Naturally occurring bacteraemia in American lobsters, Homarus americanus Milne-Edwards, in Long Island Sound

The health status of the American lobster, Homarus americanus Milne-Edwards, in Long Island Sound (LIS) has been in decline, with seasonal mortality events occurring since 1998. In order to assess the potential effects of environmental conditions on lobster health via haemolymph analysis, lobsters collected from various sites in LIS were examined and sampled while concurrent environmental data (water temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen) were recorded. The pH of the haemolymph of each lobster was tested, followed by a collection of haemolymph for serum biochemistry analysis and bacterial culture. This report focuses on the results of the bacterial sampling. The majority of bacteria cultured were opportunistic pathogens commonly found in the environment, including some that are associated with sewage and pollution. The prevalence of bacteraemia was correlated with the site of collection, the month in which the lobsters were sampled, and water temperature.     

牦牛大肠埃希氏菌病灭活疫苗的制备

用本实验室分离鉴定的致病性牦牛大肠埃希氏菌，按常规方法制备了4批氢氧化铝胶灭活疫苗。对牦牛大肠埃希氏菌的菌液培养、纯粹检验、活菌计数、灭活等进行了探索，并对用该菌研制成的疫苗进行了常规检验。结果4批灭活疫苗经无菌检验为阴性；经物理性状检验为：静置后上层是淡黄色的澄明液体，下层为灰白色沉淀，振荡后呈均匀混浊液；经牦牛安全检验结果为安全；经牦牛效力试验有效。牦牛大肠埃希氏菌病灭活疫苗为免疫预防该病打下了良好的基础。     

Foresters' beliefs about farmers: a priority for social science research in social forestry

This study suggests that one of the most productive (and most neglected) uses of social science research in forestry development projects is to examine foresters' beliefs regarding rural peoples. This suggestion is illustrated with data from the Forestry Planning and Development Project, Pakistan's first nation-wide social forestry project.The operational component of this project, intended to assist small farmers to cultivate trees on their farmlands, ran into immediate difficulties. Many of the foresters involved insisted that small farmers were simply not interested in tree cultivation. A comprehensive base-line study subsequently was carried out to examine the validity of this belief. The results of this study (confirmed by the subsequent experience with the project in the field) varied markedly from the foresters' beliefs.While many of the foresters believed small farmers were opposed to having trees on their farms and would not agree to plant trees under the project, most farmers already had trees on their farms and expressed interest in planting more; while many foresters believed farmers would only be interested in planting large blocks of market-oriented exotics, most farmers requested small plantings of multi-purpose native trees; while many foresters believed farmers would plant trees only for market sale, most farmers requested trees to meet household needs for fuel and timber; and while many foresters did not think that increasing supplies of fuelwood could reduce the burning of dung, all of the evidence provided by the farmers suggested that it would.The disparity between farmer reality and forester belief is attributed to failures on the part of both foresters and social scientists — failure by foresters to distinguish their non-empirical beliefs about farmers from their empirically-based knowledge of trees, and failure by social scientists to recognize the belief systems of foresters as a legitimate and important object of study. Their study comprises three parts: finding out what the foresters think the farmers want, finding out from the farmers what they actually want, and then analyzing and explaining the differences.     

Anthropogenic grasslands in Southeast Asia: Sociology of knowledge and implications for agroforestry

Anthropogenic grasslands, meaning grasslands that have been influenced and modified by humans, are one of the most important land covers of the tropics, but their management is dominated by conflicted and contested views, which is reflected in the problematic record of grassland development intervention. This chapter analyzes the historic, cultural, political, and institutional factors that affect the way grasslands are viewed, drawing largely on data from Southeast Asia. These data suggest that perceptions of grasslands are colored in part by the marginal place that they occupy in the cosmology of western industrialized societies, which idealize forest covers. Consequently, national and international agencies view grasslands not as a common land cover but as a development problem. The agendas of government and development agencies are often not grounded in a proper understanding of the local human and bio-physical ecology of grasslands or of successful local agroforestry practices; and research on many of the most important dimensions of grassland management is poorly conducted and/or utilized. The recent rise in scientific interest in indigenous knowledge, environmental history, and non-equilibrium systems, has opened up new possibilities for the study of grasslands. Agroforestry, given its inherent bridging of nature and culture, is ideally suited to benefit from these possibilities, by focusing research attention on the bio-social factors that determine the appearance, disappearance, and maintenance of anthropogenic grasslands.

