Certificate Feeder Pig Program

The Iowa Certificate feeder pig program is a cooperative venture established in 1978 by the Iowa Veterinary Medical Association and the Iowa Pork Producers Association. The purposes are to 1) establish a set of health guidelines for feeder pigs; 2) identify feeder pig producers meeting or exceeding the guidelines; 3) encourage increased veterinary participation in the development and maintenance of herd health programs; and 4) supply feeder pig finishers with healthy quality pigs and information about he herd of origin, vaccination history, and products used prior to sale

The Iowa and Danish Pork Industries: A Comparison

Iowa produces 29.6 million markets pigs per year, representing 29% of USA swine production. Denmark produces 25.2 million pigs per year and is a major component of the European pork industry and worldwide markets. Both have competitive advantages in a global pork industry. Through available data and personal experience a reflection is made on the similarities and differences between these two distinct pig producing regions

The Toda hierarchy and the KdV hierarchy

The Toda hierarchy of size $N$ is well known to be analogous to the KdV hierarchy at $N$ goes to infinity. This paper shows that given $f$ a periodic function, there is a canonical way of defining the initial data for the Toda lattice equations so that the evolution of this data under the Toda lattice hierarchy looks asymptotically like the evolution of $f$ under the KdV hierarchy. Further, the conserved quantities of $f$ and those of the Toda hierarchy match.Comment: AMSTe

ALMA imaging of SDP.81 - II. A pixelated reconstruction of the CO emission lines

We present a sub-100 pc-scale analysis of the CO molecular gas emission and kinematics of the gravitational lens system SDP.81 at redshift 3.042 using Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) science verification data and a visibility-plane lens reconstruction technique. We find clear evidence for an excitation dependent structure in the unlensed molecular gas distribution, with emission in CO (5-4) being significantly more diffuse and structured than in CO (8-7). The intrinsic line luminosity ratio is r_8-7/5-4 = 0.30 +/- 0.04, which is consistent with other low-excitation starbursts at z ~ 3. An analysis of the velocity fields shows evidence for a star-forming disk with multiple velocity components that is consistent with a merger/post-coalescence merger scenario, and a dynamical mass of M(< 1.56 kpc) = 1.6 +/- 0.6 x 10^10 M_sol . Source reconstructions from ALMA and the Hubble Space Telescope show that the stellar component is offset from the molecular gas and dust components. Together with Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array CO (1-0) data, they provide corroborative evidence for a complex ~2 kpc-scale starburst that is embedded within a larger ~15 kpc structure.Comment: MNRAS accepted, 6th July 201

The Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey parent population - I. Sample selection and number counts

We present the selection of the Jodrell Bank Flat-spectrum (JBF) radio source sample, which is designed to reduce the uncertainties in the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS) gravitational lensing statistics arising from the lack of knowledge about the parent population luminosity function. From observations at 4.86 GHz with the Very Large Array, we have selected a sample of 117 flat-spectrum radio sources with flux densities greater than 5 mJy. These sources were selected in a similar manner to the CLASS complete sample and are therefore representative of the parent population at low flux densities. The vast majority (~90 per cent) of the JBF sample are found to be compact on the arcsecond scales probed here and show little evidence of any extended radio jet emission. Using the JBF and CLASS complete samples we find the differential number counts slope of the parent population above and below the CLASS 30 mJy flux density limit to be -2.07+/-0.02 and -1.96+/-0.12, respectively.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Divergence terms in the supertrace heat asymptotics for the de Rham complex on a manifold with boundary

We use invariance theory to determine the coefficient $a_{m+1,m}^{d+\delta}$ in the supertrace for the twisted de Rham complex with absolute boundary conditions.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX, Theorem 1.2 correcte

ALMA imaging of SDP.81 - I. A pixelated reconstruction of the far-infrared continuum emission

We present a sub-50 pc-scale analysis of the gravitational lens system SDP.81 at redshift 3.042 using Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) science verification data. We model both the mass distribution of the gravitational lensing galaxy and the pixelated surface brightness distribution of the background source using a novel Bayesian technique that fits the data directly in visibility space. We find the 1 and 1.3 mm dust emission to be magnified by a factor of u_tot = 17.6+/-0.4, giving an intrinsic total star-formation rate of 315+/-60 M_sol/yr and a dust mass of 6.4+/-1.5*10^8 M_sol. The reconstructed dust emission is found to be non-uniform, but composed of multiple regions that are heated by both diffuse and strongly clumped star-formation. The highest surface brightness region is a ~1.9*0.7 kpc disk-like structure, whose small extent is consistent with a potential size-bias in gravitationally lensed starbursts. Although surrounded by extended star formation, with a density of 20-30+/-10 M_sol/yr/kpc^2, the disk contains three compact regions with densities that peak between 120-190+/-20 M_sol/yr/kpc^2. Such star-formation rate densities are below what is expected for Eddington-limited star-formation by a radiation pressure supported starburst. There is also a tentative variation in the spectral slope of the different star-forming regions, which is likely due to a change in the dust temperature and/or opacity across the source.Comment: MNRAS accepted 2015 April 1

Economic Comparison of Alternatives to Sulfamethazine Use in Pork Production

Sulfamethazinehas been widely used in the production of meat animals. It is effective as a product for treatment as well as prevention of animal disease leading to improved production efficiencies and lower cost meat and meat products. This was true especially in pork production. However, in recent years, use ofsulfamethazine in meat animal production has received a renewed focus. Thisstudy provides an economic analysis ofselected alternatives to the use of sulfamethazine in pork production. Alternatives evaluated were sulfathiazole, oxytetracycline, chlortetracycline, tylosin and lincomycin. Sulfathiazole isshown to be the most cost effective alternative. Production efficiency, production costs, and pork priceswere only slightly impacted when sulfathiazole was substituted for sulfamethazine. Sulfathiazole is followed by lincomycin, then the tetracyclines, and tylosi

Mass along the Line of Sight to the Gravitational Lens B1608+656: Galaxy Groups and Implications for H_0

We report the discovery of four groups of galaxies along the line of sight to the B1608+656 gravitational lens system. One group is at the redshift of the primary lensing galaxy (z = 0.631) and appears to have a low mass, with eight spectroscopically confirmed members and an estimated velocity dispersion of 150 ± 60 km s^(-1). The three other groups are in the foreground of the lens. These groups contain ~10 confirmed members each and are located at redshifts of 0.265, 0.426, and 0.52. Two of the three additional groups are centered roughly on the lens system, while the third is centered ~1' south of the lens. We investigate the effect of each of the four groups on the gravitational lensing potential of the B1608+656 system, with a particular focus on the implications for the value of H_0 derived from this system. We find that each group provides an external convergence of ~0.005-0.060, depending on the assumptions made in the calculation. For the B1608+656 system, the stellar velocity dispersion of the lensing galaxy has been measured, thus breaking the mass sheet degeneracy due to the group that is physically associated with the lens. The effect of the other groups along the line of sight can be folded into the overall uncertainties due to large-scale structure (LSS) along the line of sight. Because B1608+656 appears to lie along an overdense line of sight, the LSS will cause the measurement of H_0 to be biased high for this system. This effect could be 5% or greater