Weight gain and resistance to gastrointestinal nematode infections in two genetically diverse groups of cattle

Body weight gain (BWG) and gastrointestinal nematode challenge (GIN) were investigated in two genetically diverse groups of cattle. Thirty-two dairy calves (D = Swedish Red/Holstein) and 31 dairy × beef crosses (C = Swedish Red/Holstein × Charolais) pairwise matched by dam breed and birth dates, were monitored for ≈20 weeks on a pasture grazed by cattle in the previous year. At turn-out, animals (between 6 and 12 months age) from each genotype were either infected with 5000 third stage (L3) Ostertagia ostertagi (50%) and Cooperia oncophora (50%) larvae (H, high-exposure); or treated monthly with 0.5 mg ivermectin (Noromectin®, Pour-on) per kg bodyweight to remove worms ingested (L, low-exposure). Animals were weighed every fortnight and individual BWG was calculated. Faecal and blood samples were collected every four weeks throughout the experiment for nematode faecal egg counts (FEC) and larvae cultures and serum pepsinogen concentrations (SPC), respectively. Nematode eggs were observed 29 days post turn-out in both H groups. FEC peaked to around 200 eggs per gram (epg) on days 58 and 85 respectively in both H groups. FEC were also observed in the L groups at the same time, but mean epg remained very low ( 3.5 IU tyrosine whereas only six DH animals reached similar pepsinogen levels. The level of infection (H and L) significantly affected BWG in both genotypes. Even though there was no statistically sig- nificant genotype (C or D) × treatment (H or L) interaction, there was a larger difference in body weight of H and L in C (37 kg) compared to D (17 kg) genotypes at the end of the experiment. Our data collectively support the view crossbred (C) animals experience the impact of gastrointestinal parasitism more severely compared to pure dairy (D) first season grazers. The mechanisms that underpin this remains speculative

Journal Staff

During the last decade, the number of devices capable of connecting to the Internet has grown enormously. The Internet of Things describes a scenario where Internet connected devices are ubiquitous and even the smallest device has a connection to the Internet. Many of these devices will be running on constrained platforms with limited power and computing resources. Implementing protocols that are both secure and resource efficient is challenging. Current protocols have generally been designed for mains powered devices; hence, they are not optimized for running on constrained devices. The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a protocol for network communication specifically designed for constrained devices. This thesis project examines CoAP and presents an extension that adds authentication in a way that is suitable for constrained devices, with respect to minimizing resource use. The proposed solution has been compared and contrasted with other alternatives for authentication, particularly those alternatives used with CoAP. It has also been implemented in code and experimentally evaluated with regards to performance versus vanilla CoAP. The main goal of this project is to implement a lightweight authentication extension for CoAP to be deployed and evaluated on constrained devices. This extension, called Short Message Authentication ChecK (SMACK), can be used on devices that require a method for secure authentication of messages while using only limited power. The main goal of the extension is to protect against battery exhaustion and denial of sleep attacks. Other benefits are that the extension adds no additional overhead when compared with the packet structure described in the latest CoAP specification. Minimizing overhead is important since some constrained networks may only support low bandwidth communication.Under det senaste århundradet har antalet enheter som kan ansluta sig till Internet ökat enormt. ”The Internet of Things” beskriver ett scenario där Internet-anslutna enheter är närvarande överallt och även den minsta enhet har en uppkoppling till Internet. Många av dessa enheter kommer att vara begränsade plattformar med restriktioner på både kraft- och beräkningsresurser. Att implementera protokoll som både är säkra och resurseffektiva är en utmaning. Tillgängliga protokoll har i regel varit designade för enheter med anslutning till det fasta kraftnätet; på grund av detta är de inte optimerade för att köras på begränsade plattformar. Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) är ett protokoll för nätverkskommunikation speciellt framtaget för begränsade plattformar. Denna uppsats undersöker CoAP protokollet och presenterar ett tillägg som erbjuder autentisering på ett sätt som passar begränsade plattformar, med avseende på att minimera resursanvändning. Den föreslagna lösningen har blivit beskriven och jämförd med andra alternativ för autentisering, speciellt de alternativ som används med CoAP. Lösningen har också implementerats i kod och blivit experimentellt utvärderad när det gäller prestanda jämfört med standardversionen av CoAP. Det huvudsakliga målet för detta projekt är att implementera en lättviktslösning för autentisering till CoAP som ska installeras och utvärderas på begränsade plattformar. Detta tillägg, Short Message Authentication checK (SMACK), kan användas på enheter som behöver en metod för säker autentisering av meddelanden samtidigt som kraftåtgången hålls låg. Huvudmålet för detta tillägg är att skydda mot batteridräneringsattacker och attacker som hindrar en enhet från att gå i viloläge. Andra fördelar är att tillägget inte kräver någon extra dataanvändning jämfört med paketstrukturen som beskrivs i den senaste CoAP-specifikationen. Att minimera overhead i kommunikationsprotokoll är viktigt eftersom vissa begränsade nätverk endast stödjer kommunikation över låg bandbredd

