Energy Balance Indicators during the Transition Period and Early Lactation of Purebred Holstein and Simmental Cows and Their Crosses.

Crossbreeding in dairy cattle has been used to improve functional traits, milk composition, and efficiency of Holstein herds. The objective of the study was to compare indicators of the metabolic energy balance, nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA), beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHBA), glucose, body condition score (BCS) back fat thickness (BFT), as well as milk yield and milk composition of Holstein and Simmental cows, and their crosses from the prepartum period until the 100th day of lactation at the Livestock Center of the Ludwig Maximilians University (Munich, Germany). In total, 164 cows formed five genetic groups according to their theoretic proportion of Holstein and Simmental genes as follows: Holstein (100% Holstein; = 9), R1-Hol (51-99% Holstein; = 30), first generation (F1) crossbreds (50% Holstein, 50% Simmental; = 17), R1-Sim (1-49% Holstein; = 81) and Simmental (100% Simmental; = 27).

Slowly but surely: gradual diversification and phenotypic evolution in the hyper-diverse tree fern family Cyatheaceae.

Background And Aims: The tremendously unbalanced distribution of species richness across clades in the tree of life is often interpreted as the result of variation in the rates of diversification, which may themselves respond to trait evolution. Even though this is likely a widespread pattern, not all diverse groups of organisms exhibit heterogeneity in their dynamics of diversification. Testing and characterizing the processes driving the evolution of clades with steady rates of diversification over long periods of time are of importance in order to have a full understanding of the build-up of biodiversity through time.

Targeted Capture of Hundreds of Nuclear Genes Unravels Phylogenetic Relationships of the Diverse Neotropical Palm Tribe Geonomateae.

The tribe Geonomateae is a widely distributed group of 103 species of Neotropical palms which contains six ecologically important understory or subcanopy genera. Although it has been the focus of many studies, our understanding of the evolutionary history of this group, and in particular of the taxonomically complex genus , is far from complete due to a lack of molecular data. Specifically, the previous Sanger sequencing-based studies used a few informative characters and partial sampling.

Relativistic small-core pseudopotentials for actinium, thorium, and protactinium.

Small-core pseudopotentials for actinium, thorium, and protactinium have been energy-adjusted to multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock reference data based on the Dirac-Coulomb-Breit Hamiltonian and the Fermi nucleus model. Corresponding optimized valence basis sets of polarized valence quadruple-ζ quality are presented. Atomic test calculations for the first four ionization potentials show satisfactory results at both the Hartree-Fock and the multireference averaged coupled-pair functional level.

Combined computational and experimental study of uranyl(VI) 1:2 complexation by aromatic acids.

The bis(salicylhydroxamato) and bis(benzohydroxamato) complexes of UO(2)(2+) in aqueous solution have been investigated in a combined experimental and computational effort using extended X-ray absorption fine structure and UV-vis spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) techniques, respectively. The experimentally unknown bis(benzoate) complex of UO(2)(2+) was investigated computationally for comparison. Experimental data indicate 5-fold UO(2)(2+) coordination with mean equatorial U-O distances of 2.

Multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock adjusted energy-consistent pseudopotential for uranium: spin-orbit configuration interaction and Fock-space coupled-cluster study of U4+ and U5+.

In order to assess the accuracy of a recently adjusted relativistic energy-consistent small-core pseudopotential for uranium, the U(5+) (5f(1) subconfiguration) spin-orbit splitting as well as the fine structure of the U(4+) (5f(2) subconfiguration) spectrum have been calculated. The pseudopotential has been adjusted to four-component all-electron data, i.e.