Publications by authors named "John Classen"

The broiler industry is crucial for rural economies, but it faces challenges in enhancing animal performance and well-being, particularly due to heat stress and ammonia (NH) in grow-out houses. This study investigates the effectiveness of air velocity (AV) treatment in reducing heat stress and NH emissions while also improving litter conditions to enhance animal welfare. Conducted at the North Carolina State University's poultry engineering laboratory, the research used six identical controlled chambers, exposing broilers to High and Low AV treatments from 28 to 61 days across four flocks during the summers of 2017 and 2018.

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Lagoon sludge, a byproduct of swine operations in the Southeast United States, poses a management challenge due to its high mineral and metal content. Composting is a low-cost, scalable technology for manure management. However, limited information is available on composting swine lagoon sludge in terms of recipes, greenhouse gas emissions and end-product quality.

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Broiler chickens exposed to heat stress adapt to various behavioral changes to regulate their comfortable body temperature, which is critical to ensure their performance and welfare. Hence, assessing various behavioral responses in birds when they are subjected to environmental changes can be essential for assessing their welfare under heat-stressed conditions. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of two air velocity (AV) treatments on heavy broilers' behavioral changes from 43 to 54 days under summer conditions.

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Heavy broilers exposed to hot summer conditions experience fluctuations in surface temperatures due to heat stress, which leads to decreased performance. Maintaining a bird's homeostasis depends on several environmental factors (temperature, relative humidity, and air velocity). It is important to understand the responses of birds to environmental factors and the amount of heat loss to the surrounding environment to create thermal comfort for the heavy broilers for improved performances and welfare.

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Fine particulate matter (i.e., PM) has gained extensive attention owing to its adverse effects.

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There is a renewed interest in treating odorous contaminants such as butyric acid, -cresol, and ammonia that are emitted from animal farming operations. However, developing newer treatment technologies require quantitative information regarding the properties of the target pollutants. Therefore, in this communication, baseline data related to physicochemical and thermodynamic properties of butyric acid, cresol, and ammonia were predicted using computational chemistry.

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The objective of this study was to develop sigmoidal models, including three-parameter (Quadratic, Logistic, and Gompertz) and four-parameter models (Schnute and Richards) to simulate the growth of archaeon Halobacterium halobium affected by temperature and light. The models were statistically compared by using t test and F test. In the t test, confidence bounds for parameters were used to distinguish among models.

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There is an epidemic in children of metabolic syndrome, obesity, type 2 diabetes and other individual diseases that form the components of metabolic syndrome. Poor diet and low exercise can not explain many facets of the epidemic including the onset in children 6 month of age, the protective effect of obesity on the incidence of type 1 diabetes and the epidemic of type 2 diabetes/metabolic syndrome in grass fed horses. Poor diet and exercise also do not explain the epidemic of type 1 diabetes in children that resembles the epidemic of type 2 diabetes/metabolic syndrome.

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We previously postulated that iatrogenic inflammation caused epidemics of type 2 diabetes/metabolic syndrome/obesity by activating an immune suppressive cortisol response which protects against type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases. In the current study, data on the incidence of obesity in different Italian provinces was compared with the incidence of type 1 diabetes in the same region. The association between obesity and type 1 diabetes was analyzed using Wilcoxon rank analysis.

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Purpose: Known drug adverse events have been estimated to be between the 4th and 6th leading cause of death in the US (1). There are currently insufficient funds to perform the quantity and quality of studies necessary to ensure all drug adverse events are discovered in a timely fashion.

Methods/results: One approach to attract capital for pharmacoepidemiology studies is to patent the discoveries from the studies.

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Objective: The hemophilus vaccine has been linked to the development of autoimmune type 1 diabetes, insulin dependent diabetes (IDDM) in ecological studies.

Methods: We attempted to determine if the Hemophilus influenza B (HiB) vaccine was associated with an increased risk of IDDM by looking for clusters of cases of IDDM using data from a large clinical trial. All children born in Finland between October 1st, 1985 and August 31st, 1987, approximately 116,000 were randomized to receive 4 doses of the HiB vaccine (PPR-D, Connaught) starting at 3 months of life or one dose starting after 24 months of life.

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Spirodela punctata 7776, the best duckweed strain in total protein production selected from in vitro screening experiments with synthetic swine lagoon water medium was examined for N and P recovery. It has shown a capability to grow in and to remove N and P from synthetic swine lagoon water with high N (240 mg NH4 N/l) and P (31.0 mg PO4 P/l) levels.

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