Effects of whole-day versus half-day cow-calf contact on cows' and calves' performance.

Cow-calf contact systems (CCCs), where dairy cows nurse their own calves for several weeks while being milked, have some advantages in terms of animal welfare. However, one major challenge is the loss of collected milk due to suckling and milk ejection problems during milking. Reducing daily CCC can decrease milk losses.

Public and manager perceptions about prescribed fire in the Mid-Atlantic, United States.

Firescapes of the Mid-Atlantic are understudied compared to other ecosystems in the United States, and little is known about the acceptance of prescribed fire as a forest management tool. Yet, this region harbors high levels of wildland-urban interface (WUI), has a close intermingling of land ownerships, and reflects substantial regional heterogeneity in burning histories and fire hazards. As prescribed fire is increasingly applied in the Mid-Atlantic as a critical tool to meet various land management objectives, research is needed to help managers understand community perceptions of prescribed fire implementation.

Methodological terminology and definitions for research and discussion of cow-calf contact systems.

Due to increasing public concern regarding separation of the dairy cow and calf within the first days after birth, alternative systems, where cows and calves stay in contact for an extended period, are receiving increasing interest from a broad array of researchers and other stakeholders. With more research in the area, there is a risk of inconsistencies emerging in the use of terminology. To create a better consensus in further discussions, the aim of this Research Reflection is to provide definitions and propose a common terminology for cow-calf contact in dairy production.

Physical development, ease of integration into the dairy herd and performance of primiparous dairy cows reared with full whole-day, half-day or no mother-contact as calves.

We investigated whether different rearing conditions affected the physical development, ease of integration into the dairy herd and performance of primiparous dairy cows and the results are reported in this Research Communication. The three rearing conditions investigated were whole-day cow-calf contact for 9 weeks (WDC), half-day contact for nine weeks (HDC) and no mother-contact (NC) with nipple-bucket-feeding (max. 2 × 3 l/d) and group-housing from the 8th day onward.

Whole blood-derived miRNA profiles as potential new tools for ovarian cancer screening.

Background: Screening is an unsolved problem for ovarian cancer (OvCA). As late detection is equivalent to poor prognosis, we analysed whether OvCA patients show diagnostically meaningful microRNA (miRNA) patterns in blood cells.

Methods: Blood-borne whole miRNome profiles from 24 patients with OvCA and 15 age- and sex-matched healthy controls were biostatistically evaluated.

Dating skeletal remains with luminol-chemiluminescence. Validity, intra- and interobserver error.

Unlabelled: Amongst numerous other morphological, chemical, physical, and histological dating methods, the assessment of the chemiluminescence of weathered organic traces on bone finds by means of the luminol reaction is common practice. Opinion differs on the diagnostic value of this procedure for differentiating between historical and recent skeletonized human remains.

Design: Chemiluminescence (CL) was tested in randomized, blind experiments on pulverized bone samples with known postmortem intervals from four different periods (1st-3rd century, 1878-1902, 1965-1972, 1995-2003).