Reproductive and Related Disorders on Dairy Farms with Different Levels of Welfare Quality

In this paper reproductive results of six dairy cows farms with total of 766 (farm 1 – 107; farm 2 –175; farm 3 – 49; farm 4 – 400; farm 5 –20 and farm 6 – 11 milking cows) with different system of rearing and welfare level were analyzed. A dairy cow reproductive efficiency is a key factor for milk production - impaired reproductive performance is a major cause of reduced production in dairy industry. Welfare and reproductive disorders data were collected by questionnaire regarding criteria of Animal Need Index (ANI – Bartussek et al., 2000) and compared by multidimensional criteria of total discriminating effect. Possibility of movement, lighting and air quality in the accommodation facility, type and quality of floor, possibility of social contacts with other cows and interaction of stockman with cattle were compared and analysed in respect of farm welfare. In respect to the welfare level of lowest ranked farm (farm 6), farms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 were ranked as 4th, 2nd, 1st, 5th, 3rd, and 6th, respectively, but in respect to the reproductive and related disorders occurrence rate lowest ranked farm (farm 4), farms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 were ranked as 1st, 4th, 2nd, 6th, 5th and 3rd. Discrepancy derives from the fact that reproduction data were collected for a year, while welfare assessment describes reached level in on particular moment of time, not covering all potential causes of reproductive disorders. Reduced reproductive success would seem promising as information about poor farm welfare, although good results often are not related to good welfare. Nevertheless, assessed welfare protection level provides important information about herd health and potential reproduction problems, pointing out that there are many opportunities for improving the quality of the welfare of dairy cows, mostly through improving the housing conditions of dairy cows

The evolution of the eutrophication of the Palić Lake (Serbia)

Eutrophication is a world-wide environmental issue. The Palic Lake is a shallow lake typical for the Pannonian plain. The Lake itself was in a very bad condition during the late sixties of the last century; polluted and hypertrophic. Due to inadequate water quality, it was dried out in 1971 and re-established in 1977 and since then its trophicity has been worsening. The lake has recreational purposes but it is also a collector for treated municipal waste waters coming from the lagoons for active sludge water treatment. The sewage discharges from rapidly developing towns in the watershed and the growing use of fertilizers in agriculture increased the nutrient load to the Lake in the last decades. A steady increase of phosphorus loading is the most important factor of the lake  eutrophication. The result of the accelerated eutrophication is the enormous amount of sediment at the bottom of the Palic Lake. Therefore, in the lake that covers an area of 565 ha and volume of 10 million m3, there was 1.900.160 m3 of sediment. The sediment thickness varied from 0.3 to 1.2 m. In summer 2010, the recreational part of the lake (sector IV) was 1.311.356 m3 of sediment, characterized with concentrations of total phosphorus (TP) of 2885 mg/kg, 4300 mg/kg total nitrogen (TN) and 39000 mg/kg total organic carbon TOC. The sediment of the Palic Lake was not loaded with high concentrations of heavy metals. Everything mentioned supports the fact that the restoration of this aquatic system is necessary and applied measures have to be grounded on the principles of ecoremediation technologies.Key words: Eutrophication, Palic Lake, sediment, total N, total P

Native structure-based modeling and simulation of biomolecular systems per mouse click

Background Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations provide valuable insight into biomolecular systems at the atomic level. Notwithstanding the ever-increasing power of high performance computers current MD simulations face several challenges: the fastest atomic movements require time steps of a few femtoseconds which are small compared to biomolecular relevant timescales of milliseconds or even seconds for large conformational motions. At the same time, scalability to a large number of cores is limited mostly due to long-range interactions. An appealing alternative to atomic-level simulations is coarse-graining the resolution of the system or reducing the complexity of the Hamiltonian to improve sampling while decreasing computational costs. Native structure-based models, also called Gō-type models, are based on energy landscape theory and the principle of minimal frustration. They have been tremendously successful in explaining fundamental questions of, e.g., protein folding, RNA folding or protein function. At the same time, they are computationally sufficiently inexpensive to run complex simulations on smaller computing systems or even commodity hardware. Still, their setup and evaluation is quite complex even though sophisticated software packages support their realization. Results Here, we establish an efficient infrastructure for native structure-based models to support the community and enable high-throughput simulations on remote computing resources via GridBeans and UNICORE middleware. This infrastructure organizes the setup of such simulations resulting in increased comparability of simulation results. At the same time, complete workflows for advanced simulation protocols can be established and managed on remote resources by a graphical interface which increases reusability of protocols and additionally lowers the entry barrier into such simulations for, e.g., experimental scientists who want to compare their results against simulations. We demonstrate the power of this approach by illustrating it for protein folding simulations for a range of proteins. Conclusions We present software enhancing the entire workflow for native structure-based simulations including exception-handling and evaluations. Extending the capability and improving the accessibility of existing simulation packages the software goes beyond the state of the art in the domain of biomolecular simulations. Thus we expect that it will stimulate more individuals from the community to employ more confidently modeling in their research

Relationship Between Endocrine Profile, Energy Balance and Milk Yield in Dairy Cows During Lactation

The objective of the present study was to investigate relationship between endocrine profile with energy balance (EB) and milk yield (MY) in Simmental dairy cows during lactation. Fifteen late pregnant cows, 15 early lactation cows and 15 mid lactation cows were chosen for the analysis. Blood samples were collected to measure growth hormone (GH), insulin, triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4). Early lactation cows were found to have higher blood serum concentrations of GH (p0.05), T3 (p0.05) compared to dry and mid lactation cows. Insulin and thyroid hormones were in positive correlation with EB (p<0.05), and in negative correlation with MY (nonsignificant). GH was in positive correlation with MY (p<0.05), but in negative correlation with EB (nonsignificant). Relationship between hormones showed significant positive correlation between insulin and thyroid hormones. These relations are not principaly determinated by EB or MY. Negative correlations between insulin or thyroid hormones with GH were observed. These relations are principaly determinated by EB or MY