| Health probe into animal 'death pit' | | Posted Monday, January 29, 2007 3:09:10 PM by Blog57 Team | | THE Assembly has ordered an investigation into a 'death pit' of rotting birds amid expert fears of avian flu. Countryside Minister Carwyn Jones launched the probe after a wildlife crime investigator for the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) claimed he stumbled upon the 6ft-deep grave while walking along a public footpath in Beulah, near Llantwrtyd Wells. "It was last spring and I was walking on a footpath. I was alerted to its presence by the stench of rotting carcasses which I could smell from the footpath. I just followed my nose," he said. "About 75 metres off the path I saw a flock of birds fly away. Then I saw the pit. It was filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of rotting pheasant carcasses and hundreds of eggs. "There was a live catch trap stuffed with rotting pheasants as bait alongside the pit.... | |
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| | | Write downs on land to drag down profit of 2 US home builders | | Posted Wednesday, January 17, 2007 1:19:34 PM by Blog57 Team | | CHICAGO: Centex and KB Home said Tuesday that they would report disappointing quarterly results because a slumping U.S. housing market was forcing them to write down a combined $793 million of property. Centex, the third-largest U.S. home builder, will take a $450 million charge in its fiscal third-quarter to reflect the reduced value of land and to abandon options to buy property, the company, based in Dallas, said in a statement. KB Home said that it would have $343 million in property charges in the fiscal fourth quarter. Home construction companies are canceling contracts and writing down their property holdings as they face the steepest decline in the housing market in 15 years. Sales of new houses fell 18 percent in 2006 to 1.05 million, the biggest contraction since 1990.... | |
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| | | Zimbabwe: Animal Antibiotic Developed | | Posted Sunday, November 12, 2006 7:34:06 AM by Blog57 Team | | ZIMBABWE has developed an animal antibiotic that is set to bolster the control of internal and external parasites in livestock. In an interview yesterday Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre chief executive officer Dr Robson Mafoti said the antibiotic -- Sirdamectin -- was one of the most effective animal drugs ever produced. .... | |
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| | | Boffins identify link between ageing and cardiovascular diseases | | Posted Monday, November 06, 2006 7:24:11 PM by Blog57 Team | | Washington, Nov 5 : Researchers at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University have discovered a fundamental mechanism that causes ageing blood vessels to lose their elasticity, which often leads to high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases.According to the scientists, the discovery will provide an important new target for both drugs and dietary changes that might help prevent or treat atherosclerosis and heart disease. "This could ultimately provide a new, fundamental and possibly inexpensive way to treat or prevent high blood pressure," said Tory Hagen, an OSU associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics, and lead author on the study. "It's also a key to understanding the biological effects of inflammation, which increasingly seems to be implicated not only in heart disease but other chronic and neurologic diseases," Hagen added.Although the research, which was done in test tubes and animal models, needs to be confirmed in humans before it could form the basis for new therapies, the fundamental findings have revealed an important insight into how blood vessels change with age and lose much of their ability to relax, contract, and facilitate the circulation of blood in the body.... | |
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| | | The CReSA is working on a new strategy to combat spongiforms | | Posted Wednesday, November 01, 2006 7:22:48 AM by Blog57 Team | | Researchers at the Animal Health Research Centre (CReSA) are developing immunotherapeutical strategies against diseases produced by prion, such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis. The most recent results, published in the Journal of Virology, show that important advances have been made in tests using DNA vaccines on animal models, enabling a significant delay in the arrival of symptoms. In the long term, this research could lead to the production of treatment for humans. The infectious agent responsible for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, also known as prion diseases, (which include mad cow disease), is a protein known as the infectious prion (PrPi), which has no nucleic acid and which produces contagious neurodegenerative diseases in different species of animals. The PrPi changes shape to that of an existing natural protein in the organism, the cellular prion (PrPc), but does not change its amino acid sequence.... | |
