578 research outputs found
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
Incidence of anthelmintic resistance in cattle farms in Northern Germany – first results
Anthelmintic resistance (AR) is an increasing problem worldwide especially for small ruminants and it is also rising in cattle. To maintain the efficacy of anthelmintics is an important objective. The current project aims at the investigation of the current efficacy of macrocyclic lactone anthelmintics for strongylid nematodes in first season grazing (FSG) calves in Northern Germany. On 8 participating farms in Northern Germany faecal egg count reduction tests (FECRT) with ivermectin (IVM) were performed. On 3 farms the efficacy of IVM was found to be ≤90% and on only 4 farms it was > 95% at 14 days post treatment (d.p.t.). Only 2 farms showed a reduction ≥ 95% at 21 d.p.t.. This survey reveals a rising problem of AR. The problem of drug resistance places the welfare of animals at risk. In organic farming, without a preventive treatment, livestock may harbour high worm counts. Therefore it is necessary to maintain powerful anthelmintic drugs to guarantee the welfare of animals that need salvage treatment. To investigate the AR problem in cattle more surveys with different anthelmintic drug classes are urgently needed
Medikamente im Ă–kolandbau und Nachhaltigkeit?
The occurrence of pharmaceuticals in the environment was frequently reported and
possible adverse effects on non-target organisms are of increasing concern. The
presence of veterinary drugs in manure may cause largely unknown ecotoxicological
effects. Organic animal health management puts emphasis rather on prevention than
on treatment. This could be an approach to develop a more sustainable production
system. The current health situation in organic farming still requires veterinary drugs.
Investigating the extent of the use and the toxic potential of pharmaceuticals could
demonstrate that organic farming is the less polluting system
The Trouble with Hubble Types in the Virgo Cluster
Quantitative measures of central light concentration and star formation
activity are derived from R and Halpha surface photometry of 84 bright S0-Scd
Virgo Cluster and isolated spiral galaxies. For isolated spirals, there is a
good correlation between these two parameters and assigned Hubble types. In the
Virgo Cluster, the correlation between central light concentration and star
formation activity is significantly weaker. Virgo Cluster spirals have
systematically reduced global star formation with respect to isolated spirals,
with severe reduction in the outer disk, but normal or enhanced activity in the
inner disk. Assigned Hubble types are thus inadequate to describe the range in
morphologies of bright Virgo Cluster spirals. In particular, spirals with
reduced global star formation activity are often assigned misleading early-type
classifications, irrespective of their central light concentrations. 45+-25% of
the galaxies classified as Sa in the Virgo Cluster sample have central light
concentrations more characteristic of isolated Sb-Sc galaxies. The misleading
classification of low concentration galaxies with low star formation rates as
early-type spirals may account for part of the excess of `early-type' spiral
galaxies in clusters. Thus the morphology-density relationship is not all due
to a systematic increase in the bulge-to-disk ratio with environmental density.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. Latex aaspp4.sty, 9 pages, 2
Postscript (embedded) figures. Also available at
http://www.astro.yale.edu/koopmann/preprint.htm
Uniform Interpolation and Forgetting for ALC Ontologies with ABoxes
Uniform interpolation and the dual task of forgetting restrict the ontology to a specified subset of concept and role names. This makes them useful tools for ontology analysis, ontology evolution and information hiding. Most previous research focused on uniform interpolation of TBoxes. However, especially for applications in privacy and information hiding, it is essential that uniform interpolation methods can deal with ABoxes as well. We present the first method that can compute uniform interpolants of any ALC ontology with ABoxes. ABoxes bring their own challenges when computing uniform interpolants, possibly requiring disjunctive statements or nominals in the resulting ABox. Our method can compute representations of uniform interpolants in ALCO. An evaluation on realistic ontologies shows that these uniform interpolants can be practically computed, and can often even be presented in pure ALC
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
CAIRNS: The Cluster And Infall Region Nearby Survey III. Environmental Dependence of H-alpha Properties of Galaxies
We investigate the environmental dependence of star formation in cluster
virial regions and infall regions as part of CAIRNS (Cluster And Infall Region
Nearby Survey), a large spectroscopic survey of the infall regions surrounding
nine nearby rich clusters of galaxies. Our long-slit spectroscopy yields
estimates of star formation rates in environments from cluster cores to the
general large-scale structure. The fraction of galaxies with current star
formation in their inner disks as traced by H-alpha emission increases with
distance from the cluster and converges to the ``field'' value only at 2-3
virial radii, in agreement with other investigations. However, among galaxies
with significant current star formation (EW[Ha]geq2\AA), there is no difference
in the distribution of EW[Ha] inside and outside the virial radius. This
surprising result, first seen by Carter et al., suggests that (1) star
formation is truncated on either very short timescales or only at moderate and
high redshifts or (2) that projection effects contaminate the measurement. The
number density profiles of star-forming and non-star-forming galaxies indicate
that, among galaxies projected inside the virial radius, at least half of the
former and 20% of the latter are ``infall interlopers,'' galaxies in the infall
region but outside the virial region. The kinematics of star-forming galaxies
in the infall region closely match those of absorption-dominated galaxies. This
result shows that the star forming galaxies in the infall regions are not
interlopers from the field and excludes one model of the backsplash scenario of
galaxy transformation. Finally, we quantify systematic uncertainties in
estimating the global star formation in galaxies from their inner disks.Comment: 25 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in A
Untersuchungen zur Wirksamkeit von Anthelminthika bei erstsömmrigen Rindern in Europa
Resistance to anthelmintics is a threat to several animal industries world wide. Nevertheless,
the use of effective anthelmintics to control nematode infections in cattle
still remains irreplaceable. Anthelmintic resistance in cattle has been reported in New
Zealand, North and South America and England but so far not in Europe. To be able
to determine the extent of anthelmintic resistance in nematodes of farm animals and to
monitor the success of any resistance management requires reliable tests for the
detection of anthelmintic resistance. One of the objectives of PARASOL, a European
Framework 6 funded project, is to produce standard operating procedures for the
running of a faecal egg count reduction test (FECRT). Standardized procedures for
the FECRT have been developed and surveys with injectable ivermectin were then
performed in Germany, Sweden and Belgium in 2006 and 2007. Additional tests using
benzimidazoles were performed in Sweden and Germany in 2007. Furthermore, some
of the refractory strains will be isolated to test whether the phenomena observed in the
field was due to the evolution of anthelmintic resistance
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