The reproductive season is energetically costly as revealed by elevated glucocorticoid concentrations, constrained immune functions and an increased risk of infections. Social allies and affiliative interactions may buffer physiological stress responses and thereby alleviate associated effects. In the present study, we investigated the seasonal differences of immune reactive corticosterone meta...

AIM To evaluate the short-term economic impact of legislation removing point of sale tobacco promotional displays (ie, tobacco displays and other point of sale tobacco advertising) in Ireland, implemented July 2009, on cigarette sales across a range of categories of retail outlets. METHODS Cigarette sales were evaluated using scanning (weekly data since January 2006) and audit data (bimonthly...

Seasonal products have an effective inventory deadline, a time by which the inventory must be ready to distribute. The deadline creates an incentive to start early with production. However, opportunities to gather information that might change production decisions provide an incentive to defer the start of production. We study the resultant dynamic decision problem with alternatives that commit...

[1] In this paper we present validation results of the total ozone column data products of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on board the NASA EOS-AURA satellite through comparisons with ground-based observations by Dobson and Brewer spectrophotometer instruments. Quality-controlled and archived total ozone column data from these ground-based instruments located at stations worldwide have b...

This paper describes the development of a hierarchical planning and scheduling system for a multiple plant, multiple product, seasonal demand situation. In this hierarchical structure, optimal decisions at an aggregate level (planning) provide constraints for detailed decision making (scheduling). Four levels of decision making are used: first, products are assigned to plants (using mixed-integ...

Milk for cheese production in Ireland is predominantly produced by pasture-fed spring-calving herds. Consequently, there are marked seasonal changes in milk composition, which arise from the interactive lactational, dietary and environmental factors. In this study, Cheddar cheese was manufactured on a laboratory scale from milk taken from a spring calving herd, over a 9-month lactation cycle be...

Pome fruit growers and crop consultants have expressed concerns about the seasonal release performance of commercial codling moth mating disruption dispenser products. Because of these concerns, we developed a laboratory flow-through volatile collection system (VCS) for measuring the volatile release of the codling moth sex pheromone, codlemone, from commercially available hand-applied dispense...

temperature and precipitation are among important atmospheric parameters for watershed planning. assessment of temperature and precipitation trends is very important for future watershed planning. in this paper, trends of atmospheric parameters such as seasonal and annual temperature and precipitation were examined for the synoptic stations of bandar anzali, rasht, ramsar, babolsar and gorgan. ...

The seasonal variations of water vapor and cirrus clouds over the Tibetan Plateau are investigated using the recently available Level 3 monthly-mean atmospheric data products with a 1 1 latitude–longitude grid. The data products are derived from the multichannel imaging data acquired with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra Spacecraft. It is shown that the wat...

The precast concrete products industry supplies 2,000 to 4,000 of different products to the construction industry. The demand for the products is seasonal. The industry builds up the stock in winter to meet the high demand in summer. As large numbers of products varying sizes and weights are involved, different handling and stacking requirements, the process of deciding appropriate locations to...