Excitation and decay of correlated atomic States

Doubly excited states of atoms and ions in which two electrons are excited from the ground configuration display strong radial and angular electron correlations. They are prototypical examples of quantum-mechanical systems with strong coupling. Two distinguishing characteristics of these states are: (i) their organization into successive families, with only weak coupling between families, and (ii) a hierarchical nature of this coupling, with states from one family decaying primarily to those in the next lower family. A view of the pair of electrons as a single entity, with the electron-electron repulsion between them divided into an adiabatic and a nonadiabatic piece, accounts for many of the dominant features. The stronger, adiabatic part determines the family structure and the weaker, nonadiabatic part the excitation and decay between successive families. Similar considerations extend to three-electron atomic states, which group into five different classes. They are suggestive of composite models for quarks in elementary particle physics, which exhibit analogous groupings into families with a hierarchical arrangement of masses and electroweak decays.     

The effect of levels of concentrate in feedlot diets on the health status of beef calves

In this two year study we investigated the effect that the level of concentrate in feedlot diet had on the occurrence of health problems in bull calves belonging to two multibreed groups.

In each of the two years, the 168 day feedlot period was divided into two equal periods of 77 days with an intervening 14 day adjustment period. During the first period, the animals in half of the pens within each breed-group received a high concentrate (85% grain) diet (H) while the rest of the pens received a diet (L) of hay ad libitum and half as much concentrate as the bulls on high concentrate. The L diet contained an average of 48% grain. In the second period, diets of bulls in half of the pens within each breed-group were switched from L to H and vice versa. During the feedlot period, the incidence of sickness among bulls was recorded. Disease incidence was higher in the second year compared to the first. In the second year, 49 out of 56 (87.5%) calves on the high concentrate diet required treatment for respiratory infections compared to only four (7.14%) in bulls on the low concentrate diet. The results suggest that a high concentrate diet for animals in feedlots may be more stressful to calves coming directly to the feedlot following weaning compared to a low concentrate diet, thereby acting as an additional predisposing factor to respiratory infections.