The rumen microbial metaproteome as revealed by SDS-PAGE

This work was supported by the RuminOmics project and funded by the European Commission (Grant Agreement No. 289319). The Rowett Institute is funded by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) of the Scottish Government. The funding bodies had no role in the design of the study or collection, analysis, or interpretation of data or in writing the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Description of a New Species of Slave-making Ant in the \u3ci\u3eFormica Sanguinea\u3c/i\u3e Group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

The new species, Formica gynocrates, is described and illustrated from all the castes. This slave-making species is a member of the sanguinea group and is most similar to F. pergandei. The type locality is the E. S. George Reserve, Livingston County, Michigan. Specimens were also examined from North Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado. A key is provided for the separation of the described North American members of the sanguinea group. The most commonly associated slave species is F. vinculans Wheeler, a member of the neogagates group. It is our opinion that F. vinculans is a valid species and not a synonym of F. neogagates, as has been previously supposed

Characterisation of pharmaceutical and polymer formulations by novel mass spectrometry approaches

Since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century, the field of mass spectrometry has progressed from the realm of physics to an analytical tool that can be found in many fields of science. This is in large part due to continued development and innovation in instrument design. This thesis explores two significant areas of development in mass spectrometry in the last ten years. The first is the development of ambient ionisation techniques. These techniques require little or no sample preparation, and as a result can provide a rapid means of direct analysis. The second development is the commercialisation of ion mobility – mass spectrometry (IM-MS). This technique enables information on the shape of the analyte of interest to be obtained in addition to its mass-to-charge ratio. The technique has the potential to simplify the spectra acquired from complex mixtures and to separate out isobaric species that cannot be resolved by mass spectrometry alone. Both of these developments have been applied to two important areas of analytical science – the characterisation of pharmaceutical commercial products and synthetic polymer formulations. A modification of the extractive electrospray ionisation (EESI) technique has been developed and has been termed thermally assisted – EESI (TA-EESI). TA-EESI and the atmospheric pressure solids analysis probe (ASAP) have been coupled with IMMS. IM-MS has been used as a rapid separation technique to resolve isomeric species within complex polysorbate formulations. Recently introduced novel polymer architectures synthesised by simple methods have been studied using IM-MS experiments

The ruminal microbiome associated with methane emissions from ruminant livestock

The Rowett Institute is funded by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) of the Scottish Government. This study was financially supported by Ruminomics (project no. 289319 of EC 7th Framework Programme: Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Biotechnology).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effect of Sunflower and Marine Oils on Ruminal Microbiota, In vitro Fermentation and Digesta Fatty Acid Profile

Funding This work has been funded by Consejería de Educación, Junta de Castilla y León (research project LE007A07). Acknowledgments We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI). Support received from CICYT project AGL2005-04760-C02-02 is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Breeding Sustainable Beef Cows: Reducing Weight and Increasing Productivity

