Sheep Updates 2003 - Husbandry

This session covers seven papers from different authors:1. Setting up a successful, low input feedlot Paul Barrett, ‘Bimberdong’ Jerramungup 2. Effective mineral supplementation of sheep Kevin Bell, Sheep Management and Production Consultants, Kojonup, WA 3. Genetic benchmarking for WA sheep producers J. Greeff, L. Butler, S. Brown, K. Hart and A. Gray Department of Agriculture Western Australia 4. Does selecting sheep for low WEC reduce scouring? John Karlsson, Johan Greeff and Paula Coombe, Department of Agriculture Western Australia 5. Summer quarters for sheep - stubbles Ron McTaggart, Department of Agriculture Western Australia, Albany 6. Thinking about breeding Easy Care Sheep? David Scobie, AgResearch PO Box 60 Lincoln, 8152, New Zealand 7. Increasing lambing percentages and lamb survival Sandy White, Department of Agriculture Western Australia, Jerramungu

Injury Scores and Spatial Responses of Wolves Following Capture: Cable Restraints Versus Foothold Traps

Wolves (Canis lupus) have been captured with foothold traps for several decades to equip them with radiocollars for population monitoring. However, trapping in most areas is limited to spring, summer, and autumn as cold winter temperatures can lead to frozen appendages in trapped animals. In addition, conflicts arise when domestic dogs encounter these traps in nonwinter seasons. An alternative capture method is the use of cable restraint devices (modified neck snares) in the winter. We evaluated injury scores, movement patterns, and space use of wolves captured in cable restraint devices and foothold traps in north‐central Minnesota, USA, during 2012–2016. Injury scores did not differ between capture techniques; however, movement patterns and space use were different. We found that the movement away from the capture site appeared to plateau by approximately 8–10 days for wolves captured by either foothold traps or cable restraints, but wolves captured in traps travelled farther away. Daily movement rates reached an asymptote approximately 14 days earlier for wolves captured with cable restraints as compared with wolves caught with foothold traps. We found the space use among wolves caught with cable restraint devices plateaued in a shorter time frame than wolves caught with foothold traps whether using days since capture (38 days earlier) or number of locations (149 locations earlier). When we controlled for seasonal effects and the presence of a capture using locational data collected 6 months later, there was no difference in space use. We concluded that wolves captured in cable restraints recovered more quickly from the capture and resumed space use and activity patterns more rapidly than wolves captured with foothold traps. Published 2019. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA

The practical management of chronic pancreatitis:A Multidisciplinary Symposium Held at the Annual Meeting of the Pancreatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Manchester 2016

Aim: This study is about a questionnaire survey of delegates attending the chronic pancreatitis symposium at the 2016 meeting of the Pancreatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and seeks a multidisciplinary “snapshot” overview of practice. Methods: A questionnaire was developed with multidisciplinary input. Questions on access to specialist care, methods of diagnosis and treatment including specific scenarios were incorporated. Eighty-three (66%) of 125 delegates effectively participated in this survey. Results: Twenty-four (29%) had neither a chronic pancreatitis MDT in their hospital nor a chronic pancreatitis referral MDT. Most frequently utilised diagnostic modalities were CT, MR and EUS with no respondents utilising duodenal intubation tests. Initial treatment was provided through non-opiate analgesia by 69 (93%), through the use of opiates by 56 (76%) and through the use of co-analgesics by 49 (66%). Fifty two (68%) routinely referred patients with alcohol-related disease for counselling. Preferred treatment for large duct disease without mass was endoscopic therapy. In older patients with a mass, pancreaticoduodenectomy was preferred. Conclusion: This is a small study likely to be skewed by sampling bias but is thought to be the first multidisciplinary survey of the management of chronic pancreatitis in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The results show a need for comprehensive access to specialist pancreatitis MDT care and there remains substantial variation in management

