Modified Medicated Early Weaning

In the past, when a swine unit wanted to eradicate a certain disease such as Pseudorabies, costly depopulation/repopulation was the only viable solution. Depopulation, facility cleanup, and repopulation is not always successful because nearby herds with a lower health status my provide a source for reinfection. In 1980, Tom Alexander of Cambridge University developed a system for producing pigs \u27free of certain diseases without costly depopulation

The negative effects of labeling on intellectually identified gifted children and suggested strategies for alleviation

Concern over special education labels has existed for more than twenty years. Labeling has been found to have both positive and negative effects on those labeled as gifted. This paper reviews the research on the negative effects of labeling a child gifted and suggested strategies to alleviate these negative effects. Research indicates that the label gifted has more positive than negative effects on the majority of children labeled; however, the research also identifies a number of adverse consequences which merit consideration and possible alleviation

Marketing and value-added opportunities with alternative swine systems

Rich Hall, president of the four-year-old Precision Beef Alliance, said efforts actually began in 1991 when a group of beef producers met to discuss ways to improve their herds. Five producers wanted to create an opportunity for success in the cattle markets. They could see they would have to change, and they wanted to change toward success. Danny Tollefson is a pork producer from Minnesota who developed an outstanding lean pork product through his feeding program. He had some trouble working with his processor to get the finished product, so when he had the opportunity to buy a USDA-inspected plant, he did

Feasibility Study of Hydrogen Production from Existing Nuclear Power Plants Using Alkaline Electrolysis

The mid-range industrial market currently consumes 4.2 million metric tons of hydrogen per year and has an annual growth rate of 15% industries in this range require between 100 and 1000 kilograms of hydrogen per day and comprise a wide range of operations such as food hydrogenation, electronic chip fabrication, metals processing and nuclear reactor chemistry modulation

Marketing and value-added opportunities with alternative swine systems

Jan O\u27Donnell is the executive director of the Minnesota Food Association, a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to forming a coalition of food producers and consumers to build a more sustainable food system. Paul Willis shared his experiences in developing a relationship with a West Coast company to market high-quality pork

A Revisited Phylogeography of Nautilus Pompilius

The cephalopod genus Nautilus is considered a “living fossil” with a contested number of extant and extinct species, and a benthic lifestyle that limits movement of animals between isolated seamounts and landmasses in the Indo-Pacific. Nautiluses are fished for their shells, most heavily in the Philippines, and these fisheries have little monitoring or regulation. Here, we evaluate the hypothesis that multiple species of Nautilus (e.g., N. belauensis, N. repertus and N. stenomphalus) are in fact one species with a diverse phenotypic and geologic range. Using mitochondrial markers, we show that nautiluses from the Philippines, eastern Australia (Great Barrier Reef), Vanuatu, American Samoa, and Fiji fall into distinct geographical clades. For phylogenetic analysis of species complexes across the range of nautilus, we included sequences of Nautilus pompilius and other Nautilus species from GenBank from localities sampled in this study and others. We found that specimens from Western Australia cluster with samples from the Philippines, suggesting that interbreeding may be occurring between those locations, or that there is limited genetic drift due to large effective population sizes. Intriguingly, our data also show that nautilus identified in other studies as N. belauensis, N. stenomphalus, or N. repertus are likely N. pompilius displaying a diversity of morphological characters, suggesting that there is significant phenotypic plasticity within N. pompilius

Dynamic and Polarized Muscle Cell Behaviors Accompany Tail Morphogenesis in the Ascidian Ciona intestinalis

BACKGROUND: Axial elongation is a key morphogenetic process that serves to shape developing organisms. Tail extension in the ascidian larva represents a striking example of this process, wherein paraxially positioned muscle cells undergo elongation and differentiation independent of the segmentation process that characterizes the formation of paraxial mesoderm in vertebrates. Investigating the cell behaviors underlying the morphogenesis of muscle in ascidians may therefore reveal the evolutionarily conserved mechanisms operating during this process. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPLE FINDINGS: A live cell imaging approach utilizing subcellularly-localized fluorescent proteins was employed to investigate muscle cell behaviors during tail extension in the ascidian Ciona intestinalis. Changes in the position and morphology of individual muscle cells were analyzed in vivo in wild type embryos undergoing tail extension and in embryos in which muscle development was perturbed. Muscle cells were observed to undergo elongation in the absence of positional reorganization. Furthermore, high-speed high-resolution live imaging revealed that the onset and progression of tail extension were characterized by the presence of dynamic and polarized actin-based protrusive activity at the plasma membrane of individual muscle cells. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results demonstrate that in the Ciona muscle, tissue elongation resulted from gradual and coordinated changes in cell geometry and not from changes in cell topology. Proper formation of muscle cells was found to be necessary not only for muscle tissue elongation, but also more generally for completion of tail extension. Based upon the characterized dynamic changes in cell morphology and plasma membrane protrusive activity, a three-phase model is proposed to describe the cell behavior operating during muscle morphogenesis in the ascidian embryo

The Hin recombinase assembles a tetrameric protein swivel that exchanges DNA strands

Most site-specific recombinases can be grouped into two structurally and mechanistically different classes. Whereas recombination by tyrosine recombinases proceeds with little movements by the proteins, serine recombinases exchange DNA strands by a mechanism requiring large quaternary rearrangements. Here we use site-directed crosslinking to investigate the conformational changes that accompany the formation of the synaptic complex and the exchange of DNA strands by the Hin serine recombinase. Efficient crosslinking between residues corresponding to the ‘D-helix’ region provides the first experimental evidence for interactions between synapsed subunits within this region and distinguishes between different tetrameric conformers that have been observed in crystal structures of related serine recombinases. Crosslinking profiles between cysteines introduced over the 35 residue E-helix region that constitutes most of the proposed rotating interface both support the long helical structure of the region and provide strong experimental support for a subunit rotation mechanism that mediates DNA exchange