     

Theories of swidden agriculture,and the political economy of ignorance

Swidden agriculture is today the focus of a great deal of debate in the context of agroforestry development in humid, tropical countries. This paper argues that much of this debate deals not with the empirical facts of swidden agriculture, however, but rather with widely-accepted myths, and that this explains the widespread failures of developmental schemes involving swidden agriculturalists. The paper examines three of these myths in some detail. One myth is that swidden agriculturalists own their land communally (or not at all), work it communally, and consume its yields communally. The truth is that their land (including land under secondary forest fallow) is typically owned by individual households, it is worked by individual household labor forces and/or by reciprocal but not communal work groups, and its yields are owned and consumed privately and individually by each household. A second myth is that swidden cultivation of forested land is destructive and wasteful, and in the worst cases results in barren, useless grassland successions. The truth is that swidden cultivation is a productive use of the forests, indeed more productive than commercial logging in terms of the size of the population supported, and forest-grassland successions are typically a function not of rapaciousness but of increasing population/land pressure and agricultural intensification — the grasses, including Imperata cylindrica, having value both as a fallow period soil-rebuilder and as cattle fodder. A third myth is that swidden agriculturalists have a totally subsistence economy, completely cut off from the rest of the world. The truth is that swidden agriculturalists, in addition to planting their subsistence food crops, typically plant market-oriented cash crops as well, and as a result they are actually more integrated into the world economy than many of the practitioners of more intensive forms of agriculture. In the conclusion to the paper, in a brief attempt to explain the genesis of these several myths, it is noted that they have generally facilitated the extension of external administration and exploitation into the territories of the swidden agriculturalists, and hence can perhaps best be explained as a reflection of the political economy of the greater societies in which they dwell.     

评估调质时间和温度对猪颗粒饲料淀粉糊化度和维生素沉积的影响

本论文研究了饲料加工的两个关键参数(调质温度和时间)对育肥猪颗粒饲料淀粉糊化度和维生素沉积的影响。日粮配方为含30%干酒糟及其可溶物的玉米-豆粕型基础日粮。整个试验中配方保持不变。本试验采用2×3双因子设计,调质温度分别为77℃和88℃,调质时间分别15秒、30秒和60秒。此外,本试验还设置一个对照组,对照组饲料不采用调质制粒工艺,而是采用粉料饲喂。因此,本试验共有7个处理组。采集调质后制粒前(热干粉)、制粒后冷却前(热制粒)、以及制粒冷却后(冷制粒)的样品,并分析这三种样品的总淀粉率、淀粉糊化     

MALDI‐MS Lipid Profiles of Oocytes Recovered by Ovum Pickup from Bos indicus and 1/2 indicus × taurus with High vs Low Oocyte Yields

The aim of the present study was to compare the lipid profile in oocytes of indicus and 1/2 indicus × taurus cows with high and low antral follicle count (AFC)/oocyte yields. After an OPU procedure (D0), antral follicles ≥3 mm were counted by ultrasonography (D4, 19, 34, 49, 64), and cows were assigned to groups with either high AFC (≥30 follicles; indicus, NH group; 1/2 indicus × taurus, AH group) or low AFC (≤15 antral follicles; indicus, NL group; 1/2 indicus × taurus, AL group). The lipid profiles of the oocytes were determined by MALDI‐MS. For GI, GII and GIII oocytes, the indicus samples tend to cluster separately from the 1/2 indicus × taurus samples. The lipid species [PC (P‐38:5) + H]⁺ and/or [PC (P‐36:2) + Na]⁺, [PC (38:2) + H]⁺, [PC (38:5) + Na]⁺ and [TAG (60:8) + NH⁴]⁺ were more abundant in indicus (NH and NL groups) than 1/2 indicus × taurus. The higher lipid content in the indicus oocytes likely reflects differences in the rate of lipid metabolism and may contribute to oocyte competence and embryo development.