Pelvic Measurements: Applications in Beef Cattle Practice Today

Dystocia (difficult calving) is a major cause of loss for beef cattle producers. It results in an increased incidence of calf mortality at or near birth, increased cow mortality, and higher veterinary and labor costs. In one study, calf loss within 24 hours of birth was 4% when heifers gave birth unassisted, 16% when calving difficulty ensued. Of the calves that died at or near calving, 57% of these were attributed to dystocia.2Another study revealed that heifers calving unassisted weaned 70% of their calves; heifers needing assistance calving weaned 59%. Dystocia also results in delayed return to estrus and decreased conception rate in heifers and cows subsequent to their calving difficulty. Pregnancy rates following first calving in one study were 85% for heifers calving unassisted and 69% for heifers that had dystocia. Subsequent weaning rates for heifers that underwent dystocia in their first calving were !4% lower than for their non-dystocia counterparts

Environmental influences on adult neuroticism:A systematic review

Behavioral-genetic studies show substantial non-genetic influences on variance of neuroticism within a population. Longitudinal studies show a small but steady drop in testretest correlations with increasing time intervals. This suggest environmental effects on neuroticism, but a systematic overview of which environmental determinants account for change in neuroticism is lacking. We review (specific or unique) environmental influences that modify the neuroticism setpoint in adulthood and therewith individual life trajectories. Results are interpreted in light of the so-called ‘mixed model’ in which within-person changes in neuroticism are subdivided over short term perturbations around the setpoint of neuroticism versus more persistent changes in the setpoint itself. To account for genetic confounding and shared environmental influences studies of monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs discordant for neuroticism and longitudinal studies that report on environmental factors that predict within-individual change in neuroticism are reviewed. Our results indicate that the neuroticism setpoint is consistently touched by experiences that affect central aspects of one’s identity and status, mainly role transitions as partner (marriage/divorce) and employee (job loss/promotion). Especially interpersonal stress, conflict, and major events that were unpredictable, uncontrollable, unexpected, undesirable, and ‘off time’ from a life history perspective were followed by changes in neuroticism that persisted more than six months, which suggest setpoint change. Most change after severe SLEs persisted over a decade. Long-term and detailed studies are required to elucidate the details of the ‘mixed model’ of change in neuroticism. An understanding of the specifics of the events that lead to persistent changes in neuroticism may enable us to craft prevention strategies to tackle the vulnerability for mental disorders inherent in high neuroticism, rather than to wait for their manifestation

Comment on Hogan and Foster:The Future is Here

This response to Hogan and Foster’s (2016) rethinking of personality refutes their claim that both neuroticism and personality psychology are meaningless. Paradoxically, they also argue that traits are meaningful if they predict outcomes, which in particular the neuroticism personality trait does best of all, as outlined in our comment. Moreover, their defeatist perspective on personality psychology is contrasted with several promising developments, including support for the five factors outside of their lexical roots, and alternative theories to explain personality trait covariance without latent trait factors. In this short literature overview personality psychology is presented as a highly diverse and progressive field, which we believe to have a meaningful future ahead

ESMvis:a tool for visualizing individual Experience Sampling Method (ESM) data

PURPOSE: The experience sampling method (ESM) is used for intensive longitudinal time-series data collection during normal daily life. ESM data give information on momentary affect, activities and (social) context of, for example, patients suffering from mental disorders, and allows for person-specific feedback reports. However, current personalized feedback reports only display a selection of measured variables, and typically involve only summary statistics, thus not reflecting the dynamic fluctuations in affect and its influencing factors. To address this shortcoming, we developed a tool for dynamically visualizing ESM data. METHODS: We introduce a new framework, ESMvis, for giving descriptive feedback, focusing on direct visualization of the dynamic nature of raw data. In this ESM feedback approach, raw ESM data are visualized using R software. We applied ESMvis to data collected for over 52 weeks on a patient diagnosed with an obsessive-compulsive disorder with comorbid depression. RESULTS: We provided personalized feedback, in which both the overall trajectory and specific time moments were captured in a movie format. Two relapses during the study period could be visually determined, and subsequently confirmed by the therapist. The therapist and patient evaluated ESMvis as an insightful add-on tool to care-as-usual. CONCLUSION: ESMvis is a showcase on providing personalized feedback by dynamic visualization of ESM time-series data. Our tool is freely available and adjustable, making it widely applicable. In addition to potential applications in clinical practice, ESMvis can work as an exploratory tool that can lead to new hypotheses and inform more complex statistical techniques

Towards a 3-D tomographic retrieval for the air-borne limb-imager GLORIA

GLORIA (Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere) is a new remote sensing instrument essentially combining a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer with a two-dimensional (2-D) detector array in combination with a highly flexible gimbal mount. It will be housed in the belly pod of the German research aircraft HALO (High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft). It is unique in its combination of high spatial and state-of-the art spectral resolution. Furthermore, the horizontal view angle with respect to the aircraft flight direction can be varied from 45° to 135°. This allows for tomographic measurements of mesoscale events for a wide variety of atmospheric constituents. <br><br> In this paper, a tomographic retrieval scheme is presented, which is able to fully exploit the manifold radiance observations of the GLORIA limb sounder. The algorithm is optimized for massive 3-D retrievals of several hundred thousands of measurements and atmospheric constituents on common hardware. The new scheme is used to explore the capabilities of GLORIA to sound the atmosphere in full 3-D with respect to the choice of the flightpath and to different measurement modes of the instrument using ozone as a test species. It is demonstrated that the achievable resolution should approach 200 m vertically and 20 km–30 km horizontally. Finally, a comparison of the 3-D inversion with conventional 1-D inversions using the assumption of a horizontally homogeneous atmosphere is performed