Phosphorus in pig diets

Pig feed is mainly based on cereals where phosphorus (P) is mostly present in inositol hexaphosphate (IP6), which is not readily available to monogastric animals. More available P sources are often added to ensure that pigs’ requirements are fulfilled; this results in high excretion levels of P. The digestibility of P depends on phytase activity and amount of IP6 in feedstuffs. The overall aim was to study effects of liquid feeding, P levels and phytase supplementation on digestibility and performance. Effects of soaking and P levels on digestibility were studied by total collection in metabolic cages, and effects on performance were studied in 192 growing pigs. Effects of soaking fermentation and phytase supplementation on ileal and total tract digestibility were studied with indicator technique on pigs surgically fitted with PVTC cannulas. P levels and phytase supplementation were studied in 104 pregnant sows for two reproduction cycles. All diets were cereal based and included wheat. Basic properties of a cereal mix fermented with whey, wet wheat distillers’ grain and water in different temperatures were also studied. Soaking reduced the level of IP6, whereas apparent digestibility of P was not significantly improved. Soaking increased average daily weight gain, carcass weights and improved the energy conversion ratio in pigs fed a low P diet to the same level as pigs fed high P diets. Low P diets resulted in lower femur density than high P diets. However, soaking of a low P diet resulted in increased femur density. Fermentation degraded IP6 efficiently and improved ileal apparent digestibility of P, organic matter, nitrogen, amino acids and total tract apparent digestibility of organic matter. Microbiological and biochemical properties of fermented liquid diets are strongly affected by feed components and temperature used. Phytase supplementation slightly affected apparent digestibility of P. Supplementing a low P gestation diet with phytase did not significantly affect sow performance. The slight effects of phytase supplementations found may depend on high levels of intrinsic phytase in the diets, and possibly suggest that the provided P level in the sows may have been sufficient. Under typical Swedish conditions of sow management, reduced total P level in gestation diets seems not to negatively affect performance

Estimating Performance of Pipelined Spoken Language Translation Systems

Most spoken language translation systems developed to date rely on a pipelined architecture, in which the main stages are speech recognition, linguistic analysis, transfer, generation and speech synthesis. When making projections of error rates for systems of this kind, it is natural to assume that the error rates for the individual components are independent, making the system accuracy the product of the component accuracies. The paper reports experiments carried out using the SRI-SICS-Telia Research Spoken Language Translator and a 1000-utterance sample of unseen data. The results suggest that the naive performance model leads to serious overestimates of system error rates, since there are in fact strong dependencies between the components. Predicting the system error rate on the independence assumption by simple multiplication resulted in a 16\% proportional overestimate for all utterances, and a 19\% overestimate when only utterances of length 1-10 words were considered.Comment: 10 pages, Latex source. To appear in Proc. ICSLP '9

Final lengthening - a consequence of articulatory and perceptual restrictions?

