BSAVA Formulary: Your questions answered

A new edition of the BSAVA Small Animal Formulary has been published. Ian Ramsey explains what is in and what is out of this new version

Generation of unique protein specifiic MRM signatures; using peptide information from alternate scanning LC-MS data to drive MRM development

Comunicaciones a congreso

Organic Rice Production – Improving System Sustainability

Trials conducted as part of the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Rice Production during 2003-2004 investigated alternative weed management, cultivar assessments and fertiliser strategies in order to improve the sustainability of organic rice production systems in the NSW Riverina. Results indicated there was no immediate rice yield benefit to organic producers by applying any of the various organic fertilisers tested. Ongoing experimentation may have shown benefits to cereal or pastures which followed in the rotation, but this was not evaluated. The authors recommend that organic rice farmers carefully monitor crop yield responses to fertiliser applications and carefully consider the cost:benefit of fertiliser applications to their cropping and livestock rotation. Whilst the yields achieved for organic rice during the experiments were low compared to district averages for ‘conventionally’ grown rice during the 2003-04 season (yields ranged from 71-86% of conventional yield), they were well above the 50-75% yield reduction cited as typical for organically produced rice compared to conventional rice. The authors recommend that organic rice producers investigate a number of strategies to improve nutrient cycling within the rice rotation. This includes strategies to maximise symbiotic N fixation during the pasture phase such as shortening the pasture phase to two years, ensuring a high (at least 90%) legume component in pastures and improving pasture nutrition (particularly P), water use efficiency and grazing management. The value of incorporating green manuring within the farming system to increase N cycling, provide weed breaks and alternative cropping and grazing opportunities should also be investigated. Rice establishment techniques (sowing method, fertiliser placement and flushing) may have a significant impact on N losses and rice yields. Sod-seeding rice into a legume pasture, the method commonly used by organic producers, is the preferred sowing method for preserving organic nitrogen as there is zero cultivation and hence slow plant decomposition. Organic farmers can further reduce N losses during establishment by minimising flushing and by applying organic fertilisers or composts prior to permanent water (as opposed to sowing application). There was no statistical evidence that the application of liquid lime and molasses after sowing prevented the germination of some weeds, and that a homeopathic remedy made out of Barnyard grass seeds would decrease populations of barnyard grass over time. A field demonstration showed that harrowing could produce an effective post-emergent control for barnyard grass, providing the timing of harrowing and soil condition is optimal

Communicative Justice and Reconciliation in Canada

Communicative justice co-exists with other dimensions of justice and emphasizes the importance of fair communicative practices, particularly after periods of direct or structural violence. While intercultural dialogue is often assumed to be a positive, or even necessary, part of reconciliation processes, there are questions to be asked about the ethicality of dialogue when one voice has been silenced, misrepresented, and ignored for decades. This article draws on twelve months of ethnographic research with reconciliation activists and organizations in Canada and considers the potential for communicative flows to help compensate for structural inequalities during processes of reconciliation

Common right and enclosure in eighteenth-century Northamptonshire

All occupiers of open field land, and some occupiers of cottages, enjoyed common right of pasture over the open fields and commonable places of a parish; even those with very small holdings could use common pasture; and in royal forest, fenland parishes, and others with sizeable wastes, landless commoners collected fuel wood, furze, browse and much more. Common of pasture was a critical support of the small occupiers' economy. Its value was maintained by a comprehensive communal regulation of the use of the right, and by apparently effective enforcement of field orders. At enclosure common rights were extinguished - although some part of the old economy survived in newly enclosed forest and fen parishes lying near unenclosed common pastures. In many parishes two thirds of all commoners sold some or all of their land, or left their rented holdings; only half as many left their lands in adjacent open field parishes at the same time. Small owners -old their lands in greater numbers than any other group. Thus opposition to enclosure arose for two reasons: the loss of common right and the loss of land. Opposition in Parliament was voiced in counter-petitions and at the report stage in a majority of successful enclosure Bills. Unlawful opposition in the form of riotous destruction of posts and rails, and more clandestine activity, was more widespread in Northamptonshire than has been thought hitherto; but existing records cannot reveal its full extent. Finally, the enclosure of open fields, and the loss of common rights over waste, woods and permanent commons, closed up the countryside to all but individual owners of land. And for the landless it replaced an economy partially based on rights over all the land with one more dependent on privileges and benevolence

Oral administration of a Salmonella enterica-based vaccine expressing Bacillus anthracis protective antigen confers protection against aerosolized B. anthracis.

Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax, a disease that affects wildlife, livestock, and humans. Protection against anthrax is primarily afforded by immunity to the B. anthracis protective antigen (PA), particularly PA domains 4 and 1. To further the development of an orally delivered human vaccine for mass vaccination against anthrax, we produced Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium expressing full-length PA, PA domains 1 and 4, or PA domain 4 using codon-optimized PA DNA fused to the S. enterica serovar Typhi ClyA and under the control of the ompC promoter. Oral immunization of A/J mice with Salmonella expressing full-length PA protected five of six mice against a challenge with 10(5) CFU of aerosolized B. anthracis STI spores, whereas Salmonella expressing PA domains 1 and 4 provided only 25% protection (two of eight mice), and Salmonella expressing PA domain 4 or a Salmonella-only control afforded no measurable protection. However, a purified recombinant fusion protein of domains 1 and 4 provided 100% protection, and purified recombinant 4 provided protection in three of eight immunized mice. Thus, we demonstrate for the first time the efficacy of an oral S. enterica-based vaccine against aerosolized B. anthracis spores

Are the immuno-stimulatory properties of Lenalidomide extinguished by co-administration of Dexamethasone?

Dexamethasone has been a mainstay of anti-myeloma therapy for 20 years. However, it is intensely immunosuppressive and may limit the efficacy of the immune system to control myeloma, and limit the exciting opportunities to use immune stimulating drug therapies such as Lenalidomide to maximize the fight against this disease

The European Performance of Buildings Directive - Case Study: New Headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main

The EPBD was passed as a Directive in 2002 paving the way for national legislation, the German version of which is the EnEV 2007, passed in October 2007. These dates mark roughly the start and end of the feasibility and design phase for the design of the New ECB Premises. The paper aims to show how, in the absence of approved legislation, the client and design team have worked together to pre-empt legislative requirements before these were officially published in 2007. Lessons learned from the implementation of the new calculation methods required by EnEV2007 will be discussed and the adopted calculation procedure outlined. The talk is given from the perspective of a building owner/user. Lessons learnt from the operation of the client's existing buildings will be highlighted and shown how these were incorporated into the requirements for the new building

Towards a Process Domain‐Sensitive Substrate Habitat Model for Sea Lampreys in Michigan Rivers

Habitat mapping is a common and often useful tool in the ecological management of rivers. The complex nature of fluvial processes, however, makes it difficult to predict the reach‐scale distribution of substrate habitat from landscape‐scale covariates. An option is to identify and partition a data set on boundaries of geomorphic process domains, within which the globally complex relationships between landscape, climate, and instream habitat may potentially be approximated by a simpler model. In this study, we used regression trees as a machine learning method for partitioning and identifying useful strata in a geographically extensive substrate habitat model for larvae of the sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus, an invasive and economically harmful species in the Laurentian Great Lakes. We used field survey data from over 5,000 substrate habitat transects collected in 43 watersheds of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, and we created a geographic database of geographical information systems‐derived covariates that represent the principal geomorphic influences on substrate habitat. We created three trees in which tree splits delineated (1) spatially contiguous units, (2) noncontiguous units defined by values of the covariates, and (3) both contiguous and noncontiguous units. The adjusted R2 values of the three trees were 0.30, 0.30, and 0.32, respectively, and all three trees outperformed a single model fitted to the entire data set and a set of models fitted to each watershed individually. The trees identified useful stratifications of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, important geomorphic influences on substrate habitat, and variation in the influence of geomorphic processes on substrate habitat across our study region. Conservation and management applications of our model predictions and tree‐based stratifications include sea lamprey population modeling, habitat survey design, and evaluation of dam removal.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141668/1/tafs0313.pd