Increased wind risk from sting-jet windstorms with climate change

Extra-tropical cyclones dominate autumn and winter weather over western Europe. The strongest cyclones, often termed windstorms, have a large socio-economic impact on landfall due to strong surface winds and coastal storm surges. Climate model integrations have predicted a future increase in the frequency of, and potential damage from, European windstorms and yet these integrations cannot properly represent localised jets, such as sting jets, that may significantly enhance damage. Here we present the first prediction of how the climatology of sting-jet-containing cyclones will change in a future warmer climate, considering the North Atlantic and Europe. A proven sting-jet precursor diagnostic is applied to 13-year present-day and future ($\sim$2100) climate integrations from the Met Office Unified Model in its Global Atmosphere 3.0 configuration. The present-day climate results are consistent with previously-published results from a reanalysis dataset (with around 32\% of cyclones exhibiting the sing-jet precursor), lending credibility to the analysis of the future-climate integration. The proportion of cyclones exhibiting the sting-jet precursor in the future-climate integration increases to 45\%. Furthermore, while the proportion of explosively-deepening storms increases only slightly in the future climate, the proportion of those storms with the sting-jet precursor increases by 60\%. The European resolved-wind risk associated with explosively-deepening storms containing a sting-jet precursor increases substantially in the future climate; in reality this wind risk is likely to be further enhanced by the release of localised moist instability, unresolved by typical climate models

Get screened: a pragmatic randomized controlled trial to increase mammography and colorectal cancer screening in a large, safety net practice

Abstract Background Most randomized controlled trials of interventions designed to promote cancer screening, particularly those targeting poor and minority patients, enroll selected patients. Relatively little is known about the benefits of these interventions among unselected patients. Methods/Design "Get Screened" is an American Cancer Society-sponsored randomized controlled trial designed to promote mammography and colorectal cancer screening in a primary care practice serving low-income patients. Eligible patients who are past due for mammography or colorectal cancer screening are entered into a tracking registry and randomly assigned to early or delayed intervention. This 6-month intervention is multimodal, involving patient prompts, clinician prompts, and outreach. At the time of the patient visit, eligible patients receive a low-literacy patient education tool. At the same time, clinicians receive a prompt to remind them to order the test and, when appropriate, a tool designed to simplify colorectal cancer screening decision-making. Patient outreach consists of personalized letters, automated telephone reminders, assistance with scheduling, and linkage of uninsured patients to the local National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection program. Interventions are repeated for patients who fail to respond to early interventions. We will compare rates of screening between randomized groups, as well as planned secondary analyses of minority patients and uninsured patients. Data from the pilot phase show that this multimodal intervention triples rates of cancer screening (adjusted odds ratio 3.63; 95% CI 2.35 - 5.61). Discussion This study protocol is designed to assess a multimodal approach to promotion of breast and colorectal cancer screening among underserved patients. We hypothesize that a multimodal approach will significantly improve cancer screening rates. The trial was registered at Clinical Trials.gov NCT00818857http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78264/1/1472-6963-10-280.xmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78264/2/1472-6963-10-280.pdfPeer Reviewe

Sequence locally, think globally:The Darwin tree of life project

The goals of the Earth Biogenome Project—to sequence the genomes of all eukaryotic life on earth—are as daunting as they are ambitious. The Darwin Tree of Life Project was founded to demonstrate the credibility of these goals and to deliver at-scale genome sequences of unprecedented quality for a biogeographic region: the archipelago of islands that constitute Britain and Ireland. The Darwin Tree of Life Project is a collaboration between biodiversity organizations (museums, botanical gardens, and biodiversity institutes) and genomics institutes. Together, we have built a workflow that collects specimens from the field, robustly identifies them, performs sequencing, generates high-quality, curated assemblies, and releases these openly for the global community to use to build future science and conservation efforts.</jats:p

Viscoelastic material properties of the peripapillary sclera in normal and early-glaucoma monkey eyes

