Does Size Matters? Relationships among Social Dominance and Some Morphometric Traits upon Out-of-Season Reproductive Outcomes in Anestrus Dairy Goats Treated with P4 + eCG

The possible role of the social rank (R) (i.e., low-LSR, middle-MSR, or high-HSR) in anestrus goats exposed to a P4 + eCG (D) (i.e., 100 or 350 IU) estrus induction protocol (EIP) was evaluated. Goats (Alpine-Saanen-Nubian × Criollo; n = 70; 25° North) managed under stall-fed conditions were all ultrasound evaluated to confirm anestrous status, while the social rank was determined 30 d prior to the EIP. The response variables included estrus induction (EI, %), duration of estrus (DUR, h), ovulation rate (OR, n), live weight (LW, kg), thoracic perimeter (TP, cm), thoracic diameter (TD, cm), body length (BL, cm), height at withers (HW, cm), beard length (BEA, cm), compactness index (COM, cm), and anamorphosis index (ANA, cm), as affected by R, D, and the R × D interaction were evaluated, while the correlation coefficients among reproductive and morphometric variables were quantified. An R × D interaction (p 0.05) with any response variable, either reproductive or morphometric. As expected, LW had high correlation coefficients (p < 0.01) with TP (0.86), TD (0.88), BL (0.82), HW (0.75), BEA (0.51), COM (0.97), and ANA (0.75). In general, the morphometric variables as a whole demonstrated important correlation coefficients among them (p < 0.01), ranging from 0.38 up to 0.84. To estimate the importance of the morphometric differences between social rank upon estrus induction, a principal component (PC) analysis was performed based on the correlation matrix derived from the corporal measurements. The PC1 and PC2 explained 70.3% and 17.6% of the morphometric variation, respectively. The PC1 was a measure of the goat size (i.e., small, medium, large) and its association with estrus occurrence was evaluated using a logistic regression model; the bigger the goat, the increased probability of being in estrus, by up to five times compared to small goats. Our results confirm that the higher social ranked, larger goats amalgamated some fundamental factors to be successful: aggressiveness, primacy to food access, augmented live weight, and corporal size; all of these were able to modulate out-of-season reproductive success in crossbred dairy goats subjected to an estrus induction protocol and managed under stall-fed conditions in Northern Mexico

Nurses' perceptions of aids and obstacles to the provision of optimal end of life care in ICU

Contains fulltext : 172380.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Efectos políticos del activismo judicial de la corte constitucional colombiana que negativamente podrían impactar el proceso de inclusión social de la minoría LGTB

Este trabajo advierte la necesidad de analizar los efectos políticos del activismo judicial de la Corte Constitucional Colombiana que negativamente impactan el proceso de inclusión social de la minoría LGTB. La hipótesis es que la Corte Constitucional con la modificación del concepto de familia en favor de la minoría LGTB, y en contra de la mayoría que rechaza la “modernización” de la noción “tradicional” de familia; no produce el deseado efecto político-social de inclusión, por el contrario, el resultado empíricamente apreciable es el recrudecimiento de la discriminación, que se acentúa por la creciente resistencia de la mayoría a incorporar social y políticamente en su núcleo los nuevos derechos reconocidos a la comunidad LGTB, siendo evidente la ineficacia de los derechos recién adquiridos, dada la incapacidad del Estado para obligar política y socialmente a la mayoría a que sea inclusiva con la minoría LGTB