Farrier services at private equine hospital practices in the USA

Private equine hospital practices (PEHPs) may optimise patient healthcare by combining veterinary and farrier services. While PEHP veterinary services are generally well known, existing PEHP farrier services require better characterisation. To document farrier services at PEHPs in the USA, 41 PEHP Diplomates of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons and/or PEHP farriers completed a multiple choice questionnaire characterising PEHP farrier service prevalence and facilities; farrier details, experience and education; and farrier service finances, clinical services, training, education and research responsibilities. Questionnaire completion rate was 82%. Twenty‐two of 41 (54%) responding PEHPs had in‐house farrier service and 8 (20%) additionally provided ambulatory farrier service. Forty‐nine of 50 (98%) PEHP farriers were male; 2 (4%) were <31 years old, 10 (20%) were >51 years old; 27 (54%) worked in‐house <6 h/week. At 19 (86%) PEHPs, the farriers were paid by the client and at 3 (13%) by the PEHP. Thirty‐five of 50 (70%) PEHP farriers had a professional certification. At 4 (18%) PEHPs, the in‐house farrier service was profitable while at 14 (64%) PEHPs it met operational costs. Sixteen (73%) PEHP farrier services provided professional education in clinical settings and 11 (50%) in lecture settings. Five (10%) PEHP farriers participated in research activities. PEHP in‐house and ambulatory farrier services in the USA are a valuable resource with the potential to enhance the quality and scope of PEHP services. PEHP farriers can contribute positively to patient care, care‐provider education, and practice productivity.     

Modelling the dispersal of Calanus finmarchicus on the Newfoundland Shelf: implications for the analysis of population dynamics from a high frequency monitoring site

We investigated the drift of passive particles on the Newfoundland Shelf and western Labrador Sea using numerical simulations to assess the possible sources of plankton collected at a high frequency sampling site (S27; 47.55°N, 52.59°W) located near the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. We also summarized data detailing the seasonal stage succession of Calanus finmarchicus at that site, as well as along three oceanographic sections sampled in the spring, summer and autumn across the adjacent continental shelf. Simulations indicated that the Labrador and Newfoundland Shelves represent the major sources of particles transiting through the S27 site, with relatively minor contributions from the western Labrador Sea which are significant during a few months each year. The latter point may be affected by uncertainty in the representation of cross‐shelf transport associated with seasonal or short‐term variations in atmospheric and oceanic forcing, which may also affect the strength and location of bifurcation of the inner branch of the Labrador Current around the Grand Banks. Nevertheless, our results indicated that drift along the inner shelf is likely to be the primary source of copepods collected at S27 throughout most of the year. This in turn suggested that there may be a higher degree of connectivity between conditions in coastal areas of Newfoundland and those in Baffin Bay and west Greenland than with the southern half of the Labrador Sea.     

Temperature and surface-ocean water balance of the mid-holocene tropical western pacific

Skeletal Sr/Ca and 18O/16O ratios in corals from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, indicate that the tropical ocean surface approximately 5350 years ago was 1 degrees C warmer and enriched in 18O by 0.5 per mil relative to modern seawater. The results suggest that the temperature increase enhanced the evaporative enrichment of 18O in seawater. Transport of part of the additional atmospheric water vapor to extratropical latitudes may have sustained the 18O/16O anomaly. The reduced glacial-Holocene shift in seawater 18O/16O ratio produced by the mid-Holocene 18O enrichment may help to reconcile the different temperature histories for the last deglaciation given by coral Sr/Ca thermometry and foraminiferal oxygen-isotope records.     

Ultraslow electron spin dynamics in GaAs quantum wells probed by optically pumped NMR

Optically pumped nuclear magnetic resonance (OPNMR) measurements were performed in two different electron-doped multiple quantum well samples near the fractional quantum Hall effect ground state nu = 13. Below 0.5 kelvin, the spectra provide evidence that spin-reversed charged excitations of the nu = 13 ground state are localized over the NMR time scale of about 40 microseconds. Furthermore, by varying NMR pulse parameters, the electron spin temperature (as measured by the Knight shift) could be driven above the lattice temperature, which shows that the value of the electron spin-lattice relaxation time tau1s is between 100 microseconds and 500 milliseconds at nu = 13.