Between-herd variation in resilience and relations to herd performance

Resilient cows are minimally affected in their functioning by infections and other disturbances, and recover quickly. Herd management is expected to have an effect on disturbances and the resilience of cows, and this effect was investigated in this study. Two resilience indicators were first recorded on individual cows. The effect of herd-year on these resilience indicators was then estimated and corrected for genetic and year-season effects. The 2 resilience indicators were the variance and the lag-1 autocorrelation of daily milk yield deviations from an expected lactation curve. Low variance and autocorrelation indicate that a cow does not fluctuate much around her expected milk yield and is, thus, subject to few disturbances, or little affected by disturbances (resilient). The herd-year estimates of the resilience indicators were estimated for 9,917 herd-year classes based on records of 227,655 primiparous cows from 2,644 herds. The herd-year estimates of the resilience indicators were then related to herd performance variables. Large differences in the herd-year estimates of the 2 resilience indicators (variance and autocorrelation) were observed between herd-years, indicating an effect of management on these traits. Furthermore, herd-year classes with a high variance tended to have a high proportion of cows with a rumen acidosis indication (r = 0.31), high SCS (r = 0.19), low fat content (r = ?0.18), long calving interval (r = 0.14), low survival to second lactation (r = ?0.13), large herd size (r = 0.12), low lactose content (r = ?0.12), and high production (r = 0.10). These correlations support that herds with high variance are not resilient. The correlation between the variance and the proportion of cows with a rumen acidosis indication suggests that feed management may have an important effect on the variance. Herd-year classes with a high autocorrelation tended to have a high proportion of cows with a ketosis indication (r = 0.14) and a high production (r = 0.13), but a low somatic cell score (r = ?0.17) and a low proportion of cows with a rumen acidosis indication (r = ?0.12). These correlations suggest that high autocorrelation at herd level indicates either good or poor resilience, and is thus a poor resilience indicator. However, the combination of a high variance and a high autocorrelation is expected to indicate many fluctuations with slow recovery. In conclusion, herd management, in particular feed management, seems to affect herd resilience.     

A Practical Attack on KeeLoq

KeeLoq is a lightweight block cipher with a 32-bit block size and a 64-bit key. Despite its short key size, it is used in remote keyless entry systems and other wireless authentication applications. For example, there are indications that authentication protocols based on KeeLoq are used, or were used by various car manufacturers in anti-theft mechanisms. This paper presents a practical key recovery attack against KeeLoq that requires 2¹⁶ known plaintexts and has a time complexity of 2^44.5 KeeLoq encryptions. It is based on the principle of slide attacks and a novel approach to meet-in-the-middle attacks.     

Atmospheric deposition of nitrogen at five subtropical forested sites in South China

Elevated concentrations of reactive nitrogen (N) in precipitation have been reported for many cities in China. Due to increased use of fossil fuels and expansion in agriculture, further increases in deposition of ammonia (NHx) and reactive N oxides (NOy) are predicted. Increased deposition of reactive N is likely to affect N dynamics and N runoff in forest ecosystems. Yet, in China little work has been done to quantify the levels of atmospheric N deposition in such systems. Here, we assess the deposition of inorganic N (ammonium, NH4+ and nitrate, NO3-) for five subtropical forest ecosystems in remote and urban areas of South China. Annual volume-weighted concentrations in bulk precipitation range from 0.18 to 1.55 mg NH4+ -N L(-1) and from 0.12 to 0.74 mg NO3- -N L(-1). These values are large and several times greater than those reported for remote sites of the world. The fluxes of total inorganic N (TIN) in wet-only deposition range from 0.8 to 2.3 g N m(-2) yr(-1), with NH4+ -N contributing 54% to 77%. Both the tree canopy and the ground vegetation layer are important in determining the net N flux reaching the forest floor, but the net effect varies from site to site. At TieShanPing (TSP), close to Chongqing city, and at CaiJiaTang (CJT), near Shaoshan (Hunan province), the canopy represents a net source of N, probably due to dry deposition. At the other three sites (LiuChongGuan (LCG), LeiGongShan (LGS), both in Guizhou province, and LiuXiHe (LXH) in Guangdong), a net loss of reactive N from precipitation water occurs in the canopy, probably due to uptake processes. The total annual atmospheric TIN load is estimated to range from at least 0.8 g N m(-2) yr(-1) to 4.0 g N m(-2) yr(-1), with a considerable contribution from dry deposition. Concentrations and fluxes of inorganic N in tree canopy throughfall are greater than those in North America. Also the contribution of NH4+ -N to TIN fluxes in throughfall (40% to 70%) is greater than in North America. Our sites have N deposition levels and NH4+ -N contributions similar to those found in Northwest and central Europe. The TIN loads at TSP and CJT far exceed 2.5 g N m(-2) yr(-1), which is the N deposition load above which NO3- leaching is expected in temperate and boreal forests.     

