scholarly journals Sheep and Goat Production in Hot Climates

Author(s):  
L. Reynolds

This paper discusses the reasons for keeping small ruminants and investigates the areas in which technological improvements are likely to have most impact in increasing the output from sheep and goat enterprises in hot climates. The most important areas in which biological manipulation can raise productivity lie in the areas of improved nutrition and increased survival of young animals. Nutritional studies of animals receiving diets of natural tropical grazing and browse may not reflect the rations actually consumed due to the ability of animals to select high quality forage from what is on offer. One suggestion is made as to how this selection can be exploited to increase the productivity of the herd as a whole. Improved health care offers the largest potential for increases in productivity by reducing the large mortality of young animals seen in many tropical production schemes. Much of this mortality has its roots in parasite infection. Anthelmatics have proved valuable for short term therapy but the speed at which parasites become resistant to drugs indicates that selective breeding of animals with resistance to parasites is a more valuable long term solution.

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-48
Author(s):  
Md Jamal Saleh Uddin ◽  
Sukumar Chakrabarti ◽  
Md Shahidul Islam

Background and Objectives: Antibiotic prophylaxis is a common practice in children undergoing colostomy closure for anorectal malformation, Hirschsprung's disease. Traditionally, antibiotics are given for unnecessarily longer period of time, which consumes scarce health resources having alternate efficient use. The present study was undertaken to compare the outcome between short-term and long-term antibiotic prophylaxis in colostomy closure. Materials & Methods: This randomized clinical trial was conducted in Dhaka Shishu Hospital, Dhaka over a period of 15 months from April 2001 to June 2002. Children admitted with anorectal malformation, Hirschsprung's disease for colostomy closures were the study population. However, immuno-compromised children or children already getting antibiotics were excluded from the study. A total of 46 such children were consecutively included and were randomly allocated to long-term group (n = 21) and short-term group (n = 25). The long-term group received antibiotic up to 5th postoperative day, while the short-term group received the same antibiotic up to 2nd postoperative day. Transverse colostomy was the main procedure employed in colostomy closure; however, a few patients required sigmoid colostomy. The outcome measures were incidence of wound infection, hospital stay and cost of treatment. Result: Majority of the children were between 1 - 5 years of age (75% in short-term and 50% in long-term group) followed by under 1 year (10% in short-term and 40% in long-term group) and > 5 years (15% in short-term and 10% in long-term group). The overall male to female ratio was 3:1. Majority (85%) of the patients in both long­term and short-term groups belonged to lower income group. Over half (52.2%) of the children had anorectal malformations (ARM) and the rest (47.8%) had Hirschsprung's disease (HD). Children were generally malnourished according to Gomez classification. Majority (91%) was operated on by transverse colostomy and few (9%) by sigmoid colostomy. Three patients in each group developed postoperative wound infection. Blood culture of none of these patients yielded growth of any organism, though wound swab culture did so in 5 cases out of 6 infected patients. In 2 cases, the organism was E.coli, in 2 cases, it was Pseudomonas and in one case Staph. aureus. Total cost of antibiotics in short-term therapy was less than 50% of that required in long-term therapy. The outcome in terms of recovery, complications and postoperative hospital stay was no different between groups. Conclusion: The study concluded that short-term antibiotic prophylaxis is as efficacious as long-term in preventing wound infection in patients with colostomy closure for anorectal malformation and Hirschsprung's disease. Short-term antibiotic prophylaxis is cost-effective Ibrahim Cardiac Med J 2014; 4(2): 43-48


2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Tator

There has been a remarkable increase in the past 10 years in the awareness of concussion in the sports and recreation communities. Just as sport participants, their families, coaches, trainers, and sports organizations now know more about concussions, health care professionals are also better prepared to diagnose and manage concussions. As has been stated in the formal articles in this special issue on sport-related concussion, education about concussion is one of the most important aspects of concussion prevention, with the others being data collection, program evaluation, improved engineering, and introduction and enforcement of rules. Unfortunately, the incidence of concussion appears to be rising in many sports and thus, additional sports-specific strategies are required to reduce the incidence, short-term effects, and long term consequences of concussion. Enhanced educational strategies are required to ensure that individual participants, sports organizations, and health care professionals recognize concussions and manage them proficiently according to internationally recognized guidelines. Therefore, this paper serves as a “brief report” on a few important aspects of concussion education and prevention.


Author(s):  
Jan de Jonge ◽  
Akihito Shimazu ◽  
Maureen Dollard

This study examined whether particular recovery activities after work have a positive or negative effect on employee recovery from work (i.e., cognitive, emotional, and physical detachment) and sleep quality. We used a two-wave panel study of 230 health care employees which enabled looking at both short-term and long-term effects (i.e., two-year time interval). Gender, age, marital status, children at home, education level, management position, and working hours were used as control variables. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that work-related off-job activities were negatively associated with cognitive and emotional detachment in both the short and long run, whereas low-effort off-job activities were positively related to cognitive detachment in the short run. Moreover, household/care off-job activities were positively related to sleep quality in the long run, whereas physical off-job activities were negatively associated with sleep quality in the long run. The long-term findings existed beyond the strong effects of baseline detachment and sleep quality. This study highlights the importance of off-job recovery activities for health care employees’ detachment from work and sleep quality. Practical implications and avenues for further research are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-24
Author(s):  
Elena S. Akarachkova ◽  
◽  
Anton A. Beliaev ◽  
Dmitrii V. Blinov ◽  
Evgenii V. Bugorskii ◽  
...  

