Considerations for managing beef cows in confinement

Continued volatility of grain markets, coupled with recent summer droughts, has had a significant impact on the Midwestern cow-calf sector in recent years. These factors, along with decreased land availability for grazing and forage production, has resulted in increased cost of production and left many producers pondering alternative management systems for their herds. One such management alternative that is capturing the interest of many producers is the concept of confinement housing of the cow herd. In many parts of the United States, where year-round grazing is either not feasible, or is not implemented, confinement housing of the cow herd is not necessarily a novel practice. Often times, cows are placed on a sacrifice paddock or drylot with varying degrees of access to shelter for a period of time during the winter months, leading up to and sometimes through the calving season. However, with reduced land access and increasing forage prices, an increased proportion of producers are managing cows in confinement during times of the year traditionally devoted to grazing. With these management alterations come various considerations that should be acknowledged

Cellular excitability and the regulation of functional neuronal identity: from gene expression to neuromodulation

The intrinsic properties of a neuron determine the translation of synaptic input to axonal output. It is this input– output relationship that is the heart of all nervous system activity. As such, the overall regulation of the intrinsic excitability of a neuron directly determines the output of that neuron at a given point in time, giving the cell a unique “functional identity.” To maintain this distinct functional output, neurons must adapt to changing patterns of synaptic excitation. These adaptations are essential to prevent neurons from either falling silent as synaptic excitation falls or becoming saturated as excitation increases. In the absence of stabilizing mechanisms, activity-dependent plasticity could drive neural activity to saturation or quiescence. Furthermore, as cells adapt to changing patterns of synaptic input, presumably the overall balance of intrinsic conductances of the cell must be maintained so that reliable output is achieved (Daoudal and Debanne, 2003; Turrigiano and Nelson, 2004; Frick and Johnston, 2005). Although these regulatory phenomena have been well documented, the molecular and physiological mechanisms involved are poorly understood

Intraoperative Image Guidance in Neurosurgery: Development, Current Indications, and Future Trends

Introduction. As minimally invasive surgery becomes the standard of care in neurosurgery, it is imperative that surgeons become skilled in the use of image-guided techniques. The development of image-guided neurosurgery represents a substantial improvement in the microsurgical treatment of tumors, vascular malformations, and other intracranial lesions. Objective. There have been numerous advances in neurosurgery which have aided the neurosurgeon to achieve accurate removal of pathological tissue with minimal disruption of surrounding healthy neuronal matter including the development of microsurgical, endoscopic, and endovascular techniques. Neuronavigation systems and intraoperative imaging should improve success in cranial neurosurgery. Additional functional imaging modalities such as PET, SPECT, DTI (for fiber tracking), and fMRI can now be used in order to reduce neurological deficits resulting from surgery; however the positive long-term effect remains questionable for many indications. Method. PubMed database search using the search term “image guided neurosurgery.” More than 1400 articles were published during the last 25 years. The abstracts were scanned for prospective comparative trials. Results and Conclusion. 14 comparative trials are published. To date significant data amount show advantages in intraoperative accuracy influencing the perioperative morbidity and long-term outcome only for cerebral glioma surgery

Direct measurement of neutrons induced in lead by cosmic muons at a shallow underground site

Neutron production in lead by cosmic muons has been studied with a Gadolinium doped liquid scintillator detector. The detector was installed next to the Muon-Induced Neutron Indirect Detection EXperiment (MINIDEX), permanently located in the T\"ubingen shallow underground laboratory where the mean muon energy is approximately 7 GeV. The MINIDEX plastic scintillators were used to tag muons; the neutrons were detected through neutron capture and neutron-induced nuclear recoil signals in the liquid scintillator detector. Results on the rates of observed neutron captures and nuclear recoils are presented and compared to predictions from GEANT4-9.6 and GEANT4-10.3. The predicted rates are significantly too low for both versions of GEANT4. For neutron capture events, the observation exceeds the predictions by factors of $1.65\,\pm\,0.02\,\textrm{(stat.)}\,\pm\,0.07\,\textrm{(syst.)}$ and $2.58\,\pm\,0.03\,\textrm{(stat.)}\,\pm\,0.11\,\textrm{(syst.)}$ for GEANT4-9.6 and GEANT4-10.3, respectively. For neutron nuclear recoil events, which require neutron energies above approximately 5 MeV, the factors are even larger, $2.22\,\pm\,0.05\,\textrm{(stat.)}\,\pm\,0.25\,\textrm{(syst.)}$ and $3.76\,\pm\,0.09\,\textrm{(stat.)}\,\pm\,0.41\,\textrm{(syst.)}$, respectively. Also presented is the first statistically significant measurement of the spectrum of neutrons induced by cosmic muons in lead between 5 and 40 MeV. It was obtained by unfolding the nuclear recoil spectrum. The observed neutron spectrum is harder than predicted by GEANT4. An investigation of the distribution of the time difference between muon tags and nuclear recoil signals confirms the validity of the unfolding procedure and shows that GEANT4 cannot properly describe the time distribution of nuclear recoil events. In general, the description of the data is worse for GEANT4-10.3 than for GEANT4-9.6.Comment: 29 pages, 22 figures, 4 table