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| | | More Defra cuts threaten disease research - CLA | | Posted Sunday, October 29, 2006 1:25:42 PM by Blog57 Team | | NEWS which leaked yesterday suggesting that Government cuts will bite deep into veterinary research at a time of ever-threatening animal diseases has appalled members of the Country Land and Business Association. It has been well known for some weeks that Chancellor Gordon Brown has slashed the budget for the rural affairs agency, Defra, but the cuts have been largely blamed on sorting out the chaos left by the Rural Payments Agency in failing to pay farm subsidies because of a massive bureaucratic tangle. But it was revealed yesterday that the cuts will also hit veterinary research at a time when diseases like bird flu and foot and mouth disease - which had such a devastating impact on the Yorkshire Dales in 2001 - are endemic in some parts of the world and could all-too-easily be transported to Britain.... | |
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| | | APHIS approves new Boehringer Ingelheim circovirus vaccine | | Posted Thursday, October 26, 2006 11:10:13 AM by Blog57 Team | | Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc., (BIVI) announced this week that it has received approval from the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for a new vaccine called Ingelvac CircoFLEX to protect swine against diseases caused by porcine circovirus type-2 (PCV2). According to Klaas Okkinga, BIVI marketing manager, Ingelvac CircoFLEX is a single-dose vaccine that provides efficacy and safety to pigs. "It's effective in immunizing pigs as young as three weeks of age prior to exposure to PCV2, and provides protection without the systemic irritation and tissue reactions some vaccines can cause," Okkinga says. .... | |
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| | | Australian bird flu fears downplayed | | Posted Saturday, October 21, 2006 11:10:00 AM by Blog57 Team | | AN Australian animal health expert has downplayed fears migratory birds from Indonesia may bring the avian flu virus to Australian shores. Laurence Gleeson, a regional manager on transboundary animal diseases with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said the migratory birds likely to carry the deadly avian flu or H5N1 virus were geese or ducks. But so far, the shorebird waders that arrived in Australia from Asia around September/October each year appeared not to carry the virus. "I guess Australia has been fortunate that in two years there's been no incursion of the virus," Mr Gleeson said at a conference assessing Asia's preparedness to control and prevent the spread of the avian flu. "Maybe it reflects the fact that the migratory birds that are carrying this virus around are more those that tend to fly over land, like geese and ducks rather than those that that fly long distances over open water like shorebird waders that migrate to Australia," he said.... | |
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| | | E.U. Financial Package to Fight Animal Diseases, notes Israel Rafalovich | | Posted Monday, October 16, 2006 3:09:17 PM by Blog57 Team | | 2006-10-16 | Brussels - The European Commission has approved a financial package of to support programs to eradicate animal diseases next year. 155 programs have been selected for the European Union funding that will tackle animal health. This reflects the high level of importance attached to disease eradication measures as well as for the protection of both animal and public health. For the year 2007, 47 programmes have qualified for European Union financial support. Diseases that might be transmitted to humans were prioritised. Significant sums are being spent on the eradication of brucellosis, tuberculosis and rabies. Programmes in recent years have virtually eradicated rabies in the western part of the European Union. Next year most of the activity will be focused towards the east especially the new member states.... | |
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| | | Women urged to donate eggs for research | | Posted Wednesday, October 11, 2006 3:06:58 PM by Blog57 Team | | Women with diseases such as diabetes and cystic fibrosis should be encouraged to donate their eggs for embryonic stem cell research, an Australian scientist says. Melbourne University genetics Professor Bob Williamson is one of a series of experts in Canberra to lobby MPs ahead of a conscience vote on whether a ban on therapeutic cloning should be overturned. In a speech to MPs and staff at parliament on Wednesday, Prof Williamson said collecting enough eggs for research could be a major problem. He said animal models such as Dolly the Sheep indicated between 20 and 200 eggs may be required initially to successfully generate a cloned embryo, but the real number was unknown as research was just starting. The number could drop as laboratories became more skilful, he said.... | |
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