Concentrations of faecal glucocorticoid metabolites in physically injured free-ranging African elephants Loxodonta africana

Free-ranging African elephants Loxodonta africana use their front feet frequently during the process of foraging and this could be the reason for the high prevalence of physical injuries to these parts of the body. Although the occurrence of severe lameness caused by foot lesions in adult elephants has already been investigated and the clinical and pathological findings have been reported, the effect of foot injuries on glucocorticoid levels as a potential physiological stress response has not been examined. Given the practical difficulties involved in monitoring unpredictable events in free-ranging animals, like the occurrence of foot injuries in elephants, it is not surprising that information regarding the endocrine correlates of physical injury is still limited for elephants. In our study we investigated the effects of foot injuries on concentrations of faecal glucocorticoid metabolites (GCM), body condition score (BCS) and reproductive behaviour in two GPS/radio-collared elephant bulls in the Kruger National Park, South Africa.Wemonitored the bulls aged 40+ (Bull 1) and 30+ (Bull 2) 2-3 times per week for 13 months starting in June 2007 and frequently collected faecal samples for non-invasive hormone monitoring. Faecal samples were lyophilised, extracted and assayed with an enzyme immunoassay which detects GCM with a 3a-hydroxy-11-oxo-structure. Both bulls acquired foot injuries (right-front), which caused temporary lameness, but the effect of injury on GCM concentration differed between bulls (P , 0.001). In Bull 1 the injury lasted 6 250 days and was associated with an up to four-fold increase in GCM concentrations (P,0.001) and his BCS reduced from ’good’ to ’very thin’ by the end of the injury period. In Bull 2 the injury lasted 65 days and was associated with a smaller increase in GCM concentrations (P ¼ 0.03) together with a reduced loss in condition when compared to Bull 1. Following recovery, the condition of both bulls improved progressively and faecalGCMreturned to baseline concentrations. Collectively, the data clearly underlined the value of non-invasive hormone measurements as a tool to provide information on the level of stress experienced by elephants. Thus, monitoring GCM levels could help improve the assessment of an elephant’s state of health

Complete mitochondrial genomes and nuclear ribosomal RNA operons of two species of Diplostomum (Platyhelminthes: Trematoda): a molecular resource for taxonomy and molecular epidemiology of important fish pathogens

© 2015 Brabec et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article

Validation of noninvasive monitoring of adrenocortical endocrine activity in ground-feeding aardwolves (Proteles cristata) : exemplifying the influence of consumption of inorganic material for fecal steroid analysis

Biologically inert material in feces may confound interpretations of noninvasive fecal endocrine data, because it may induce variance related to differences in foraging behavior rather than to differences in endocrine activity. We evaluated two different enzyme immunoassays (EIAs) for the noninvasive evaluation of adrenocortical activity in ground-feeding aardwolves (Proteles cristata) and tested the influence of soil content in aardwolf feces on the interpretation of fecal glucocorticoid metabolite data. Using adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) challenges for validation, we successfully identified a cortisol EIA suitable for assessing adrenocortical activity in aardwolves. An alternatively tested 11-oxoetiocholanolone EIA failed to detect a biologically relevant signal after ACTH administration. Although the proportion of inorganic content in aardwolf feces did not alter qualitative conclusions from the endocrine data, the data related to mass of organic content had a larger amount of variance attributed to relevant biological contrasts and a lower amount of variance attributed to individual variation, compared with data related to total dry mass of extracted material. Compared with data expressed as dry mass of extracted material, data expressed as mass of organic content may provide a more refined and statistically powerful measure of endocrine activity in species that ingest large amounts of indigestible material.A National Research Foundation (NRF) South African Research Chair to N.C.B., an NRF focal area grant to E.Z.C., and two research fellowships from the University of Pretoria to F.D. and A.G.http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/pbz/currentab201

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Managment of software projects

Práce se zaměřuje na způsoby, kterými je možné řídit softwarové projekty. První část představuje základní pojmy a postupy pro řízení projektů jako takových, druhá část se zaměřuje na odhadování projektů. Třetí část se věnuje zkoumání firmy, na základě, které jsou v poslední části navrženy vylepšení pro řízení softwarových projektů.This work is focused on different approaches that can be used in leading software projects. In the first part basic terms and methods used for project managment are layed out, second part focuses on different ways to estimate projects. Third part examines the company which will be given suggestions for improvement of it's software projects in the last part.Fakulta ekonomicko-správníStudent přednesl obhajobu práce s názvem Management softwarových projektů. Cílem práce bylo navrhnout vhodný způsob řízení softwarových projektů ve zvolené firmě. Během rozpravy byly položeny dotazy dle posudku vedoucího diplomové práce: O1: Jakým způsobem ovlivnila pandemie Covid-19 způsob řízení softwarových projektů ve firmě? Otázky oponenta: O1: V rámci rozpravy by autor měl vydefinovat samotný pojem Management softwarových projektů a s ním spojených činností. O2: Jak by diplomant charakterizoval vhodný způsob – systém řízení softwarových projektů v sledované společnosti? Následně byly během rozpravy položeny doplňující dotazy: O1: Jaká je největší hrozba pro společnost? O2: Analýza byla prováděná pomocí řízených rozhovorů? S kolika osobami? Student na položené otázky reagoval s výraznými nedostatky. Hloubka analýzy na DP není zcela dostatečná.Dokončená práce s úspěšnou obhajobo

