Genetic Deletion Hurts Fertility in High Milk Yield Dairy Cows

Science Daily, via Sowing Agricultural Seeds Daily:

Scientists have found a genomic deletion that affects fertility and milk yield in dairy cattle at the same time. The discovery can help explain a dilemma in dairy cattle breeding: the negative correlation between fertility and milk production.
For the past many years milk yield in Scandinavian dairy cattle has gone in one clear direction: up. This has been due to targeted breeding programs and modern breeding methods. Despite putting large weight in the breeding goal in Nordic countries, almost no improvement is achieved for fertility. It now seems that this unfavorable correlation between milk yield and fertility is partially affected by a deletion of a simple gene sequence. The presence and effects of this mutation have recently been discovered by scientists from Aarhus University, University of Liège, MTT Agrifood Research Finland, in collaboration with the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service and the Nordic Cattle Genetic Evaluation.
Scientists, farmers and advisors have generally assumed that the reduction in fertility is primarily due to the negative energy balance of high-producing cows at the peak of their lactation but now the scientists have also found a genetic explanation.
"We have discovered a deletion encompassing four genes as the causative variant and shown that the deletion is a recessive embryonically lethal mutation," explains Goutam Sahana. "This means that the calves die while they are still embryos and are aborted or reported as insemination failure. The fact that the mutation is recessive means that both parents must carry it and pass the genes on to their calf for the calf to be affected. The bulls carrying the deletion can be routinely identified in on-going genomic selection program and by avoiding carrier-by-carrier matings a quantum jump in fertility could be achieved in Nordic red breeds," adds Goutam Sahana.
To make matters worse, this particular mutation has become rather common in Nordic Red cattle, however, the deletion is totally absent in Nordic Holstein and Danish Jersey populations. Based on the frequency of the mutation in the population, it is estimated that 2.89, 1.32 and 0.42% of embryos are dying in Finnish Ayshire, Swedish Red and Danish Red cattle respectively due to this mutation.
The reason that the deleted gene sequence causing embryo mortality has become relatively widespread is that it has such as strong positive effect on milk yield. By selecting for high milk yields, breeders have inadvertently also selected for embryo mortality -- a situation of so-called hitchhiking.

The dominance of AI, and selective breeding for milk yield has massively increased milk production in dairy breeds, but I think it has probably made the dairy cow genomes extremely  susceptible to recessive mutations.  I also expect that at least some of the BSE cases in the U.S. and Canada have been genetucally inherited cases, and not a result of tainted feed.

Montana's Socialized Medicine

Maybe it is contagious, and they caught it from their neighbors to the north:

Now, 50 years later [after Saskatchewan established the provincial Medicare program], Montana has implemented a remarkable program to provide socialized health care to state employees.  They don’t call it “socialized health care,” but just put two and two together as you consider the following remarks from a story on National Public Radio from last July:
“Montana opened the first government-run medical clinic for state employees last fall. A year later, the state says the clinic is already saving money.”
Note that Montana’s experiment is not a “single-payer” insurance plan.  It’s actually socialized medicine, as the NPR report makes clear without stooping so low as to use the “S” word:
“The state contracts with a private company to run the facility and pays for everything—wages of the staff, total costs of all the visits. Those are all new expenses, and they all come from the budget for state employee healthcare.  Even so, division manager Russ Hill says it’s actually costing the state $1,500,000 less for healthcare than before the clinic opened.”
“Physicians are paid by the hour, not by the number of procedures they prescribe like many in the private sector. The state is able to buy supplies at lower prices.  ‘Because there’s no markup, our cost per visit is lower than in a private fee-for-service environment,’ Hill says.”
“Bottom line: a patient’s visit to the employee health clinic costs the state about half what it would cost if that patient went to a private doctor. And because it’s free to patients, hundreds of people have come in who had not seen a doctor for at least two years.”
“Montana recently opened a second state employee health clinic in Billings, the state’s largest city. Others are in the works.”

Don't use the S word.  The NPR story is here.

