54 results match your criteria: "SRUC: Scotland's Rural College[Affiliation]"

This article describes the regulatory and evidence requirements necessary for the authorization of antimethanogenic feed additives (AMFA) aimed at mitigating enteric methane (CH) emissions from ruminants. It outlines the legislation and legal procedures in Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States as illustrative examples, offering insights for applicants seeking authorization. Additionals objectives are to highlight consequential similarities and differences in regulations and evidence requirements and offer recommendations for scientists and applicants.

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Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is a major source of morbidity and mortality in calves and detection of the disease can be challenging. Diagnostic tools for BRD are typically based on the assessment of clinical signs. As experience of disease is associated with a poor quality of life and this poor emotional experience can be expressed in observable behaviour patterns, a quality-of-life approach might identify new indicators of disease.

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Conservation agriculture improves soil health and sustains crop yields after long-term warming.

Nat Commun

October 2024

Laboratorio de Biodiversidad y Funcionamiento Ecosistémico. Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla (IRNAS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), 41012, Sevilla, Spain.

Article Synopsis
  • Climate warming poses a risk to global food security by further degrading soils used for intensive farming, necessitating more sustainable agricultural practices.
  • Conservation agriculture has been shown to enhance soil health and maintain crop yields better than conventional methods, even in the face of long-term warming.
  • Research shows that after eight years, conservation agriculture led to a 21% improvement in soil health and a 9.3% increase in wheat yields, demonstrating its potential to ensure sustainable food production amid climate challenges.
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European Dairy Cattle Evaluations and International Use of Genomic Data.

Vet Clin North Am Food Anim Pract

November 2024

Livestock Informatics, Animal Breeding and Genomics Team, SRUC - Scotland's Rural College, Edinburgh, UK.

The European and global dairy breeding industry has benefited enormously from collaboration and sharing of data. The new era of genomics has disrupted the information flow due to the requirement to protect commercial investments. New trait phenotypes, evaluation models, and breeding goals continue to evolve and will impact the way national and proprietary data are shared and presented to the dairy industry.

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An economic assessment of alternative antimicrobial use scenarios on pig farms.

Front Vet Sci

April 2024

Centre for Epidemiology and Planetary Health, School of Veterinary Medicine, SRUC (Scotland's Rural College), Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

This paper explores the theoretical economic outcome of management changes that result in different levels of antimicrobial use (AMU) in two types of UK pig farm. A static farm economic pig production model (FEPM) was used on a representative 'Top-third' most profitable farm and a representative 'Mid-range' profitable farm. Three AMU theoretical management scenarios were investigated; (a) management changes leading to a reduction of AMU by 35% (AMU35); (b) more extensive management changes leading to a reduction of AMU by 95% (AMU95); and (c) implementing depopulation of the herd (AMU Depop).

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Mobility, functionality and functional mobility: A review and application for canine veterinary patients.

Vet J

June 2024

The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies and Roslin Institute, The University of Edinburgh, Easter Bush Campus, Midlothian EH25 9RG, UK.

Mobility is an essential aspect of a dog's daily life. It is defined as the ability to move freely and easily and deviations from an animals' normal mobility capabilities are often an indicator of disease, injury or pain. When a dog's mobility is compromised, often functionality (ability to perform activities of daily living [ADL]), is also impeded, which can diminish an animal's quality of life.

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Entomology is key to understanding terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems at a time of unprecedented anthropogenic environmental change and offers substantial untapped potential to benefit humanity in a variety of ways, from improving agricultural practices to managing vector-borne diseases and inspiring technological advances.We identified high priority challenges for entomology using an inclusive, open, and democratic four-stage prioritisation approach, conducted among the membership and affiliates (hereafter 'members') of the UK-based Royal Entomological Society (RES).A list of 710 challenges was gathered from 189 RES members.

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Biogeographic survey of soil bacterial communities across Antarctica.

Microbiome

January 2024

Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, 0002, South Africa.

Background: Antarctica and its unique biodiversity are increasingly at risk from the effects of global climate change and other human influences. A significant recent element underpinning strategies for Antarctic conservation has been the development of a system of Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions (ACBRs). The datasets supporting this classification are, however, dominated by eukaryotic taxa, with contributions from the bacterial domain restricted to Actinomycetota and Cyanobacteriota.

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Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) in croplands by switching from conventional to conservation management may be hampered by stimulated microbial decomposition under warming. Here, we test the interactive effects of agricultural management and warming on SOC persistence and underlying microbial mechanisms in a decade-long controlled experiment on a wheat-maize cropping system. Warming increased SOC content and accelerated fungal community temporal turnover under conservation agriculture (no tillage, chopped crop residue), but not under conventional agriculture (annual tillage, crop residue removed).

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The only common European Union (EU) legislation set up specifically to ensure the welfare of dairy cattle is for calves. As a consequence, there is wide diversity in how dairy cattle welfare is ensured in EU countries. A few countries have legal requirements for dairy cattle welfare, while in others, it is left to industry standards or niche production requirements, typically linked to various premium labels.

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Harnesses have become increasingly popular and whilst there are benefits to harnesses, the impact of harness design on canine biomechanics, and thus physical health and welfare is largely unknown. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of three popular commercially available harnesses on canine locomotion in 66 domestic dogs. Dogs were filmed moving on a loose lead over a Tekscan Strideway gait analysis system.

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Skin, the largest organ in humans, is an efficient route for the delivery of drugs as it circumvents several disadvantages of the oral and parenteral routes. These advantages of skin have fascinated researchers in recent decades. Drug delivery via a topical route includes moving the drug from a topical product to a locally targeted region with dermal circulation throughout the body and deeper tissues.

