Musculoskeletal responses of 2-year-old Thoroughbred horses to early training. 3. In vivo ultrasonographic assessment of the cross-sectional area and echogenicity of the superficial digital flexor tendon

AIM: To determine if the superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT) of young Thoroughbred horses changed in size and echogenicity in association with early race training.

METHODS: Cross-sectional area (CSA) and echogenicity were determined ultrasonographically at five levels of the SDFT of the forelimbs of 2-year-old fillies (n=14), corresponding to 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 cm distal to the accessory carpal bone (DACB). Measurements were made before and after a 13-week period in which a trained group of seven horses was compared with another group of seven untrained horses.

RESULTS: Level below the accessory carpal bone had a significant effect on CSA and Level 8 was smaller than all other levels except Level 12, while Level 12 was smaller than Levels 4 and 20 but not different from Levels 8 and 16. There was a significant interaction between level and time due to effects observed at Level 8. The CSA at Level 8 measured pre-training was different from that of Levels 4 and 20 in both pre- and post-training groups (p<0.05), but when measured post-training was not different from any other measurement. There was also a significant interaction between treatment group and time. There was no difference between CSA for the untrained and trained groups at the pre-training observation (p=0.9), but post-training the CSA (pooled over all levels) in trained horses was significantly larger than that of the untrained horses both post-training (p=0.019) and pre-training (p=0.034), and was not different from the pretraining CSA recorded in the trained group (p=0.29). Treatment group had no effect on echogenicity (p=0.43), while echogenicity was less at the end of the trial in both trained and untrained horses (p<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: Early training for racing was associated with an increase in mean CSA of the SDFT. Other factors such as age and maturity may play a role in limiting this increase.     

Vaginal Neurofibroma in a Hysterectomized Poodle Dog

A 15‐year‐old, spayed, female poodle dog was presented for evaluation of a mass of tissue prolapsed from the vulva. The dog had been hysterectomized when it was 5 years old. A vaginal mass had been removed approximately 10 months before presentation. Haematological and serum biochemistry analyses demonstrated mild leucocytosis and glycaemia. A vaginal smear was predominantly made up of parabasal cells and intermediate cells with no neoplastic cells. Thoracal and abdominal radiographic findings were unremarkable. The ovaries could not be identified using abdominal ultrasonography. A midline exploratory laparotomy identified both ovaries that were surgically excised. The vaginal mass was also removed following an episiotomy procedure. Histopathological examination of the mass demonstrated that it was a neurofibroma. Both ovaries had cystic changes. Four months after the surgery, the owner reported that the dog was clinically normal. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first reported case of a vaginal neurofibroma after an incomplete ovariohysterectomy in the dog.     

Hyperspectral species mapping for automatic weed control in tomato under thermal environmental stress

This work studied the impacts of variations in environmental temperature on hyperspectral imaging features in the visible and near infrared regions for robust species identification for weed mapping in tomato production. Six major Californian processing tomato cultivars, black nightshade (Solanum nigrum L.) and redroot pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus L.) were grown under a variety of diurnal temperature ranges simulating conditions common in the Californian springtime planting period and one additional treatment simulating greenhouse growing conditions. The principal change in canopy reflectance with varying temperature occurred in the 480-670 and 720-810 nm regions. The overall classification rate ranged from 62.5% to 91.6% when classifiers trained under single temperatures were applied to plants grown at different temperatures. Eliminating the 480-670 nm region from the classifier’s feature set mitigated the temperature effect by stabilizing the total crop vs. weed classification rate at 86.4% over the temperature ranges. A site-specific recalibration method was also successful in alleviating the bias created by calibrating the models on the extreme temperatures and increased the classification accuracy to 90.3%. A global calibration method, incorporating all four temperature conditions in the classifier feature space, provided the best average total classification accuracy of 92.2% out of the methods studied, and was fairly robust to the varying diurnal temperature conditions.     

Adenylyl cyclase amino acid sequence: possible channel- or transporter-like structure

Complementary DNA's that encode an adenylyl cyclase were isolated from a bovine brain library. Most of the deduced amino acid sequence of 1134 residues is divisible into two alternating sets of hydrophobic and hydrophilic domains. Each of the two large hydrophobic domains appears to contain six transmembrane spans. Each of the two large hydrophilic domains contains a sequence that is homologous to a single cytoplasmic domain of several guanylyl cyclases; these sequences may represent nucleotide binding sites. An unexpected topographical resemblance between adenylyl cyclase and various plasma membrane channels and transporters was observed. This structural complexity suggests possible, unappreciated functions for this important enzyme.     

Vision Guided Precision Cultivation

A color machine vision based automatic guidance system was developed for precision guidance of an agricultural cultivator. The guidance system was designed to operate in weedy row crop fields at the time of first cultivation. The performance of the system varied from an RMS guidance error of 7 mm under low weed loads to 12 mm under high weed loads and was capable of operating at travel speeds up to 16 km/h.