Stealing the FBI's Spy Files

What an amazing story:

The Danger of Metrics

Wired:

After disruption, though, there comes at least some version of stage three: over­shoot. The most common problem is that all these new systems—metrics, algo­rithms, automated decisionmaking processes—result in humans gaming the system in rational but often unpredictable ways. Sociologist Donald T. Campbell noted this dynamic back in the ’70s, when he articulated what’s come to be known as Campbell’s law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making,” he wrote, “the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
On a managerial level, once the quants come into an industry and disrupt it, they often don’t know when to stop. They tend not to have decades of institutional knowledge about the field in which they have found themselves. And once they’re empowered, quants tend to create systems that favor something pretty close to cheating. As soon as managers pick a numerical metric as a way to measure whether they’re achieving their desired outcome, everybody starts maximizing that metric rather than doing the rest of their job—just as Campbell’s law predicts.

Amen.

Keep an Eye on the Bull at All Times

I broke that cardinal rule today, and I've got a beat up body to show for it.  This bull has seemed much more temperamental than the last one, but I didn't thin k of that when I climbed over a six-foot wooden gate to bust a non-working tank heater out of the ice in the water trough.  After pounding the ice a few times with a wood post, I was trying to pry the heater up when the bull hit me in the crotch with his head.  He knocked me off balance and pinned me against the gate. Each time he pulled back to hit me again, I scrambled to get better footing.  It was a little worrisome waiting while he pinned me until another instant of freedom before he struck again.  Finally, I was able to scramble up the gate and get to safety.  I've got to keep him a few more months to get my cows bred back, but he's worn out his welcome at the farm.

Do We Need a Bigger Congress?

Bruce Bartlett looks at the issue:

One problem that continues to fester is that the Constitution says no state may have fewer than one House member. This means that small states such as Wyoming, Vermont and North Dakota are overrepresented in the House — and other states are underrepresented. This is a violation of the principle of one person one vote, established by the Supreme Court in the 1964 case Reynolds v. Sims.
A number of political scientists and legal scholars now contend that an increase in the size of the House is necessary to relieve the growing malapportionment under the fixed size of 435, the minimum representation requirement and the mathematical formula used for reapportionment. Articles making this argument have appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Polity, the Washburn Law Journal, the New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy and The New York Times....
In 2009, some activists brought suit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the law freezing the number of House members at 435. But it was rejected by a Federal District Court in 2010, which said the question was a political one for Congress to decide, and the Supreme Court refused to review the case.
In closing, let me note that according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the House of Representatives is on the very high side of population per representative at 729,000. The population per member in the lower house of other major countries is considerably smaller: Britain and Italy, 97,000; Canada and France, 114,000; Germany, 135,000; Australia, 147,000; and Japan, 265,000.

While I appreciate the idea that one person representing 729,000 people is pretty crazy, I just can't imagine how  many clowns we'd end up with if we halved the size of the districts.  If Jim Jordan is the best his district can offer, who else would get elected if the districts were cut in half.  We could use a better class of public servants instead of more of what we've got.

Does the GOP Need To Pass a Farm Bill?

National Journal:

For the last several years, commodity prices have been so high that farmers haven't been concerned about their safety net and farm leaders have found it impossible to get their members to put on the kind of grassroots campaigns that are usually required to get a bill enacted. Those high prices have allowed Republicans, particularly in the House, to engage in an endless debate over food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
Now big crops and the Obama administration's decision to consider lowering the volumetric requirements for corn-based ethanol and biodiesel under the renewable-fuel standard have sent commodity prices plummeting and raised questions about land values. As Bloomberg has reported, corn prices in 2013 experienced their biggest one-year drop since 1960 and wheat prices dropped the most in five years. Prices haven't fallen below profitable levels yet, but farmers and their bankers now see that they need the certainty of a five-year bill, whatever its details.
Since the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a farm bill in 2012 and 2013 and the House passed it in 2013 after the most excruciating lengthy battle, there seems to be an understanding in political circles that if the conference report gets held up, rural voters will see it as the fault of the Republicans in general and the House Republicans in particular.
The evidence can already be seen in key Senate races. In December, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said that the vote of his expected opponent, GOP Rep. Tom Cotton, against a comprehensive farm bill last June because it didn't cut food stamps enough had hurt Arkansas farmers. Pryor urged farmers to ask Cotton how he will vote on the conference report that will most certainly include both commodity programs and food stamps.
In Kentucky, Allison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat running against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has charged in a TV ad that Congress's slowness in passing a farm bill means "McConnell's failure to lead hurts Kentucky farmers." Grimes has also called McConnell's vote against the Senate farm bill "shameful."
McConnell, who also faces a Republican primary, justified his vote, telling reporters, "In the Senate bill, it just largely became a food-stamp bill with production agriculture kind of stuck on as an afterthought."
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., is not up for reelection in 2014, but she recently used the farm bill in a fundraising letter. "The failure to pass a strong farm bill could do serious damage to Wisconsin's economy and to communities all over the country who depend on family farms moving local economies forward. Tea-party obstructionists can't be allowed to play political games with America's rural economy," Baldwin wrote to her supporters.
The farm bill could also become an issue in Senate races in Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia

Personally, I don't see it being a big part of the 2014 elections.  While farmers vote, there just aren't a huge number of people who actually get government money as farmers.  In the end, the food stamp portion affects way more people, and that is what the Republicans really want to cut.  Politically, those cuts probably won't hurt most rural Republicans, but you never can tell.

NASA Photo of the Day

Today:

Galaxy NGC 474: Shells and Star Streams
Image Credit & Copyright: P.-A. Duc(CEA, CFHT), Atlas 3D Collaboration Explanation: What's happening to galaxy NGC 474? The multiple layers of emission appear strangely complex and unexpected given the relatively featureless appearance of the elliptical galaxy in less deep images. The cause of the shells is currently unknown, but possibly tidal tails related to debris left over from absorbing numerous small galaxies in the past billion years. Alternatively the shells may be like ripples in a pond, where the ongoing collision with the spiral galaxy just above NGC 474is causing density waves to ripple though the galactic giant. Regardless of the actual cause, the above imagedramatically highlights the increasing consensus that at least some elliptical galaxieshave formed in the recent past, and that the outer halos of most large galaxies are not really smooth but have complexities induced by frequent interactions with -- and accretions of -- smaller nearby galaxies. The halo of our own Milky Way Galaxyis one example of such unexpected complexity. NGC 474 spans about 250,000 light years and lies about 100 million light years distant toward the constellation of the Fish (Pisces).

sixth element

sixth element from Level 4 on Vimeo.

The Absurdity of Big-time Sports - Rose Bowl Sod Edition

From Grantland's report on the Rose Bowl game:

We'd been told stories of signs in the public parking lots warning patrons who lingered more than 90 minutes past the game's end that their vehicles could be towed. Undaunted, at 7:30 in the evening, Pacific time, stray clumps of fans lingered in opposite corners of the stadium, watching the crisp semicircles and mild dancing of the Spartan band, and the ragged LSJUMB arc and Dollies kick line. Security guards maintained their rope line around the midfield logo, which disappeared long before midnight. The turf, which looked nearly untouched, was pulled up section by section. Entirely new sod will be brought in and laid down for Monday night's Florida State–Auburn BCS title game tilt. This is the Rose Bowl, and immaculate is the only standard.

Seriously?  New sod for one game when the old sod was in great shape?  Nuts.

