Real World's new plans: immersive concerts where you get to enjoy live events on a more intimate level.

We are aware that a lot of people are doing live streams right now, Oli explains. Some are great but some are pretty boring. We are producing a series of concerts that will be audio only, with the focus on really hi-res audio streaming, not video. We want to do something that is a lot better sounding than what is out there, not just another live stream.

"The performances will be pre-recorded and then mixed here binaurally; they will be immersive mixes, making the experience as close as possible to being in the live room. The idea is that you spend your whole day on Zoom or staring at email and then this is 'just put some headphones on, close your eyes and just listen as if you were there'.

Because no-one can go out touring, they think 'well what can we do? Oh let's make a record!'

We're collaborating with a few institutions, he adds, like d&b audiotechnik who are a very important collaborator; we're also talking to Kings College London who are developing new surround sound plugin systems, and also the Bristol and Bath Expanded Performance creative cohort.

"We're still in the experimentation phase with all sorts of new ideas, like we may also eventually introduce an app so you can change where you are standing in the room or change where the instruments are around you.

As you can see then, with so many innovations, it's not so much a case of adapt and survive, but adapt and thrive and Real World looks set to push the recording envelope. There are plans to develop further spaces, plus part of the site is set to be redeveloped into a media hub over the next few years with additional office space, producer rooms and a cafe. But let's not forget the reason the studio started in the first place, to make great records, and that picture is as rosy as ever.

Actually it is looking really positive, says Tim. Because no-one can go out touring for the foreseeable, they think 'well what can we do? Oh let's make a record!' As a result, weve been getting many more enquiries than we expected.

Oli concludes: That's the one thing we have discovered during the lockdown is that no matter how great the technology gets to allow collaboration online, its ultimately a million miles away from the real thing. People are desperate to come into a studio together again, and there really is no substitute for musicians in a room together.

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Anatomy of a 21st century recording studio: how Real World is adapting and thriving in a harsh recording climate - MusicRadar

Anatomy

Grey’s Anatomy showrunner shares stories of her white privilege – Entertainment Weekly

Grey's Anatomy showrunner shares stories of her white privilege | EW.com Top Navigation Close View image

Grey's Anatomy showrunner shares how she got away with teen 'mistakes' because she was white

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Grey's Anatomy showrunner shares stories of her white privilege - Entertainment Weekly

Anatomy

Dr. Frank Phillips is First in the World to Use Augmented Reality Surgical Guidance in Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery – OrthoSpineNews

June 17, 2020

CHICAGO(BUSINESS WIRE)Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush announced today that Dr. Frank Phillips, Professor and Director of the Division of Spine Surgery and the Section of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery at Rush University Medical Center, completed the first augmented reality (AR) minimally invasive spine surgery. The Augmedics xvision Spine System surgical guidance system allows a surgeon to see a patients 3-dimensional (3D) spinal anatomy through skin as if they have x-ray vision. Using this new technology, Dr. Phillips performed a lumbar fusion with spinal implants on a patient with spinal instability at Rush University Medical Center on June 15.

The FDA-cleared xvision system is designed to revolutionize how surgery is done by giving the surgeon better control and visualization, which can lead to easier, faster and safer surgeries. Dr. Phillips reports the patient, who was experiencing severe back pain and limited mobility prior to the surgery, is doing well.

Having 3-dimensional (3D) spinal anatomic and 2-dimensional (2D) CT scan images directly projected onto the surgeons retina and superimposed over the surgical field takes spinal surgery to another level, said Dr. Phillips. Being able to place minimally invasive spinal instrumentation extremely accurately and efficiently, reducing surgical time and complication risk, is critical to improving outcomes for spinal surgery. Traditional surgical navigation platforms have been shown to improve accuracy of implant placement, however using augmented reality allows for the advantages of traditional (non-3D) navigation plus the ability to visualize the patients spinal anatomy in 3D through the skin.

The xvision Spine System developed by Chicago-based Augmedics consists of a transparent near-eye-display headset. It accurately determines the position of surgical tools, in real time, and a virtual trajectory is then superimposed on the patients CT data. In a minimally invasive procedure, the 3D navigation data is then projected onto the surgeons retina using the headset, allowing him or her to simultaneously look at the patient and see the navigation data without averting his or her eyes to a remote screen during the procedure. In a percutaneous cadaver study performed by Dr. Phillips and colleagues at Rush Medical Center, the xvision Spine System demonstrated98.9 percent screw placement accuracy.

When we set out to create a better navigation system, we knew it had to be intuitively designed to work within the surgical workflow and align the hands and eyes of the surgeon, eliminating the need to avert his or her eyes to an ancillary screen. Our innovative visualization technology breaks down the wall between traditional navigation and the patient, said Nissan Elimelech, founder and CEO, Augmedics. Moreover, the xvision Spine Systems 3D anatomy visualization allows surgeons to accurately guide instruments and implants intraoperatively, in real time, while looking directly at the patient, as if they had x-ray vision.

