Relocation and expansion planning for dairy producers

Relocating or expanding a dairy facility requires a tremendous amount of time and planning. Owners or managers of dairies will go through a number of steps including: 1) developing a business plan; 2) choosing a design process; 3) developing specifications; 4) selecting location/site; 5) obtaining permits/ legal; 6) obtaining bids; 7) selecting contractors; 8) buying cattle; 9) purchasing feeds; 10) financing; 11) managing construction; 12) hiring and training employees; 13) developing management protocols for the dairy; and 14) managing information flow. The dairy can be divided into these components: 1) milking parlor; 2) cow housing; 3) special needs facility (e.g., hospital, closeups); 4) replacement heifer housing; 5) manure management system; and 6) feed center. This article will focus on milking parlors, cow housing, grouping strategies, and site selection.; Dairy Day, 1999, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 1999

The statistics of atmospheric turbulence at Maunakea measured by RAVEN

Prior statistical knowledge of the turbulence such as turbulence strength, layer altitudes and the outer scale is essential for atmospheric tomography in adaptive-optics (AO). These atmospheric parameters can be estimated from measurements of multiple Shack-Hartmann wave-front sensors (SH-WFSs) by the SLOpe Detection And Ranging (SLODAR). In this paper, we present the statistics of the vertical CN^2 and the outer scale L_0 at Maunakea in Hawaii estimated from 60 hours telemetry data in total from multiple SH-WFSs of RAVEN, which is an on-sky multi-object AO demonstrator tested on the Subaru telescope. The mean seeing during the RAVEN on-sky observations is 0.475 arcsec, and 55% turbulence is below 1.5 km. The vertical profile of CN^2 from the RAVEN SLODAR is consistent with the profiles from CFHT DIMM and MASS, and TMT site characterization

Relocation and expansion planning for dairy producers

Relocating or expanding a dairy facility requires a tremendous amount of time and planning. Owners or managers of dairies will go through a number of steps including: 1) developing a business plan; 2) choosing a design process; 3) developing specifications; 4) selecting location/site; 5) obtaining permits/ legal; 6) obtaining bids; 7) selecting contractors; 8) buying cattle; 9) purchasing feeds; 10) financing; 11) managing construction; 12) hiring and training employees; 13) developing management protocols for the dairy; and 14) managing information flow. The dairy can be divided into these components: 1) milking parlor; 2) cow housing; 3) special needs facility (e.g., hospital, closeups); 4) replacement heifer housing; 5) manure management system; and 6) feed center. This article will focus on milking parlors, cow housing, grouping strategies, and site selection.; Dairy Day, 1999, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 1999

On-sky MOAO performance evaluation of RAVEN

This paper presents the AO performance we got on-sky with RAVEN, a Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO) technical and science demonstrator installed and tested at the Subaru telescope. We report Ensquared-Energy (EE) and Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) measured from science images on Subaru's IRCS taken during all of the on-sky observing runs. We show these metrics as function of different AO modes and atmospheric conditions for two asterisms of natural guide stars. The performances of the MOAO and Ground-Layer AO (GLAO) modes are between the classical Single-Conjugate AO (SCAO) and seeing-limited modes. We achieve the EE of 30% in H-band with the MOAO correction, which is a science requirement for RAVEN. The MOAO provides sightly better performance than the GLAO mode in both asterisms. One of the reasons which cause this small difference between the MOAO and GLAO modes may be the strong GL contribution. Also, the performance of the MOAO modes is affected by the accuracy of the on-sky turbulence profiling by the SLOpe Detection And Ranging (SLODAR) method

“Be an ambassador for change that you would like to see”: a call to action to all stakeholders for co-creation in healthcare and medical research to improve quality of life of people with a neuromuscular disease

