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ABSTRACT: The objectives of this observational cohort study were to assess the effect of body condition score change, back fat depth change, and muscle diameter change on the time to commencement of luteal activity and first estrus in commercial pedigree Holstein cows. A total of 140 of 200 commercial pedigree Holstein cows were enrolled in one dairy herd in Somerset, UK, over 52 wk in 2021 to 2022. The herd used 4 automatic milking machines with in-line progesterone measurement capability to determine commencement of luteal activity and time to first estrus. Cows were followed until at least 60 d postpartum, and milk progesterone was measured daily starting from 10 DIM. Body condition scoring and ultrasound measurements of back fat depth and longissimus dorsi muscle diameter were performed on cows twice, within 7 d of both calving and 60 DIM. Other explanatory variables assessed included parity, 60-d and 305-d milk yield, and subclinical ketosis (β-hydroxybutryate ≥1.2 mmol/L). Occurrence of clinical disease 8 mm was associated with the longest times to luteal activity and first estrus. In addition to being affected by muscle loss, commencement of luteal activity was delayed by subclinical ketosis, clinical disease, and failure to gain body condition to 60 DIM. Cows that had a BCS loss of 0.25 or more between calving and 60 DIM were at least 52 ± 22% less likely to have commenced luteal activity compared with those that gained BCS. Interestingly, cows that had no change in body condition score commenced luteal activity later than those that gained body condition score. Muscle loss was associated with time to first estrus irrespective of clinical disease status. Cows that lost >8 mm of muscle diameter showed estrus behavior later than cows that lost 1.5 to 5 mm. In conclusion, our findings indicate that extensive muscle loss postpartum was associated with a delayed start to luteal activity and first estrus, irrespective of body condition change, clinical disease, and subclinical ketosis. Marginal muscle loss and a gain in body condition, however, were associated with an earlier start to luteal activity and first estrus.

The use of drones to explore indoor spaces has gained attention and popularity for disaster management and indoor navigation applications. In this paper we present the operations and mapping techniques of two drones that are different in terms of size, the sensors deployed, and the positioning and mapping techniques used. The first drone is a low-cost commercial quadcopter microdrone, a Crazyflie, while the second drone is a relatively expensive research quadcopter macrodrone, called MAX. We investigated their feasibility in mapping areas where satellite positioning is not available, such as indoor spaces. We compared the point clouds obtained by a multi-ranger deck, a multi-layer LIDAR scanner and a stereo camera, and assessed each against ground truth obtained with a terrestrial laser scanner. Results showed that both drones are capable of mapping relatively cluttered indoor environments and can provide point clouds that are sufficient for a quick exploration. Furthermore, the LIDAR scanner-based system can handle a relatively large office environment with an accumulated drift less than 0.02% (1 cm) on the Z-axis and 0.77% (50 cm) on the X and Y axes over a length trajectory of about 65 m. Despite the limited features of the sensor configuration of the Crazyflie, its performance is promising for mapping indoor spaces, given the relatively low deviation from the ground truth: cloud-to-cloud distances measured were generally less than 20 cm.

ABSTRACT: Transport crates for poultry can contribute to the spread of pathogens, with those of public health interest, for example, Campylobacter, being of particular importance. A strict cleaning procedure and use of an effective disinfection method for transport equipment are thus important to avoid introduction of Campylobacter to chicken and poultry farms, particularly during flock thinning. This study evaluated the efficacy of the disinfection procedure currently in use at one of the largest slaughter plants in Sweden and compared the effects with those of other disinfection methods. The evaluation was based on treatment ability to reduce the presence and amount of indicator bacteria belonging to the family Enterobacteriaceae and total aerobic bacteria. In 4 trials, sodium hypochlorite, peracetic acid, and drying with hot air, with or without sodium hypochlorite for final disinfection, were compared. The analysis was based on 40 cotton swab samples taken in each treatment, 20 after the soaking stage and 20 after the final disinfection step.The results showed that use of a chemical disinfectant in combination with drying with hot air (dehumidifier) was the most effective treatment, with an average reduction of 3.4 log for total aerobic bacteria and 3.8 log for Enterobacteriaceae. Since all crates treated with hot air were dry, transport conditions for the birds also improved, particularly in cold weather. A disadvantage is that this treatment is energy-consuming and would require substantial technical changes to the current cleaning process, increasing operating costs at the slaughter plant. However, considering the contribution of improved crate cleaning to overall hygiene control within the poultry supply chain and the beneficial effect on animal welfare, the costs may be justified.

