The Zodiak workshop: an innovative model for teaching financial management through partnership with industry     

Lloyd JW  Frawley SL  Neer CA  Merle C  Goebel R 《Journal of veterinary medical education》2004,31(2):175-178

The National Commission on Veterinary Economic Issues (NCVEI) is working to enhance the non-technical skills, knowledge, aptitudes, and attitudes (SKAs) of veterinarians. This report describes the development of an innovative model for teaching the principles of financial management as they apply to the veterinary practice. Zodiak: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy is a "business literacy" game in which players work together in small teams (generally four people) to run a fictional multi-million-dollar company called Zodiak Industries for three "years" in order to learn principles of business finance and strategy. After finishing the 4.5-hour game, participants spend the rest of the workshop making the right "Connections"-exercises designed to connect what they have learned to business strategies, financial statements, and operational tactics drawn from veterinary practice. Issues addressed for the veterinary practice, with parallels drawn to Zodiak, included return on owner investment in a veterinary practice (vs. salary drawn by owner veterinarians); pricing (setting prices, price elasticity of demand, and relationships between volume, quality, and price); human resources and operations management as they relate to profitability and efficiency; cash flow and management of accounts receivable; and commonly used financial benchmarks. Workshop venues have included Michigan State University, The Ohio State University, the University of Illinois, and Purdue University. Financial and in-kind support were provided through partnership with Pharmacia Animal Health (now Pfizer Animal Health) and Hill's Pet Nutrition, Inc. Through course evaluations, participants generally rated the workshop high as an educational experience and indicated that the most important things learned were related to financial management (principles, terminology, and methods). The most enjoyable aspects of the workshop tended to be group discussions, teamwork, the dynamic/interactive environment, and the "game" atmosphere. Based on these experiences, the Zodiak workshop provides a useful model for teaching career development and practice management topics to veterinary students. The business simulation in a workshop format was especially useful for teaching these "non-mainstream" topics, as traditional classroom lecture approaches might not have engaged students sufficiently to achieve effective learning. In addition, the partnership developed between academia and industry offered substantial benefits to both parties. Similar educational approaches should be considered for additional aspects of the non-technical SKAs.  相似文献   

An improved polymerase chain reaction assay for the detection of Tritrichomonas foetus in cattle          下载免费PDF全文

Nickel DD  Olson ME  Schultz GA 《The Canadian veterinary journal. La revue veterinaire canadienne》2002,43(3):213-216

An improved polymerase chain reaction test has been developed to detect Tritrichomonas foetus, the causative agent of trichomoniasis in cattle. The test amplifies a region of the 5.8S ribosomal RNA gene of T. foetus, and it is simple, sensitive, and specific when compared with traditional methods to examine field samples.  相似文献   

We and our pets: allergic together?     

Schäfer T  Merkl J  Klemm E  Wichmann HE  Ring J 《Acta veterinaria Hungarica》2008,56(2):153-161

The study of allergies in creatures living together without being relatives can help us understand the impact of environmental influences. We tested the association of allergies in humans and their pets. A nested unmatched case-control study was performed in a random sample of 4261 inhabitants, aged 25-74 years, of the City of Augsburg, Germany and two adjacent counties. Using standardised computer-assisted face-to-face interviews, we determined and compared the prevalence of doctor-diagnosed atopic diseases (hay fever, asthma, atopic dermatitis) in the study subjects and veterinarian-diagnosed allergies in their pets. Pets were kept in 48.0% of the households (cats 26.1%, dogs 20.1%, rodents 9.7%) and a veterinarian had diagnosed an allergy in 3.9% (cats 3.3%, dogs 4.7%, rodents 1.2%). Atopic diseases were diagnosed in 20.2% of the study subjects (asthma 6.1%, hay fever 13.7%, atopic dermatitis 5.1%). After adjustment for age, sex, parental predisposition and social status a significant association between hay fever in the study subjects and allergies in their pets was observed [odds ratio (OR) 1.74, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01-2.97]. This association was more pronounced when investigating dogs only (OR 2.76, 95% CI 1.32-5.77) where in addition an association with the overall prevalence of atopic diseases in the study subjects reached significance (OR 2.31, 95% CI 1.16-4.58). We conclude that there is indication for a concomitant occurrence of allergies in humans and their pets. Shared environmental factors are the most likely explanation.  相似文献   