Systolic ejection murmurs and the left ventricular outflow tract in boxer dogs

Turbulence of various genesis in the left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) causes systolic ejection murmurs. The prevalence of murmurs in adult boxer dogs is 50-80%, the majority of which are of low intensity. Some of the murmurs are caused by aortic stenosis (AS), while the origin of the others is unclear. The aim of this thesis was to study the physiology and clinical evaluation of systolic ejection murmurs and their relation to the development of the LVOT in boxers with and without AS. Growing and adult boxer dogs were examined by the standard methods cardiac auscultation, ECG, phonocardiography and echocardiography. Additionally, the complementary methods time-frequency and complexity analyses of heart murmurs and contrast echocardiography were evaluated. Studies on inter-observer variation in cardiac auscultation proved the importance of experience in detection and grading of low intensity ejection murmurs. Excitement of the dogs by exercise or noise stimulation (barking dog and squeaky toy) caused higher murmur grades, longer murmur duration and increased aortic flow velocities. No differences were found between diameters measured at different levels of the LVOT in growing boxers. Contrast echocardiography enhanced Doppler signals, but did not allow evaluation of myocardial blood flow. Using time-frequency analysis, duration of murmur frequency >200 Hz proved useful for differentiation between dogs with mild AS and dogs without. Combining assessment of murmur duration >200 Hz and complexity analysis using the correlation dimension (T2), a sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 82% for differentiation between dogs with and without AS was achieved. The variability in presence and intensity of low intensity murmurs during growth was high. None of the young dogs developed AS, whereas 3 out of 16 individuals developed mild-moderate aortic insufficiency. Aortic or pulmonic flow velocities did not differ significantly between growing dogs with or without low intensity murmurs. In conclusion, the variability in presence and intensity of low intensity ejection murmurs in boxers is high during growth with no obvious progression. Both in young and adult boxers the murmur grade increased during excitement, which may be due to rapid flow in a comparatively small LVOT that has been suggested for the boxer breed. Experience is important in cardiac auscultation of low intensity murmurs. Therefore, assessment of murmur duration > 200 Hz combined with T2 analysis may be a useful complementary method for diagnosis of cardiovascular function in dogs

Journal Staff

The integer factorisation problem (FACT) is a well-known number-theoreticproblem, with many applications in areas such as cryptography. An instanceof a FACT problem (a number n such that n = p × q) can be reduced to aninstance of the conjunctive normal form boolean satisfiability problem (CNF-SAT), a well-known NP-complete problem. Some applications of this is toutilize advances in SAT solving for solving FACT, and for creating difficultCNF-SAT instances.This report compares four different reductions from FACT to CNF-SAT,based on the full adder, array multiplier and Wallace tree multiplier circuits.The comparisons were done by reducing a set of FACT instances to CNF-SATinstances with the different reductions. The resulting CNF-SAT instanceswere then compared with respect to the number of clauses and variables, aswell as the time taken to solve the instances with the SAT solver MiniSat

