WELFARE, PRODUCTIVITY AND QUALITATIVE TRAITS OF EGG IN LAYING HENS REARED UNDER DIFFERENT REARING SYSTEMS

The welfare, production performance and some qualitative characteristics of eggs obtained under three different rearing systems (conventional, organic and organic-plus) were compared. Three homogeneous groups, each of 120 White Leghorn hens, fed the same diets, were assigned to different rearing systems and data were recorded for 1 year. The welfare indicators were the following: first impact, behavioural patterns, tonic immobility and plumage status. Productive performance was recorded (% deposition; egg weight) and some qualitative traits (Haugh index, yolk colour, yolk, albumen and egg shell weight) were evaluated. Well-being was greatly affected by rearing system. The best welfare status was observed in hens of the organic-plus group, whereas the worst was in the conventional group (caged hens). Caged hens showed little interest or fear of observers, at times they had high tonic immobility and some aggressive pecking; the status of their plumage was very poor. On the contrary, caged hens produced more eggs, even if their qualitative traits (Haugh index and yolk colour) were worse than the organicplus eggs. The intense motor activity of organic hens and the concurrent intake of grass reduced their productive level; further egg deposition seemed more affected by seasonal variation

X-band scattering measurements of earth surfaces from an aircraft

Airborne equipment for measuring X band scattering of earth surface

Flight tests of a radar scattering-coefficient measuring instrument. Part 1 - Summary

Flight tests of radar scattering coefficient measuring instrumen

Metastatic Uterine Leiomyosarcoma in the Upper Buccal Gingiva Misdiagnosed as an Epulis

Uterine leiomyosarcoma (LMS) is a rare tumor constituting 1% of all uterine malignancies. This sarcoma demonstrates an aggressive growth pattern with an high rate of recurrence with hematologic dissemination; the most common sites are lung, liver, and peritoneal cavity, head and neck district being rarely interested. Only other four cases of metastasis in the oral cavity have been previously described. The treatment of choice is surgery and the use of adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation has limited impact on clinical outcome. In case of metastases, surgical excision can be performed considering extent of disease, number and type of distant lesions, disease free interval from the initial diagnosis to the time of metastases, and expected life span. We illustrate a case of uterine LMS metastasis in the upper buccal gingiva that occurred during chemotherapy in a 63-year-old woman that underwent a total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy for a diagnosis of LMS staged as pT2bN0 and that developed lung metastases eight months after primary treatment. Surgical excision of the oral mass (previously misdiagnosed as epulis at a dental center) and contemporary reconstruction with pedicled temporalis muscle flap was performed in order to improve quality of life. Even if resection was achieved in free margins, "local" relapse was observed 5 months after surgery

Terrorist Use of the Internet and Cyberspace: Issues and Responses, in: Terrorists' Use of the Internet, pp. 1-21

The authors of this paper consider recent developments involving terrorist use of the internet and cyberspace for a range of purposes, as well as renewed concerns relating to potential terrorist attacks against critical infrastructure and their control systems. Following from an overview of recent trends, they discuss public and private efforts to respond to existing and emerging threats. The authors anchor these within the context of current efforts to manage a range of interrelated cyber security challenges, focusing predominantly on the international and regional response, as well as efforts by industry actors to deal with terrorist use of their products and services

Geophysical Monitoring at Laboratory Scale of Aerobic Degradation of Diesel Oil

The study is aimed to monitor bioremediation of hydrocarbon-polluted soils by measuring geophysical electromagnetic parameters. A previous study at lab scale showed that biostimulated indigenous microorganisms can remove diesel oil from soil successfully. Herein, we focused on the result of a laboratory test using Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) probes to measure electrical conductivity and dielectric permittivity in a column of sandy soil artificially contaminated with diesel oil. To simulate aerobic degradation of hydrocarbons, mesocosms were set-up in two Plexiglas columns (inner diameter = 13.8 cm) with 3.4 kg of soil (layer height = 14 cm) spiked with 0.24 kg of diesel oil and hydrated with 0.4 kg of Mineral Salt Medium for Bacteria. One mesocosm was aerated by air injection from the bottom of the column, while the other had only natural aeration due to air diffusion through the soil itself. In each column, electrical conductivity and dielectric permittivity were monitored by TDR probes for 105 days. TDR measurements were supported by microbiological and gas chromatographic analyses, along with SEM images. The findings showed that air injection heavily influenced the TDR monitoring, probably due to generation of air bubbles around the probe that interfered with probe-soil coupling. Therefore, the measurement accuracy was reduced in an irreversible way. In the non-aerated system, a slight (2%) and linear decrease of dielectric permittivity was observed over time, meanwhile electrical conductivity decreased by about 30%

Can Narrative Skills Improve in Autism Spectrum Disorder? A Preliminary Study with Verbally Fluent Adolescents Receiving the Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting social and communicative skills, including narrative ability, namely the description of real-life or fictive accounts of temporally and causally related events. With this study, we aimed to determine whether a communicative-pragmatic training, i.e., the version for adolescents of the Cognitive-Pragmatic Treatment, is effective in improving the narrative skills of 16 verbally fluent adolescents with ASD. We used a multilevel approach to assess pre- and post-training narrative production skills. Discourse analysis focused on micro- (i.e., mean length of utterance, complete sentences, omissions of morphosyntactic information) and macrolinguistic measures (i.e., cohesion, coherence errors, lexical informativeness). Results revealed a significant improvement in mean length of utterance and complete sentences and a decrease in cohesion errors. No significant change was found in the other narrative measures investigated. Our findings suggest that a pragmatically oriented training may be useful in improving grammatical efficiency in narrative production