Corn Silage and Alfalfa Hay for Beef Production

SUMMARY. 1. A ration of corn and alfalfa hay produced the cheapest gains of any ration used. Furthermore, the steers fed corn and alfalfa hay made as rapid gains as did the steers on any other ration. 2. Had the alfalfa hay used in the first experiment cost $20 per ton, the average profit on the three lots receiving alfalfa would have been 15 per cent greater than the profit on the best one of the three lots not receiving alfalfa. 3. Cold pressed cottonseed cake did not give as good results, as regards either rate of gain or economy of gain, as did alfalfa hay in a ration for fattening steers. 4. The addition of cold pressed cottonseed cake to a ration of corn, silage, and alfalfa increased the cost of gain and lowered the profits on the steers. 5. The steers receiving silage without exception shed their coats early in the spring and at all times presented a sleek and sappy appearance. 6. Contrary to preceding experiments, a heavy feed of silage with alfalfa hay and corn gave as rapid gains as did either a medium or a light feed of silage with alfalfa hay and corn. The amount of silage which can best be fed to fattening steers apparently must be regarded as unsettled. 7. The steers fed silage in connection with corn and alfalfa suffered a very light shrinkage when shipped to market. Different amounts of silage seemingly had no effect upon the number of pounds shrinkage. 8. Where prairie hay was used in place of alfalfa, small and expensive gains resulted. 9. The individuality of a steer is a very important factor in the rate of gain. The average difference in gains made between the highest and lowest producing steer in each of fourteen different lots was 120 pounds. In practically all cases there was a greater variation in the daily gains made by steers in the same lot than there was in the average daily gains of the different lots. 10. Usually a considerable difference can be noted between poor and good feeder cattle, but sometimes even a careful study of steers does not reveal their feeding possibilities. 11. An advance of 8 cents per bushel in the price of corn increased the cost of gains$1 per 100 pounds. 12. In the second experiment, where a ration of corn and alfafa hay was fed, an increase of 1 cent per bushel in the price of corn had the same effect in increasing the cost of gains as did an increase of $1 per ton in the price of alfalfa hay

Corn Silage and Alfalfa Hay for Beef Production

SUMMARY. 1. A ration of corn and alfalfa hay produced the cheapest gains of any ration used. Furthermore, the steers fed corn and alfalfa hay made as rapid gains as did the steers on any other ration. 2. Had the alfalfa hay used in the first experiment cost $20 per ton, the average profit on the three lots receiving alfalfa would have been 15 per cent greater than the profit on the best one of the three lots not receiving alfalfa. 3. Cold pressed cottonseed cake did not give as good results, as regards either rate of gain or economy of gain, as did alfalfa hay in a ration for fattening steers. 4. The addition of cold pressed cottonseed cake to a ration of corn, silage, and alfalfa increased the cost of gain and lowered the profits on the steers. 5. The steers receiving silage without exception shed their coats early in the spring and at all times presented a sleek and sappy appearance. 6. Contrary to preceding experiments, a heavy feed of silage with alfalfa hay and corn gave as rapid gains as did either a medium or a light feed of silage with alfalfa hay and corn. The amount of silage which can best be fed to fattening steers apparently must be regarded as unsettled. 7. The steers fed silage in connection with corn and alfalfa suffered a very light shrinkage when shipped to market. Different amounts of silage seemingly had no effect upon the number of pounds shrinkage. 8. Where prairie hay was used in place of alfalfa, small and expensive gains resulted. 9. The individuality of a steer is a very important factor in the rate of gain. The average difference in gains made between the highest and lowest producing steer in each of fourteen different lots was 120 pounds. In practically all cases there was a greater variation in the daily gains made by steers in the same lot than there was in the average daily gains of the different lots. 10. Usually a considerable difference can be noted between poor and good feeder cattle, but sometimes even a careful study of steers does not reveal their feeding possibilities. 11. An advance of 8 cents per bushel in the price of corn increased the cost of gains$1 per 100 pounds. 12. In the second experiment, where a ration of corn and alfafa hay was fed, an increase of 1 cent per bushel in the price of corn had the same effect in increasing the cost of gains as did an increase of $1 per ton in the price of alfalfa hay

Fast recruiting clinical trials – a Utopian dream or logistical nightmare?

