Zweijährige Laktationen durch einmal ausgesetzte Kalbung eine Fallstudie

In recent Danish research (Lehmann 2016) extended lactations are ranging up to 17 months. In this paper the data of a Belgian dairy farm with two years lactations (or intermitted calving) are examined. The two years lactation of 31 cows result in a lower replacement rate (16 %), less costs for rearing calves and heifers besides less animals being slaughtered for about the same amount of milk. During the two years lactation of 9 cows, milk production was reduced in the second year of the lactation (2012) by an average of -718 kg. But it did increase in the following one years lactation by +1385 kg. Thus the lactation following the intermitted calving did more than compensate for the reduced performance in the second half of the two years lactation. Over three years of lactation (2012-2014) it was +222 kg with intermitted calving compared to the control group. From a vegetarian perspective, during a two years lactation, theoretically only half of the animals as before are being born and slaughtered, while producing the same amount of milk. This might be a possibility to generally reduce the amount of animals slaughtered and a step towards a cattle husbandry without slaughtering

Motive und Zugang zur Präparateanwendung

Der Bericht enthält Teilausschnitte und Interviews aus der Arbeit "Erfahrungen von Bauern mit den biologisch-dynamischen Präparaten und ihre Vorstellungen über deren Wirkungsweisen"(Universität Kassel, 1999). Ergänzend zu den wissenschaftlichen Forschungsergebnissen zur Präparateanwendung wird hier der praktische Erfahrungsschatz aus Beobachtungen und Einsichten der bäuerlichen Praxis vermittelt

Pioniere einer Rinderhaltung mit natürlichem Sterben

Vegetarianism and Veganism have become the subject of public debate. But even a vegetarian diet including milk products results in the slaughtering of cows after their productive life and in the slaughtering of fattened male breed cattle. Narrative and semi-structured interviews were conducted on 5 farms that do not slaughter their cattle. These farms were either certified as organic farms, or are former organic farms or strongly oriented toward organic farming. Subsequently the interviews were analysed applying Grounded Theory. The emerging four principles of a care-system for healthy, handicapped, old, ill and dying cattle are described and related to the IFOAM principles. Further on innovations leading to this care-system and the main challenges it faces are elaborated. Cattle husbandry without slaughtering, that includes sanctuaries and farms which milk their cows is an emerging innovative example of an ethical choice that has the life of the animals as its main “product” and milk rather as a by-product

Landwirtschaft und Kunst: ART-Gerechte Haltungen

The project Agriculture and Art (Landwirtschaft und Kunst) offers the unique opportunities to experience three different forms of art-activities: 1) the platform “art in the house of ecology”, 2) the open studio “burning questions” and 3) the exhibition of posters representing the work of artists concerned with the rural context. All activities are an experiment in the cocperative field of art and sciences – a transdisciplinary vision

Local Support Assembly of the ATLAS Pixel Detector

The barrel part of the ATLAS pixel detector will consist of 112 carbon-carbon structures called "staves" with 13 hybrid detector modules being glued on each stave. The demands on the glue joints are high, both in terms of mechanical precision and thermal contact. To achieve this precision a custom-made semi-automated mounting machine has been constructed in Wuppertal, which provides a precision in the order of tens of microns. As this is the last stage of the detector assembly providing an opportunity for stringent tests, a detailed procedure has been defined for assessing both mechanical and electrical properties. This note gives an overview of the procedure for affixation and tests, and summarizes the first results of the production.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure

LONG-TERM SURVIVAL IN METASTATIC MELANOMA PATIENTS WITH LEPTOMENINGEAL DISEASE TREATED WITH INTRATHECAL INTERLEUKIN-2

BACKGROUND: Metastatic melanoma patients with leptomeningeal disease (LMD) have an extremely poor prognosis and a paucity of effective treatment options. We assessed the safety and efficacy of intrathecal interleukin-2 (IT IL-2) in metastatic melanoma patients with LMD. METHODS: We reviewed the outcomes of 43 consecutive metastatic melanoma patients with LMD who were treated with IT IL-2 from 2006 to 2014 in a Compassionate Investigational New Drug Study. All patients had evidence of LMD based on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cytology, radiology, and/or surgical pathology. IL-2 at a dose of 1.2 mIU was administered intrathecally via Ommaya reservoir up to 5 times per week in the inpatient setting for 4 weeks; patients with good tolerance and clinical benefit received maintenance IT IL-2 every 1 to 3 months thereafter. RESULTS: The median age of the patients was 46.7 years (range 18-71); 32 (74%) were male; 31 (72%) had positive CSF cytology, and 39 (91%) had radiographic evidence of LMD. Median overall survival (OS) from initiation of IT IL-2 was 7.8 months (range, 4.7-16.3 months), with 1-, 2-, and 5-year OS rates of 36%, 26%, and 13%. The presence of neurological symptoms (HR 2.1, p=0.03), positive baseline CSF cytology (HR 4.1, p=0.001) and concomitant use of targeted therapy (HR 3.0, p=0.02) were associated with shorter OS on univariate analysis. All patients developed symptoms due to increased intracranial pressure. There were no treatment-related deaths. CONCLUSION: IT IL-2 treatment is safe and achieves long-term survival in a subset of metastatic melanoma patients with LMD

Prototype ATLAS IBL Modules using the FE-I4A Front-End Readout Chip

The ATLAS Collaboration will upgrade its semiconductor pixel tracking detector with a new Insertable B-layer (IBL) between the existing pixel detector and the vacuum pipe of the Large Hadron Collider. The extreme operating conditions at this location have necessitated the development of new radiation hard pixel sensor technologies and a new front-end readout chip, called the FE-I4. Planar pixel sensors and 3D pixel sensors have been investigated to equip this new pixel layer, and prototype modules using the FE-I4A have been fabricated and characterized using 120 GeV pions at the CERN SPS and 4 GeV positrons at DESY, before and after module irradiation. Beam test results are presented, including charge collection efficiency, tracking efficiency and charge sharing.Comment: 45 pages, 30 figures, submitted to JINS

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurement of D*+/- meson production in jets from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper reports a measurement of D*+/- meson production in jets from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is based on a data sample recorded with the ATLAS detector with an integrated luminosity of 0.30 pb^-1 for jets with transverse momentum between 25 and 70 GeV in the pseudorapidity range |eta| < 2.5. D*+/- mesons found in jets are fully reconstructed in the decay chain: D*+ -> D0pi+, D0 -> K-pi+, and its charge conjugate. The production rate is found to be N(D*+/-)/N(jet) = 0.025 +/- 0.001(stat.) +/- 0.004(syst.) for D*+/- mesons that carry a fraction z of the jet momentum in the range 0.3 < z < 1. Monte Carlo predictions fail to describe the data at small values of z, and this is most marked at low jet transverse momentum.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (22 pages total), 5 figures, 1 table, matches published version in Physical Review