Incidence of anthelmintic resistance in cattle farms in Northern Germany – first results

Anthelmintic resistance (AR) is an increasing problem worldwide especially for small ruminants and it is also rising in cattle. To maintain the efficacy of anthelmintics is an important objective. The current project aims at the investigation of the current efficacy of macrocyclic lactone anthelmintics for strongylid nematodes in first season grazing (FSG) calves in Northern Germany. On 8 participating farms in Northern Germany faecal egg count reduction tests (FECRT) with ivermectin (IVM) were performed. On 3 farms the efficacy of IVM was found to be ≤90% and on only 4 farms it was > 95% at 14 days post treatment (d.p.t.). Only 2 farms showed a reduction ≥ 95% at 21 d.p.t.. This survey reveals a rising problem of AR. The problem of drug resistance places the welfare of animals at risk. In organic farming, without a preventive treatment, livestock may harbour high worm counts. Therefore it is necessary to maintain powerful anthelmintic drugs to guarantee the welfare of animals that need salvage treatment. To investigate the AR problem in cattle more surveys with different anthelmintic drug classes are urgently needed

Remarks on E11 approach

We consider a few topics in $E_{11}$ approach to superstring/M-theory: even subgroups ($Z_2$ orbifolds) of $E_{n}$, n=11,10,9 and their connection to Kac-Moody algebras; $EE_{11}$ subgroup of $E_{11}$ and coincidence of one of its weights with the $l_1$ weight of $E_{11}$, known to contain brane charges; possible form of supersymmetry relation in $E_{11}$; decomposition of $l_1$ w.r.t. the $SO(10,10)$ and its square root at first few levels; particle orbit of $l_1 \ltimes E_{11}$. Possible relevance of coadjoint orbits method is noticed, based on a self-duality form of equations of motion in $E_{11}$.Comment: Two references adde

A group model for stable multi-subject ICA on fMRI datasets

Spatial Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is an increasingly used data-driven method to analyze functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data. To date, it has been used to extract sets of mutually correlated brain regions without prior information on the time course of these regions. Some of these sets of regions, interpreted as functional networks, have recently been used to provide markers of brain diseases and open the road to paradigm-free population comparisons. Such group studies raise the question of modeling subject variability within ICA: how can the patterns representative of a group be modeled and estimated via ICA for reliable inter-group comparisons? In this paper, we propose a hierarchical model for patterns in multi-subject fMRI datasets, akin to mixed-effect group models used in linear-model-based analysis. We introduce an estimation procedure, CanICA (Canonical ICA), based on i) probabilistic dimension reduction of the individual data, ii) canonical correlation analysis to identify a data subspace common to the group iii) ICA-based pattern extraction. In addition, we introduce a procedure based on cross-validation to quantify the stability of ICA patterns at the level of the group. We compare our method with state-of-the-art multi-subject fMRI ICA methods and show that the features extracted using our procedure are more reproducible at the group level on two datasets of 12 healthy controls: a resting-state and a functional localizer study

Dynamik der Radonfolgeprodukt-Aktivität imSpeichel nach therapeutischer Radon-Exposition

Radon decay product activity was measured in saliva of 10 male patients 20-30 min after a 1-hour radon exposure in the gallery of the Gasteiner Heilstollen (radon activity 36.2 kBq/m(3), radon progeny activity 20.3 kBq/m(3)), in 1 patient showing relatively high activity (75th percentile) measurements were continued until 65 min after exposure. Patients were asked to collect about 2 mi of saliva in the mouth and produce it on a filter. After drying the filter at 300 degrees C, radon progeny activity was measured. Activity (median) at 20-30 min after leaving the treatment area was 4.5 Bq (25th percentile 1 Bq; 75th percentile 21 Bq). In the patient who underwent additional measurements the activity showed a further increase up to 29 Bq (35 min after radon exposure) before it continuously decreased to a very low activity (1-3 Bq) at 65 min after exposure. The results show that a significantly increased radon decay product activity is found in saliva after speleotherapeutic radon exposure. Maximum values were observed 35 min after radon exposure. Radon decay product activity almost disappeared after about 1 h

Exploring BOLD Changes during Spatial Attention in Non-Stimulated Visual Cortex

Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses were measured in parts of primary visual cortex that represented unstimulated visual field regions at different distances from a stimulated central target location. The composition of the visual scene varied by the presence or absence of additional peripheral distracter stimuli. Bottom-up effects were assessed by comparing peripheral activity during central stimulation vs. no stimulation. Top-down effects were assessed by comparing active vs. passive conditions. In passive conditions subjects simply watched the central letter stimuli and in active conditions they had to report occurrence of pre-defined targets in a rapid serial letter stream. Onset of the central letter stream enhanced activity in V1 representations of the stimulated region. Within representations of the periphery activation decreased and finally turned into deactivation with increasing distance from the stimulated location. This pattern was most pronounced in the active conditions and during the presence of peripheral stimuli. Active search for a target did not lead to additional enhancement at areas representing the attentional focus but to a stronger deactivation in the vicinity. Suppressed neuronal activity was also found in the non distracter condition suggesting a top-down attention driven effect. Our observations suggest that BOLD signal decreases in primary visual cortex are modulated by bottom-up sensory-driven factors such as the presence of distracters in the visual field as well as by top-down attentional processes