Stijging gehalte vrije vetzuren bij automatisch melken

Sinds de invoering van de melkrobot op bedrijven is te zien dat het gemiddelde gehalte aan vrije vetzuren omhoog gaat. Sommige bedrijven kampen zelfs met een korting voor vrije vetzuren

EU-project automatisch melken

Automatisch melken werkt goed, maar de invoering van het automatisch melksysteem (AM-systeem) vraagt behoorlijke aanpassingen van het melkveebedrijf

Pyrimidine biosynthesis is not an essential function for trypanosoma brucei bloodstream forms

<p>Background: African trypanosomes are capable of both pyrimidine biosynthesis and salvage of preformed pyrimidines from the host, but it is unknown whether either process is essential to the parasite.</p> <p>Methodology/Principal Findings: Pyrimidine requirements for growth were investigated using strictly pyrimidine-free media, with or without single added pyrimidine sources. Growth rates of wild-type bloodstream form Trypanosoma brucei brucei were unchanged in pyrimidine-free medium. The essentiality of the de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis pathway was studied by knocking out the PYR6-5 locus that produces a fusion product of orotate phosphoribosyltransferase (OPRT) and Orotidine Monophosphate Decarboxylase (OMPDCase). The pyrimidine auxotroph was dependent on a suitable extracellular pyrimidine source. Pyrimidine starvation was rapidly lethal and non-reversible, causing incomplete DNA content in new cells. The phenotype could be rescued by addition of uracil; supplementation with uridine, 2′deoxyuridine, and cytidine allowed a diminished growth rate and density. PYR6-5−/− trypanosomes were more sensitive to pyrimidine antimetabolites and displayed increased uracil transport rates and uridine phosphorylase activity. Pyrimidine auxotrophs were able to infect mice although the infection developed much more slowly than infection with the parental, prototrophic trypanosome line.</p> <p>Conclusions/Significance: Pyrimidine salvage was not an essential function for bloodstream T. b. brucei. However, trypanosomes lacking de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis are completely dependent on an extracellular pyrimidine source, strongly preferring uracil, and display reduced infectivity. As T. brucei are able to salvage sufficient pyrimidines from the host environment, the pyrimidine biosynthesis pathway is not a viable drug target, although any interruption of pyrimidine supply was lethal.</p&gt

Assessing the impact of increasing lung screening eligibility by relaxing the maximum years-since-quit threshold. A simulation modeling study

BackgroundIn 2021, the US Preventive Services Task Force expanded its lung screening recommendation to include persons aged 50–80 years who had ever smoked and had at least 20 pack-years of exposure and less than 15 years since quitting (YSQ). However, studies have suggested that screening persons who formerly smoked with longer YSQ could be beneficial.MethodsThe authors used two validated lung cancer models to assess the benefits and harms of screening using various YSQ thresholds (10, 15, 20, 25, 30, and no YSQ) and the age at which screening was stopped. The impact of enforcing the YSQ criterion only at entry, but not at exit, also was evaluated. Outcomes included the number of screens, the percentage ever screened, screening benefits (lung cancer deaths averted, life-years gained), and harms (false-positive tests, overdiagnosed cases, radiation-induced lung cancer deaths). Sensitivity analyses were conducted to evaluate the effect of restricting screening to those who had at least 5 years of life expectancy.ResultsAs the YSQ criterion was relaxed, the number of screens and the benefits and harms of screening increased. Raising the age at which to stop screening age resulted in additional benefits but with more overdiagnosis, as expected, because screening among those older than 80 years increased. Limiting screening to those who had at least 5 years of life expectancy would maintain most of the benefits while considerably reducing the harms.ConclusionsExpanding screening to persons who formerly smoked and have greater than 15 YSQ would result in considerable increases in deaths averted and life-years gained. Although additional harms would occur, these could be moderated by ensuring that screening is restricted to only those with reasonable life expectancy

Repetitive floods intensify outmigration and climate gentrification in coastal cities

© 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Recent floods in America, Europe, Asia and Africa reminded societies across the world of the need to revisit their climate adaptation strategies. Rapid urbanization coinciding with a growing frequency and intensity of floods requires transformative actions in cities worldwide. While abandoning flood prone areas is sometimes discussed as a public climate adaptation option, little attention is paid to studying cumulative impacts of outmigration as an individual choice. To explore the aggregated consequences of households' outmigration decisions in response to increasing flood hazards, we employ a computational agent-based model grounded in empirical heuristics of buyers' and sellers' behaviour in a flood-prone housing market. Our results suggest that pure market-driven processes can cause shifts in demographics in climate-sensitive hotspots placing low-income households further at risk. They get trapped in hazard zones, even when individual risk perceptions and behavioural location preferences are independent of income, suggesting increasing climate gentrification as an outcome of market sorting