Preferred color gamut boundaries for wide‐gamut and multiprimary displays

Preferred chroma enhancement and its dependence on hue are studied in a two‐part experiment using a wide‐gamut multiprimary display. Earlier research showed a clear dependence on hue but was limited by the gamut of the display it employed; the present work builds on this while easing the gamut constraints. In the first part of the present experiment, a tuning task was used to refine the preference for chroma boost starting with standard‐gamut (Rec. 709) images. The overall median preferred boost is roughly 20%, but it is not uniform over hues: the preferred boost for orange, yellow, green, and cyan colors is greater than that for blue, magenta, and red colors. Dependence on image content and observer is noted, though a content‐independent chroma boost created by aggregating preference over many images performs well. An adjustment parameter for overall chroma, which incorporates the hue dependence averaged over image content, should be sufficient to handle the vast majority of interobserver variance in preference. In the second part of the experiment, various chroma boost algorithms were evaluated through a paired comparison task. The prescribed hue‐dependent chroma boost is preferred over all other variations, and all hue‐preserving chroma boost variations are preferred over both colorimetrically accurate and na??ve same‐drive‐signal renderings. The results may be applied in display design to select gamut boundaries that maximize satisfaction over the observer population. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 39, 169–178, 2014     

New challenges in the field of spatial planning: landscapes

The European Landscape Convention (ELC) highlights the landscape as an holistic concept, which is important for individual and social well being and for quality of life. Landscape questions tend today to fall between the responsibilities of different sectors of society. The implications of the Convention for giving 'landscape' a higher status in spatial planning are discussed. Important challenges for planning that need to be focused from a landscape approach are discussed: the growing urbanization; the development and new roles of the urban fringe areas; new infrastructure landscapes; the mental landscapes of tomorrow; an holistic approach to landscape ecological planning and environmental policies and the need for co-ordination of European planning issues that concern landscapes. Planning for good landscape qualities is not a new issue; many landscape architects and landscape planners have worked in the spirit of the ELC for decades. The importance of educating landscape architects and planners with an holistic approach is particularly addressed. Efforts for a more integrated landscape education, such as the European network LE:NOTRE, already exist and contribute to the implementation of the ELC.     

Total mercury,methylmercury and selenium in mercury polluted areas in the province Guizhou,China

The province of Guizhou in Southwestern China is currently one of the world's most important mercury production areas. Emissions of mercury from the province to the global atmosphere have been estimated to be approximately 12% of the world total anthropogenic emissions. The main objective of this study was to assess the level of contamination with Hg in two geographical areas of Guizhou province. Mercury pollution in the areas concerned originates from mercury mining and ore processing in the area of Wanshan, while in the area of Quingzhen mercury pollution originates from the chemical industry discharging Hg through wastewaters and emissions to the atmosphere due to coal burning for electricity production. The results of this study confirmed high contamination with Hg in soil, sediments and rice in the Hg mining area in Wanshan. High levels of Hg in soil and rice were also found in the vicinity of the chemical plant in Quingzhen. The concentrations of Hg decreased with distance from the main sources of pollution considerably. The general conclusion is that Hg contamination in Wanshan is geographically more widespread, due to deposition and scavenging of Hg from contaminated air and deposition on land. In Quingzhen Hg contamination of soil is very high close to the chemical plant but the levels reach background concentrations at a distance of several km. Even though the major source of Hg in both areas is inorganic Hg, it was observed that active transformation of inorganic Hg to organic Hg species (MeHg) takes place in water, sediments and soils. The concentration of Hg in rice grains can reach up to 569 microg/kg of total Hg of which 145 microg/kg was in MeHg form. The percentage of Hg as MeHg varied from 5 to 83%. The concentrations of selenium can reach up to 16 mg/kg in soil and up to 1 mg/g in rice. A correlation exists between the concentration of Se in soil and rice, indicating that a portion of Se is bioavailable to plants. No correlation between Hg and Se in rice was found. Exposure of the local population to Hg may occur due to inhalation of Hg present in air (in particular in Hg mining area) and consumption of Hg contaminated food (in particular rice and fish) and water. Comparison of intake through these different routes showed that the values of Hg considerably exceed the USA EPA Reference Concentration (RfC) for chronic Hg exposure (RfC is 0.0004 mg/m(3)) close to the emission sources. Intake of Hg through food consumption, particularly rice and fish, is also an important route of Hg exposure in study area. In general, it can be concluded that the population mostly at risk is located in the vicinity of smelting facilities, mining activities and close to the waste disposal sites in the wider area of Wanshan. In order to assess the real level of contamination in the local population, it is recommended that biomonitoring should be performed, including Hg and MeHg measurements in hair, blood and urine samples.     

Perceptual learning of noise vocoded words: Effects of feedback and lexicality.

Speech comprehension is resistant to acoustic distortion in the input, reflecting listeners' ability to adjust perceptual processes to match the speech input. This adjustment is reflected in improved comprehension of distorted speech with experience. For noise vocoding, a manipulation that removes spectral detail from speech, listeners' word report showed a significantly greater improvement over trials for listeners that heard clear speech presentations before rather than after hearing distorted speech (clear-then-distorted compared with distorted-then-clear feedback, in Experiment 1). This perceptual learning generalized to untrained words suggesting a sublexical locus for learning and was equivalent for word and nonword training stimuli (Experiment 2). These findings point to the crucial involvement of phonological short-term memory and top-down processes in the perceptual learning of noise-vocoded speech. Similar processes may facilitate comprehension of speech in an unfamiliar accent or following cochlear implantation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)