Two Case Reports of Life-Threatening Ethanol-Induced Anaphylaxis

Adverse reactions to alcoholic beverages are common and diverse in aetiology. Ethanol-induced anaphylaxis, however, is a rare but often life-threatening condition that warrants careful evaluation in suspected individuals. We present the cases of two patients who developed urticaria, angioedema and throat constriction within minutes of consuming white wine. Both individuals demonstrated no adverse reaction to double-blind placebo-controlled challenges to metabisulphite or sodium salicylate. However, an open challenge to white wine elicited urticaria in both subjects. This reaction was reproduced with a double-blind placebo-controlled challenge to ethanol and was accompanied by a rise in serum total tryptase levels. Positive skin test responses to 2% acetic acid, a breakdown product of ethanol, were elicited from both patients but not from three normal controls. These two cases demonstrate the need for a systematic approach for the evaluation of allergic reactions to alcohol

Rapid brain discrimination of sounds of objects.

Electrical neuroimaging in humans identified the speed and spatiotemporal brain mechanism whereby sounds of living and man-made objects are discriminated. Subjects performed an "oddball" target detection task, selectively responding to sounds of either living or man-made objects on alternating blocks, which were controlled for in their spectrogram and harmonics-to-noise ratios between categories. Analyses were conducted on 64-channel auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) from nontarget trials. Comparing responses to sounds of living versus man-made objects, these analyses tested for modulations in local AEP waveforms, global response strength, and the topography of the electric field at the scalp. In addition, the local autoregressive average distributed linear inverse solution was applied to periods of observed modulations. Just 70 ms after stimulus onset, a common network of brain regions within the auditory "what" processing stream responded more strongly to sounds of man-made versus living objects, with differential activity within the right temporal and left inferior frontal cortices. Over the 155-257 ms period, the duration of activity of a brain network, including bilateral temporal and premotor cortices, differed between categories of sounds. Responses to sounds of living objects peaked approximately 12 ms later and the activity of the brain network active over this period was prolonged relative to that in response to sounds of man-made objects. The earliest task-related effects were observed at approximately 100 ms poststimulus onset, placing an upper limit on the speed of cortical auditory object discrimination. These results provide critical temporal constraints on human auditory object recognition and semantic discrimination processes

Comparative effect of lodging on seed yield of flax and wheat

Non-Peer Reviewe

The contribution of qualitative behavioural assessment to appraisal of livestock welfare

Animal welfare is increasingly important for the Australian livestock industries, to maintain social licence to practice as well as ensuring market share overseas. Improvement of animal welfare in the livestock industries requires several important key steps. Paramount among these, objective measures are needed for welfare assessment that will enable comparison and contrast of welfare implications of husbandry procedures or housing options. Such measures need to be versatile (can be applied under a wide range of on- and off-farm situations), relevant (reveal aspects of the animal’s affective or physiological state that is relevant to their welfare), reliable (can be repeated with confidence in the results), relatively economic to apply, and they need to have broad acceptance by all stakeholders. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) is an integrated measure that characterises behaviour as a dynamic, expressive body language. QBA is a versatile tool requiring little specialist equipment suiting application to in situ assessments that enables comparative, hypothesis-driven evaluation of various industry-relevant practices. QBA is being increasingly used as part of animal welfare assessments in Europe, and although most other welfare assessment methods record ‘problems’ (e.g. lameness, injury scores, and so on), QBA can capture positive aspects of animal welfare (e.g. positively engaged with their environment, playfulness). In this viewpoint, we review the outcomes of recent QBA studies and discuss the potential application of QBA, in combination with other methods, as a welfare assessment tool for the Australian livestock industries

Relative performance of four midge-resistant wheat varietal blends in western Canada

Non-Peer ReviewedOrange wheat blossom midge, Sitodiplosis mosellana (Géhin), causes significant yield losses to spring wheat in western Canada in severe infestations. To mitigate losses, midge-resistant wheat varietal blends, consisting of cultivars carrying the Sm1 midge resistance gene and 10% interspersed midge susceptible refuge, have been made available to farmers. To test their performance relative to conventional midge-susceptible cultivars, four varietal blends were grown during four consecutive years, at eight locations in the provinces of Manitoba Saskatchewan and Alberta, in comparison to four conventional, midge-susceptible cultivars. Midge damage was higher in 2007 and 2010 than in 2008 and 2009. In general, the varietal blends, as a group, yielded more grain than the susceptible cultivars, especially when grown in environments with high midge pressure (5.5 - 35% seed damage). In environments with low midge pressure (0 – 2.6% seed damage), the varietal blend average yield advantage was smaller but still significant, indicating that some of the varietal blends had additional superior attributes, in addition to midge resistance