Browns Have Paid or Owe $49 Million to Fired Coaches

Plain Dealer:

Coach	Yrs. after fired	Sum owed
Chris Palmer	3 years	$3 million
Butch Davis	3 years	$12 million
Romeo Crennel	3 years	Approx. $10 million
Eric Mangini	2 years	$7.8 million
Pat Shurmur	2 years left	About $5.6 million
Rob Chudzinski	3 years left	$10.5 million
Source: Various media reports

 ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported Monday the Browns owed Chudzinski about $10.5 million over the next three years. Shurmur was due roughly $5.6 million at the time of his dismissal.
Since 2001, the Browns have gone through only one season (2008) without compensating a former head coach not to blow a whistle or design a game plan. By the end of 2016, they will have paid for 16 years of non-service from the pink-slipped six.
The most expensive buyout: Butch Davis, who Randy Lerner still owed $12 million at the time of his 2004 firing. The cheapest buyout: Chris Palmer, who the late Al Lerner owed $3 million over three years beginning in 2001. Remember, these figures don't include monies paid to coordinators and assistant coaches.
Since their 1999 return, the Browns have two winning seasons, one playoff appearance and no post-season victories to show for their investment.

That is the most ridiculous aspect of teams firing their coaches after a poor season.  It is bad enough that the team appears rudderless and lacking in any plan on how to improve, but then they have to shell out tons of money for guys they determined weren't good enough to keep around.  Honestly, why do teams give a new coach a 4 year contract?  No offense, but shouldn't Rob Chudzinski be pretty damn happy with getting paid $3 million for less than a year's work?  Why does he need guaranteed nearly $14 million to take the job?  That is obscene.  I guess it is nice work if you can get it.

RIP Phil Everly

Phil Everly, who with his brother Don made up the most revered vocal duo of the rock-music era — their exquisite harmonies profoundly influencing the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds and countless younger rock, folk and country singers — died Friday in Burbank, Calif., of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his wife, Patti Everly, said. He was 74.

The Full Cast of Futurama

Via Wired:

Of all the glories that 2013 gave our televisions, it took one of our favorites away: Futurama. After seven seasons – with a bit of a, um, hiatus in the middle – the bitingly funny animated series ended its run in September. We’re still dealing, but now we at least have this fantastic memento: a single image containing almost every character in Matt Groening’s 30th century show.
Like the Simpsons full cast poster before it, the image, posted on deviantArt by user Unrellius, has usual suspects like Fry and Bender, but also Humplings and various heds in jars. “This is a project I’ve worked on for around 14 months!” Unrellius wrote in the post accompanying the image. “It contains just about every character that appears in Futurama.”
And indeed it does — one eagle-eyed commenter even said they spotted Waldo.

I always loved that show.  Who can argue about an  alcoholic robot?

America Burning

America Burning: The Yarnell Hill Fire Tragedy and the Nation's Wildfire Crisis from Weather Films on Vimeo.


More on the Granite Mountain Hotshots and the Yarnell Hill fire here.

Commodity Markets Look Bleak in 2014

WSJ:

Many investors expect commodities markets to struggle for a fourth consecutive year in 2014, as steady-but-unspectacular economic growth extends a rough patch for what had been one of the hottest investment niches of the past decade. In 2013, investors appeared to finally give up on hopes for the return of the "supercycle," the confluence of tight supplies and surging demand that propelled prices for commodities ranging from oil to aluminum to wheat to records in the past decade. Years of high prices persuaded farmers to boost crop output and metal producers to invest in new mines. In 2013, those efforts flooded many markets with more supply than a barely expanding global economy could consume. The Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index, which tracks 22 U.S.- and London-traded commodities, fell 9.6% in 2013, the third consecutive annual loss. With the S&P 500-stock index climbing 30% this past year, the gap between commodities and stocks was the widest it has been since 1998. Investors and analysts expect more of the same. Analysts with Citigroup Inc. C +0.31% are bearish or neutral on 19 of the 23 commodities tracked by Citigroup, even as the bank forecasts that global economic growth is expected to accelerate to 3.2%, from 2.5% this year.
"There's going to have to be a huge shift in market psychology to have commodities bounce higher," said Ralph Preston, a market strategist with Heritage West Financial in San Diego. Growth in China, the world's largest consumer of raw materials, is widely expected to continue at a pace close to the state-targeted figure of 7.5% for 2013. But that expansion would remain a step below the frantic growth seen during the past decade's commodity boom. While the country will likely consume greater quantities of most commodities in 2014, analysts caution that a slower-expanding China may not be enough to absorb the increased global output of agricultural commodities, minerals and fuel. In industrial metals, aluminum and steel are locked in a chronic surplus, and iron ore and copper are set to join them as production ramps up from megaprojects in Peru, Mongolia, Australia and other countries. It is the same story for agricultural commodities such as corn, whose stockpiles are set to more than double next year in the U.S., and for sugar.

