Improve animal health to reduce livestock emissions: quantifying an open goal.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from livestock production must be urgently tackled to substantially reduce their contribution to global warming. Simply reducing livestock numbers to this end risks impacting negatively on food security, rural livelihoods and climate change adaptation. We argue that significant mitigation of livestock emissions can be delivered immediately by improving animal health and hence production efficiency, but this route is not prioritized because its benefits, although intuitive, are poorly quantified.

The impact of changing toward higher welfare broiler production systems on greenhouse gas emissions: a Dutch case study using life cycle assessment.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch Retail Broiler (DRB) and Better Life one Star (BLS) production systems have been introduced with the aim to improve broiler welfare. Simultaneously, retailers set targets for reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the whole broiler production chain. The GHG emissions of DRB and BLS may differ from conventional systems because of differences in slaughter age, feed intake, and diet composition.

Exploring the role of expectations and stimulus relevance on stimulus-specific neural representations and conscious report.

Subjective experience can be influenced by top-down factors, such as expectations and stimulus relevance. Recently, it has been shown that expectations can enhance the likelihood that a stimulus is consciously reported, but the neural mechanisms supporting this enhancement are still unclear. We manipulated stimulus expectations within the attentional blink (AB) paradigm using letters and combined visual psychophysics with magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings to investigate whether prior expectations may enhance conscious access by sharpening stimulus-specific neural representations.

Predictable tones elicit stimulus-specific suppression of evoked activity in auditory cortex.

The auditory cortex is sensitive to many forms of acoustic regularity, resulting in suppressed neural activity for expected auditory events. It is unclear whether this activity reduction for expected events is the result of suppression of neurons that are tuned to the expected stimulus (i.e.

Estimating the impact of clinical mastitis in dairy cows on greenhouse gas emissions using a dynamic stochastic simulation model: a case study.

The increasing attention for global warming is likely to contribute to the introduction of policies or other incentives to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to livestock production, including dairy. The dairy sector is an important contributor to GHG emissions. Clinical mastitis (CM), an intramammary infection, results in reduced milk production and fertility, increases culling and mortality of cows and, therefore, has a negative impact on the efficiency (output/input) of milk production.

Eye Movement-Related Confounds in Neural Decoding of Visual Working Memory Representations.

A relatively new analysis technique, known as neural decoding or multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), has become increasingly popular for cognitive neuroimaging studies over recent years. These techniques promise to uncover the representational contents of neural signals, as well as the underlying code and the dynamic profile thereof. A field in which these techniques have led to novel insights in particular is that of visual working memory (VWM).

Differential temporal dynamics during visual imagery and perception.

Visual perception and imagery rely on similar representations in the visual cortex. During perception, visual activity is characterized by distinct processing stages, but the temporal dynamics underlying imagery remain unclear. Here, we investigated the dynamics of visual imagery in human participants using magnetoencephalography.

Stimulus Familiarity and Expectation Jointly Modulate Neural Activity in the Visual Ventral Stream.

Prior knowledge about the visual world can change how a visual stimulus is processed. Two forms of prior knowledge are often distinguished: stimulus familiarity (i.e.

Effects of dry period length on production, cash flows and greenhouse gas emissions of the dairy herd: A dynamic stochastic simulation model.

Shortening or omitting the dry period of dairy cows improves metabolic health in early lactation and reduces management transitions for dairy cows. The success of implementation of these strategies depends on their impact on milk yield and farm profitability. Insight in these impacts is valuable for informed decision-making by farmers.

Prior expectations induce prestimulus sensory templates.

Perception can be described as a process of inference, integrating bottom-up sensory inputs and top-down expectations. However, it is unclear how this process is neurally implemented. It has been proposed that expectations lead to prestimulus baseline increases in sensory neurons tuned to the expected stimulus, which in turn, affect the processing of subsequent stimuli.

Estimating the economic impact of subclinical ketosis in dairy cattle using a dynamic stochastic simulation model.

The objective of this study was to estimate the economic impact of subclinical ketosis (SCK) in dairy cows. This metabolic disorder occurs in the period around calving and is associated with an increased risk of other diseases. Therefore, SCK affects farm productivity and profitability.

Opposite Effects of Recent History on Perception and Decision.

Recent studies claim that visual perception of stimulus features, such as orientation, numerosity, and faces, is systematically biased toward visual input from the immediate past [1-3]. However, the extent to which these positive biases truly reflect changes in perception rather than changes in post-perceptual processes is unclear [4, 5]. In the current study we sought to disentangle perceptual and decisional biases in visual perception.

Dissociating sensory from decision processes in human perceptual decision making.

A key question within systems neuroscience is how the brain translates physical stimulation into a behavioral response: perceptual decision making. To answer this question, it is important to dissociate the neural activity underlying the encoding of sensory information from the activity underlying the subsequent temporal integration into a decision variable. Here, we adopted a decoding approach to empirically assess this dissociation in human magnetoencephalography recordings.

Fatal case of Clostridium perfringens enteritis and bacteraemia in South Africa.

Clostridium perfringens is an important anaerobic pathogen causing foodborne and non-foodborne gastrointestinal diseases in humans and animals. This pathogen is also the more common Clostridium species associated with bacteraemia. We report on a fatal case of C.

Discriminant analysis of the localization of aggression-inducing electrode placements in the hypothalamus of male rats.

Over 400 sites in the hypothalami of 270 male CPB/WE-zob rats were electrically stimulated in order to induce fights between males. The localization of electrodes inducing fights seems to differ from the localization of electrodes in which no fights can be induced. The differences in localization were detected and tested by a non-parametric discriminant analysis.

Ascaris suum in Saskatchewan pigs: an abattoir survey of prevalence and intensity of infection.

In a survey of 2500 market weight pigs in a Saskatchewan abattoir, 37% were infected with adult Ascaris suum and in 46% there were milkspot hepatic lesions. A total of 60% of the pigs examined had some evidence of A. suum infection.