Earth system models (ESMs) are currently the most advanced tools with which to study the interactions among humans, ecosystem productivity, and the climate. The inclusion of storm damage in ESMs has long been hampered by their big-leaf approach, which ignores the canopy structure information that is required for process-based wind-throw modelling. Recently the big-leaf assumptions in the large-scale land surface model ORCHIDEE-CAN were replaced by a three-dimensional description of the canopy structure. This opened the way to the integration of the processes from the small-scale wind damage risk model ForestGALES into ORCHIDEE-CAN. The integration of ForestGALES into ORCHIDEE-CAN required, however, developing numerically efficient solutions to deal with (1) landscape heterogeneity, i.e. account for newly established forest edges for the parameterization of gusts; (2) downscaling spatially and temporally aggregated wind fields to obtain more realistic wind speeds that would represents gusts; and (3) downscaling storm damage within the 2500 km2 pixels of ORCHIDEE-CAN. This new version of ORCHIDEE-CAN was parameterized over Sweden. Subsequently, the performance of the model was tested against data for historical storms in southern Sweden between 1951 and 2010 and south-western France in 2009. In years without big storms, here defined as a storm damaging less than 15 × 106 m3 of wood in Sweden, the model error is 1.62 × 106 m3, which is about 100 % of the observed damage. For years with big storms, such as Gudrun in 2005, the model error increased to 5.05 × 106 m3, which is between 10 and 50 % of the observed damage. When the same model parameters were used over France, the model reproduced a decrease in leaf area index and an increase in albedo, in accordance with SPOT-VGT and MODIS records following the passing of Cyclone Klaus in 2009. The current version of ORCHIDEE-CAN (revision 4262) is therefore expected to have the capability to capture the dynamics of forest structure due to storm disturbance on both regional and global scales, although the empirical parameters calculating gustiness from the gridded wind fields and storm damage from critical wind speeds may benefit from regional fitting.

A system was developed for automatic estimations of tree positions and stem diameters. The sensor trajectory was first estimated using a positioning system that consists of a low precision inertial measurement unit supported by image matching with data from a stereo-camera. The initial estimation of the sensor trajectory was then calibrated by adjustments of the sensor pose using the laser scanner data. Special features suitable for forest environments were used to solve the correspondence and matching problems. Tree stem diameters were estimated for stem sections using laser data from individual scanner rotations and were then used for calibration of the sensor pose. A segmentation algorithm was used to associate stem sections to individual tree stems. The stem diameter estimates of all stem sections associated to the same tree stem were then combined for estimation of stem diameter at breast height (DBH). The system was validated on four 20 m radius circular plots and manual measured trees were automatically linked to trees detected in laser data. The DBH could be estimated with a RMSE of 19 mm (6 %) and a bias of 8 mm (3 %). The calibrated sensor trajectory and the combined use of circle fits from individual scanner rotations made it possible to obtain reliable DBH estimates also with a low precision positioning system.

Canopy structure is one of the most important vegetation characteristics for land–atmosphere interactions, as it determines the energy and scalar exchanges between the land surface and the overlying air mass. In this study we evaluated the performance of a newly developed multi-layer energy budget in the ORCHIDEE-CAN v1.0 land surface model (Organising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic Ecosystems – CANopy), which simulates canopy structure and can be coupled to an atmospheric model using an implicit coupling procedure. We aim to provide a set of acceptable parameter values for a range of forest types. Top-canopy and sub-canopy flux observations from eight sites were collected in order to conduct this evaluation. The sites crossed climate zones from temperate to boreal and the vegetation types included deciduous, evergreen broad-leaved and evergreen needle-leaved forest with a maximum leaf area index (LAI; all-sided) ranging from 3.5 to 7.0. The parametrization approach proposed in this study was based on three selected physical processes – namely the diffusion, advection, and turbulent mixing within the canopy. Short-term sub-canopy observations and long-term surface fluxes were used to calibrate the parameters in the sub-canopy radiation, turbulence, and resistance modules with an automatic tuning process. The multi-layer model was found to capture the dynamics of sub-canopy turbulence, temperature, and energy fluxes. The performance of the new multi-layer model was further compared against the existing single-layer model. Although the multi-layer model simulation results showed few or no improvements to both the nighttime energy balance and energy partitioning during winter compared with a single-layer model simulation, the increased model complexity does provide a more detailed description of the canopy micrometeorology of various forest types. The multi-layer model links to potential future environmental and ecological studies such as the assessment of in-canopy species vulnerability to climate change, the climate effects of disturbance intensities and frequencies, and the consequences of biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions from the terrestrial ecosystem.