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This study estimated the genetic parameters for human-directed behavior and intraspecific social aggression traits in growing pigs, and explored the phenotypic correlations among them. Data on 2,413 growing pigs were available. Pigs were mixed into new social groups of 18 animals, at 69 ± 5.

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Microbial necromass in cropland soils: A global meta-analysis of management effects.

Glob Chang Biol

April 2023

Key Laboratory of Plant-Soil Interactions, Ministry of Education, College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, National Academy of Agriculture Green Development, China Agricultural University, Beijing, P.R. China.

Microbial necromass is a large and persistent component of soil organic carbon (SOC), especially under croplands. The effects of cropland management on microbial necromass accumulation and its contribution to SOC have been measured in individual studies but have not yet been summarized on the global scale. We conducted a meta-analysis of 481-paired measurements from cropland soils to examine the management effects on microbial necromass and identify the optimal conditions for its accumulation.

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Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is a major welfare and productivity issue for calves. Despite the extensive negative impacts on calf welfare and performance, BRD remains challenging to detect and treat effectively. However, the clinical signs of disease are only one aspect of the disease that is experienced by the individual.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists studied how nitrogen (N) moves from white clover plants to ryegrass plants in a shared field to see if clover could help ryegrass get enough nitrogen.
  • They found that only a little nitrogen actually transferred to the ryegrass, mostly from the clover's roots releasing it and from decomposing plant parts.
  • The amount of nitrogen that did transfer was affected by things like soil bugs, which can help or hurt the process, and how the land was managed, like whether animals grazed there.
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The conventional dairy production system involves separation of the cow and calf at around 24 h after birth. Due to public concerns regarding this early separation, a few farmers are taking up the cow-calf contact system. However, some farmers have cited great variation in milk yield delivered to the parlor by cows in this sytem, with this being detrimental because it leads to low farm returns.

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The laser methane detector (LMD), is a proprietary hand-held open path laser measuring device. Its measurements are based on infrared absorption spectroscopy using a semiconductor laser as a collimated excitation source. In the current study, LMD measurements were carried out in two experiments using 20 and 71 lactating dairy cows in Spain and Scotland, respectively.

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Chemistry and engineering of brush type polymers: Perspective towards tissue engineering.

Adv Colloid Interface Sci

July 2022

Biorefining and Advanced Materials Research Center, SRUC (Scotland's Rural College), Edinburgh EH9 3JG, UK; School of Engineering, University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun 248007, Uttarakhand, India. Electronic address:

In tissue engineering, it is imperative to control the behaviour of cells/stem cells, such as adhesion, proliferation, propagation, motility, and differentiation for tissue regeneration. Surfaces that allow cells to behave in this way are critical as support materials in tissue engineering. Among these surfaces, brush-type polymers have an important potential for tissue engineering and biomedical applications.

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The "Regulator" Function of Viruses on Ecosystem Carbon Cycling in the Anthropocene.

Front Public Health

April 2022

Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Viruses act as "regulators" of the global carbon cycle because they impact the material cycles and energy flows of food webs and the microbial loop. The average contribution of viruses to the Earth ecosystem carbon cycle is 8.6‰, of which its contribution to marine ecosystems (1.

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Current modern dietary patterns throughout the world have resulted in adverse health implications. On the other hand, current agricultural practices and methods employed in food industries lead to the exploitation of the environment and generate nutrient-rich waste, which is underutilized. The simple answer to both these problems could be the adoption of fermentation technology.

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Development of paper-based DNA sensor for detection of O. tsutsugamushi using sustainable GQDs@AuNPs nanocomposite.

Chemosphere

August 2022

Amity Center of Nanotechnology, Amity University, Haryana, 122413, India; Department of Biotechnology, Maharishi Markandeshwar University, Mullana, Ambala, 134003, India. Electronic address:

The graphene quantum dots (GQDs) was synthesized using potato starch and water by hydrothermal method and further used for reduction of tetracholoroauric acid to form graphene quantum dots-gold (GQDs@AuNPs) nanocomposite. The GQDs/GQDs@AuNPs were analyzed using FTIR, UV-Vis, Flourometry and HR-TEM. The synthesized GQDs@AuNPs were further used for fabrication of cost-effective screen-printed paper electrode (SPPE) based DNA sensor for the detection of O.

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Recent advances of carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNMs) for wastewater treatment: Synthesis and application.

Chemosphere

July 2022

Biorefining and Advanced Materials Research Center, SRUC (Scotland's Rural College), Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JG, UK; School of Engineering, University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • - CBNMs are advanced materials with unique properties like high aspect ratios and excellent thermal, electrical, and optical performance, making them promising for various applications in medicine, electronics, and environmental remediation.
  • - These materials are particularly effective in adsorbing heavy metal ions from wastewater, but there is a lack of reliable tools to assess their potential health risks due to complex detection methods.
  • - The review discusses the role of CBNMs in removing pollutants from wastewater, the challenges faced in managing contaminants, and potential photocatalytic methods for treatment, highlighting both limitations and future opportunities.
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Animal microbiomes are occasionally considered as an extension of host anatomy, physiology, and even their genomic architecture. Their compositions encompass variable and constant portions when examined across multiple hosts. The latter, termed the core microbiome, is viewed as more accommodated to its host environment and suggested to benefit host fitness.

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There is a growing scientific and legislative consensus that fish are sentient, and therefore have the capacity to experience pain and suffering. The assessment of the welfare of farmed fish is challenging due to the aquatic environment and the number of animals housed together. However, with increasing global production and intensification of aquaculture comes greater impetus for developing effective tools which are suitable for the aquatic environment to assess the emotional experience and welfare of farmed fish.

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