PURPOSE. To test the hypothesis that changes in the viscoelastic material properties of peripapillary sclera are present within monkey eyes at the onset of early experimental glaucoma detected by confocal scanning laser tomography (CSLT). METHODS. Short-term (3-9 weeks), moderate (Յ44 mm Hg) intraocular pressure (IOP) elevation was induced in one eye of each of eight male monkeys by lasering the trabecular meshwork. This procedure generated early experimental glaucoma, defined as the onset of CSLT-detected optic nerve head (ONH) surface change, in the treated eye. Scleral tensile specimens from the superior and inferior quadrants of the eight earlyglaucoma eyes were subjected to uniaxial stress relaxation and tensile tests to failure and the results compared with similar data obtained in a previous study of 12 normal (nonglaucomatous) eyes. Linear viscoelastic theory was used to characterize viscoelastic material property parameters for each specimen. Differences in each parameter due to quadrant and treatment were assessed by analysis of variance (ANOVA). RESULTS. Peripapillary sclera from the early-glaucoma eyes exhibited an equilibrium modulus (7.46 Ϯ 1.58 MPa) that was significantly greater than that measured in normal eyes (4.94 Ϯ 1.22 MPa; mean Ϯ 95% confidence interval, P Ͻ 0.01, ANOVA). Quadrant differences were not significant for the viscoelastic parameters within each treatment group. CONCLUSIONS. The long-term viscoelastic material properties of monkey peripapillary sclera are altered by exposure to moderate, short-term, chronic IOP elevations and these alterations are present at the onset of CSLT-detected glaucomatous damage to the ONH. Damage to and/or remodeling of the extracellular matrix of these tissues may underlie these changes in scleral material properties. (Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2005;46: 540 -546 1 The finite element method is a computer-based engineering technique that estimates the stresses (force/cross-sectional area) and strains (local deformation under those stresses) within a complex load-bearing structure. 2 The important aspects of a finite element model are the three-dimensional geometry and material properties of the load-bearing structure and the appropriate boundary and mechanical loading conditions. 2 Within such models of the monkey ONH, scleral material properties are needed to characterize accurately the important transition between the peripapillary sclera and the peripheral laminar beams. To characterize the material properties of peripapillary sclera, we constructed a controlled-environment testing apparatus capable of performing uniaxial biomechanical testing of soft tissues in tension. The overall response of a tissue to a load is the combination of instantaneous (elastic) and time-dependent (viscous) responses, which are governed by its viscoelastic material properties. All soft tissues are viscoelastic, and the characterization of the instantaneous and time-dependent aspects of these material properties is important in understanding a tissue&apos;s behavior as a load-bearing structure and its response to short-and long-term changes in the applied load. Accurate characterization of a tissue&apos;s material properties can lead to a broader understanding of the mechanisms that underlie tissue damage, as well as determine the resultant altered load-bearing behavior of a remodeled or healed tissue. In a previous report we performed quadrant-based uniaxial tensile testing of peripapillary sclera from normal rabbit and normal monkey eyes 3 and found no differences in the viscoelastic material properties of the peripapillary sclera by quadrant (superior, inferior, nasal, and temporal to the ONH) in either species. In addition, when normal rabbit and monkey sclera were compared with one another, peripapillary sclera from monkey eyes was stiffer and showed slower stress relaxation than sclera from rabbit eyes. The present study tests the hypothesis that changes in the viscoelastic material properties of monkey peripapillary sclera are present at the earliest detectable stage of glaucomatous damage to the ONH, defined as the onset of confocal scanning laser tomography (CSLT)-detected ONH surface change. MATERIALS AND METHODS Animals, Scleral Specimens, and Study Design All animals were treated in accordance with the ARVO Statement for the Use of Animals in Ophthalmic and Vision Research. In the present study, a single scleral tensile specimen was generated from either the superior or inferior quadrant of eight eyes with experimental early glaucoma, yielding four early-glaucoma specimens for each quadrant. Each specimen underwent a multistage uniaxial tensile test. ViscoelasFrom th

Persistent anthrax as a major driver of wildlife mortality in a tropical rainforest

Anthrax is a globally important animal disease and zoonosis. Despite this, our current knowledge of anthrax ecology is largely limited to arid ecosystems, where outbreaks are most commonly reported. Here we show that the dynamics of an anthrax-causing agent, Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis, in a tropical rainforest have severe consequences for local wildlife communities. Using data and samples collected over three decades, we show that rainforest anthrax is a persistent and widespread cause of death for a broad range of mammalian hosts. We predict that this pathogen will accelerate the decline and possibly result in the extirpation of local chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) populations. We present the epidemiology of a cryptic pathogen and show that its presence has important implications for conservation