Effect of different adjuvants on PCV2-associated lesions

Ninety, 12-14 day old pigs were randomly assigned to five groups. Group 1 (n=19) pigs were vaccinated with a Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae (M. hyopneumoniae) vaccine with an oil-in-water adjuvant (RespiSure®; Pfizer Animal Health, Inc.). Group 2 (n=17) pigs were vaccinated with a commercial M. hyopneumoniae vaccine with an aqueous adjuvant (Carbopol) (Suvaxyn® Respifend® MH; Fort Dodge Animal Health, Inc.). Group 3 (n=18) pigs were vaccinated using an oil-in-water adjuvanted vaccine containing the same amount and type of M. hyopneumoniae antigen as in group 2. Group 4 (n=18) pigs were vaccinated using an aluminum hydroxide adjuvanted vaccine containing the same amount and type of M. hyopneumoniae antigen as in group 2. Group 5 (n=18) pigs served as the controls and were sham-vaccinated with saline. Pigs were injected with 2 mL of one of the four M. hyopneumoniae vaccines at four and again at six weeks of age. PCV2 was inoculated intranasally on the day of the second vaccination at 6 weeks of age. Half of the pigs were necropsied at 21 days post inoculation (DPI). The remaining pigs were necropsied at 35 DPI. There were no differences among groups in clinical disease scores. At 21 DPI all vaccinated groups had significantly (p\u3c0.05) more severe lymphoid depletion than the saline injected group. At 35 DPI group 1 pigs had significantly (p\u3c0.05) higher amounts of PCV2 DNA in serum than pigs in groups 2, 4, and 5 as determined by quantitative real-time PCR. There was a significant (p\u3c0.05) increase in the severity of lymphoid depletion in the lymph nodes, tonsil, and spleen in groups 1 and 3 compared to groups 2, 4, and 5. Group 3 had significantly (p\u3c0.05) higher amounts of PCV2 antigen within lymph nodes, tonsil, and spleen compared to groups 2, 4 and 5. The results confirm that all adjuvants tested enhanced PCV2-induced lesions and oil-in-water products used in this study had a more severe effect

DOENAT: een applicatie voor de allocatie van natuurdoeltypen en de berekening van de doelrealisatie; modelbeschrijving en toepassingen

Soms wordt bij het vaststellen van natuurdoelen gewerkt met associaties van natuurdoeltypen, waarbij de ruimtelijke verdeling van de verschillende natuurdoeltypen over het natuurgebied ongedefinieerd blijft. Voor toepassing van de waternoodsystematiekwaarbij op locatie de mate van realisatie van verschillende gebiedsdoelstellingen wordt bepaald, leverde dit problemen op omdat per locatie geen eenduidig doel is vastgesteld. Daarom zijn hier een methode en een ARCVIEW-applicatie ontwikkeld waarmee de ruimtelijke toedeling van natuurdoeltypeassociaties over een natuurgebied kan worden bepaald. De ruimtelijke toedeling van de verschillende natuurdoeltypen van een natuurdoeltypeassociatie vindt plaats op basis van de hydrologisch-bodemkundige geschiktheid in het gebied. Na toedeling van de natuurdoeltypen in het natuurgebied wordt de doelrealisatie voor natuur ruimtelijk en voor het gebied als geheel berekend. De ontwikkelde applicatie biedt gebruikers de mogelijkheid om door het vaststellen van natuurwaarden en gewenste arealen per natuurdoeltype de ruimtelijk toedeling interactief te optimaliseren, rekening houdend met de hydrologisch-bodemkundige gesteldheid van het gebied. Ter illustratrie is de ontwikkelde methode toegepast in twee proefgebiede