The Lawyer and the Scientific Community—Procuring Basic Research

A major open question in astrophysics concerns the formation of highly collimated beams of matter and electromagnetic radiation, so-called relativistic jets, emerging from active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the center of certain galaxies. It is not known how, or why, these jets are formed nor how they maintain their collimated state for such large distances. For long it has been thought that jets can only be hosted in large, elliptical galaxies, though quiterecently AGNs have been discovered that contradict these beliefs. These objects are called radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (RLNLSy1). In this thesis an AGN belonging to this class is analysed. Utilising an X-ray spectral fitting package (XSPEC), data from two separate observations obtained from the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission observatory (XMM-Newton) of the radio-loud narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy SDSS J154817.92+351128.0 are fitted through the use of different models and analysed in the energy region of 0.3 keV to 10 keV. The purpose is to disentangle the emission from the light-emitting accretion disk surrounding the central supermassive black hole(SMBH) and the emission from a possible jet, as well as to determine their properties. The results indicate a strong presence of a jet while still maintaining a visible spectrum from the accretion disk. No sign of the Fe line, usually seen in radio-quiet NLSy1s, can be detected, even though the data is not of sufficientquality to exclude the possibility of detection. Furthermore, considerable amounts of enhanced emission below 2 keV is observed, a so-called soft excess. The soft excess could be explained by inverse comptonisation of the light emitted from the disk and/or reflections in the disk. Our results confirm the presence of powerful relativistic jets emerging from J1548+3511. The wider implications of jet formation are further discussed

Impurity effects at finite temperature in the two-dimensional S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet

We discuss effects of various impurities on the magnetic susceptibility and the specific heat of the quantum S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a two-dimensional square lattice. For impurities with spin S_i > 0 (here S_i=1/2 in the case of a vacancy or an added spin, and S_i=1 for a spin coupled ferromagnetically to its neighbors), our quantum Monte Carlo simulations confirm a classical-like Curie susceptibility contribution S_i^2/4T, which originates from an alignment of the impurity spin with the local N\'eel order. In addition, we find a logarithmically divergent contribution, which we attribute to fluctuations transverse to the local N\'eel vector. We also study frustrated and nonfrustrated bond impurities with S_i=0. For a simple intuitive picture of the impurity problem, we discuss an effective few-spin model that can distinguish between the different impurities and reproduces the leading-order simulation data over a wide temperature range.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, submitted to PRB. v2, published version with cosmetic change

Electronic structure investigation of the cubic inverse perovskite Sc3AlN

The electronic structure and chemical bonding of the recently discovered inverse perovskite Sc3AlN, in comparison to ScN and Sc metal have been investigated by bulk-sensitive soft x-ray emission spectroscopy. The measured Sc L, N K, Al L1, and Al L2,3 emission spectra are compared with calculated spectra using first principle density-functional theory including dipole transition matrix elements. The main Sc 3d - N 2p and Sc 3d - Al 3p chemical bond regions are identified at -4 eV and -1.4 eV below the Fermi level, respectively. A strongly modified spectral shape of 3s states in the Al L2,3 emission from Sc3AlN in comparison to pure Al metal is found, which reflects the Sc 3d - Al 3p hybridization observed in the Al L1 emission. The differences between the electronic structure of Sc3AlN, ScN, and Sc metal are discussed in relation to the change of the conductivity and elastic properties.Comment: 11 pages, 5 picture

Advanced mobile network monitoring and automated optimization methods

The operation of mobile networks is a complex task with the networks serving a large amount of subscribers with both voice and data services, containing extensive sets of elements, generating extensive amounts of measurement data and being controlled by a large amount of parameters. The objective of this thesis was to ease the operation of mobile networks by introducing advanced monitoring and automated optimization methods. In the monitoring domain the thesis introduced visualization and anomaly detection methods that were applied to detect intrusions, mal-functioning network elements and cluster network elements to do parameter optimization on network-element-cluster level. A key component in the monitoring methods was the Self-Organizing Map. In the automated optimization domain several rule-based Wideband CDMA radio access parameter optimization methods were introduced. The methods tackled automated optimization in areas such as admission control, handover control and mobile base station cell size setting. The results from test usage of the monitoring methods indicated good performance and simulations indicated that the automated optimization methods enable significant improvements in mobile network performance. The presented methods constitute promising feature candidates for the mobile network management system.reviewe

Parasitangrepp hos nötkreatur påverkas av ras

Betande nötkreatur över hela världen smittas av parasiter. Särskilt hos förstagångsbetande ungdjur påverkar maskinfektioner djurens hälsa och välfärd allvarligt. Som följd sänks produktionen vilket också ger ekonomiska förluster för lantbrukarna