Untersuchungen zum Vorkommen von Leptospiren-, Toxoplasmen- und PRRSV-Antikörpern sowie von Salmonellen und Spulwurmeiern auf österreichischen Bioschweinebetrieben

In Austria, 80.000 organic fattening pigs are raised on 13% out of all pig production farms. Consumer expectations regarding animal health and welfare and meat quality are particularly high for organic products (Baumgartner et al. 2003). Health problems in organic pig farming are often related to the outdoor area, exposing the animals to bacterial and parasitic agents. In this study, data about zoonotic agents as, Leptospira ssp., Toxoplasma gondii and Salmonella were collected. Infections by the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) and Ascaris (A.) suum were also investigated. The study included 59 organic farms in Austria. Blood samples and one faecal group sample from pigs of each farm were taken at the slaughterhouse. Leptospira antibodies were found in all investigated herds. The most frequent serovars were Bratislava with 29%, Icterohämorraghiae with 21% and Canicola with 5%. In 29 herds antibodies against T. gondii were detected at least in one pig. The seroprevalence of PRRSV was 46% of the farms. Only one farm was positive for Salmonella infantis. In 70% of the faecal samples A. suum eggs were found

An overview of digital speech watermarking

Digital speech watermarking is a robust way to hide and thus secure data like audio and video from any intentional or unintentional manipulation through transmission. In terms of some signal characteristics including bandwidth, voice/non-voice and production model, digital speech signal is different from audio, music and other signals. Although, various review articles on image, audio and video watermarking are available, there are still few review papers on digital speech watermarking. Therefore this article presents an overview of digital speech watermarking including issues of robustness, capacity and imperceptibility. Other issues discussed are types of digital speech watermarking, application, models and masking methods. This article further highlights the related challenges in the real world, research opportunities and future works in this area, yet to be explored fully

Redox thermodynamics of high-spin and low-spin forms of chlorite dismutases of diverse subunit and oligomeric structure

Chlorite dismutases (Clds) are heme b containing oxidoreductases that convert chlorite to chloride and dioxygen. In this work the thermodynamics of the one-electron reduction of the ferric high-spin forms and of the six-coordinate low-spin cyanide adducts of the enzymes from Nitrobacter winogradskyi (NwCld) and Candidatus “Nitrospira defluvii” (NdCld) were determined through spectroelectrochemical experiments. The above proteins belong to two phylogenetically separated lineages that differ in subunit (21.5 kDa versus 26 kDa) and oligomeric (dimeric versus pentameric) structure but exhibit similar chlorite degradation activity. The E°’ values for free and cyanide-bound proteins were determined to be -119 mV and -397 mV for NwCld as well as -113 mV and -404 mV for NdCld, respectively (pH 7.0, 25 °C). Variable-temperature spectroelectrochemical experiments revealed that the oxidized state of both proteins is enthalpically stabilized. Molecular dynamics simulations suggest that changes in the protein structure are negligible, whereas solvent reorganization is mainly responsible for the increase of entropy during the redox reaction. Obtained data are discussed with respect to the known structures of the two Clds and the proposed reaction mechanism