Abstracts of the 7th International Conference on Lactoferrin / Résumés de la 7e Conférence internationale sur la lactoferrine

The article presents abstracts on lactoferrin research. They include "Oral administration of lactoferrin raises NK cell activity in mice,"Comparison of antimicrobial activity between lactoferricin B 15 derivative and antibiotics" and "Batch extraction of lactoferrin from raw whole milk.

Point vortices and polynomials of the Sawada-Kotera and Kaup-Kupershmidt equations

Rational solutions and special polynomials associated with the generalized K_2 hierarchy are studied. This hierarchy is related to the Sawada-Kotera and Kaup-Kupershmidt equations and some other integrable partial differential equations including the Fordy-Gibbons equation. Differential-difference relations and differential equations satisfied by the polynomials are derived. The relationship between these special polynomials and stationary configurations of point vortices with circulations Gamma and -2Gamma is established. Properties of the polynomials are studied. Differential-difference relations enabling one to construct these polynomials explicitly are derived. Algebraic relations satisfied by the roots of the polynomials are found.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure

Length of the weaning period affects postweaning growth, health, and carcass merit of ranch-direct beef calves weaned during the fall

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is the most economically devastating feedlot disease. Risk factors associated with incidence of BRD include (1) stress associated with maternal separation, (2) stress associated with introduction to an unfamiliar environment, (3) poor intake associated with introduction of novel feedstuffs into the animal\u27s diet, (4) exposure to novel pathogens upon transport to a feeding facility and commingling with unfamiliar cattle, (5) inappropriately administered respiratory disease vaccination programs, and (6) poor response to respiratory disease vaccination programs. Management practices that are collectively referred to as preconditioning are thought to minimize damage to the beef carcass from the BRD complex. Preconditioning management reduces the aforementioned risk factors for respiratory disease by (1) using a relatively long ranch-of-origin weaning period following maternal separation, (2) exposing calves to concentrate-type feedstuffs, and (3) producing heightened resistance to respiratory disease-causing organisms through a preweaning vaccination program. The effectiveness of such programs for preserving animal performance is highly touted by certain segments of the beef industry. Ranch-of-origin weaning periods of up to 60 days are suggested for preconditioning beef calves prior to sale; however, optimal length of the ranch-of-origin weaning period has not been determined experimentally. The objective of this study was to test the validity of beef industry assumptions about appropriate length of ranch-of-origin weaning periods for calves aged 160 to 220 days and weaned during the fall

The calibration of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory using uniformly distributed radioactive sources

The production and analysis of distributed sources of 24Na and 222Rn in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) are described. These unique sources provided accurate calibrations of the response to neutrons, produced through photodisintegration of the deuterons in the heavy water target, and to low energy betas and gammas. The application of these sources in determining the neutron detection efficiency and response of the 3He proportional counter array, and the characteristics of background Cherenkov light from trace amounts of natural radioactivity is described.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figure

Ecological Invasion, Roughened Fronts, and a Competitor's Extreme Advance: Integrating Stochastic Spatial-Growth Models

Both community ecology and conservation biology seek further understanding of factors governing the advance of an invasive species. We model biological invasion as an individual-based, stochastic process on a two-dimensional landscape. An ecologically superior invader and a resident species compete for space preemptively. Our general model includes the basic contact process and a variant of the Eden model as special cases. We employ the concept of a "roughened" front to quantify effects of discreteness and stochasticity on invasion; we emphasize the probability distribution of the front-runner's relative position. That is, we analyze the location of the most advanced invader as the extreme deviation about the front's mean position. We find that a class of models with different assumptions about neighborhood interactions exhibit universal characteristics. That is, key features of the invasion dynamics span a class of models, independently of locally detailed demographic rules. Our results integrate theories of invasive spatial growth and generate novel hypotheses linking habitat or landscape size (length of the invading front) to invasion velocity, and to the relative position of the most advanced invader.Comment: The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com/content/8528v8563r7u2742

Rationale and design of the IRON-AF study: a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled study to assess the effect of intravenous ferric carboxymaltose in patients with atrial fibrillation and iron deficiency

Introduction: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with significantly impaired quality-of-life. Iron deficiency (ID) is prevalent in patients with AF. Correction of ID in other patient populations with intravenous iron supplementation has been shown to be a safe, convenient and effective way of improving exercise tolerance, fatigue and quality-of-life. The IRON-AF (Effect of Iron Repletion in Atrial Fibrillation) study is designed to assess the effect of iron repletion with intravenous ferric carboxymaltose in patients with AF and ID. Methods and Analysis: The IRON-AF study is a double-blind, randomised controlled trial that will recruit at least 84 patients with AF and ID. Patients will be randomised to receive infusions of either ferric carboxymaltose or placebo, given in repletion and then maintenance doses. The study will have follow-up visits at weeks 4, 8 and 12. The primary endpoint is change in peak oxygen uptake from baseline to week 12, as measured by cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) on a cycle ergometer. Secondary endpoints include changes in quality-of-life and AF disease burden scores, blood parameters, other CPET parameters, transthoracic echocardiogram parameters, 6-minute walk test distance, 7-day Holter/Event monitor burden of AF, health resource utilisation and mortality. Ethics and dissemination: The study protocol has been approved by the Central Adelaide Local Health Network Human Research Ethics Committee, Australia. The results of this study will be disseminated through publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference presentations.Samuel J Tu, Adrian D Elliott, Nicole Hanna-Rivero, Celine Gallagher, Ricardo S Mishima, Ellen Lyrtzis, Danielle Wlochowicz, Nicholas AR Clarke, Kurt C Roberts-Thomson, Michael B Stokes, Mehrdad Emami, Dennis H Lau, Prashanthan Sanders, Christopher X Won

Search for the glueball candidates f0(1500) and fJ(1710) in gamma gamma collisions

Data taken with the ALEPH detector at LEP1 have been used to search for gamma gamma production of the glueball candidates f0(1500) and fJ(1710) via their decay to pi+pi-. No signal is observed and upper limits to the product of gamma gamma width and pi+pi- branching ratio of the f0(1500) and the fJ(1710) have been measured to be Gamma_(gamma gamma -> f0(1500)). BR(f0(1500)->pi+pi-) < 0.31 keV and Gamma_(gamma gamma -> fJ(1710)). BR(fJ(1710)->pi+pi-) < 0.55 keV at 95% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02