Intracellular free magnesium concentration in healthy horses          下载免费PDF全文

J. C. Winter  G. Sponder  R. Merle  J. R. Aschenbach  H. Gehlen 《Journal of animal physiology and animal nutrition》2018,102(5):1351-1356

Equine metabolic syndrome (EMS) is a worldwide disease in horses that parallels human diabetes mellitus type 2. In both diseases, patients show an altered peripheral insulin sensitivity as a key feature. In humans, multiple studies have demonstrated the beneficial effect of magnesium supplementation on insulin sensitivity. However, serum magnesium levels vary and are therefore not a reliable indicator of the patients’ magnesium status. Determining the intracellular free magnesium concentration appears to be a more sensitive diagnostic indicator. In this study, the free intracellular magnesium concentration was measured using mag‐fura 2 spectrophotometry in blood lymphocytes in 12 healthy, non‐obese horses at 9 a.m., 12 a.m. and 4 p.m. to establish reference ranges according to a protocol designed for human blood lymphocytes. Additionally, the serum magnesium concentration was measured. In all horses, the total serum magnesium concentration was within the reference range. The mean free magnesium concentration in blood lymphocytes of all horses was 0.291 ± 0.067 mmol/L with no significant difference between the time points. The reference range for the free intracellular magnesium concentration in equine lymphocytes was set at 0.16–0.42 mmol/L. The established values are slightly lower than those in healthy humans. The designed protocol for the measurement of the intracellular free magnesium concentration might be an excellent research tool to assess the cellular magnesium status and to reliably diagnose an altered magnesium homeostasis in EMS. Further studies shall elucidate possible alterations in cellular magnesium status in horses with EMS.  相似文献   

Adequate supply of potassium improves plant water‐use efficiency but not leaf water‐use efficiency of spring wheat          下载免费PDF全文

Bálint Jákli  Merle Tränkner  Mehmet Senbayram  Klaus Dittert 《植物养料与土壤学杂志》2016,179(6):733-745

Enhancing crop water‐use efficiency (WUE) is a major research objective in water‐scarce agroecosystems. Potassium (K) enhances WUE and plays a crucial role in mitigating plant stress. Here, effects of K supply and PEG‐induced water deficit on WUE of spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L. var. Sonett), grown in nutrient solution, were studied. Plants were treated with three levels of K supply (0.1, 1, 4 mM K⁺) and two levels of PEG (0, 25%). WUE was determined at leaf level (WUE_L), at whole‐plant level (WUE_P), and via carbon isotope ratio (δ¹³C). Effects of assimilation and stomatal conductance on WUE_L were evaluated and compared with effects of biomass production and whole‐plant transpiration (E_P) on WUE_P. Adequate K supply enhanced WUE_P up to 30% and by additional 20% under PEG stress, but had no effect on WUE_L. E_P was lower with adequate K supply, but this effect may be attributed to canopy microclimate. Shoot δ¹³C responded linearly to time‐integrated WUE_L in adequately supplied plants, but not in K‐deficient plants, indicating negative effects of K deficiency on mesophyll CO₂ diffusion. It is concluded that leaf‐scale evaluations of WUE are not reliable in predicting whole‐plant WUE of crops such as spring wheat suffering K deficiency.  相似文献   

Critical precipitation period for dryland maize production   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

David C. Nielsen  Ardell D. Halvorson  Merle F. Vigil 《Field Crops Research》2010

Grain yields for dryland maize (Zea mays L.) production in the semi-arid Great Plains of the United States can be unpredictable because of the erratic nature of growing season precipitation. Because of the high input costs for maize production, farmers need to have a tool that will help them assess the risk associated with dryland maize production. The objectives of this work were to determine the critical period for precipitation during the maize growing season and to develop a relationship between critical period precipitation and maize yield to use as a tool to quantify expected yield variability associated with dryland maize production in this region. Maize yield data were collected at Akron, CO from two dryland cropping systems experiments (1984–2009) in which maize was grown in a 3-year winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)–maize–fallow rotation. Yields were correlated with weekly precipitation amounts from planting to harvest in search of the period of time in which yield was most influenced by precipitation. Soil water contents at planting were measured either by gravimetric sampling or by neutron attenuation. Yields were found to be most closely correlated with precipitation occurring during the 6-week period between 16 July and 26 August. The data separated into two linear relationships defined by whether the sum of available soil water at planting and May precipitation was less than or greater than 250 mm. These two linear relationships between precipitation during this critical period and yield were used with long-term precipitation records to determine the probability of obtaining a maize yield of at least 2500 kg ha⁻¹ (generally considered to be a break-even yield) at three locations across the central Great Plains precipitation gradient. This analysis quantified the production risk associated with the highly variable corn yields that result from erratic summer precipitation in this region.  相似文献   

