Effect of Growing Beef Replacement Heifers on Wheat Pasture Before and During Breeding on Reproductive Peformance

Unsatisfactory breeding performance has been reported when replacement heifers have been exposed to bulls or AI while grazing small grains. The objective of this study was to compare reproductive performance of heifers grazing wheat pasture before and during breeding with heifers grazing wheat pasture until approximately 3 weeks before breeding. In each of two years, 40 spring-born Angus and Angus crossbred heifers were placed on wheat pasture in December and randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups in mid March. Group one (WP; n=20) remained on wheat pasture (mean CP 26.6 %) through estrus synchronization and fixed-time AI (FAI). Group two (DL; n=20) was placed in drylot and had free choice access to a corn-based growing ration (11.1% CP) through estrous synchronization and FAI. Heifers were exposed to fertile bulls 10 d after FAI for 45 d. Conception after FAI was determined at 32 d post-AI by ultrasonography. Five weekly blood samples starting 5 wks before FAI were obtained to describe luteal activity prior to estrous synchronization and for analysis of urea-N concentrations before and during estrous synchronization and FAI. Reproductive data were analyzed using the PROC GLIMMIX procedure of SAS. Concentrations of urea in plasma or serum, and insulin like growth factor-I were analyzed with the mixed model procedure of SAS with year and sampling block as random variables. The percentage of heifers with luteal activity was 75% and 55% for WP and DL, respectively (P = 0.08). Drylot heifers were heavier than WP heifers (408 vs. 394 kg ? 4.49) at the time of AI (P < 0.01) but were similar (P = 0.43) when final body weight was measured on native range (417 vs. 414 kg ? 5.26). Conception rate to FAI was similar (P = 0.38) for WP (53%) and DL (43%) and final pregnancy rate was similar (P = 0.34) for WP (98%) and DL (95%). Concentrations of urea were less (5.77 mg/dL vs. 29.15 mg/dL, P < 0.01) for DL heifers during all weeks after treatments were imposed. Reproductive performance of heifers grazing wheat pasture during estrous synchronization and FAI was similar to heifers consuming a corn-based growing diet in drylot.Department of Animal Scienc

Pornography, sexual coercion and abuse and sexting in young people’s intimate relationships: A European study

New technology has made pornography increasingly accessible to young people, and a growing evidence base has identified a relationship between viewing pornography and violent or abusive behavior in young men. This article reports findings from a large survey of 4,564 young people aged 14 to 17 in five European countries which illuminate the relationship between regular viewing of online pornography, sexual coercion and abuse and the sending and receiving of sexual images and messages, known as “sexting.” In addition to the survey, which was completed in schools, 91 interviews were undertaken with young people who had direct experience of interpersonal violence and abuse in their own relationships. Rates for regularly viewing online pornography were very much higher among boys and most had chosen to watch pornography. Boys’ perpetration of sexual coercion and abuse was significantly associated with regular viewing of online pornography. Viewing online pornography was also associated with a significantly increased probability of having sent sexual images/messages for boys in nearly all countries. In addition, boys who regularly watched online pornography were significantly more likely to hold negative gender attitudes. The qualitative interviews illustrated that, although sexting is normalized and perceived positively by most young people, it has the potential to reproduce sexist features of pornography such as control and humiliation. Sex and relationships education should aim to promote a critical understanding of pornography among young people that recognizes its abusive and gendered values

A Study of Pre-Service Teachers: Is it Really Mathematics Anxiety?

This research study was motivated by a hypothesis, generated on the basis of formal and informal observations, personal and professional experiences, discussions with prospective teachers and a pilot study conducted by this author; that pre-service teachers have a high level of mathematics anxiety and negative attitudes about mathematics. The primary purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between mathematics anxiety and pre-service teachers. The secondary purposes of this study were to examine the relationship between anxiety and performance and to examine the relationship between math anxiety, test anxiety, and stereotype threat. A quantitative experimental research design was used to investigate the research questions. The population consisted of prospective teachers at colleges and universities in Louisiana. The sets of data are mathematics anxiety of prospective teachers, a test anxiety inventory and a mathematics performance task. A personal data questionnaire was used to gather demographic information and attitudinal information about the participants. The implications of this study for elementary teacher education programs point to increased attention on the mathematics anxiety of pre-service teachers. This process is two-fold. One, it is recommended that pre-service teachers be made aware of their mathematics anxiety level and their attitudes about mathematics and two, it is recommended that teacher education programs acknowledge and address the importance of these affective variables and their role in pedagogy

