Associations between EP-like lesions and pleuritis and post trimming carcass weights of finishing pigs in England

Herd health slaughter checks regularly identify enzootic pneumonia-like (EP-like) lesions and pleuritis. The aim of this paper is to determine the associations between these lesions and post-trimming carcass weight. Data were collected on the presence/absence and severity of EP-like lesions and presence/absence of pleuritis from pigs at the abattoir. Linear mixed models identified a significant association between an increase in EP-like lesion severity and a decrease in post-trimming carcass weight (P = 0.006) at the individual level. Each categorical increase in EP-like lesion severity (5 points step) was associated with a 0.37 kg reduction in post-trimming carcass weight. The presence of EP-like lesions in individual pigs, irrespective of severity (P = 0.034) and the presence of pleuritis (P = 0.038) were significantly associated with a reduction in post-trimming carcass weight of 1.26 kg and 1.25 kg respectively. The results confirm that the presence of these lesions at slaughter are associated with a significant decrease in production performance which can result in substantial economic implications for producers

Galactic X-ray Sources

Bremsstrahlung and synchrotron hypotheses considered as possible mechanisms for galactic X-ray productio

The GSFC Mark-2 three band hand-held radiometer

A self-contained, portable, hand-radiometer designed for field usage was constructed and tested. The device, consisting of a hand-held probe containing three sensors and a strap supported electronic module, weighs 4 1/2 kilograms. It is powered by flashlight and transistor radio batteries, utilizes two silicon and one lead sulfide detectors, has three liquid crystal displays, sample and hold radiometric sampling, and its spectral configuration corresponds to LANDSAT-D's thematic mapper bands. The device was designed to support thematic mapper ground-truth data collection efforts and to facilitate 'in situ' ground-based remote sensing studies of natural materials. Prototype instruments were extensively tested under laboratory and field conditions with excellent results

Maxwell's Equations in a Uniformly Rotating Dielectric Medium and the Wilson-Wilson Experiment

This note offers a conceptually straightforward and efficient way to formulate and solve problems in the electromagnetics of moving media based on a representation of Maxwell's equations in terms of differential forms on spacetime together with junction conditions at moving interfaces. This framework is used to address a number of issues that have been discussed recently in this journal about the theoretical description underlying the interpretation of the Wilson-Wilson experiment.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figure

Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata using Buried Dopants

The use of buried dopants to construct quantum-dot cellular automata is investigated as an alternative to conventional electronic devices for information transport and elementary computation. This provides a limit in terms of miniaturisation for this type of system as each potential well is formed by a single dopant atom. As an example, phosphorous donors in silicon are found to have good energy level separation with incoherent switching times of the order of microseconds. However, we also illustrate the possibility of ultra-fast quantum coherent switching via adiabatic evolution. The switching speeds are numerically calculated and found to be 10's of picoseconds or less for a single cell. The effect of decoherence is also simulated in the form of a dephasing process and limits are estimated for operation with finite dephasing. The advantages and limitations of this scheme over the more conventional quantum-dot based scheme are discussed. The use of a buried donor cellular automata system is also discussed as an architecture for testing several aspects of buried donor based quantum computing schemes.Comment: Minor changes in response to referees comments. Improved section on scaling and added plot of incoherent switching time

Time-Dependent Ionization Equilibrium and Line Radiation Under Flarelike Conditions

The results of calculations for time-dependent ionization equilibrium and line emission are presented and compared with the values obtained under the assumption that steady-state conditions prevail. In the models considered, it is assumed that the electron density is constant (=10^3 cm^-3) and that the temperature increases by a factor of 10 from 3 x 10^6 K on timescales ranging from 100 to 300 s and decays back to 3 x 10^6 K on a timescale ranging from 600 to 1400 s. Ions of oxygen and silicon are considered, and it is found that the spectrum is softer during the rise and harder during the fall than predicted by the steady-state approximation