Effect of warm-up and precooling on pacing during a 15-km cycling time trial in the heat

PURPOSE:The best way to apply precooling for endurance exercise in the heat is still unclear. Therefore, we analyzed the effect of different preparation regimes on pacing during a 15-km cycling time trial in the heat.METHODS:Ten male subjects completed four 15-km time trials (30°C), preceded by different preparation regimes: 10 min cycling (WARM-UP), 30 min scalp cooling of which 10 min cycling (SC+WARM-UP), ice slurry ingestion (ICE), and ice slurry ingestion + 30 min scalp cooling (SC+ICE).RESULTS:No differences were observed in finish time and mean power output, although power output was lower for WARM-UP than for SC+ICE during km 13-14 (17±16 and 19±14 W, respectively) and for ICE during km 13 (16±16 W). Rectal temperature at the start of the time trial was lower for both ICE (~36.7°C) than both WARM-UP (~37.1°C) conditions and remained lower during the first part of the trial. Skin temperature and thermal sensation were lower at the start for SC+ICE.CONCLUSIONS:The preparation regime providing the lowest body heat content and sensation of coolness at the start (SC+ICE) was most beneficial for pacing during the latter stages of the time trial, although overall performance did not differ

The fatty acid composition of excreta of broiler chickens fed different dietary fatty acids

Published: October 15, 2017Background and Objective: Excreted fatty acids represent the net result of fat digestion, absorbtion and bioconversion by chickens or their intestinal microbiome and thus provide information on the capacity of the birds to utilize different fat types. This study aimed to clarify the relationship between the fatty acid profile of diet and excreta in broiler chickens. Materials and Methods: Male Cobb 500 broilers (n = 240) were fed (ad libitum) one of 6 different diets supplemented with 4% (w/w) beef tallow, flaxseed, corn, macadamia, canola or coconut oils (4 replicate pens/treatment) from hatching day. At day-40 post-hatch, excreta samples were collected for fatty acids analysis. Results: Significant positive linear correlations (R = 0.82-0.99) were found in the fatty acid content of diets and excreta for all fatty acid groups in all treatments. Comparing the individual fatty acid content of diet and excreta suggested that the broilers preferentially utilized (in decending order, if present) omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, omega-9 and omega-7 monounsaturated fatty acids and most saturated fatty acids (except C16:0 and C18:0), but the omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids were under utilized even when they were the most abundant. Conclusion: Fat sources which are high in the C16:0, C18:0 and omega-6 fatty acids may not be ideal for broiler feed formulations for nutritional and economical reasons.Khaled Kanakri, John Carragher, Robert Hughes, Beverly Muhlhausler, Carolyn de Koning and Robert Gibso

An exact minimum variance filter for a class of discrete time systems with random parameter perturbations

An exact, closed-form minimum variance filter is designed for a class of discrete time uncertain systems which allows for both multiplicative and additive noise sources. The multiplicative noise model includes a popular class of models (Cox-Ingersoll-Ross type models) in econometrics. The parameters of the system under consideration which describe the state transition are assumed to be subject to stochastic uncertainties. The problem addressed is the design of a filter that minimizes the trace of the estimation error variance. Sensitivity of the new filter to the size of parameter uncertainty, in terms of the variance of parameter perturbations, is also considered. We refer to the new filter as the 'perturbed Kalman filter' (PKF) since it reduces to the traditional (or unperturbed) Kalman filter as the size of stochastic perturbation approaches zero. We also consider a related approximate filtering heuristic for univariate time series and we refer to filter based on this heuristic as approximate perturbed Kalman filter (APKF). We test the performance of our new filters on three simulated numerical examples and compare the results with unperturbed Kalman filter that ignores the uncertainty in the transition equation. Through numerical examples, PKF and APKF are shown to outperform the traditional (or unperturbed) Kalman filter in terms of the size of the estimation error when stochastic uncertainties are present, even when the size of stochastic uncertainty is inaccurately identified

Temperature effects on dislocation core energies in silicon and germanium

Temperature effects on the energetics of the 90-degree partial dislocation in silicon and germanium are investigated, using non-equilibrium methods to estimate free energies, coupled with Monte Carlo simulations. Atomic interactions are described by Tersoff and EDIP interatomic potentials. Our results indicate that the vibrational entropy has the effect of increasing the difference in free energy between the two possible reconstructions of the 90-degree partial, namely, the single-period and the double-period geometries. This effect further increases the energetic stability of the double-period reconstruction at high temperatures. The results also indicate that anharmonic effects may play an important role in determining the structural properties of these defects in the high-temperature regime.Comment: 8 pages in two-column physical-review format with six figure