In Earth system modelling, a description of the energy budget of the vegetated surface layer is fundamental as it determines the meteorological conditions in the planetary boundary layer and as such contributes to the atmospheric conditions and its circulation. The energy budget in most Earth system models has been based on a big-leaf approach, with averaging schemes that represent in-canopy processes. Furthermore, to be stable, that is to say, over large time steps and without large iterations, a surface layer model should be capable of implicit coupling to the atmospheric model. Surface models with large time steps, however, have difficulties in reproducing consistently the energy balance in field observations. Here we outline a newly developed numerical model for energy budget simulation, as a component of the land surface model ORCHIDEE-CAN (Organising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic Ecosystems – CANopy). This new model implements techniques from single-site canopy models in a practical way. It includes representation of in-canopy transport, a multi-layer long-wave radiation budget, height-specific calculation of aerodynamic and stomatal conductance, and interaction with the bare-soil flux within the canopy space. Significantly, it avoids iterations over the height of the canopy and so maintains implicit coupling to the atmospheric model LMDz (Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique Zoomed model). As a first test, the model is evaluated against data from both an intensive measurement campaign and longer-term eddy-covariance measurements for the intensively studied Eucalyptus stand at Tumbarumba, Australia. The model performs well in replicating both diurnal and annual cycles of energy and water fluxes, as well as the vertical gradients of temperature and of sensible heat fluxes.

Because of the slow accumulation and long residence time of carbon in biomass and soils, the present state and future dynamics of temperate forests are influenced by management that took place centuries to millennia ago. Humans have exploited the forests of Europe for fuel, construction materials and fodder for the entire Holocene. In recent centuries, economic and demographic trends led to increases in both forest area and management intensity across much of Europe. In order to quantify the effects of these changes in forests and to provide a baseline for studies on future land-cover–climate interactions and biogeochemical cycling, we created a temporally and spatially resolved reconstruction of European forest management from 1600 to 2010. For the period 1600–1828, we took a supply–demand approach, in which supply was estimated on the basis of historical annual wood increment and land cover reconstructions. We made demand estimates by multiplying population with consumption factors for construction materials, household fuelwood, industrial food processing and brewing, metallurgy, and salt production. For the period 1829–2010, we used a supply-driven backcasting method based on national and regional statistics of forest age structure from the second half of the 20th century. Our reconstruction reproduces the most important changes in forest management between 1600 and 2010: (1) an increase of 593 000 km2 in conifers at the expense of deciduous forest (decreasing by 538 000 km2); (2) a 612 000 km2 decrease in unmanaged forest; (3) a 152 000 km2 decrease in coppice management; (4) a 818 000 km2 increase in high-stand management; and (5) the rise and fall of litter raking, which at its peak in 1853 resulted in the removal of 50 Tg dry litter per year.

Since 70 % of global forests are managed and forests impact the global carbon cycle and the energy exchange with the overlying atmosphere, forest management has the potential to mitigate climate change. Yet, none of the land-surface models used in Earth system models, and therefore none of today's predictions of future climate, accounts for the interactions between climate and forest management. We addressed this gap in modelling capability by developing and parametrising a version of the ORCHIDEE land-surface model to simulate the biogeochemical and biophysical effects of forest management. The most significant changes between the new branch called ORCHIDEE-CAN (SVN r2290) and the trunk version of ORCHIDEE (SVN r2243) are the allometric-based allocation of carbon to leaf, root, wood, fruit and reserve pools; the transmittance, absorbance and reflectance of radiation within the canopy; and the vertical discretisation of the energy budget calculations. In addition, conceptual changes were introduced towards a better process representation for the interaction of radiation with snow, the hydraulic architecture of plants, the representation of forest management and a numerical solution for the photosynthesis formalism of Farquhar, von Caemmerer and Berry. For consistency reasons, these changes were extensively linked throughout the code. Parametrisation was revisited after introducing 12 new parameter sets that represent specific tree species or genera rather than a group of often distantly related or even unrelated species, as is the case in widely used plant functional types. Performance of the new model was compared against the trunk and validated against independent spatially explicit data for basal area, tree height, canopy structure, gross primary production (GPP), albedo and evapotranspiration over Europe. For all tested variables, ORCHIDEE-CAN outperformed the trunk regarding its ability to reproduce large-scale spatial patterns as well as their inter-annual variability over Europe. Depending on the data stream, ORCHIDEE-CAN had a 67 to 92 % chance to reproduce the spatial and temporal variability of the validation data.