Programs for sustainable beef production are established, but the specific role of beef cows in these systems is not well defined. This work characterized cows for two traits related to sustainability, cow weight (CW) and cumulative weight weaned (WtW). Cow weight indicates nutrient requirements and enteric methane emissions. Cumulative weight weaned reflects reproductive performance and avoidance of premature culling for characteristics related to animal health, welfare, and worker safety. Both traits were evaluated with random regression models with records from a crossbred population representing 18 breeds that conduct US national cattle evaluations. The genomic REML analyses included additive and dominance components, with relationships among 22,776 animals constructed from genotypes of 181,286 potentially functional variants imputed from a low-pass sequence. Projected to 8 years of age, the additive heritability estimate for CW was 0.57 and 0.11 for WtW. Dominance heritability was 0.02 for CW and 0.19 for WtW. Many variants with significant associations with CW were within previously described quantitative trait loci (QTL) for growthrelated production, meat, and carcass traits. Significant additive WtW variants were covered by QTL for traits related to reproduction and structural soundness. All breeds contributed to groups of cows with high and low total genetic values (additive + dominance effects) for both traits. The high WtW cows and cows above the WtW mean but below the CW mean had larger heterosis values and fewer bases in runs of homozygosity. The high additive heritability of CW and dominance effects on WtW indicate that breeding to improve beef cow sustainability should involve selection to reduce CW and mate selection to maintain heterosis and reduce runs of homozygosity. Simple Summary: Improving the sustainability of beef cows involves reducing feed costs and enteric methane emissions and increasing calf production while addressing concerns including animal health and welfare and worker safety. Reducing cow weight can favorably impact feed costs and methane emissions. Cumulative weight weaned observed throughout a cow’s productive life directly addresses calf production and indirectly addresses other concerns—cumulative production is higher for cows who wean healthy calves and avoid culling because of reproductive failure, unsoundness, and dangerous behavior. Using functional variant genotypes imputed from the low-coverage whole genome sequence, this examination of cow weight and cumulative weight weaned in a herd of crossbred cattle resulted in additive heritability estimates of 0.57 for cow weight and 0.11 for weight weaned by 8-year-old cows. Corresponding dominance heritability estimates were 0.02 for cow weight and 0.19 for weight weaned. All breeds were represented by cows projected to have high and low cow weights and weight weaned. Heterosis was higher and genomic inbreeding, measured by runs of homozygosity, was lower among high-weight weaned cows. These results suggest selection should be effective in reducing cow weight. Selection to increase weight weaned will be slow but can be hastened with crossbreeding. Especially when pedigree is not available to estimate heterosis, runs of homozygosity may be a useful indicator of heterosis and a predictor of cumulative productivity. Beef cow sustainability can be improved with appropriate crossbreeding and selection, and may be accelerated by incorporating functional variants associated with sustainability-related traits

Measurable \u3csup\u3e14\u3c/sup\u3eC in Fossilized Organic Materials: Confirming the Young Earth Creation-Flood Model

Given the short 14C half-life of 5730 years, organic materials purportedly older than 250,000 years, corresponding to 43.6 half-lives, should contain absolutely no detectable 14C. (One gram of modern carbon contains about 6 x 1010 14C atoms, and 43.6 half-lives should reduce that number by a factor of 7.3 x 10-14.) An astonishing discovery made over the past twenty years is that, almost without exception, when tested by highly sensitive accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) methods, organic samples from every portion of the Phanerozoic record show detectable amounts of 14C! 14C/C ratios from all but the youngest Phanerozoic samples appear to be clustered in the range 0.1-0.5 pmc (percent modern carbon), regardless of geological ‘age.’ A straightforward conclusion that can be drawn from these observations is that all but the very youngest Phanerozoic organic material was buried contemporaneously much less than 250,000 years ago. This is consistent with the Biblical account of a global Flood that destroyed most of the air-breathing life on the planet in a single brief cataclysm only a few thousand years ago

Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay

Two decades ago, Robert Gentry and his colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory reported surprisingly high amounts of nuclear-decay-generated helium in tiny radioactive zircons recovered from Precambrian crystalline rock, the Jemez Granodiorite on the west flank of the volcanic Valles Caldera near Los Alamos, New Mexico [9]. Up to 58% of the helium (that radioactivity would have generated during the alleged 1.5 billion year age of the granodiorite) was still in the zircons. Yet the zircons were so small that they should not have retained the helium for even a tiny fraction of that time. The high helium retention levels suggested to us and many other creationists that the helium simply had not had enough time to diffuse out of the zircons, and that recent accelerated nuclear decay had produced over a billion years worth of helium within only the last few thousand years, during Creation and/or the Flood. Such acceleration would reduce the radioisotopic time scale from megayears down to months. However, until a few years ago nobody had done the experimental and theoretical studies necessary to confirm this conclusion quantitatively. There was only one (ambiguously reported) measurement of helium diffusion through zircon [18]. There were no measurements of helium diffusion through biotite, the black mica surrounding the zircons. In 2000 the RATE project [14] began experiments to measure the diffusion rates of helium in zircon and biotite specifically from the Jemez Granodiorite. The data, reported here, are consistent with data for a mica related to biotite [17], with recently reported data for zircon [19] and with a reasonable interpretation of the earlier zircon data [18]. We show that these data limit the age of these rocks to between 4,000 and 14,000 years. These results support our hypothesis of accelerated nuclear decay and represent strong scientific evidence for the young world of Scripture

The shortage of kidneys for transplantation in Australia

The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included.Timothy Mathew, Randall Faull and Paul Snellin