Herbal folk remedies for animal health in the Netherlands

As a part of their training in herbalism 85 students of the two private schools for natural animal care that exist in the Netherlands were given the assignment to ask farmers, pet owners and animal pension keepers about their traditional remedies. This led to 168 case reports in the period 1998-2004. A few reports from IEZ workers were added and all the results have been put in a database to make follow up analyses possible. The animals that were involved were often horses. The plant species involved consisted of 63 genera in 33 families of which 92% were indigenous to, or have been grown in the Netherlands for many years. The most frequently reported plant was Linum usitatissimum, flax seeds. Next in line were Urtica urens/dioica (nettles) and Allium sativum (garlic). All three were used for several different health conditions in several species of animals. Besides traditional internal and external herbal remedies there was use of beer, gin, tobacco, vinegar, and the hanging of branches in stables

On the Relative Order of IP-adverbials

Abstract not availabl

Sustainable inland transportation

Inland navigation is often mentioned as a ‘green’ alternative for the two other main inland transport modes: rail and road transport. In order to investigate the opportunities for inland navigation we first analyze the competitive position of inland navigation vis-àvis the other main inland transport modes. For that, we perform a comparative study on the current sustainability performance of the three modes. Second, through a case study, we analyze a recent initiative for sustainable innovation of inland navigation in order to assess the barriers and opportunities for improving the competitive position of sustainable inland navigation

Stretching and jamming of Automata

... monologue in the field of automata theory. In this thesis we present two new transformation operations on finite state automata, called stretching and jamming. These transformations are intended to increase the performance of the automata. Readers who are mainly interested in the theoretical side of the transformations are referred to chapters 2 and 3. An overview of the abstract algorithms that model the transfor-mations is given in chapters 4 and 5. Implementation details can be found in chapter 6. If the reader is interested in the practical results, and wants to know in which cases stretching and jamming are useful, we refer to chapter 7

(1→3)-β-D-Glucan Does Not Induce Acute Inflammation After Nasal Deposition

To assess if (1→3)-β-D-glucan, a microbial cell wall agent normally present in pollen, has the ability to produce pollenlike response, sensitive persons received a nasal deposition of two doses of (1→3)-β-D-glucan. The percentage of eosinophils and amount of eotaxin were measured in nasal lavage 30 minutes and 24 hours after challenge. No effect could be demonstrated. The absence of an inflammatory response after (1→3)-β-D-glucan application confirms earlier findings in inhalation studies