The Effects of Temperature and Temperature-Humidity Index on Pregnancy Rate in Beef Cows

Ten years of records from a 150- head beef cow herd were used to determine the relationship of temperature and temperature-humidity index (THI) on pregnancy rate in beef cows. Pregnancy rate of the herd for the duration of the experiment averaged 92%. There was a linear relationship between average 30-day temperature and pregnancy rate during the first 30 days of the breeding season. Average THI greater than 65 for the first 30 days of the breeding season tended to decrease pregnancy rate in the first 30 days, but there was no effect on herd pregnancy rate. If the 60-day average THI was greater than 70, pregnancy rate for 60 days tended to decrease. Breeding season THI had no effect on pregnancy rate. High temperatures and high temperature-humidity index decrease the pregnancy rate during the first 30 days of the breeding season. Cows acclimate to environmental conditions and if the length of the breeding season is 60 days or more, pregnancy rate is not compromised

Environmental Effects on Pregnancy Rate in Beef Cattle

Ten years of calving records were examined from Bos taurus crossbred cows (mean of 182 cows/ yr) to quantify the effects of environmental conditions during the breeding season on pregnancy rate. Estimated breeding dates were determined by subtracting 283 d from the calving date. Relationships were determined between the proportion of cows bred during the periods from the beginning of the breeding season until d 21, 42, and 60 of the breeding season and the corresponding environmental variables. Weather data were compiled from a weather station located approximately 20 km from the research site. Average daily temperature and relative humidity were used to calculate daily temperature-humidity index (THI). Daily averages for each environmental variable were averaged for each period. Minimum temperature (MNTP) and THI for the first 21 and 42 d of the breeding season were negatively associated (P \u3c 0.001) with pregnancy rate. For the 0- to 21-d, 0- to 42-d, and 0- to 60-d breeding periods, respective r2 for average temperatures were 0.32, 0.37, and 0.11, whereas r2 for MNTP were 0.45, 0.40, and 0.10 and r2 for THI were 0.38, 0.41, and 0.11, respectively, for the same breeding periods. The negative associations of temperature and THI with pregnancy rate are most pronounced during the first 21 d of the breeding season, with a −3.79 and −2.06% change in pregnancy rate for each unit of change in MNTP and THI, respectively. A combination of environmental variables increased the R2 to 0.67. In this analysis, windspeed was found to be positively associated with pregnancy rate in all equations and increased the R2 in all breeding periods. Optimum MNTP for the 0- to 21-d, 0- to 42-d, and 0- to 60- d breeding periods was 12.6, 13.5, and 14.9°C, respectively. For the 0- to 60-d breeding period, optimum THI was 68.0, whereas the THI threshold, the calculated level at which cattle will adapt, was found to be 72.9. Reductions in pregnancy rate are likely when the average MNTP and THI equal or exceed 16.7°C and 72.9, respectively, and for Bos Taurus beef cows that are pasture bred during a 60-d spring-summer period

The Portable Dynamic Fundus Instrument: Uses in telemedicine and research

For years ophthalmic photographs have been used to track the progression of many ocular diseases such as macular degeneration and glaucoma as well as the ocular manifestations of diabetes, hypertension, and hypoxia. In 1987 a project was initiated at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) to develop a means of monitoring retinal vascular caliber and intracranial pressure during space flight. To conduct telemedicine during space flight operations, retinal images would require real-time transmissions from space. Film-based images would not be useful during in-flight operations. Video technology is beneficial in flight because the images may be acquired, recorded, and transmitted to the ground for rapid computer digital image processing and analysis. The computer analysis techniques developed for this project detected vessel caliber changes as small as 3 percent. In the field of telemedicine, the Portable Dynamic Fundus Instrument demonstrates the concept and utility of a small, self-contained video funduscope. It was used to record retinal images during the Gulf War and to transmit retinal images from the Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-50. There are plans to utilize this device to provide a mobile ophthalmic screening service in rural Texas. In the fall of 1993 a medical team in Boulder, Colorado, will transmit real-time images of the retina during remote consultation and diagnosis. The research applications of this device include the capability of operating in remote locations or small, confined test areas. There has been interest shown utilizing retinal imaging during high-G centrifuge tests, high-altitude chamber tests, and aircraft flight tests. A new design plan has been developed to incorporate the video instrumentation into face-mounted goggle. This design would eliminate head restraint devices, thus allowing full maneuverability to the subjects. Further development of software programs will broaden the application of the Portable Dynamic Fundus Instrument in telemedicine and medical research

The microanalysis of iron and sulphur oxidation states in silicate glass - Understanding the effects of beam damage

Quantifying the oxidation state of multivalent elements in silicate melts (e.g., Fe²⁺ versus Fe³⁺ or S²⁻ versus S⁶⁺) is fundamental for constraining oxygen fugacity. Oxygen fugacity is a key thermodynamic parameter in understanding melt chemical history from the Earth's mantle through the crust to the surface. To make these measurements, analyses are typically performed on small (<100 µm diameter) regions of quenched volcanic melt (now silicate glass) forming the matrix between crystals or as trapped inclusions. Such small volumes require microanalysis, with multiple techniques often applied to the same area of glass to extract the full range of information that will shed light on volcanic and magmatic processes. This can be problematic as silicate glasses are often unstable under the electron and photon beams used for this range of analyses. It is therefore important to understand any compositional and structural changes induced within the silicate glass during analysis, not only to ensure accurate measurements (and interpretations), but also that subsequent analyses are not compromised. Here, we review techniques commonly used for measuring the Fe and S oxidation state in silicate glass and explain how silicate glass of different compositions responds to electron and photon beam irradiation

Rheological controls on the eruption potential and style of an andesite volcano:A case study from Mt. Ruapehu, New Zealand

