Advances in prevention and therapy of neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea : a systematical review with emphasis on colostrum management and fluid therapy

Neonatal calf diarrhoea remains the most common cause of morbidity and mortality in preweaned dairy calves worldwide. This complex disease can be triggered by both infectious and non-infectious causes. The four most important enteropathogens leading to neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea are Escherichia coli, rota-and coronavirus, and Cryptosporidium parvum. Besides treating diarrhoeic neonatal dairy calves, the veterinarian is the most obvious person to advise the dairy farmer on prevention and treatment of this disease. This review deals with prevention and treatment of neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea focusing on the importance of a good colostrum management and a correct fluid therapy

Acquisition of Ca2+ and HCO3−/CO32− for shell formation in embryos of the common pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis

Embryos of the freshwater common pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis develop to hatch within 10 days under control conditions (22°C, Miami-Dade tap water) and this development is impaired by removal of ambient calcium. In contrast, embryos did not exhibit dependence upon an ambient HCO3−/CO32− source, developing and hatching in HCO3−/CO32−-free water at rates comparable to controls. Post-metamorphic, shell-laying embryos exhibited a significant saturation-type calcium uptake as a function of increasing ambient calcium concentration. However, changes in ambient bicarbonate concentration did not influence calcium or apparent titratable alkalinity uptake. There was a distinct shift from no significant flux in pre-metamorphic embryos to net uptake of calcium in post-metamorphic stages as indicated by an increased uptake from the micro-environment surrounding the egg mass and increased net uptake in 24-h, whole egg mass flux measurements. Furthermore, HCO3−/CO32− acquisition as measured by titratable alkalinity flux is at least partially attributable to an endogenous carbonate source that is associated with acid extrusion. Thus, calcium requirements for embryonic shell formation are met via uptake but HCO3−/CO32−, which is also necessary for shell formation is acquired in part from endogenous sources with no detectable correlation to ambient HCO3−/CO32− availability

Channelopathies in Cav1.1, Cav1.3, and Cav1.4 voltage-gated L-type Ca2+ channels

Voltage-gated Ca2+ channels couple membrane depolarization to Ca2+-dependent intracellular signaling events. This is achieved by mediating Ca2+ ion influx or by direct conformational coupling to intracellular Ca2+ release channels. The family of Cav1 channels, also termed L-type Ca2+ channels (LTCCs), is uniquely sensitive to organic Ca2+ channel blockers and expressed in many electrically excitable tissues. In this review, we summarize the role of LTCCs for human diseases caused by genetic Ca2+ channel defects (channelopathies). LTCC dysfunction can result from structural aberrations within their pore-forming α1 subunits causing hypokalemic periodic paralysis and malignant hyperthermia sensitivity (Cav1.1 α1), incomplete congenital stationary night blindness (CSNB2; Cav1.4 α1), and Timothy syndrome (Cav1.2 α1; reviewed separately in this issue). Cav1.3 α1 mutations have not been reported yet in humans, but channel loss of function would likely affect sinoatrial node function and hearing. Studies in mice revealed that LTCCs indirectly also contribute to neurological symptoms in Ca2+ channelopathies affecting non-LTCCs, such as Cav2.1 α1 in tottering mice. Ca2+ channelopathies provide exciting disease-related molecular detail that led to important novel insight not only into disease pathophysiology but also to mechanisms of channel function

Calculation of the relative metastabilities of proteins in subcellular compartments of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

[abridged] Background: The distribution of chemical species in an open system at metastable equilibrium can be expressed as a function of environmental variables which can include temperature, oxidation-reduction potential and others. Calculations of metastable equilibrium for various model systems were used to characterize chemical transformations among proteins and groups of proteins found in different compartments of yeast cells. Results: With increasing oxygen fugacity, the relative metastability fields of model proteins for major subcellular compartments go as mitochondrion, endoplasmic reticulum, cytoplasm, nucleus. In a metastable equilibrium setting at relatively high oxygen fugacity, proteins making up actin are predominant, but those constituting the microtubule occur with a low chemical activity. A reaction sequence involving the microtubule and spindle pole proteins was predicted by combining the known intercompartmental interactions with a hypothetical program of oxygen fugacity changes in the local environment. In further calculations, the most-abundant proteins within compartments generally occur in relative abundances that only weakly correspond to a metastable equilibrium distribution. However, physiological populations of proteins that form complexes often show an overall positive or negative correlation with the relative abundances of proteins in metastable assemblages. Conclusions: This study explored the outlines of a thermodynamic description of chemical transformations among interacting proteins in yeast cells. The results suggest that these methods can be used to measure the degree of departure of a natural biochemical process or population from a local minimum in Gibbs energy.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures; supporting information is available at http://www.chnosz.net/yeas

Modal auxiliaries and negation : A type-logical account

National Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsOhio State UniversityThis paper proposes an analysis of modal auxiliaries in English in Type-Logical Grammar. The proposed analysis captures the scopal interactions between different types of modal auxiliaries and negation by incorporating the key analytic idea of Iatridou and Zeijlstra [6], who classify English modal auxiliaries into PPI and NPI types. In order to technically implement this analysis, we build on Kubota and Levine’s [8, 10] treatment of modal auxiliaries as higher-order operators that take scope at the clausal level. The proposed extension of the Kubota/Levine analysis is shown to have several interesting consequences, including a formal derivability relation from the higher-order entry for auxiliaries to a lower-order VP/VP entry traditionally recognized in categorial grammar (CG) research. The systematic analysis of the scopal properties of auxiliaries and the somewhat more abstract meta-comparison between ‘transformational’ and ‘non-transformational’ analytic ideas that become possible in a type-logical setup highlight the value of taking a logical perspective on the syntax of natural language embodied in Type-Logical Grammar research