There are hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells across North America that are not currently producing oil or gas. Many of these wells have not been permanently decommissioned to meet environmental standards for permanent closure, but left in a inactive state that enables the well to be more easily reactivated. Some of the wells have been temporarily inactive for more than sixty years which...

BACKGROUND Several genetic defects are associated with permanent congenital hypothyroidism. Immunologic, environmental, and iatrogenic (but not genetic) factors are known to induce transient congenital hypothyroidism, which spontaneously resolves within the first months of life. We hypothesized that molecular defects in the thyroid oxidase system, which is composed of at least two proteins, mig...

Using spline functions (segmented polynomials) in regression models requires the knowledge of the location of the knots. Knots are the points at which independent linear segments are connected. Optimal positions of knots for linear splines of different orders were determined in this study for different scenarios, using existing estimates of covariance functions and an optimization algorithm. Th...

Tissue cells are in a state of permanent mechanical tension that is maintained mainly by myosin II minifilaments, which are bipolar assemblies of tens of myosin II molecular motors contracting actin networks and bundles. Here we introduce a stochastic model for myosin II minifilaments as two small myosin II motor ensembles engaging in a stochastic tug-of-war. Each of the two ensembles is descri...

The objective of this study was to quantify the role of maternal effects on docility in Limousin cattle. Docility scores were obtained at weaning while animals were restrained in a squeeze chute. Scores 1 through 6 represented a docile to aggressive temperament, respectively, and were provided by the North American Limousin Foundation. Observations with unknown age of dam, contemporary groups c...

The assessment of Burkholderia diversity in agricultural areas is important considering the potential use of this genus for agronomic and environmental applications. Therefore, the aim of this work was to ascertain how plant species and land use management drive the diversity of the genus Burkholderia. In a greenhouse experiment, different crops, i.e., maize, oat, barley, and grass, were plante...

Random regression models have been widely used to estimate genetic parameters that influence milk production in Bos taurus breeds, and more recently in B. indicus breeds. With the aim of finding appropriate random regression model to analyze milk yield, different parametric functions were compared, applied to 20,524 test-day milk yield records of 2816 first-lactation Guzerat (B. indicus) c...

The most popular use of the Pura Raza Español horse in sport is for dressage competitions. Tests on young sport horses were first established in 2004 in Spain to collect data for the genetic evaluation of this breed's suitability for dressage. The aim of this study was to compare eight different models to find out the most appropriate way to include the rider in the genetic evaluation of dressa...

The objective of the present study was to estimate the genetic parameters for test-day milk yields (TDMY) in the first and second lactations using random regression models (RRM) in order to contribute to the application of these models in genetic evaluation of milk yield in Gyr cattle. A total of 53,328 TDMY records from 7118 lactations of 5853 Gyr cows were analyzed. The model included the dir...