Affiliate Marketing

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá affiliate marketingem. První část představuje jeho srovnání s klasickou formou internetového marketingu, jeho historii a principy fungování jako moderního marketingového nástroje, popisu jeho účastníků, výhod i úskalí. V druhé části pak zkoumá situaci doma i v zahraničí, od používaných softwarů po vyplácené provize v jednotlivých odvětvích. V poslední části se pokusí nastínit, jak potenciálně zavést affiliate program demonstrací na fiktivním podniku.This bachelor thesis is exploring affiliate marketing. The first part compares affiliate marketing with the classical form of internet marketing. It's history and dives into its basic principles as a modern marketing tool, From describing the actors involved in the process, the advantages of the affiliate marketing, and its disadvantages. In the second part, it will look at the local and international situation regarding affiliate marketing, from the software being used to commissions in different product categories. The final part will try to illustrate how to potentially implement an affiliate program demonstrating it on a fictional business.Fakulta ekonomicko-správníStudent přednesl téma své BP Affiliate marketing, otázka dle posudku: 1. V návrhu implementace popisujete možné partnery pro zapojení do svého affiliate programu. Pro zavedenou firmu jistě není problém oslovovat i větší společnosti a známé influencery. Jaký postup doporučíte nově vzniklé společnosti? Student na otázku reagoval. Nicméně, v teoretické části nejsou uvedeny citace, cíl práce ve stati BP není zcela totožný s cílem v zadávacím listu.Dokončená práce s úspěšnou obhajobo

Kondenzované fosforečnany jako speciální anorganické pigmenty

Katedra anorganické technologieDokončená práce s úspěšnou obhajobo

The effect of transdermal flunixin meglumine on blood cortisol levels in dairy calves after cautery disbudding with local anesthesia

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug transdermal flunixin meglumine (Finadyne Transdermal) on plasma cortisol, average daily weight gain, and standing and lying behavior of calves, when given at the time of disbudding combined with local anesthesia. A sedative was not used to minimize pharmacological interactions. Seventy-one female Holstein Friesian calves aged 13 ± 2 d, with an average weight of 48.9 ± 4.26 kg were enrolled in the study. All calves were randomly assigned to one of 3 treatment groups: (1) control group (CON, n = 27), (2) 1-flunixin group (1-FLU, n = 26) with a single administration of transdermal flunixin meglumine at disbudding, and (3) 2-flunixin group (2-FLU, n = 24) with 2 administrations of transdermal flunixin meglumine, the first treatment at disbudding and the second 6 h after disbudding. Although the CON group received a placebo, 1-FLU and 2-FLU received flunixin meglumine transdermally. To account for plasma cortisol changes due to manipulation and handling of the calves, a sham disbudding procedure was performed one week before disbudding took place. Sham disbudding was conducted by using a cold cautery dehorner applied to each horn bud for 10 s. Disbudding was performed in a similar way by using a hot cautery dehorner. Plasma samples were collected to measure the stress biomarker cortisol at 7 different time points. Body weights were measured 4 times in 2 wk. Standing and lying behavior was assessed via 3-dimensional accelerometer. During sham disbudding and disbudding mean plasma cortisol concentrations were 6.09 ± 2.5 ng/mL and 5.16 ± 2.8 ng/mL, respectively. Treatment tended to have an effect on plasma cortisol concentrations during sham disbudding and had an effect on plasma cortisol concentrations during disbudding. Plasma cortisol concentrations were affected by treatment 2 h after disbudding in comparison to CON group. Furthermore, there was a significant effect on plasma cortisol concentrations 6 h after disbudding in contrast to CON. A return to baseline plasma cortisol levels (initial concentrations) was not achieved in CON during disbudding. There was no statistical difference between average daily weight gain and the treatment procedure. Total lying time was not affected by treatment after disbudding. In conclusion, transdermal flunixin meglumine given at the time of disbudding combined with local anesthesia decreased concentrations of the stress biomarker cortisol, but a second dose 6 h after disbudding had no further effect on plasma cortisol levels

A comparison of two different biodiversity assessment methods in LCA: A case study of Swedish spruce forest

Purpose Lately, there has been a growing interest in how to include biodiversity in life cycle assessment (LCA). The aim of this study was to compare two impact assessment methods, with regard to their applicability on a regional level and their feasibility in terms of data availability, through applying them to a case study. Methods The methods tested were those developed by de Baan et al. (2013a), based on species richness, and Lindner et al. (2014), based on ecosystem indicators. These were applied to commercially managed spruce forest in the south of Sweden. For the species-based method, characterization factors (CFs) were based on species richness of vascular plants in the region, calculated for two different stages in the production cycle, before and after felling, and using two different types of semi-natural reference situations. The key feature in the ecosystem approach was a set of indicators of prerequisites for biodiversity, based on expert knowledge, and the reference situation applied was the hypothetic maximum biodiversity quality in the region. Results and discussion The results showed that both methods were applicable for biodiversity assessment at regional level. All methodological requirements, such as species data and expert opinion, were available. To obtain enough data for the species richness method, data on vascular plants from two administrative regions was needed. When biodiversity was assessed before felling and using the spruce reference situation, the conventional spruce forestry studied was shown to have positive impact on biodiversity. All other results showed negative impacts on biodiversity. The positive impact indicated by the species richness method was probably due to the small difference in species richness between the mature spruce forest assessed and the available spruce forest reference situation. Conclusions The study shows that the two methods are applicable on a regional level, although data availability was a constraint in the species richness method by de Baan et al. (2013a). The choice of reference situation, and when in the production cycle assessment was made, led to considerable differences in the characterization factors generated