The evolving magma rheology of three recent Ruapehu eruptions (1969, 1977, and 1995) is estimated using a combination of thermodynamic models and rheological calculations, supported by textural observations of the erupted scoria. We use a well-established thermodynamic model to determine the composition of these representative Ruapehu magmas from 300MPa to ∼30MPa. The outputs of the model provide the changing crystal and bubble content in a closed system (assuming no gas loss), as well as the fractionating melt compositions. We calculate the melt viscosity, and the effect of bubbles and crystals, to quantify the rheology of the magma during ascent (under assumed equilibrium conditions). The moderately high phenocryst content of Ruapehu scoria (∼30%) means that only a small amount of additional microlite crystallisation (∼5%) would result in a yield strength, which may lead the magma to stall. However, if the strain rates are high enough, more crystallisation would be possible without developing a yield stress. This suggests that microlite-rich magmas are almost certain to stall unless they encounter significant fluid addition from a source such as a hydrothermal system, groundwater, or surface water (i.e., Ruapehu's Crater Lake). Ruapehu magmas are initially H2O-undersaturated and as a consequence, crystallisation and bubble growth were suppressed until the magma achieved saturation, at ∼100 to 50 MPa. From this analysis, we suggest that Ruapehu magmas are more likely to erupt compared to magmas of a similar composition that are H2O-saturated. This partly explains the regular, albeit small-volume eruptions at Ruapehu and the propensity for phreatomagmatic eruptions when the magma:water ratio is low

Impact 2001

Index Competitive Agricultural Systems in a Global Economy ............................................................. 1 Safe and Secure Food and Fiber Systems ............................................................. 20 Healthy, Well-Nourished Population ............................................................. 28 Greater Harmony Between Agriculture and the Environment ............................................................. 38 Economic Development and Quality of Life for People and Communities ............................................................. 46 Society-Ready Graduates ............................................................. 5

Impact 2001

Index Competitive Agricultural Systems in a Global Economy ............................................................. 1 Safe and Secure Food and Fiber Systems ............................................................. 20 Healthy, Well-Nourished Population ............................................................. 28 Greater Harmony Between Agriculture and the Environment ............................................................. 38 Economic Development and Quality of Life for People and Communities ............................................................. 46 Society-Ready Graduates ............................................................. 5

A case study in adaptable and reusable infrastructure at the Keck Observatory Archive: VO interfaces, moving targets, and more

The Keck Observatory Archive (KOA) (https://koa.ipac.caltech.edu) curates all observations acquired at the W. M. Keck Observatory (WMKO) since it began operations in 1994, including data from eight active instruments and two decommissioned instruments. The archive is a collaboration between WMKO and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI). Since its inception in 2004, the science information system used at KOA has adopted an architectural approach that emphasizes software re-use and adaptability. This paper describes how KOA is currently leveraging and extending open source software components to develop new services and to support delivery of a complete set of instrument metadata, which will enable more sophisticated and extensive queries than currently possible. In August 2015, KOA deployed a program interface to discover public data from all instruments equipped with an imaging mode. The interface complies with version 2 of the Simple Imaging Access Protocol (SIAP), under development by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA), which defines a standard mechanism for discovering images through spatial queries. The heart of the KOA service is an R-tree-based, database-indexing mechanism prototyped by the Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO) and further developed by the Montage Image Mosaic project, designed to provide fast access to large imaging data sets as a first step in creating wide-area image mosaics (such as mosaics of subsets of the 4.7 million images of the SDSS DR9 release). The KOA service uses the results of the spatial R-tree search to create an SQLite data database for further relational filtering. The service uses a JSON configuration file to describe the association between instrument parameters and the service query parameters, and to make it applicable beyond the Keck instruments. The images generated at the Keck telescope usually do not encode the image footprints as WCS fields in the FITS file headers. Because SIAP searches are spatial, much of the effort in developing the program interface involved processing the instrument and telescope parameters to understand how accurately we can derive the WCS information for each instrument. This knowledge is now being fed back into the KOA databases as part of a program to include complete metadata information for all imaging observations. The R-tree program was itself extended to support temporal (in addition to spatial) indexing, in response to requests from the planetary science community for a search engine to discover observations of Solar System objects. With this 3D-indexing scheme, the service performs very fast time and spatial matches between the target ephemerides, obtained from the JPL SPICE service. Our experiments indicate these matches can be more than 100 times faster than when separating temporal and spatial searches. Images of the tracks of the moving targets, overlaid with the image footprints, are computed with a new command-line visualization tool, mViewer, released with the Montage distribution. The service is currently in test and will be released in late summer 2016

Injection Molding of Magnesium Aluminate Spinel Nanocomposites for High‐Throughput Manufacturing of Transparent Ceramics

Transparent ceramics like magnesium aluminate spinel (MAS) are considered the next step in material evolution showing unmatched mechanical, chemical and physical resistance combined with high optical transparency. Unfortunately, transparent ceramics are notoriously difficult to shape, especially on the microscale. Therefore, a thermoplastic MAS nanocomposite is developed that can be shaped by polymer injection molding at high speed and precision. The nanocomposite is converted to dense MAS by debinding, pre-sintering, and hot isostatic pressing yielding transparent ceramics with high optical transmission up to 84 % and high mechanical strength. A transparent macroscopic MAS components with wall thicknesses up to 4 mm as well as microstructured components with single micrometer resolution are shown. This work makes transparent MAS ceramics accessible to modern high-throughput polymer processing techniques for fast and cost-efficient manufacturing of macroscopic and microstructured components enabling a plethora of potential applications from optics and photonics, medicine to scratch and break-resistant transparent windows for consumer electronics