Randomised clinical trials that exceed anticipated recruitment rates will by definition have the necessary precision to answer the research question within the expected time, thus ensuring the timely release of data that will inform future clinical practice. In addition, the national or international momentum generated brings with it a collective sense of achievement. Such trials, however, may also identify logistical and scientific problems that researchers should be aware of and for which provision needs to be made. The logistical problems relate to the rapid identification of the extra resources required to allow continued excellence in day-to-day management and monitoring of trial governance (both in participating centres and in coordinating trials units). The scientific/clinical problems include managing issues such as unexpected toxicities and suboptimal compliance, and the lack of time available in a rapidly recruiting trial to address them. A related issue concerns the lack of time available to initiate substudies (e.g. biological substudies), the relevance of which may only become apparent as the trial progresses. Many of these challenges were highlighted by recent experience with the Cancer Research UK Taxotere as Adjuvant Chemotherapy trial

Systematic Approach to Gauge-Invariant Relations between Lepton Flavor Violating Processes

We analyze four-lepton contact interactions that lead to lepton flavor violating processes, with violation of individual family lepton number but total lepton number conserved. In an effective Lagrangian framework, the assumption of gauge invariance leads to relations among branching ratios and cross sections of lepton flavor violating processes. In this paper, we work out how to use these relations systematically. We also study the consequences of loop-induced processes.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure, 5 table

Current Concepts and Trends in Human-Automation Interaction

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The purpose of this panel was to provide a general overview and discussion of some of the most current and controversial concepts and trends in human-automation interaction. The panel was composed of eight researchers and practitioners. The panelists are well-known experts in the area and offered differing views on a variety of different human-automation topics. The range of concepts and trends discussed in this panel include: general taxonomies regarding stages and levels of automation and function allocation, individualized adaptive automation, automation-induced complacency, economic rationality and the use of automation, the potential utility of false alarms, the influence of different types of false alarms on trust and reliance, and a system-wide theory of trust in multiple automated aids

Spiky oscillations in NF-kB signalling

The NF-kB signalling system is involved in a variety of cellular processes including immune response, inflammation, and apoptosis. Recent experiments have found oscillations in the nuclear-cytoplasmic translocation of the NF-kB transcription factor. How the cell uses the oscillations to differentiate input conditions and send specific signals to downstream genes is an open problem. We shed light on this issue by examining the small core network driving the oscillations, which, we show, is designed to produce periodic spikes in nuclear NF-kB concentration. The oscillations can be used to regulate downstream genes in a variety of ways. In particular, we show that genes to whose operator sites NF-kB binds and dissociates fast can respond very sensitively to changes in the input signal, with effective Hill coefficients in excess of 20.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figure

Hydrologic indicators of hot spots and hot moments of mercury methylation potential along river corridors

The authors acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation: EAR-1226741 (to M.B.S.) and EAR-1225630 (to J.D.B.), and from the REG Trust (to M.B.S.).The biogeochemical cycling of metals and other contaminants in river-floodplain corridors is controlled by microbial activity responding to dynamic redox conditions. Riverine flooding thus has the potential to affect speciation of redox-sensitive metals such as mercury (Hg). Therefore, inundation history over a period of decades potentially holds information on past production of bioavailable Hg. We investigate this within a Northern California river system with a legacy of landscape-scale 19th century hydraulic gold mining. We combine hydraulic modeling, Hg measurements in sediment and biota, and first-order calculations of mercury transformation to assess the potential role of river floodplains in producing monomethylmercury (MMHg), a neurotoxin which accumulates in local and migratory food webs. We identify frequently inundated floodplain areas, as well as floodplain areas inundated for long periods. We quantify the probability of MMHg production potential (MPP) associated with hydrology in each sector of the river system as a function of the spatial patterns of overbank inundation and drainage, which affect long-term redox history of contaminated sediments. Our findings identify river floodplains as periodic, temporary, yet potentially important, loci of biogeochemical transformation in which contaminants may undergo change during limited periods of the hydrologic record. We suggest that inundation is an important driver of MPP in river corridors and that the entire flow history must be analyzed retrospectively in terms of inundation magnitude and frequency in order to accurately assess biogeochemical risks, rather than merely highlighting the largest floods or low-flow periods. MMHg bioaccumulation within the aquatic food web in this system may pose a major risk to humans and waterfowl that eat migratory salmonids, which are being encouraged to come up these rivers to spawn. There is a long-term pattern of MPP under the current flow regime that is likely to be accentuated by increasingly common large floods with extended duration.PostprintPeer reviewe

