The aim of the present study was to study the effects of social instability (regrouping) during the second trimester (7 weeks) of pregnancy on aggression, cortisol concentrations and growth in goats and its consequences for survival, growth and some aspects of behavioural development in the kids. Six weeks after mating, 32 goats were distributed into eight groups. In four of the groups, randoml...

Feces are the primary source of many pathogenic organisms that can potentially contaminate agricultural commodities. Feces generally contain chlorophyll a and related compounds due to ingestion of plant materials. Fluorescent responses of these compounds to appropriate excitation can mark the presence of feces on animal carcasses, or on fruits or vegetables. We describe a transportable imaging ...

We measured annual C storage, or net ecosystem production (NEP), from 1999 to 2003 in an aspen-dominated, mixed-deciduous forest in Michigan, USA. Measurements of the annual production of aboveand below-ground live and dead mass, foliar herbivory, and soil respiration were used to develop biometric estimates of NEP (NEPB). Eddy-covariance measurements made above the canopy were used to construc...

Spatial characterization of the variability of soil physico-chemical properties is a fundamental element of (i) soil quality assessment, (ii) modeling non-point source pollutants in soil, and (iii) sitespecific crop management. Apparent soil electrical conductivity (ECa) is a quick, reliable measurement that is frequently used for the spatio-temporal characterization of edaphic (e.g., salinity,...

This study evaluates the qualitative assessment of dairy cows’ social behaviour on farm with regard to its interand intra-observer reliability and its correlation to quantitative ethogram-based assessment. Qualitative behaviour assessment is a method based upon the integration by observers of perceived animal behaviour expression, using descriptors such as ‘calm’, ‘aggressive’, ‘sociable’ or ‘i...

This paper provides a partial solution to the completeness problem for Joyal’s axiomatization of open and etale maps, under the additional assumption that a collection axiom (related to the set-theoretical axiom with the same name) holds. In many categories of geometric objects, there are natural classes of open maps, of proper maps and of etale maps. Some of the forma1 properties of these clas...

An integrated field experiment was organized as part of the EC EXAMINE project to quantify surface–atmosphere fluxes of ammonia (NH3). Fluxes of NH3, NH4+ aerosol, HNO3 and HCl were measured using the gradient method with several continuous and batch sampling systems. Within-canopy NH3 was determined to quantify the contribution of leaf cuticles, sub-stomatal apoplastic (intercellular) fluids a...

Free-air carbon dioxide enrichment (FACE) provides a realistic, cost-effective method for evaluating the effects of supraambient CO2 concentrations on growth, development, yield, and water use of agricultural crops and natural ecosystems with very few of the problems normally associated with glasshouse or chamber type research. There are no walls interfering with incident radiation and no artif...

We present the results of a study to examine the effects of management actions and natural disturbances in influencing the evolution of habitat patterns on forested lands. TELSA, a spatially explicit vegetation succession model with the ability to apply user-defined management actions and stochastic wildfires calibrated to local conditions, was used to evaluate changes in several indicators of ...

Six specific personality traits – playfulness, chase-proneness, curiosity/fearlessness, sociability, aggressiveness, and distance-playfulness – and a broad boldness dimension have been suggested for dogs in previous studies based on data collected in a standardized behavioural test (‘‘dog mentality assessment’’, DMA). In the present study I investigated the validity of the specific traits for p...