A randomised factorial design clinical trial to investigate the impact of parenteral long acting oxytetracycline, foot trimming and flunixine meglumine on time to recovery from lameness and foot lesions in sheep lame with footrot

Background: Internationally, foot trimming is used by most farmers and parenteral antibacterials by some, to treat sheep with footrot. Non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) are sometimes used. No clinical trials have compared these treatments. Objectives: To investigate the above treatments on time to recovery from lameness and foot 5 lesions in sheep with footrot. Animals: 53 sheep with footrot on a commercial farm in England. Methods: In a randomised factorial design, the sheep were allocated to treatment groups. The 8 treatments were oxytetracycline spray to all sheep (positive control) and one or more of: parenteral administration of long acting oxytetracycline, flunixine meglumine and foot trimming on day 1 or day 6 of diagnosis. Follow-up was for 15 days. Time to recovery from lameness and lesions was investigated with discrete- time survival models. Results: There was significant association (p<0.05) between recovery from lameness and lesions. Sheep receiving antibacterials parenterally recovered faster from lameness (odds ratio (OR): 4.92 (1.20-20.10)) and lesions (OR: 5.11 (1.16-22.4)) than positive controls whereas sheep foot trimmed on day 1 (lameness- OR: 0.05 (0.005-0.51); lesions- OR: 0.06 (0.008-0.45)) or day 6 of diagnosis (lameness-OR: 0.07 (0.01-0.72); lesions- OR: 0.07 (0.01-0.56)) recovered slowly than positive controls. NSAID had no significant effect on recovery. Conclusions and Clinical Importance: If foot trimming on day 1 or 6 of diagnosis was stopped and parenteral antibacterials were used, then over 1 million sheep/annum lame with footrot in the UK, would recover more rapidly with benefits to productivity. Globally, this figure would be 21 much higher

Interactions of Tollmien-Schlichting waves and Dean vortices. Comparison of direct numerical simulation and a weakly nonlinear theory

Direct numerical simulation is used to evaluate a weakly nonlinear theory describing the interaction of Tollmien-Schlichting waves with Dean vortices in curved channel flow. The theory and the simulation agree for certain combinations of parameters, but the two approaches give conflicting results for other combinations. Some possibilities for these discrepancies are discussed

Virtualizing Monitoring and Control Systems: First Operational Experience and Future Applications

Virtualization is a technology that allows emulating a complete computer platform. The potential use ranges from consolidating hardware to running several different operating systems in parallel on one computer to preserving the operability of heritage software. GSOC has been investigating the possibilities of virtualization for some time. Aside from the usual approach of virtualizing the central servers out of administrational, consolidational reasons, the possibilities and advantages of control room client virtualization was explored. While moving mainstream in other businesses, the space community is cautious to apply this technique to the mission critical monitoring and control systems. This paper illustrates three virtualization steps that are underway at GSOC and presents the experiences gained

A weakly nonlinear theory for wave-vortex interactions in curved channel flow

A weakly nonlinear theory is developed to study the interaction of Tollmien-Schlichting (TS) waves and Dean vortices in curved channel flow. The predictions obtained from the theory agree well with results obtained from direct numerical simulations of curved channel flow, especially for low amplitude disturbances. Some discrepancies in the results of a previous theory with direct numerical simulations are resolved

TS - Dean interactions in curved channel flow

A weakly nonlinear theory is developed to study the interaction of TS waves and Dean vortices in curved channel flow. The prediction obtained from the theory agree well with results obtained from direct numerical simulations of curved channel flow, especially for low amplitude disturbances. At low Reynolds numbers the wave interaction is generally stabilizing to both disturbances, though as the Reynolds number increases, many linearly unstable TS waves are further destabilized by the presence of Dean vortices

Reflectance spectra of mafic silicates and phyllosilicates from .6 to 4.6 microns

The results of spectral measurements for mafic silicates are given. The study provided valuable spectral reflectance information about mafic silicates and phyllosilicates in the 2.5 to 4.6 micron wavelength region. It was shown that the reflectance of these materials is strongly affected by the presence of H2O and OH. Therefore, the identification of these absorbing species is greatly enhanced