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

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

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

Untersuchungen zur Wirksamkeit von Anthelminthika bei erstsömmrigen Rindern in Europa

Resistance to anthelmintics is a threat to several animal industries world wide. Nevertheless, the use of effective anthelmintics to control nematode infections in cattle still remains irreplaceable. Anthelmintic resistance in cattle has been reported in New Zealand, North and South America and England but so far not in Europe. To be able to determine the extent of anthelmintic resistance in nematodes of farm animals and to monitor the success of any resistance management requires reliable tests for the detection of anthelmintic resistance. One of the objectives of PARASOL, a European Framework 6 funded project, is to produce standard operating procedures for the running of a faecal egg count reduction test (FECRT). Standardized procedures for the FECRT have been developed and surveys with injectable ivermectin were then performed in Germany, Sweden and Belgium in 2006 and 2007. Additional tests using benzimidazoles were performed in Sweden and Germany in 2007. Furthermore, some of the refractory strains will be isolated to test whether the phenomena observed in the field was due to the evolution of anthelmintic resistance

Ehlers symmetry at the next derivative order

We analyse four-dimensional gravity in the presence of general curvature squared corrections and show that Ehlers' SL(2,R) symmetry, which appears in the reduction of standard gravity to three dimensions, is preserved by the correction terms. The mechanism allowing this is a correction of the SL(2,R) transformation laws which resolves problems with the different scaling behaviour of various terms occurring in the reduction.Comment: 13 pages. v2: updated referenc