World Health Organization declared COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Fear of illness, self-isolation/quarantine, and reduced quality of life dramatically increased the prevalence of stress-related disorders in the population. Therefore, it is necessary to implement the preventive health-care measures aimed at short-term and long-term COVID-19 pandemic consequences reduction and promotion of social stability.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 94 (5) ◽  
pp. 724-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitta U. Mueller ◽  
Karina M. Butler ◽  
Vicki L. Stocker ◽  
Frank M. Balis ◽  
Philip A. Pizzo ◽  
...  

Background. Didanosine has demonstrated promising antiviral activity and a tolerable toxicity profile in short term studies. We describe a cohort of HIV-infected children who were treated for a prolonged period of time with didanosine. Methods. Children (6 months to 18 years of age) with symptomatic HIV infection or an absolute CD4 count < 0.5 x 109 cells/L, received oral didanosine at doses between 20 mg/m2 to 180 mg/m2 every 8 hours. Clinical, immunological, and virological parameters were assessed at least every 2 months. The pharmacokinetics of didanosine were evaluated in 85 patients. Results. Previously untreated children (n = 51) and children who had received prior antiretroviral therapy (n = 52) were enrolled in the study (median time on study 22.6 months; range 2 to 48). The long-term administration of didanosine was well tolerated and no new toxicities were observed. The absolute CD4 count increased by ≥ .05 x 109 cells/L in 28 of 87 (32%) of patients after 6 months of therapy. Responses were also sustained in 41% of these children after 3 years of therapy. Children entering the study with a CD4 count >0.1 x 109 cells/L (n = 51) had a marked survival advantage (P = .00002) with an estimated survival probability after 3 years of 80% compared to 39% for children with lower CD4 counts. Although the area under the curve of didanosine increased proportionally with the dose, there was considerable interpatient variability at each dose level. There was no apparent relationship between surrogate markers of clinical outcome and plasma drug concentration. Conclusions. Didanosine was well tolerated with chronic administration, and toxicities were uncommon and usually reversible. In 41% of patients, the CD4 count increased and was maintained at the higher level even after years of treatment.


1989 ◽  
Vol 238 (1291) ◽  
pp. 137-154 ◽  

Synapses that can be strengthened in temporary and persistent manners by two separate mechanisms are shown to have powerful advantages in neural networks that perform auto-associative recall and recognition. A multiplicative relation between the two weights allows the same set of connections to be used in a closely interactive way for short-term and long-term memory. Algorithms and simulations are described for the storage, consolidation and recall of patterns that have been presented only once to a network. With double modifiability, the short-term performance is dramatically improved, becoming almost independent of the amount of long-term experience. The high quality of short-term recall allows consolidation to take place, with benefits from the selection and optimization of long term engram s to take account of relations between stored patterns. Long-term capacity is greater than short-term capacity, with little or no deficit compared with that, obtained with singly modifiable synapses. Long-term recall requires special, simply implemented, procedures for increasing the temporary weights of the synapses being used to initiate recall. A consolidation algorithm is described for improving long-term recall when there is overlap between patterns. Confusional errors are reduced by strengthening the associations between non-overlapping elements in the patterns, in a two-stage process that has several of the characteristics of sleep.


Author(s):  
Tim Spalding ◽  
Lars Peterson

♦ Articular cartilage has a poor capacity to heal by itself♦ Left alone, large areas are likely to progress into osteoarthritis♦ The goal of cartilage repair is both short term improvement in function and long term durability♦ There are several available strategies including non-surgical options, and these are formulated into an algorithm♦ Cartilage repair is an advancing field and the future lies in bioengineering and high quality comparative clinical analysis.


Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1665 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. James Squires ◽  
Christine Bone ◽  
Jocelyn Cameron

Boar taint is caused by the accumulation of androstenone and skatole and other indoles in the fat; this is regulated by the balance between synthesis and degradation of these compounds and can be affected by a number of factors, including environment and management practices, sexual maturity, nutrition, and genetics. Boar taint can be controlled by immunocastration, but this practice has not been accepted in some countries. Genetics offers a long-term solution to the boar taint problem via selective breeding or genome editing. A number of short-term strategies to control boar taint have been proposed, but these can have inconsistent effects and there is too much variability between breeds and individuals to implement a blanket solution for boar taint. Therefore, we propose a precision livestock management approach to developing solutions for controlling taint. This involves determining the differences in metabolic processes and the genetic variations that cause boar taint in specific groups of pigs and using this information to design custom treatments based on the cause of boar taint. Genetic, proteomic or metabolomic profiling can then be used to identify and implement effective solutions for boar taint for specific populations of animals.


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