On ℤ2-indices for ground states of fermionic chains

For parity-conserving fermionic chains, we review how to associate $\mathbb{Z}_2$-indices to ground states in finite systems with quadratic and higher-order interactions as well as to quasifree ground states on the infinite CAR algebra. It is shown that the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-valued spectral flow provides a topological obstruction for two systems to have the same $\mathbb{Z}_2$-index. A rudimentary definition of a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-phase label for a class of parity-invariant and pure ground states of the one-dimensional infinite CAR algebra is also provided. Ground states with differing phase labels cannot be connected without a closing of the spectral gap of the infinite GNS Hamiltonian.Comment: v2: 61 pages, many revisions. To appear in Reviews in Mathematical Physic

Iowa Beef Center

During 2016, IBC staff made 183 presentations to more than 13,700 participants, conducted 564 personal consultations, and over 4,100 phone or email consultations. The webinars and videos IBC produced were viewed more than 20,000 times, and the online software tools had 375,000 downloads. There were 180,000 website visitors and 3,500 social media contacts. IBC funded 4 mini grant projects investigating current industry questions including: Management effects on ergovaline content of stockpiled tall fescue for winter grazing • Grazing cover crops • Calving management on Iowa beef cattle farms • Corn silage characteristics on Iowa farms Iowa Beef Center staff are also involved in current ISU Beef Research projects related to cover crop grazing by stocker cattle, bull reproduction and fescue tolerance. Beef team staff authored nine 2017 Animal Industry Research reports. They annually conduct a needs assessment such as listening sessions, formal surveys, or think tanks. The following are some examples of featured programs evaluated in 2016

SPIRE Point Source Catalog Explanatory Supplement

The Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) was launched as one of the scientific instruments on board of the space observatory Herschel. The SPIRE photometer opened up an entirely new window in the Submillimeter domain for large scale mapping, that up to then was very difficult to observe. There are already several catalogs that were produced by individual Herschel science projects. Yet, we estimate that the objects of only a fraction of these maps will ever be systematically extracted and published by the science teams that originally proposed the observations. The SPIRE instrument performed its standard photometric observations in an optically very stable configuration, only moving the telescope across the sky, with variations in its configuration parameters limited to scan speed and sampling rate. This and the scarcity of features in the data that require special processing steps made this dataset very attractive for producing an expert reduced catalog of point sources that is being described in this document. The Catalog was extracted from a total of 6878 unmodified SPIRE scan map observations. The photometry was obtained by a systematic and homogeneous source extraction procedure, followed by a rigorous quality check that emphasized reliability over completeness. Having to exclude regions affected by strong Galactic emission, that pushed the limits of the four source extraction methods that were used, this catalog is aimed primarily at the extragalactic community. The result can serve as a pathfinder for ALMA and other Submillimeter and Far-Infrared facilities. 1,693,718 sources are included in the final catalog, splitting into 950688, 524734, 218296 objects for the 250\mu m, 350\mu m, and 500\mu m bands, respectively. The catalog comes with well characterized environments, reliability, completeness, and accuracies, that single programs typically cannot provide

Iowa Beef Center

The Iowa Beef Center (IBC) is Iowa State University’s extension and outreach program to cattle producers. Our center has a dedicated group of faculty and staff from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Veterinary Medicine, and Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. We work together to develop and deliver the latest research-based information to improve the profitability and vitality of Iowa’s beef industry