Beurteilung alternativer Schlachtmethoden im Hinblick auf die Verringerung der Furcht von Rindern

Es ist bekannt, dass Rinder bei der Prozedur der Schlachtung (Einfangen, Separieren, Transport, Ankunft Schlachtbetrieb, Zuführung Betäubungsbox) erheblichen physischen und psychischen Stressoren ausgesetzt sind. Ziel der Diplomarbeit war die Beurteilung alternativer Schlachtmethoden im Hinblick auf die Verringerung der Furcht von Rindern. Kernstück der Arbeit waren halbstandardisierte Interviews mit Landwirten und Metzgern von insgesamt sieben Betrieben. Ergänzend wurde je eine Rinderschlachtung beobachtet und Verhaltensparameter im Hinblick auf die Furcht der Rinder auf Grundlage entsprechender Literatur anhand eines standardisierten Erhebungsbogens aufgezeichnet. Die Ergebnisse der Interviews und Beobachtungen zeigten deutlich, dass in den Betrieben, in denen die Rinder weitgehend unbeeinflusst bleiben von den vorbereitenden Maßnahmen zur Schlachtung, die geringsten Furchtanzeichen zu erkennen sind

Status Quo Analyse "Kugelschuss auf der Weide zur Betäubung und Tötung von Rindern aus Extensivhaltung"

In compliance with the EU-regulation (1099/2009/EG) - and the German “Tierschutzschlachtverordnung” of 1997, gunshot at pasture is a legal method for slaughtering free-ranged cattle. Shooting on pasture redundantizes trapping and transporting of a living animal: it is put to death in its familiar surrounding without any enforcement. The aim of this status quo analysis in the context of a project-thesis was gathering applied procedures and experiences in shooting on pasture practices. Results of the online survey (75 Farmers) show high Similarity of applied procedures in different farming-conditions. The most mentioned decision for shooting on pasture rest upon improved meat-quality and animal protection

Mutations in Thyroid Hormone Receptor Alpha 1 and Their Implications for Resistance to Thyroid Hormone Alpha

Thyroid hormone plays a vital role in growth and metabolism. Its action is mediated by multiple receptors including thyroid hormone receptor α 1 (TRα1). TRα1 is primarily a nuclear protein, but it has been found to shuttle rapidly between the nucleus and cytoplasm. Recently, mutated variants of TRα1 have been found to cause Resistance to Thyroid Hormone α syndrome (RTHα). Over 20 different mutations in patients have been described including amino acid substitutions at position 384 in human (h) TRα1 from arginine (R) to either cysteine (C) or histidine (H). One of the potential mechanisms of the disorder is mislocalization of the receptor within the cell. To test this hypothesis, the distribution of these two TRα1 mutations associated with RTHα was assessed by fluorescence microscopy after transfection of HeLa (human) cells with expression plasmids for GFP-tagged hTRα1_R384C and hTRα1_R384H. Both RTHα mutants were found to have a significantly larger cytoplasmic population than wild type TRα1. This suggests that the mislocalization of the receptor within the cell could contribute to the symptoms of RTHα

Manipulating an Equivocal World: How Force Control and Weight Perception use Probabilistic Information

Choosing an adequate motor performance can be considered as a decision-making process based on probabilities. The present cumulative dissertation aimed at investigating how probabilistic information about an object’s weight is used to modify expectations about object properties and how they impact the predictive scaling of fingertip forces. Healthy volunteers and subjects with Parkinson’s disease (PD) were studied using a novel paradigm in the context of two tasks. Subjects saw four different probabilistic visual cues, each of which announced the likely weight of an object. In the grip-lift (GL) task an object was grasped and lifted with a pinch grip after the probabilistic cue was presented. Effects of probabilistic information on predictive force scaling were analyzed by comparing the trials where the same actual weight was lifted, yet pre-ceded by four different probabilistic cues. In the weight perception (WP) task participants gradually adjusted the object’s weight until its heaviness matched the expected weight for a given probabilistic cue. Findings of healthy subjects reported in this thesis revealed that probabilistic cues influenced weight adjustments in the WP task and peak force rates in the GL task in a similar manner. The interpretation and utilization of the probabilistic information was critically influenced by the initial task. PD subjects on the other side, used the same probabilistic information to evaluation the perceptual weight, but their force prediction remained unaffected by the cues. Findings reported in this thesis are in line with aspects of the ‘dual-stream theory of the visual system’ and the opposing ‘common-coding approach’ but they do not favor one of them. Rather they indicate that specific requirements of a task critically influence the interpretation and use of probabilistic information in perception and action

Molecular dynamic simulation of a homogeneous bcc -> hcp transition

We have performed molecular dynamic simulations of a Martensitic bcc->hcp transformation in a homogeneous system. The system evolves into three Martensitic variants, sharing a common nearest neighbor vector along a bcc direction, plus an fcc region. Nucleation occurs locally, followed by subsequent growth. We monitor the time-dependent scattering S(q,t) during the transformation, and find anomalous, Brillouin zone-dependent scattering similar to that observed experimentally in a number of systems above the transformation temperature. This scattering is shown to be related to the elastic strain associated with the transformation, and is not directly related to the phonon response.Comment: 11 pages plus 8 figures (GIF format); to appear in Phys. Rev.

Vibrational Properties of Nanoscale Materials: From Nanoparticles to Nanocrystalline Materials

The vibrational density of states (VDOS) of nanoclusters and nanocrystalline materials are derived from molecular-dynamics simulations using empirical tight-binding potentials. The results show that the VDOS inside nanoclusters can be understood as that of the corresponding bulk system compressed by the capillary pressure. At the surface of the nanoparticles the VDOS exhibits a strong enhancement at low energies and shows structures similar to that found near flat crystalline surfaces. For the nanocrystalline materials an increased VDOS is found at high and low phonon energies, in agreement with experimental findings. The individual VDOS contributions from the grain centers, grain boundaries, and internal surfaces show that, in the nanocrystalline materials, the VDOS enhancements are mainly caused by the grain-boundary contributions and that surface atoms play only a minor role. Although capillary pressures are also present inside the grains of nanocrystalline materials, their effect on the VDOS is different than in the cluster case which is probably due to the inter-grain coupling of the modes via the grain-boundaries.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.