Evaluating individualized treatment effect predictions: A model-based perspective on discrimination and calibration assessment.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the prediction of individualized treatment effects. While there is a rapidly growing literature on the development of such models, there is little literature on the evaluation of their performance. In this paper, we aim to facilitate the validation of prediction models for individualized treatment effects. The estimands of interest are defined based on the potential outcomes framework, which facilitates a comparison of existing and novel measures. In particular, we examine existing measures of discrimination for benefit (variations of the c-for-benefit), and propose model-based extensions to the treatment effect setting for discrimination and calibration metrics that have a strong basis in outcome risk prediction. The main focus is on randomized trial data with binary endpoints and on models that provide individualized treatment effect predictions and potential outcome predictions. We use simulated data to provide insight into the characteristics of the examined discrimination and calibration statistics under consideration, and further illustrate all methods in a trial of acute ischemic stroke treatment. The results show that the proposed model-based statistics had the best characteristics in terms of bias and accuracy. While resampling methods adjusted for the optimism of performance estimates in the development data, they had a high variance across replications that limited their accuracy. Therefore, individualized treatment effect models are best validated in independent data. To aid implementation, a software implementation of the proposed methods was made available in R

Optimalistatie van de waterhuishouding voor natuur in het gebied Lochem-Vorden

Waterbedrijf Gelderland wil samen met andere belanghebbenden de waterhuishouding in het gebied Lochem-Vorden optimaliseren. Naast waterhuishoudkundige maatregelen bestaat de mogelijkheid om de drinkwaterwinningen in het gebied aan te passen. Met een hydrologisch model zijn verschillende inrichtingsvarianten doorgerekend. In dit rapport wordt verslag gedaan van de gevolgen van de voorgestelde maatregelen voor de natuur. Er is een methode ontwikkeld om met de uitkomsten van het natuurevaluatiemodel NATLES de realiseerbaarheid van de natuurdoelen die door de provincie Gelderland zijn vastgesteld, als percentage te berekenen. Tevens is een historische situatie gereconstrueerd die als referentie dient voor de hydrologische situatie en voor de realiseerbaarheid van de natuurdoelen

Monte Carlo Renormalization of the 3-D Ising model: Analyticity and Convergence

We review the assumptions on which the Monte Carlo renormalization technique is based, in particular the analyticity of the block spin transformations. On this basis, we select an optimized Kadanoff blocking rule in combination with the simulation of a d=3 Ising model with reduced corrections to scaling. This is achieved by including interactions with second and third neighbors. As a consequence of the improved analyticity properties, this Monte Carlo renormalization method yields a fast convergence and a high accuracy. The results for the critical exponents are y_H=2.481(1) and y_T=1.585(3).Comment: RevTeX, 4 PostScript file

Reactie op het artikel ‘Controle van kalibratiegegevens’

Grondwaterstandsinformatie van goede kwaliteit vinden wij belangrijk. Iedere inspanning om deze kwaliteit vast te stellen en te verbeteren juichen wij toe, vooral als zo’n inspanning wetenschappelijk degelijk is onderbouwd. Wat betreft dat laatste willen wij graag twee opmerkingen plaatsen bij het artikel ‘Controle van kalibratiegegevens’ van Jaco van der Gaast in Stromingen 19(2), pag. 85-9

Estimating nitrogen fluxes at the European scale by upscaling INTEGRATOR model outputs from selected sites

A comparison was made between upscaled model results of nitrogen (N) fluxes to air and water from 450 sites within the EU-27 and results derived for the entire EU-27 area using the model INTEGRATOR. The 450 sites were selected using stratified random sampling, dividing the EU-27 into 150 strata and selecting three sites at random within each stratum. The strata were based on important environmental factors influencing N fluxes. Hierarchical divisive cluster analysis was used to reduce the numerous combinations of environmental factors to the required total of 150, such that the heterogeneity of environmental factors within strata was as small as possible. Modelled NH<sub>3</sub>, N<sub>2</sub>O and NO<sub>x</sub> emissions and N leaching/runoff obtained were scaled up from the 450 sites to the entire EU-27 and were within 10% of results obtained by running the model for the whole of the EU-27 using about 36 500 sites. This implies that a reliable estimate of N fluxes for EU-27 can be made by upscaling results of the 450 selected sites suggesting that dramatic reduction in computation time can be achieved without substantial deterioration of result