W. H. Auden's documentary vision

In the destabilized England and America of the 1930s, many artists turned to the documentary method for representing and interpreting social reality. But W. H. Auden came to question this approach in Letters from Iceland, Spain, and Journey to a War. All three works explore the powers and limits of perception. By offering competing and contradictory ways of seeing, they reveal a visual instability at the center of Auden's career--which prefigures the uneasy mixture of the external world and allegorized landscapes in the long poems. Crucial to Auden's experiments are his photographs in the travel books.Letters from Iceland reflects Auden's film work with its radically disjunctive form: lists, quotations, Auden's photographs, and poems and prose by Auden and by Louis MacNeice. The often disorienting photographs blur the line between observer and observed. With the camera eye Auden can connect random images and events while avoiding the causal logic of narrative or the rhetorical logic of expository prose. Demystifying the high modernist collage, he presents this inherently public form as a necessary way of apprehending the external world.Auden could not translate his encounter with the Spanish Civil War into a documentary text. His dispatch "Impressions of Valencia" confuses perspective and spatial relations like the Iceland photographs. As he continues to write about the war, Auden retreats from concrete representation so that in Spain the country is emptied of distinguishing features. Its use of the definite article invites misinterpretation, teasing its readers to fill in abstract representations with their own images.Auden turns to the Sino-Japanese War much more distrustful of documentary. Journey to a War combines verbal and visual representations: the opening poems, Christopher Isherwood's diary, a "Picture Commentary" of Auden's photographs, and the sonnet sequence In Time of War. By constructing precarious relationships among these competing genres, Auden creates a self-conscious, unstable text. Both writers must acknowledge the imperialist vision they inherit from Britain--Journey to a War marks their negotiations to allow the Chinese a reciprocal gaze. The book shows Auden's ultimate rejection of documentary by questioning the acts of seeing and recording.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio

Thirteen Tactics for Teaching Poetry as Architecture

What if encounters between modernist poetry and architecture exceed inspiration, imagery, and allusions? These two modes of making have crossed boundaries for over a century, from Walt Whitman’s ecstatic stanzas on Manhattan skyscrapers to architect John Hejduk’s poetry of memory and place. Buildings become materials for poetry, and poems become material for building. When a literary critic and an architect build on overlaps they have discovered in syllabi for American Poetry and Architecture Studio courses, their teaching collaboration becomes a sustainable maker-space for student work—and for the Humanities more generally. We found that linking a literature survey to an architectural design studio brings materiality and resourcefulness to working with poems and that interacting with the Humanities demonstrates praxis (theory + practice) from the perspective of architectural pedagogy. Our classes also engaged each other through The Repurpose Project, a community space that promotes reuse and diverts waste from the local landfill. The profusion of readily available materials at Repurpose afforded students with a rich sampling of architectural textures and languages, opening new possibilities for thinking and making. In an academic climate that groups literary studies and architecture as “not-STEM,” we designed sustainable and resilient pedagogies that go beyond problem solving. Finding the same quality of renewable resourcefulness in Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” we offer 13 tactics for teaching poetry as architecture

Thirteen Tactics for Teaching Poetry as Architecture

What if encounters between modernist poetry and architecture exceed inspiration, imagery, and allusions? These two modes of making have crossed boundaries for over a century, from Walt Whitman&rsquo;s ecstatic stanzas on Manhattan skyscrapers to architect John Hejduk&rsquo;s poetry of memory and place. Buildings become materials for poetry, and poems become material for building. When a literary critic and an architect build on overlaps they have discovered in syllabi for American Poetry and Architecture Studio courses, their teaching collaboration becomes a sustainable maker-space for student work&mdash;and for the Humanities more generally. We found that linking a literature survey to an architectural design studio brings materiality and resourcefulness to working with poems and that interacting with the Humanities demonstrates praxis (theory + practice) from the perspective of architectural pedagogy. Our classes also engaged each other through The Repurpose Project, a community space that promotes reuse and diverts waste from the local landfill. The profusion of readily available materials at Repurpose afforded students with a rich sampling of architectural textures and languages, opening new possibilities for thinking and making. In an academic climate that groups literary studies and architecture as &ldquo;not-STEM,&rdquo; we designed sustainable and resilient pedagogies that go beyond problem solving. Finding the same quality of renewable resourcefulness in Wallace Stevens&rsquo;s &ldquo;Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,&rdquo; we offer 13 tactics for teaching poetry as architecture

Hellenic by Design: H.D., Architecture, and Future Modernism

Modernist poet H.D. saw ancient Greek words as portals and gates to new ways of writing. Her Imagist poems often push against the medium of the printed page, taking on qualities of Classical artifacts and modernist paintings. What happens when H.D.’s Hellenism generates literal portals for architectural design? And how might these crossings of materials and academic disciplines foretell future modernisms? This essay reconsiders H.D.’s Imagist practice to propose that her iconic poems are not painterly at heart, but architectural.  Collaborating as a literary critic and an architect, we bring these early poems into conversation with recent work from an undergraduate design studio in the University of Florida’s School of Architecture. Our analysis also offers an ex-centric narrative of modernist making—one that considers the outlier spaces housing H.D.’s vanguard poems, the ways “Oread” occupies the space of the page and its spatial transformations, and the poem’s provocations for emergent spaces in students’ design projects. Crossing materials and disciplinary thresholds, the future of modernist poetry will create and occupy new spaces in the university curriculum.

Strip Tillage in California's Central Valley

Strip-tillage, a form of conservation tillage, limits soil disruption to a narrow strip down each planting line, thus helping maintain soil structure and minimize dust. Read about new equipment and techniques, as well as the many benefits of this method