I wouldn't be surprised if grain markets just trend lower and lower all year.  I think this is going to be a very tough year.  Hopefully, I'll be wrong.  Where grain prices are right now, I can't see land prices remaining propped up where they've been.

A Nice Side Story From the Winter Classic

Katie Baker describes one of the alumni games held at Comerica Park:

This time around, there were not one but two alumni games, held back-to-back Tuesday at a different outdoor rink in Detroit's downtown Comerica Park. It was definitely a bit of overkill — particularly since the games were transparently split into A and B squads — but it also led to some outstanding moments.
In the first game (the JV one), legendary Michigan hockey coach Red Berenson not only suited up at age 74, he kind of put everyone to shame. It was like watching Jack Palance do one-armed push-ups at the Oscars. Before one crucial faceoff, he even began directing his teammates as if they were his Wolverines. After the game, more than one aging player declared him an idol. "I think I'm lucky," said Berenson, who has been behind the bench at Michigan for 30 years. "I've been able to stay in the game and stay around young kids playing college hockey."
And there was also Jiri Fischer, who at 33 was decades younger than some of his teammates. The former first-round pick was forced to retire at 25 after collapsing from cardiac arrest on the bench in 2005; on Tuesday, he scored the game's first goal, calling it "a little fairy tale."

Red Berenson sounds like a badass. The main event at Michigan Stadium was pretty kickass, too.  Hopefully the NHL doesn't kill the impact of these events by having too many (they have 3 more outdoor games coming up in the next few weeks).  But honestly, the view from the seats has to be pretty damn crappy, considering how far away the seats are from the rink.

Barbed Wire Telephone Lines

Didn't know this:

In this day of seemingly unlimited telephone service via satellite phones and other modern contraptions, it’s hard to believe we once used common barbed wire to carry messages. Laura V. Hamner, a noted Texas Panhandle historian, wrote about such unique telephone service in her book, Light and Hitch. According to Hamner, pioneers in early-day Claude and Gruver, Texas, recalled nearby ranchers who’d installed telephones and used the top wire of barbed-wire fences as telephone lines. When we purchased our Alanreed ranch in 1949, a telephone line ran from our ranch 8 miles south, and some of it still used barbed wire to transmit crude signals.

When the signal diminished during rainy weather, few pioneers realized it was because the wire was stapled directly to the fence post and grounded out when wet. As insulators became popular, the clever, most-innovative cowboys used every conceivable device as an insulator to suspend the wire and improve the faint telephone transmissions. I’ve seen everything from leather straps folded around wire and nailed to the posts, broken whiskey bottle necks affixed with big nails, snuff bottles, corncobs, pieces of inner tube wrapped around the wire and short car tire straps holding barbed wire telephone wires.
Bigger ranches were among the first to install barbed wire telephones to alert them to prairie fires when working distant corners of the ranch. Line camps located far from the ranch house were contacted and work schedules discussed using the “already-in-place” barbed wire. One-time fence riders also became telephone line repairmen because Ma Bell’s service workers simply didn’t exist yet.
Early phone lines, even the barbed wire variety, were usually party lines shared by neighbors. Eavesdroppers were the biggest problem with those early-day communication networks, and secrets were rare. When a caller raised the receiver and cranked out a call, clicks could be heard up and down the line as neighbors carefully listened in.

That is a bit of rural infrastructure I didn't know about.

A Sense of Place - #1

A Sense of Place - #1: Argyll Forest Park from Max Smith TV on Vimeo.