Groups of Jungian analysts, which included the present authors, met to discuss four key theoretical concepts, each of which was felt to have problematic aspects if used unquestioningly in contemporary practice. The concepts were: The Primitive, Inner and Outer Worlds, Contrasexuality and Participation Mystique. The discussions were informed by clinical material and specific papers chosen for their critical evaluation of the topic. Four recorded transcripts were made, with permission, for further consideration of the relationship between contemporary Jungian theory and practice using the research method of thematic analysis. Three main themes were identified: Work of Analysis, Frames of Reference and Power Dynamics. The authors discuss the themes in relation to the overarching theme of power, understood as operating at conscious and unconscious levels. The artwork "Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View" by Cornelia Parker is used as a metaphor in discussing the dynamic of challenging foundational concepts. The authors suggest that power dynamics are intrinsic in both the difficulty and the benefits of critically evaluating key concepts, binding together the theoretical (what informs us) with the clinical (what we do in the consulting room) as well as blowing apart pre-conceived notions of what underpins the analyst's work., (© 2024 The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

Background: Clinical prediction rules (CPRs) developed to predict adverse outcomes of suspected pulmonary embolism (PE) and facilitate outpatient management have limitations in discriminating outcomes for ambulatory cancer patients with unsuspected PE (UPE). The HULL Score CPR uses a 5‑point scoring system incorporating performance status and self-reported new or recently evolving symptoms at UPE diagnosis. It stratifies patients into low, intermediate and high risk for proximate mortality. This study aimed to validate the HULL Score CPR in ambulatory cancer patients with UPE., Patients and Methods: 282 consecutive patients managed under the UPE-acute oncology service in Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust were included from January 2015 to March 2020. The primary end-point was all-cause mortality, and outcome measures were proximate mortality for the three risk categories of the HULL Score CPR., Results: 30-day, 90-day and 180-day mortality rates for the whole cohort were 3.4% (n=7), 21.1% (n=43) and 39.2% (n=80), respectively. The HULL Score CPR stratified patients into low-risk (n=100, 35.5%), intermediate-risk (n=95, 33.7%) and high-risk (n=81, 28.7%) categories. Correlation of the risk categories with 30-day mortality (area under the curve (AUC) 0.717, 95% CI 0.522-0.912), 90-day mortality (AUC 0.772, 95% CI 0.707-0.838), 180-day mortality (AUC 0.751, 95% CI 0.692-0.809) and overall survival (AUC 0.749, 95% CI 0.686-0.811) was consistent with the derivation cohort., Conclusion: This study validates the capacity of the HULL Score CPR to stratify proximate mortality risk in ambulatory cancer patients with UPE. The score uses immediately available clinical parameters and is easy to integrate into an acute outpatient oncology setting., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest: All authors declared that they have no competing financial or personal interests relevant to this manuscript., (Copyright ©The authors 2023.)

Little is known about how the intersection of being a forced migrant and living with HIV can contribute to the development or exacerbation of pre-existing mental conditions. This study is set in this context and it aims to explore specific risk factors affecting the mental health of refugee women living with HIV. A total of eight refugee women living with HIV took part in the study; they were individually interviewed, and their transcripts were thematically analyzed. The overall findings indicated that participants' mental health was impaired by multiple stressors associated with their conditions, such as racial discrimination, HIV-related stigma, including from health professionals, loneliness, and resettlement adversities. These all represent threats to public health, as they discourage individuals from engaging with adequate health/mental health services. Despite their situation, participants had not received psychological interventions and their healthcare was reduced to managing the physical symptoms of HIV. Participants indicated their need to take part in group interventions that could promote their mental health and social recovery. These findings are relevant to raising awareness about the specific risk factors affecting refugee women living with HIV and to provide evidence for public health interventions based on this specific population's need.