Review of livestock welfare indicators relevant for the Australian live export industry

Animal welfare is an important issue for the live export industry (LEI), in terms of economic returns, community attitudes and international socio-political relations. Mortality has traditionally been the main welfare measure recorded within the LEI; however, high mortality incidents are usually acted upon after adverse events occur, reducing the scope for proactive welfare enhancement. We reviewed 71 potential animal welfare measures, identifying those measures that would be appropriate for use throughout the LEI for feeder and slaughter livestock species, and categorised these as animal-, environment- and resource-based. We divided the live export supply chain into three sectors: (1) Australian facilities, (2) vessel and (3) destination country facilities. After reviewing the relevant regulations for each sector of the industry, we identified 38 (sector 1), 35 (sector 2) and 26 (sector 3) measures already being collected under current practice. These could be used to form a ‘welfare information dashboard’: a LEI-specific online interface for collecting data that could contribute towards standardised industry reporting. We identified another 20, 25 and 28 measures that are relevant to each LEI sector (sectors 1, 2, 3, respectively), and that could be developed and integrated into a benchmarking system in the future

The effect of incorporating the midge resistance (Sm1) gene in wheat

Non-Peer ReviewedOrange wheat blossom midge, Sitodiplosis mosellana (Géhin), was first detected in Manitoba in 1901, but now is present in all three prairie provinces of western Canada. In severe infestations, this insect may cause significant yield losses to spring wheat. To mitigate losses, midge-resistant wheat varietal blends, consisting of cultivars carrying the Sm1 midge resistance gene and 10% interspersed midge susceptible refuge, are now available to farmers. The refuge prevents this resistance to be overcome by the insect. To test the field performance of these varietal blends, relative to conventional midge-susceptible cultivars, four varietal blends were grown during four consecutive years, at eight locations in the provinces of Manitoba Saskatchewan and Alberta, in comparison to four conventional, midge-susceptible cultivars. Midge damage was higher in 2007 and 2010, than in 2008 and 2009. In general, the varietal blends, as a group, yielded more grain than the susceptible cultivars, especially when grown in environments with high midge pressure (5.5 - 35% seed damage). In environments with low midge pressure (0 – 2.6% seed damage), the varietal blend average yield advantage was smaller but still significant, indicating that some of the varietal blends had additional superior attributes, in addition to midge resistance. Significant differences in midge damage were observed within the resistant and the susceptible groups of the cultivars tested. Midge resistance did not protect wheat against loss of market grade

Anomalous c-axis charge dynamics in copper oxide materials

Within the t-J model, the c-axis charge dynamics of the copper oxide materials in the underdoped and optimally doped regimes is studied by considering the incoherent interlayer hopping. It is shown that the c-axis charge dynamics is mainly governed by the scattering from the in-plane fluctuation. In the optimally doped regime, the c-axis resistivity is a linear in temperatures, and shows the metallic-like behavior for all temperatures, while the c-axis resistivity in the underdoped regime is characterized by a crossover from the high temperature metallic-like behavior to the low temperature semiconducting-like behavior, which are consistent with experiments and numerical simulations.Comment: 6 pages, Latex, Three figures are adde

Strategic partnership of stakeholders: a veritable tool for sustainable fishery resources in Nigeria

Fishery resources are very important resource from the aquatic environment to the Nigerian economy. Stakeholders involvement in its management is highly important therefore, this paper proposes two frameworks against which sustainable fishery should be based, vis-a-vis stakeholders participation. The paper showed that decision-making involving stakeholders would enhance the goals of sustainable fishery development and create unity of purpose among various stakeholder

One particle interchain hopping in coupled Hubbard chains

Interchain hopping in systems of coupled chains of correlated electrons is investigated by exact diagonalizations and Quantum-Monte-Carlo methods. For two weakly coupled Hubbard chains at commensurate densities (e.g. n=1/3) the splitting at the Fermi level between bonding and antibonding bands is strongly reduced (but not suppressed) by repulsive interactions extending to a few lattice spacings. The magnitude of this reduction is directly connected to the exponent $\alpha$ of the 1D Luttinger liquid. However, we show that the incoherent part of the single particle spectral function is much less affected by the interchain coupling. This suggests that incoherent interchain hopping could occur for intermediate $\alpha$ values.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX 3.0, 7 PostScript figures in uuencoded for