The variable response of dryland corn yield to soil water content at planting   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

David C. Nielsen  Merle F. Vigil  Joseph G. Benjamin 《Agricultural Water Management》2009,96(2):330-336

Farmers in the central Great Plains want to diversify crop rotations from the traditional monoculture system of winter wheat-fallow. Corn (Zea mays L.) could work well as a rotation crop, but inputs are expensive and farmers would like to know the chances of producing a certain yield before investing in seed, fertilizer, herbicides, etc. Information on the yield response of corn to available soil water at planting could help guide the crop choice decision regarding corn. This study was conducted to determine if a predictive relationship exists between dryland corn yield and available soil water at planting time and, if such a relationship exists, to use it to assess the risk in obtaining profitable yields. Yield and soil water data from 10 years of a dryland crop rotation study at Akron, CO were analyzed by linear regression to determine predictive relationships. The yield-soil water content production function was highly variable, with values ranging from 0.0 to 67.3 kg ha⁻¹ per mm of available soil water in the 0 to 1.8 m soil profile at planting. The differences in yield response to soil water were related to the amount and timing of precipitation that fell during the corn growing season. Because dryland corn yield is highly dependent on precipitation during reproductive and grain-filling stages, soil water content at corn planting cannot be used alone to reliably determine whether corn should be planted in a flexible rotational system. The predictive relationships developed in this study indicate that under typical amounts of available soil water at corn planting, profitable corn production under dryland conditions is a risky and speculative activity in the central Great Plains of the United States.  相似文献   

Investigations of the potential risk factors associated with cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Bavaria, Germany     

Clauss M  Sauter-Louis C  Chaher E  Pottgiesser C  Goebel S  Selhorst T  Wichmann HE  Klee W  Kienzle E 《The Veterinary record》2006,158(15):509-513

In order to identify the management and feeding practices that might have contributed to the occurrence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Bavaria, Germany, information from 110 dairy farms on which a case of BSE had been reported was compared with information derived from a questionnaire sent to approximately 10,000 Bavarian farms on which no case of BSE had been reported up to February 2003. Representative information was obtained from 4006 dairy farms. The results indicated that in comparison with these control farms a higher proportion of the BSE farms had also kept pigs or poultry, although the difference was not significant, and that a significantly higher proportion of the BSE farms had fed proprietary concentrates and/or milk replacers to their calves.  相似文献   

Ermittlung von Kennwerten optimaler Magnesium-Versorgung für Hafer,Sommerweizen und Mais     

W. Wichmann  A. Finck 《植物养料与土壤学杂志》1978,141(1):95-105

Determination of plant analysis criteria characterizing the magnesium nutrition of oats, spring wheat and maize Cereal plants from pot trials were analyzed for criteria of optimal Mg nutrition. The critical Mg concentration in dry matter of aerial parts from oats and spring wheat at the beginning of the shooting stage was found to be 1.8 and 1.3 per mille Mg respectively. The critical Mg concentration with maize is about 2,2 per mille in dry matter of yount leaves at tasseling stage. Because the Mg content of oats (based on dry matter) decreases significantly during the shooting stage, it seems advisable to have additional data (Mg content of green matter, Mg/N ratio, Mg/Ca ratio) which are less influenced by plant age. The Mg/Ca ratio appears to be well suited for evaluating the nutritional status of cereals. Minimum critical Mg/Ca ratios (based on per mille contents) are 0,23 for spring wheat, 0.3 for oats and 0.4 for maize.  相似文献   

Regional and socio-economic differences in food, nutrient and supplement intake in school-age children in Germany: results from the GINIplus and the LISAplus studies     

Sausenthaler S  Standl M  Buyken A  Rzehak P  Koletzko S  Bauer CP  Schaaf B  von Berg A  Berdel D  Borte M  Herbarth O  Lehmann I  Krämer U  Wichmann HE  Heinrich J;GINIplus  the LISAplus Study Groups 《Public health nutrition》2011,14(10):1724-1735

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