5,520 research outputs found
Comparative grazing behaviour of lactating suckler cows of contrasting genetic merit and genotype
peer-reviewedThe objective of this study was to determine if differences in grazing behaviour exist between lactating suckler cows diverse in genetic merit for the national Irish Replacement index and of two contrasting genotypes. Data from 103 cows: 41 high and 62 low genetic merit, 43 beef and 60 beef x dairy (BDX) cows were available over a single grazing season in 2015. Milk yield, grass dry matter intake (GDMI), cow live weight (BW) and body condition score (BCS) were recorded during the experimental period, with subsequent measures of production efficiency extrapolated. Grazing behaviour data were recorded twice in conjunction with aforementioned measures, using Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research headset behaviour recorders. The effect of genotype and cow genetic merit during mid- and late-lactation on grazing behaviour phenotypes, milk yield, BW, BCS and GDMI were estimated using linear mixed models. Genetic merit had no significant effect on any production parameters investigated, with the exception that low genetic merit had a greater BCS than high genetic merit cows. Beef cows were heavier, had a greater BCS but produced less milk per day than BDX. The BDX cows produced more milk per 100 kg BW and per unit intake and had greater GDMI, intake per bite and rate of GDMI per 100 kg BW than beef cows. High genetic merit cows spent longer grazing and took more bites per day but had a lower rate of GDMI than low genetic merit cows, with the same trend found when expressed per unit of BW. High genetic merit cows spent longer grazing than low genetic merit cows when expressed on a per unit intake basis. Absolute rumination measures were similar across cow genotype and genetic merit. When expressed per unit BW, BDX cows spent longer ruminating per day compared to beef. However, on a per unit intake basis, beef cows ruminated longer and had more mastications than BDX. Intake per bite and rate of intake was positively correlated with GDMI per 100 kg BW. The current study implies that despite large differences in grazing behaviour between cows diverse in genetic merit, few differences were apparent in terms of production efficiency variables extrapolated. Conversely, differences in absolute grazing and ruminating behaviour measurements did not exist between beef cows of contrasting genotype. However, efficiency parameters investigated illustrate that BDX will subsequently convert herbage intake more efficiently to milk production
Effects of dietary fibre and the provision of a foraging substrate on the welfare of sows in different grouping systems
End of project reportThere are no clear guidelines on how best to meet the EU legislative requirement (Council Directive 2001/88/EC) that pregnant sows and gilts should be provided with sufficient amounts of bulky or high fibre diets and high energy food to satisfy hunger and the motivation to chew. Therefore the aim of this project was to investigate the effect of increasing dietary fibre levels and providing access to a foraging substrate on the welfare of sows housed in dynamic and static groups. To achieve this a review paper was compiled and three experiments were conducted.
The aim of the review paper was to assess the effectiveness of increasing dietary fibre levels on the welfare of pregnant sows. Previous research found that increasing dietary fibre levels decrease activity levels and the performance of stereotypic behaviour, and increase resting behaviour. However, high fibre diets do not appear to reduce aggression between group-housed pregnant sows. The research clearly showed that the effectiveness of high fibre diets is influenced by the source of fibre, with soluble fibres being more effective in reducing stereotypic behaviours than insoluble fibres. However the optimum fibrous ingredient, or combination of ingredients, and the optimum dietary inclusion rate for these ingredients remains unclear
RascalC: A Jackknife Approach to Estimating Single and Multi-Tracer Galaxy Covariance Matrices
To make use of clustering statistics from large cosmological surveys,
accurate and precise covariance matrices are needed. We present a new code to
estimate large scale galaxy two-point correlation function (2PCF) covariances
in arbitrary survey geometries that, due to new sampling techniques, runs times faster than previous codes, computing finely-binned covariance
matrices with negligible noise in less than 100 CPU-hours. As in previous
works, non-Gaussianity is approximated via a small rescaling of shot-noise in
the theoretical model, calibrated by comparing jackknife survey covariances to
an associated jackknife model. The flexible code, RascalC, has been publicly
released, and automatically takes care of all necessary pre- and
post-processing, requiring only a single input dataset (without a prior 2PCF
model). Deviations between large scale model covariances from a mock survey and
those from a large suite of mocks are found to be be indistinguishable from
noise. In addition, the choice of input mock are shown to be irrelevant for
desired noise levels below mocks. Coupled with its generalization
to multi-tracer data-sets, this shows the algorithm to be an excellent tool for
analysis, reducing the need for large numbers of mock simulations to be
computed.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. Code is available at
http://github.com/oliverphilcox/RascalC with documentation at
http://rascalc.readthedocs.io
Self reported aggravating activities do not demonstrate a consistent directional pattern in chronic non specific low back pain patients: An observational study
Question: Do the self-reported aggravating activities of chronic non-specific low back pain
patients demonstrate a consistent directional pattern? Design: Cross-sectional observational
study. Participants: 240 chronic non specific low back pain patients. Outcome measure: We
invited experienced clinicians to classify each of the three self-nominated aggravating
activities from the Patient Specific Functional Scale by the direction of lumbar spine
movement. Patients were described as demonstrating a directional pattern if all nominated
activities moved the spine into the same direction. Analyses were undertaken to determine if
the proportion of patients demonstrating a directional pattern was greater than would be
expected by chance. Results: In some patients, all tasks did move the spine into the same
direction, but this proportion did not differ from chance (p = 0.328). There were no clinical or
demographic differences between those who displayed a directional pattern and those who did
not (all p > 0.05). Conclusion: Using patient self-reported aggravating activities we were
unable to demonstrate the existence of a consistent pattern of adverse movement in patients
with chronic non-specific low back pain
Disentanglement and Decoherence without dissipation at non-zero temperatures
Decoherence is well understood, in contrast to disentanglement. According to
common lore, irreversible coupling to a dissipative environment is the
mechanism for loss of entanglement. Here, we show that, on the contrary,
disentanglement can in fact occur at large enough temperatures even for
vanishingly small dissipation (as we have shown previously for decoherence).
However, whereas the effect of on decoherence increases exponentially with
time, the effect of on disentanglement is constant for all times,
reflecting a fundamental difference between the two phenomena. Also, the
possibility of disentanglement at a particular increases with decreasing
initial entanglement.Comment: 3 page
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