Two groups of female rats were used to investigate vitamin D metabolism in the pregnant animals and in their fetuses. In the first group, 3 wg of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 (25-OH-D 3) per kg of body weight were injected into intact or nephrectomized (NX) pregnant rats 3 h before sacrifice on day 21 of pregnancy ; in the second group, 2 and 6 ng, respectively, of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,2510H1 2)...

Th e aim of study was to investigate diff erent models for the evaluation of dairy bulls for male fertility. A dataset containing single insemination records performed on Brown Swiss cows and heifers reared in Eastern Italian Alps was used. Th e outcome variable (successful/ unsuccessful) was analyzed as binary trait. In the fi rst step raw conception rate was computed for each service sire, as...

WO previous workers have estimated the number of pairs of genes controlling Tthe response of the chicken to Rous sarcoma virus. PRINCE (1958) proposed (a) that a single pair of autosomal alleles controlled susceptibility and resistance of chorioallantoic membranes to Rous sarcoma virus and (b) that susceptibility (allele S) was dominant to resistance (s) . This proposal was based on the proport...

Weaning weight records of 44,357 Australian Angus calves produced by 1,020 sires in 90 herds were used to evaluate the importance of sire x herd interactions. Models fitted fixed effects of contemporary group (herd-year-date of weighing subclass), sex, calf age, and dam age and random effects of sire or of sire and sire x herd interaction using REML. Effects of standardizing the data, including...

Segregation Distorter (SD) is an autosomal meiotic drive gene complex found worldwide in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster. During spermatogenesis, SD induces dysfunction of SD(+) spermatids so that SD/SD(+) males sire almost exclusively SD-bearing progeny rather than the expected 1:1 Mendelian ratio. SD is thus evolutionarily "selfish," enhancing its own transmission at the expens...

Development of practical, physiologically based methods that provide an early, yet accurate, evaluation of a bull's genetic merit could benefit the beef industry. The use of GH response to a single, acute dose of GHRH was evaluated as a predictor of future growth performance and carcass characteristics of weanling bulls. Fifty-six Angus bulls averaging 229 d (SD = 27) of age were administered t...

Although the benefits of dam construction are numerous, particularly in the context of climate change and growing global demand for electricity, recent experience has shown that many dams have serious negative environmental, human, and political consequences. Despite an extensive literature documenting the benefits and costs of dams from a single disciplinary perspective, few studies have simul...

This paper looks at issues associated with estimating risk of seismically initiated failure (uncontrolled release of the reservoir) of dams that are co-located with respect to each other and the location of future earthquakes. These may be dams on the same river or dams regionally co-located on different rivers. Failure of one or more dams could lead to serial dam failures on a single river; or...