About Augmedics

With Augmedics, the future of surgery is within sight. The Chicago-based company aims to improve healthcare by augmenting surgery with cutting edge technologies that solve unmet clinical needs and instill technological confidence in the surgical workflow. Its pioneering xvision system, the first augmented reality guidance system for surgery, allows surgeons to see the patients anatomy through skin and tissue as if they have x-ray vision, and to accurately navigate instruments and implants during spine procedures. Augmedics plans to explore additional surgical applications for xvision beyond spinal surgery. The systems small footprint, economical cost and compatibility with current instrumentation are designed to allow easy integration into any surgical facility nationwide. Augmedics is backed by Terra Venture Partners and AO Invest, a venture arm of the AO Foundation. The AO is a medically guided, not-for-profit organization, a global network of surgeons, and the worlds leading education, innovation, and research organization for the surgical treatment of trauma and musculoskeletal disorders. For more information, visitwww.augmedics.com.

About Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush

Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush (MOR) offers comprehensive, unparalleled, orthopedic services as well as physical and occupational therapy. MOR doctors are team physicians for the Chicago Bulls, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Fire Soccer Club and Joffrey Ballet, among others. They are known for treating patients with orthopedic conditions, ranging from the most common to the most complex.U.S. News & World Reportranks the orthopedic program at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, as No. 7 in the nation and it is the highest ranked program in Illinois and Indiana. MOR has offices at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago; Geneva (PT); Lincoln Park (PT); Naperville; Oak Brook; Oak Park; Orland Park (PT), Westchester; and Munster, Indiana. For more information or to make an appointment, visitwww.rushortho.com/appointments. Follow us on Facebook @MidwestOrthopaedicsatRush or Twitter @mor_docs.

Diana SolteszPazanga Health Communicationsdsoltesz@pazangahealth.com818-618-5634

Ann PitcherPitcher Communicationsann@pitchercomm.com630.234.4150

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Dr. Frank Phillips is First in the World to Use Augmented Reality Surgical Guidance in Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery - OrthoSpineNews

Anatomy

Greys Anatomy showrunner tweets about escaping action due to her race, sparks debate – The Indian Express

By: Trends Desk | New Delhi | Published: June 18, 2020 11:18:23 am Vernoff has been lauded for illustrating how her teenage crimes were written off as mistakes because she was white. (Source: Twitter, AP)

Even as anti-racism demonstrations continue in the US, the showrunner of the show Greys Anatomy, Krista Vernoff, took to Twitter to highlight how she had committed various crimes, but was never punished due to white privilege. The thread has sparked a serious conversation on race and Vernoff has been praised for being straightforward.

Opening up about all the crimes she has committed over her life in a candid conversation, Vernoff listed various things she did and how she was mostly let off with a warning. She also pointed out that other incidents had shown how it could have panned out differently for those who werent white. Vernoff wrote about how her crimes were written off as mistakes just because she was white, and that she still didnt have a criminal record.

When I was 15, I was chased through a mall by police who were yelling Stop thief! I had thousands of dollars of stolen merchandise on me. I was caught, booked, sentenced to 6 months of probation, required to see a parole officer weekly. I was never even handcuffed, she said in the start of her thread.

When I was 18, I was pulled over for drunk driving. When the Police Officer asked me to blow into the breathalyzer, I pretended to have asthma and insisted I couldnt blow hard enough to get a reading, she continued. The officer laughed then asked my friends to blow and when one of them came up sober enough to drive, he let me move to the passenger seat of my car and go home with just a verbal warning.

The 46-year-old screenwriter who has never shied away from talking about things online, or highlighting such incidents in her show over the years, talked of her crimes to highlight how white people are treated differently by the police.

Her tweets come after the death of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man who was shot and killed an Atlanta Police Department officer on June 12, amid the ongoing protests over George Floyds killing.

Defunding the police is not about living in a lawless society, she wrote. Its about the fact that in this country, were not supposed to get shot by police for getting drunk.

Footage from body and dash-mounted cameras showed Brooks chatted cooperatively with the two white officers, agreeing he had a couple of drinks to celebrate his daughters birthday and agreeing to a breath test.

Vernoff ended her thread saying: The system that lets me live and murders Rayshard Brooks is a broken system that must change. Stop defending it. Demand the change. #BlackLivesMatter #WhitePrivilege #DefundPolice.

Commenting about the thread, Director Ava Duvernay, a founder of an advocacy for justice reform, lauded her for talking honestly about her experiences as a white woman in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Its one of the best threads on the criminalisation of Black people that Ive read lately, Duvernay said.

The thread went viral and many highlighted how important it is for white people to talk about their privilege and be aware of the discrimination. Others also shared how they received different treatment from the police due to their race:

Violent protests had erupted in many cities across the US after a video emerged of a Minneapolis policeman suffocating Floyd by pinning him to the ground with his knee on Floyds neck. The policeman, David Chauvin, has since been fired, arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

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Greys Anatomy showrunner tweets about escaping action due to her race, sparks debate - The Indian Express