6,352 research outputs found
Effects of husbandry and low-dose lipopolysaccharide challenge on the acute phase response of young pigs
End of project reportIn recent years, concern has grown for the welfare of domesticated animals in different production systems (Appleby and Hughes, 1997). Poor welfare can result in poor performance and productivity. However, the consumers are also requesting more welfare-friendly systems, as reflected by the importance that âorganicâ and âfree-rangeâ products have gained in our markets. Furthermore, there are ethical reasons for safeguarding the welfare of animals in our care. Thus, it is scientistsâ task to be able to develop methods and techniques that can help to assess the welfare objectively. Traditionally, welfare assessment relied on the study of behaviour and the measurement of endocrine parameters. Acute phase response mediators and products, such as pro-inflammatory cytokines and acute phase proteins, emerged recently as potential indicators of infection and herd health status (Eckersall, 2000; Petersen et al., 2004). Thus, investigating the effects of husbandry and low-dose lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenge on the acute phase response of young pigs can give valuable information on the use of these immune parameters as health and welfare indicators in pigs.Teagasc acknowledges the support of National Development Programme Funds (NDP) in the financing of this research projec
Citation Flows in the Zones of Influence of Scientific
Domestic citation to papers from the same country and the greater citation impact of documents involving international collaboration are two phenomena that have been extensively studied and contrasted. Here, however, we showthat it is not somuch a national bias,but that papers have a greater impact on their immediate environments, an impact that is diluted as that environment grows. For this reason, the greatest biases are observed in countries
with a limited production. Papers that involve international collaboration have a greater impact in general, on the one hand, because they have multiple âimmediate
environments,â and on the other because of their greater quality or prestige. In short, one can say that science knows no frontiers. Certainly there is a greater impact
on the authorsâ immediate environment, but this does not necessarily have to coincide with their national environments, which fade in importance as the collaborative
environment expands
Sensitivity of the g-mode frequencies to pulsation codes and their parameters
From the recent work of the Evolution and Seismic Tools Activity (ESTA,
Lebreton et al. 2006; Monteiro et al. 2008), whose Task 2 is devoted to compare
pulsational frequencies computed using most of the pulsational codes available
in the asteroseismic community, the dependence of the theoretical frequencies
with non-physical choices is now quite well fixed. To ensure that the accuracy
of the computed frequencies is of the same order of magnitude or better than
the observational errors, some requirements in the equilibrium models and the
numerical resolutions of the pulsational equations must be followed. In
particular, we have verified the numerical accuracy obtained with the Saclay
seismic model, which is used to study the solar g-mode region (60 to
140Hz). We have compared the results coming from the Aarhus adiabatic
pulsation code (ADIPLS), with the frequencies computed with the Granada Code
(GraCo) taking into account several possible choices. We have concluded that
the present equilibrium models and the use of the Richardson extrapolation
ensure an accuracy of the order of in the determination of the
frequencies, which is quite enough for our purposes.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Solar Physic
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