No abstrac

Regulation of mast cell function and survival in health and disease

Mast cells are sentinels of danger but they are also the major effector cells in allergic disease causing the well-known allergic symptoms caused by their mediators such as histamine and prostaglandin D2 that are released upon activation. Mastocytosis is a disease characterized by the clonal expansion of mast cells in the skin and/or other organs where the patients suffer from mediator-related symptoms and/or organ failure due to mast cell infiltration. The aim of the work presented in this thesis was to investigate mast cell function in health and disease, particularly systemic mastocytosis. In paper I, we investigate the in vivo reactvitiy of mast cells in patients with mastocytosis. We show that though the patients with systemic mastocytosis have increased levels of circulating mast cell mediators their mast cells in skin and lung are no more reactive then those in heatlhy controls. Paper II. We analyze the reactivity of in vitro cultured mast cells from the patients investigated in paper I, and could show that systemic mastocytosis mast cells proliferate and develop normally though with increased expression of the high affinity IgE receptor. Mast cells from patients with systemic mastocytosis are more reactive to increased osmolarity by releasing more PGD2. Investigating the genetic background of mastocytosis we discovered that they exhibit a specific miRNA profile. In the search for new therapeutical possibilities for mastocytosis we investigated the combination of ABT-737, a BH3 mimetic, and Roscovitine in paper III. By targeting expression and function of pro-survival proteins we found that even in very low doses the drugs induce apoptosis in mast cells carrying the D816V KIT mutation. Paper IV. Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) alter genetic expression. Here we show that SAHA, a class II HDACi induces mast cell apoptosis in cell lines and primary systemic mastocytosis patient cells, and that KIT is epigenetically silenced by SAHA in KIT D816V mutated cells. We have previously shown that IgE-receptor cross linking induces mast cell degranulation and activation-induced cell survival. In paper V we further investigate the effects of the Bcl-2 family and found that Bfl-1 is vital for the cell to survive, reform and be ready to degranulate again. Patients with allergic disease or cutaneous inflammatory skin disease have increased expression of Bfl-1 in their skin mast cells suggesting that targeting Bfl-1 might be an option for treatment. Paper VI. Further investigating the function of the A1/Bfl-1 gene, we found that knockdown of A1/Bfl-1 in mice protects the animals from passive cutaneous and systemic anaphylaxis. Additionally, connective tissue mast cells depend on A1/Bfl-1 for their development and survival

The Case of Boel Olsdotter

By the mid-19th century, syphilis had been established for several hundred years as a disease associated with immorality, from which the poor in particular suffered. Although hospitals for the treatment of venereal diseases existed in most European countries, there would be no cure for another hundred years, and physicians battled unsuccessfully against disfigurement and death. The lock hospital in Lund was dirty and crowded, housing poor and desperate patients. Boel Olsdotter is first mentioned in the lock hospital journal of 1856 in January, although she, and her child, are not admitted until October. It is noted that Boel is responsible, through her child, of infecting four women from Hyby parish with syphilis. The reason why Boel’s child needed wet-nurses was most likely that she was illegitimate, and that Boel therefore worked harder than a new mother normally would, which affected her ability to produce milk. No records remain of the process by which the wet-nurses were selected; only the end result, that they were infected with syphilis, and infected their families in turn, is discernible. Boel had her child in Esarp, where she had been living for some time. Yet the church records omit any mention of her until 1855, when she moved to Hyby. An unmarried mother, in the old agrarian community, was viewed as a threat and was treated harshly. According to Jonas Frykman, the need for female labour was higher in southern Sweden than in the rest of the country, and social sanctions against unmarried mothers were therefore somewhat more lenient than elsewhere. The whore, as the unmarried mother was likely to be termed, was, however, subjected to humiliation, even if she was not completely cast out from society. As Frykman notes, it was important, in the old agrarian community, to separate the unmarried mother from decent society. To this end, she was forced to wear a whore’s cap, a head-dress which differed in appearance from that of the married woman. Other sanctions designed to identify, separate, and shame the unmarried mother were based on Church ritual. Although not officially endorsed by Church doctrine, these types of sanctions were firmly planted in popular culture. Ritual humiliation is, in Foucauldian terms, a manifestation of power. Mary Douglas, too, describes social sanctions as a response to actions challenging power structures. She notes that the only societies in which social sanctions against sexual transgressions do not exist are those in which male power is absolute, and immorality instantly results in harsh physical punishment or death. This is very rare; most societies boast a wealth of repression rituals to regulate behaviour which is considered indecent. Boel’s social status was always low, and bearing an illegitimate child brought her to the very bottom of society. Her syphilis infection further tainted her as a woman of low morals, and what is more, she was reduced to living in the poorhouse. Both socially and economically, then, Boel’s status was as low as can be. Whatever her inclination was, in terms of ambition and resourcefulness, she was most likely always hampered by her place in society. If she, in her youth, possessed any cultural capital, in the shape of beauty or charm, she may have been able to use it to her advantage, but, when she became a whore, a social outcast, Boel's destiny was set. Her capacity to influence her own situation was limited to the ability to choose – if she could get work – her abode. However, once she was in the poorhouse, she could not get away and seek work until her daughter died – external circumstances, sometimes mere accidents, determined her life