Top guns may not fire:Best-shot group contests with group-specific public good prizes

We analyze a group contest in which n groups compete to win a group-specific public good prize. Group sizes can be different and any player may value the prize differently within and across groups. Players exert costly efforts simultaneously and independently. Only the highest effort (the best-shot) within each group represents the group effort that determines the winning group. We fully characterize the set of equilibria and show that in any equilibrium at most one player in each group exerts strictly positive effort. There always exists an equilibrium in which only the highest value player in each active group exerts strictly positive effort. However, perverse equilibria may exist in which the highest value players completely free-ride on others by exerting no effort. We provide conditions under which the set of equilibria can be restricted and discuss contest design implications

A novel phase variant of the cholera pathogen shows stress-adaptive cryptic transcriptomic signatures

© 2016 The Author(s). Background: In a process known as phase variation, the marine bacterium and cholera pathogen Vibrio cholerae alternately expresses smooth or rugose colonial phenotypes, the latter being associated with advanced biofilm architecture and greater resistance to ecological stress. To define phase variation at the transcriptomic level in pandemic V. cholerae O1 El Tor strain N16961, we compared the RNA-seq-derived transcriptomes among the smooth parent N16961, its rugose derivative (N16961R) and a smooth form obtained directly from the rugose at high frequencies consistent with phase variation (N16961SD). Results: Differentially regulated genes which clustered into co-expression groups were identified for specific cellular functions, including acetate metabolism, gluconeogenesis, and anaerobic respiration, suggesting an important link between these processes and biofilm formation in this species. Principal component analysis separated the transcriptome of N16961SD from the other phase variants. Although N16961SD was defective in biofilm formation, transcription of its biofilm-related vps and rbm gene clusters was nevertheless elevated as judged by both RNA-seq and RT-qPCR analyses. This transcriptome signature was shared with N16961R, as were others involving two-component signal transduction, chemotaxis, and c-di-GMP synthesis functions. Conclusions: Precise turnarounds in gene expression did not accompany reversible phase transitions (i.e., smooth to rugose to smooth) in the cholera pathogen. Transcriptomic signatures consisting of up-regulated genes involved in biofilm formation, environmental sensing and persistence, chemotaxis, and signal transduction, which were shared by N16961R and N16961SD variants, may implicate a stress adaptation in the pathogen that facilitates transition of the N16961SD smooth form back to rugosity should environmental conditions dictate

Search for neutrinoless tau decays tau -> 3l and tau -> l K0S

Neutrinoless tau-lepton decays into either three leptons (tau- -> l1- l2 l3) or one lepton and one K0S meson(tau- -> l- K0S) where lepton l means either an electron or muon, have been searched for using 48.6 fb^{-1} of data collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB e+e- collider. No evidence for candidate decays are found in any channel. Therefore we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fraction for 8 different decay modes. These limits are more stringent than those set previously and reach to the 10^{-7} level.Comment: Invited talk at the Seventh International Workshop on Tau Lepton Physics (TAU02), Santa Cruz, Ca, USA, Sept 2002, 7 pages, LaTeX, 3 eps figure