Using hormones to manage dairy cow fertility: the clinical and ethical beliefs of veterinary practitioners

In the face of a steady decline in dairy cow fertility over several decades, using hormones to assist reproduction has become common. In the European Union, hormones are prescription-only medicines, giving veterinary practitioners a central role in their deployment. This study explored the clinical and ethical beliefs of practitioners, and provides data on their current prescribing practices. During 2011, 93 practitioners working in England completed a questionnaire (95% response rate). Of the 714 non-organic farms they attended, only 4 farms (0.6%) never used hormones to assist the insemination of lactating dairy cows. Practitioners agreed (.80%) that hormones improve fertility and farm businesses profitability. They also agreed(.80%) that if farmers are able to tackle management issues contributing to poor oestrus expression, then over a five year period these outcomes would both improve, relative to using hormones instead. If management issues are addressed instead of prescribing hormones, practitioners envisaged a less favourable outcome for veterinary practices profitability (p,0.01), but an improvement in genetic selection for fertility (p,0.01) and overall cow welfare (p,0.01). On farms making no efforts to address underlying management problems, long-term routine use at the start of breeding for timing artificial insemination or inducing oestrus was judged ‘‘unacceptable’’ by 69% and 48% of practitioners, respectively. In contrast, practitioners agreed ($90%) that both these types of use are acceptable, provided a period of time has been allowed to elapse during which the cow is observed for natural oestrus. Issues discussed include: weighing quality versus length of cow life, fiscal factors, legal obligations, and balancing the interests of all stakeholders, including the increasing societal demand for food. This research fosters debate and critical appraisal, contributes to veterinary ethics, and encourages the pro-active development of professional codes of conduct

Food for the Family.

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Managing the transition to work: the role of the planning network in British town planning education

The development of town planning education in the United Kingdom can be traced back over at least sixty years and has always enjoyed a close relationship with practitioners, employers and the professional body, the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). In order to ensure an intake of sufficient quality to a growing profession, the Institute offered its own exams until the 1980s and then initiated the current system of accrediting both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes of study. This system of accreditation emphasises the importance of relevant knowledge, skills and values as well as core and specialised studies. The vocational nature of town planning requires that graduates have the breadth of understanding as well as the practical skills in order to practice effectively. Thus accredited courses have over time developed strong links with employers and practitioners. Rapid developments in the scope and range of planning, and the skills needed to work in it, have reflected changes in public policy and growing number of agencies concerned with the built environment. The system of regular quinquennial visits to accredit courses has helped ensure that this acceptance of change has become part of the culture of planning schools

Optimising patient recall of adverse events over prolonged time periods

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Expedition 306 summary

The overall aim of the North Atlantic paleoceanography study of Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 306 is to place late Neogene–Quaternary climate proxies in the North Atlantic into a chronology based on a combination of geomagnetic paleointensity, stable isotope, and detrital layer stratigraphies, and in so doing generate integrated North Atlantic millennial-scale stratigraphies for the last few million years. To reach this aim, complete sedimentary sections were drilled by multiple advanced piston coring directly south of the central Atlantic “ice-rafted debris belt” and on the southern Gardar Drift. In addition to the North Atlantic paleoceanography study, a borehole observatory was successfully installed in a new ~180 m deep hole close to Ocean Drilling Program Site 642, consisting of a circulation obviation retrofit kit to seal the borehole from the overlying ocean, a thermistor string, and a data logger to document and monitor bottom water temperature variations through time

How does reviewing the evidence change veterinary surgeons' beliefs regarding the treatment of ovine footrot? A quantitative and qualitative study

Footrot is a widespread, infectious cause of lameness in sheep, with major economic and welfare costs. The aims of this research were: (i) to quantify how veterinary surgeons’ beliefs regarding the efficacy of two treatments for footrot changed following a review of the evidence (ii) to obtain a consensus opinion following group discussions (iii) to capture complementary qualitative data to place their beliefs within a broader clinical context. Grounded in a Bayesian statistical framework, probabilistic elicitation (roulette method) was used to quantify the beliefs of eleven veterinary surgeons during two one-day workshops. There was considerable heterogeneity in veterinary surgeons’ beliefs before they listened to a review of the evidence. After hearing the evidence, seven participants quantifiably changed their beliefs. In particular, two participants who initially believed that foot trimming with topical oxytetracycline was the better treatment, changed to entirely favour systemic and topical oxytetracycline instead. The results suggest that a substantial amount of the variation in beliefs related to differences in veterinary surgeons’ knowledge of the evidence. Although considerable differences in opinion still remained after the evidence review, with several participants having non-overlapping 95% credible intervals, both groups did achieve a consensus opinion. Two key findings from the qualitative data were: (i) veterinary surgeons believed that farmers are unlikely to actively seek advice on lameness, suggesting a proactive veterinary approach is required (ii) more attention could be given to improving the way in which veterinary advice is delivered to farmers. In summary this study has: (i) demonstrated a practical method for probabilistically quantifying how veterinary surgeons’ beliefs change (ii) revealed that the evidence that currently exists is capable of changing veterinary opinion (iii) suggested that improved transfer of research knowledge into veterinary practice is needed (iv) identified some potential obstacles to the implementation of veterinary advice by farmers

The Freshman, vol. 6, no. 1

The Freshman was a weekly, student newsletter issued on Mondays throughout the academic year. The newsletter included calendar notices, coverage of campus social events, lectures, and athletic teams. The intent of the publication was to create unity, a sense of community, and class spirit among first year students

Tandem quadruplication of HMA4 in the zinc (Zn) and cadmium (Cd) hyperaccumulator noccaea caerulescens

Zinc (Zn) and cadmium (Cd) hyperaccumulation may have evolved twice in the Brassicaceae, in Arabidopsis halleri and in the Noccaea genus. Tandem gene duplication and deregulated expression of the Zn transporter, HMA4, has previously been linked to Zn/Cd hyperaccumulation in A. halleri. Here, we tested the hypothesis that tandem duplication and deregulation of HMA4 expression also occurs in Noccaea. A Noccaea caerulescens genomic library was generated, containing 36,864 fosmid pCC1FOSTM clones with insert sizes ~20–40 kbp, and screened with a PCR-generated HMA4 genomic probe. Gene copy number within the genome was estimated through DNA fingerprinting and pooled fosmid pyrosequencing. Gene copy numbers within individual clones was determined by PCR analyses with novel locus specific primers. Entire fosmids were then sequenced individually and reads equivalent to 20-fold coverage were assembled to generate complete whole contigs. Four tandem HMA4 repeats were identified in a contiguous sequence of 101,480 bp based on sequence overlap identities. These were flanked by regions syntenous with up and downstream regions of AtHMA4 in Arabidopsis thaliana. Promoter-reporter b-glucuronidase (GUS) fusion analysis of a NcHMA4 in A. thaliana revealed deregulated expression in roots and shoots, analogous to AhHMA4 promoters, but distinct from AtHMA4 expression which localised to the root vascular tissue. This remarkable consistency in tandem duplication and deregulated expression of metal transport genes between N. caerulescens and A. halleri, which last shared a common ancestor >40 mya, provides intriguing evidence that parallel evolutionary pathways may underlie Zn/Cd hyperaccumulation in Brassicaceae