BACKGROUND: Patient and public involvement for co-creation is increasingly recognized as a valuable strategy to develop healthcare research targeting patients’ real needs. However, its practical implementation is not as advanced and unanimously accepted as it could be, due to cultural differences and complexities of managing healthcare programs and clinical studies, especially in the rare disease field. MAIN BODY: The European Neuromuscular Centre, a European foundation of patient organizations, involved its key stakeholders in a special workshop to investigate the position of the neuromuscular patient community with respect to healthcare and medical research to identify and address gaps and bottlenecks. The workshop took place in Milan (Italy) on January 19–20, 2018, involving 45 participants who were mainly representatives of the patient community, but also included experts from clinical centers, industry and regulatory bodies. In order to provide practical examples and constructive suggestions, specific topics were identified upfront. The first set of issues concerned the quality of life at specific phases of a patient’s life, such as at the time of diagnosis or during pediatric to adult transition, and patient involvement in medical research on activities in daily living including patient reported outcome measures. The second set of issues concerned the involvement of patients in the management of clinical research tools, such as registries and biobanks, and their participation in study design or marketing authorization processes. Introductory presentations were followed by parallel working group sessions, to gain constructive contributions from all participants. The concept of shared decision making was used to ensure, in discussions, a partnership-based identification of the wishes and needs of all stakeholders involved, and the “ladder of participation” tool served as a model to evaluate the actual and the desired level of patients’ involvement in all topics addressed. A general consensus on the outcome of the meeting was collected during the final plenary session. This paper reports the outcome of the workshop and the specific suggestions derived from the analysis of the first set of topics, related to quality of life. The outcomes of the second set of topics are reported elsewhere and are only briefly summarized herein for the sake of completeness. CONCLUSIONS: The neuromuscular community proved to be very active and engaged at different levels in the healthcare initiatives of interest. The workshop participants critically discussed several topics, providing practical examples where different stakeholders could play a role in making a change and bridging gaps. Overall, they indicated the need for education of all stakeholders for better communication, where everyone should become an ambassador to promote real change. Support should also come from institutions and healthcare bodies both at structural and economic level

Relocation and expansion planning for dairy producers

Relocating or expanding a dairy facility requires a tremendous amount of time and planning. Owners or managers of dairies will go through a number of steps including: 1) developing a business plan; 2) choosing a design process; 3) developing specifications; 4) selecting location/site; 5) obtaining permits/ legal; 6) obtaining bids; 7) selecting contractors; 8) buying cattle; 9) purchasing feeds; 10) financing; 11) managing construction; 12) hiring and training employees; 13) developing management protocols for the dairy; and 14) managing information flow. The dairy can be divided into these components: 1) milking parlor; 2) cow housing; 3) special needs facility (e.g., hospital, closeups); 4) replacement heifer housing; 5) manure management system; and 6) feed center. This article will focus on milking parlors, cow housing, grouping strategies, and site selection

Feed management : a tool for balancing nutrients on dairies and other livestock operations

Many studies have shown that dairies consistently overfeed nutrients such as phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). This practice is expensive and potentially damaging to the environment and to animal health. This publication suggests ways to improve feed management and thus avoid overfeeding P and K. Proper ration balancing is good for the environment and for the producer’s bottom line.Published July 2006. Reviewed March 2016. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalo

Status of the Raven MOAO science demonstrator

Raven is a Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO) scientific demonstrator which will be used on-sky at the Subaru observatory. Raven is currently being built at the University of Victoria AO Lab. In this paper, we present an overview of the final Raven design and then describe lab tests involving prototypes of Raven subsystems. The final design includes three open loop wavefront sensors (WFSs), a laser guide star WFS and two figure/truth WFSs. Two science channels, each containing a deformable mirror (DM), feed light to the Subaru IRCS spectrograph. Central to the Raven MOAO system is a Calibration Unit (CU) which contains multiple sources, a telescope simulator including two rotating phase screens and a ground layer DM that can be used to calibrate and test Raven. We are working with the Raven CU and open loop WFSs to test and validate our open loop calibration and alignment techniques.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

Challenges and opportunities in graduate nursing education by distributed learning in Canada and Brazil

In this paper, the authors share their experience related to graduate nursing programs offered by distributed learning (DL) in Canada and Brazil. Although degrees offered by DL are often the subject of criticism, the authors’ experience has been that learning outcomes have been very good. Nevertheless, a number of challenges and opportunities have been encountered including those associated with flexibility of the program, delivering practice courses at a distance, facilitating interaction, faculty workload and preparation and student support, Newer technologies that may assist in this effort are identified. Despite the challenges encountered, students rate the program highly and ongoing efforts are underway to ensure excellence of such flexible innovative graduate programs in nursing. The authors argue that despite the challenges, DL programs offer high quality graduate education that meets the needs of many nurses