Veterinary treatment in organic husbandry

The organic farming regulations put emphasis on the preservation of animal health by prophylaxis in the agriculture. The No 5 of the regulation EC 1804/99 (EC organic regulation) Appendix I B defines the veterinary treatments in organic animal husbandry. The veterinarian can use any medicine, which is effective for the indication and the animal species. If possible, effective homeopathics, phytotherapeutics or the like should have priority. Problems of implementing the EC organic regulation into the daily farm practice arise mostly from the doubling of the withdrawal period and the restriction of the numbers of treatments. The strict ban on prophylactic treatments is not mentioned any longer in the new regulation 834/2007, which shall apply as from 1st January 2009. Clarification of the guidelines for animal treatments in organic farming seems to be useful for farmers, veterinarians and boards of control

Investigation on the influence of nematophagous fungi as feed additive on nematode infection risk of sheep and goats on pasture

Gastrointestinal nematodes in small ruminants cause high economic losses. Thus on most farms anthelmintic treatment is required. In response to increasing problems with anthelmintic resistance, biological control, for example the use of nematophagous fungi, has received significant attention. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of Duddingtonia flagrans orally applied to small ruminants on natural infection with gastrointestinal nematodes in a field study in Northern Germany. 20 goats and 20 sheep were fed daily for 3 months with 5x105 spores of D. flagrans per kg bodyweight. Differences in body weight, faecal egg count and larval development in faeces and on pasture in comparison with same-sized control groups were analysed. After 3 months the control goats showed significantly higher mean faecal egg count than the fungus-fed group. No significant difference was found between the two sheep groups. The maximum in larval reduction in faeces was 81.3 % in the sheep groups and 67.9 % in the goat groups (not significant). At the end of the study the body weight gain in the fungus-treated groups was 1.7 kg higher in goats and 0.7 kg higher in sheep than in the control groups (not significant). Regarding the first-year-grazing goats only, the bodyweights revealed significant differences (p<0.05). No statistically significant differences were observed in pasture larval counts. In the study presented here, no clear effect of fungus could be observed. A modified feeding regimen, perhaps with permanent release boluses or feed blocks, may improve the efficacy. Furthermore, it seems that climatic conditions during the study period could have influenced the results and displayed how sensitive the fungus application may be on such parameters

Observations of Stripped Edge-on Virgo Cluster Galaxies

We present observations of highly inclined, HI deficient, Virgo cluster spiral galaxies. Our high-resolution VLA HI observations of edge-on galaxies allow us to distinguish extraplanar gas from disk gas. All of our galaxies have truncated H-alpha disks, with little or no disk gas beyond a truncation radius. While all the gas disks are truncated, the observations show evidence for a continuum of stripping states: symmetric, undisturbed truncated gas disks indicate galaxies that were stripped long ago, while more asymmetric disks suggest ongoing or more recent stripping. We compare these timescale estimates with results obtained from two-dimensional stellar spectroscopy of the outer disks of galaxies in our sample. One of the galaxies in our sample, NGC 4522 is a clear example of active ram-pressure stripping, with 40% of its detected HI being extraplanar. As expected, the outer disk stellar populations of this galaxy show clear signs of recent (and, in fact, ongoing) stripping. Somewhat less expected, however, is the fact that the spectrum of the outer disk of this galaxy, with very strong Balmer absorption and no observable emission, would be classified as ``k+a'' if observed at higher redshift. Our observations of NGC 4522 and other galaxies at a range of cluster radii allow us to better understand the role that clusters play in the structure and evolution of disk galaxies.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the Island Universes conference held in Terschelling, Netherlands, July 2005, ed. R. de Jong, version with high resolution figures can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.astro.yale.edu/pub/hugh/papers/iu_crowl_h.ps.g

Star-forming galaxies in low-redshift clusters: Data and integrated galaxy properties

This paper is a continuation of an ongoing study of the evolutionary processes affecting cluster galaxies. Both CCD R band and H alpha narrow-band imaging was used to determine photometric parameters (m_(r), r_(24), H alpha flux and equivalent width) and derive star formation rates for 227 CGCG galaxies in 8 low-redshift clusters. The galaxy sample is a subset of CGCG galaxies in an objective prism survey of cluster galaxies for H alpha emission. It is found that detection of emission-line galaxies in the OPS is 85%, 70%, and 50% complete at the mean surface brightness values of 1.25 x 10^(-19), 5.19 x 10^(-20), and 1.76 x 10^(-20) W m^(-2) arcsec^(-2), respectively, measured within the R band isophote of 24 mag arcsec^(-2) for the galaxy. The CCD data, together with matched data from a recent H alpha galaxy survey of UGC galaxies within 3000 km s^(-1), will be used for a comparative study of R band and H alpha surface photometry between cluster and field spirals.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 11 pages, including 6 figure

Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Larynx Arising in Multifocal Pharyngolaryngeal Oncocytic Papillary Cystadenoma:A Case Report and Review of the Literature

We report on a rare case of a laryngeal carcinoma arising in a multifocal pharyngolaryngeal oncocytic papillary cystadenoma (OPC). The disease of a 63-year-old man is well documented by computed and positron emission tomography, histology, and electron microscopy. We could show that an OPC can even develop in the pharynx. The coexistence of both tumors makes this a challenging diagnosis for pathologists. Treated by surgery and radiotherapy, both lesions dissolved. Based on the literature available, we discuss the theory that the laryngeal carcinoma might be the result of a true metaplasia facilitated by chronic irritation and recommend a regular follow-up for OPC too. As in benign oncocytic lesions, we could show that the detection of numerous mitochondria is a diagnostic indicator for malignant variants as well

HI Distribution and Tully-Fisher Distances of Gas-Poor Spiral Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster Region

We present aperture synthesis observations in the 21 cm line of pointings centered on the Virgo Cluster region spirals NGC 4307, NGC 4356, NGC 4411B, and NGC 4492 using the Very Large Array (VLA) radiotelescope in its CS configuration. These galaxies were identified in a previous study of the three-dimensional distribution of HI emission in the Virgo region as objects with a substantial dearth of atomic gas and Tully-Fisher (TF) distance estimates that located them well outside the main body of the cluster. We have detected two other galaxies located in two of our fields and observed bands, the spiral NGC 4411A and the dwarf spiral VCC 740. We provide detailed information of the gas morphology and kinematics for all these galaxies. Our new data confirm the strong HI-deficiency of all the main targets but NGC 4411B, which is found to have a fairly normal neutral gas content. The VLA observations have also been used to discuss the applicability of TF techniques to the five largest spirals we have observed. We conclude that none of them is actually suitable for a TF distance evaluation, whether due to the radical trimming of their neutral hydrogen disks (NGC 4307, NGC 4356, and NGC 4492) or to their nearly face-on orientation (NGC 4411A and B).Comment: 32 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in A

Impact of magnetic fields on ram pressure stripping in disk galaxies

(abridged) Ram pressure can remove significant amounts of gas from galaxies in clusters, and thus has a large impact on the evolution of cluster galaxies. Recent observations have shown that key properties of ram pressure stripped tails of galaxies are in conflict with predictions by simulations. To increase the realism of existing simulations, we simulated for the first time a disk galaxy exposed to a uniformly magnetized wind including radiative cooling and self-gravity of the gas. We find that B-fields have a strong effect on the morphology of the gas in the tail of the galaxy. While in the pure hydro case the tail is very clumpy, the MHD case shows very filamentary structures in the tail. The filaments can be strongly supported by magnetic pressure and, when this is the case, the B-field vectors tend to be aligned with the filaments. The ram pressure stripping may lead to the formation of magnetized density tails that appear as bifurcated in the plane of the sky and resemble the double tails observed in ESO 137-001 and ESO 137-002. Such tails can be formed under a variety of situations, both for the disks oriented face-on with respect to the ICM wind and for the tilted ones. While this bifurcation is due to the generic tendency for the B-fields to produce very filamentary tail morphology, the tail properties are further shaped by the combination of the B-field orientation and the sliding of the field past the disk surface exposed to the wind. Magnetic draping does not strongly change the rate of gas stripping. For a face-on galaxy, the field tends to reduce the amount of stripping compared to the pure hydro case, and is associated with the formation of a magnetic draping layer on the side of the galaxy exposed to the ICM wind. For significantly tilted disks, the stripping rate may be enhanced by the ``scraping'' of the disk surface by the B-fields sliding past the ISM/ICM interface.Comment: ApJ in press. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0909.3097 by other author

Accessible PDFs : applying artificial intelligence for automated remediation of STEM PDFs

People with visual impairments use assistive technology, e.g., screen readers, to navigate and read PDFs. However, such screen readers need extra information about the logical structure of the PDF, such as the reading order, header levels, and mathematical formulas, described in readable form to navigate the document in a meaningful way. This logical structure can be added to a PDF with tags. Creating tags for a PDF is time-consuming, and requires awareness and expert knowledge. Hence, most PDFs are left untagged, and as a result, they are poorly readable or unreadable for people who rely on screen readers. STEM documents are particularly problematic with their complex document structure and complicated mathematical formulae. These inaccessible PDFs present a major barrier for people with visual impairments wishing to pursue studies or careers in STEM fields, who cannot easily read studies and publications from their field. The goal of this Ph.D. is to apply artificial intelligence for document analysis to reasonably automate the remediation process of PDFs and present a solution for large mathematical formulae accessibility in PDFs. With these new methods, the Ph.D. research aims to lower barriers to creating accessible scientific PDFs, by reducing the time, effort, and expertise necessary to do so, ultimately facilitating greater access to scientific documents for people with visual impairments