Hard White Wheat Gains Market Foothold

Harvest Public Media via Big Picture Agriculture's new sister site, Sowing Agricultural Seeds Daily:

A new wheat variety may have cracked the code to marry the fluffiness of white bread with whole grain nutrition.
For a long time, American bread makers have been in a bind. Many consumers like the texture and taste of white bread, but want the nutritional benefits of whole grains.
Snowmass, named for a Colorado peak, is a hard white wheat variety, a crop in high demand as bread makers increasingly seek new markets -- in this case health-conscious consumers who don’t want to give up white bread. Hard white wheats lack the dark bran color and potent flavor of their red wheat cousins, which are grown widely across the Great Plains.
Farmers and food companies have been interested in hard white wheat for a while, but economic and climatological realities have kept it from taking off. Hard red winter wheat grows well in wheat states like Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. But it doesn’t mill into white flour, it has to be bleached. By itself, the dark, flavorful bran it can be a tougher sell to more finicky consumers who prefer white bread.
Wheat breeding programs, both public and private, have been hard at work trying to come up with a variety like Snowmass -- a type of white wheat that yields well, mills into a white flour and mixes easily into dough.
Colorado State University wheat breeder Scott Haley finally had success. He’s the father of Snowmass. When you come up with a well-performing, novel crop, there’s a whole community of people who consider you a rock star.
“Well, I’ve been told that this is the most famous wheat in the world, which is just like, oh my gosh. I don’t believe that,” Haley said.
The foundation that funds some of Haley’s research receives money from food giant ConAgra to develop wheat varieties for commercial use. The exact amount is part of a confidentiality agreement among Colorado State University, ConAgra and the Colorado Wheat Research Foundation. ConAgra has been after healthier white flour, which its customers, like Sara Lee and Azteca, can then turn into whole grain white products like breads and tortillas.

Sowing Agricultural Seeds Daily looks like it will be a must-visit site.

Dubai Tries To Ring In New Year With Record Fireworks Display

Breaking News from ABC | ABC Sports News

NPR:

Organizers of what is expected to be certified as the world's largest fireworks display ever put on a show in Dubai that was seen by thousands of people Tuesday, as viewers turned out to celebrate the new year and watch the spectacle. The show was also and on .
Both the Dubai Media and the Guinness World Records' sites seemed to struggle with the crush of web traffic from people wanting to see the show. On the scene, the weather cooperated to give the audience a clear and dry night. A record 1.7 million people attended the event last year, according to .
As , fireworks and parties are the hallmark of tonight, as people welcome the arrival of 2014.
Here's how the folks at Guinness described tonight's show in Dubai, from a preview written before the display began:
"Staring precisely 20 seconds before midnight local time, over 500,000 fireworks are set to be used during the display which is set to last around six minutes, with Guinness World Records adjudicators on hand to officiate the attempt.
"Covering a distance of over 94km (61.6 miles) of the city's seafront, the display will incorporate some of Dubai's top landmarks, including Palm Jumeirah, World Islands, the Burj Khalifa and Burj Al Arab.
"The spectacle's final salvo of fireworks will create an artificial 'sunrise' along the seafront, with the highest fireworks reaching more than one kilometre in height."
The Dubai display was aimed at displacing a Guinness record held by Kuwait, reports .

 I love me some fireworks but I don't love me some Gulf states.

Bye, Bye Incandescent Bulbs

Hello, energy savings:

The whining about government thugs limiting light bulb choices has mainly disappeared to the libertarian loon fringe, where I found my classmate from high school and Galtian Hero/Postal Worker (I know, wtf?) moaning about not being able to waste massive amounts of heat while lighting his home (and getting to burn his fingers if he grabs the wrong bulb to change after turning off the light).  He also made a comment about not having a Hazmat suit to clean up if the bulb breaks.  I tried to point out the benefits of moving from 130 year-old technology and offered that he still had the option of lighting dollar bills on fire instead of burning them secondhand through outdated illumination methods, but he was still kind of bummed out.  It would seem to me that a political ideology based on "rational" decision-making might lean toward electrical efficiency, but apparently, I would be wrong.  Oh well.