Nota de Viernes: Why Being Sleepy and Drunk Is Great for Creativity (No lo estamos fomentando)

Here’s a brain teaser: Your task is to move a single line so that the false arithmetic statement below becomes true.

IV = III + III

Did you get it? In this case, the solution is rather obvious – you should move the first “I” to the right side of the “V,” so that the statement now reads: VI = III + III. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people (92 percent) quickly solve this problem, as it requires a standard problem-solving approach in which only the answer is altered. What’s perhaps a bit more surprising is that nearly 90 percent of patients with brain damage to the prefrontal lobes — this leaves them with severe attentional deficits, unable to control their mental spotlight — are also able to find the answer.

Here’s a much more challenging equation to fix:

III = III + III

In this case, only 43 percent of normal subjects were able to solve the problem. Most stared at the Roman numerals for a few minutes and then surrendered. The patients who couldn’t pay attention, however, had an 82 percent success rate. What accounts for this bizarre result? Why does brain damage dramatically improve performance on a hard creative task? The explanation is rooted in the unexpected nature of the solution, which involves moving the vertical matchstick in the plus sign, transforming it into an equal sign. (The equation is now a simple tautology: III = III = III.) The reason this puzzle is so difficult, at least for people without brain damage, has to do with the standard constraints of math problems. Because we’re not used to thinking about the operator, most people quickly fix their attention on the roman numerals. But that’s a dead end. The patients with a severe cognitive deficit, in contrast, can’t restrict their search. They are forced by their brain injury to consider a much wider range of possible answers. And this is why they’re nearly twice as likely to have a breakthrough.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should take a hammer to your frontal lobes. Being able to direct the spotlight of attention is a crucial talent. However, the creative upside of brain damage — the unexpected benefits of not being able to focus — does reveal something important about the imagination. Sometimes, it helps to consider irrelevant information, to eavesdrop on all the stray associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain. We are more likely to find the answer because we have less control over where we look.
This helps explain a new study led by Mareike Wieth at Albion College. The scientists surveyed 428 undergrads about their circadian habits, asking them whether they were more productive and alert in the morning or evening. As expected, the overwhelming majority were night owls, which is why they studiously avoided 9 a.m. classes. Then, the scientists gave the students a series of problem-solving tasks. Half of these tasks were creative insight puzzles, in which the answer arrives suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere. Here’s a sample insight puzzle:
A man has married 20 women in a small town. All of the women are still alive and none of them are divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?
And here’s another classic puzzle:
Marsha and Marjorie were born on the same day of the same month of the same year to the same mother and the same father, yet they are not twins. How is that possible?
Did you solve these brain teasers? (The answers are, respectively, priest and triplets.)
The other half of the problems given to the students were standard analytic problems, such as long-division and pre-algebra equations. These questions don’t require insights. Instead, they benefit from ordinary focus, as people grind out the answer and check to make sure it’s right. The subjects were given four minutes to solve each problem. Half of them were tested early in the morning (8:30 a.m.) and half were tested in the late afternoon (around 5 p.m.).
The results are a testament to the creative virtues of grogginess. When people were tested during their “least optimal time of day” — think of that night owl stumbling into the lab in the early morning — they were significantly more effective at solving insight puzzles. (On one problem, their performance increased by nearly 50 percent.) Performance on the analytic problems, meanwhile, was unaffected by the clock.
The larger lesson is that those sleepy students, like a brain-damaged patient, benefit from the inability to focus. Their minds are drowsy and disorganized, humming with associations that they’d normally ignore. When we need an insight, of course, those stray associations are the source of the answer.
One last piece of evidence: A brand-new study by scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago compared performance on insight puzzles between sober and drunk students. (They were aiming for real intoxication, giving students enough booze to achieve a blood alcohol level of 0.075.) Once the students achieved “peak intoxication” the scientists gave them a battery of word problems – they’re known as remote associate tests – that are often solved in a moment of insight. Here’s a sample problem. Your task is to find the one additional word that goes with the following triad of words:

Cracker Union Rabbit

In this case, the answer is “jack.” According to the data, drunk students solved more of these word problems in less time. They also were much more likely to perceive their solutions as the result of a sudden insight. And the differences were dramatic: The alcohol made subjects nearly 30 percent more likely to find the unexpected solution.

Once again, the explanation for this effect returns us to the benefits of not being able to pay attention. The stupor of alcohol, like the haze of the early morning, makes it harder for us to ignore those unlikely thoughts and remote associations that are such important elements of the imagination. So the next time you are in need of insight, avoid caffeine and concentration. Don’t chain yourself to your desk. Instead, set the alarm a few minutes early and wallow in your groggy thoughts. And if that doesn’t work, chug a beer.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/why-being-sleepy-and-drunk-are-great-for-creativity/

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Mercado de Derivados 4 de 9 - Operativa con futuros en la práctica (Video)

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Three New Feed Innovations Introduced

This fall, the Livestock Marketing Group launched three innovations for dairy animals: the enhanced calf milk replacers, the AMPLI-Calf® grower feed and the updated MetaPro® Nutrition program for dairy cows.
In partnership with Animal Milk Products, a division of Land O’Lakes, Inc., Livestock Marketing introduced a new plant-based ingredient in all Full Potential and Performance milk replacers. When fed in milk replacer, digestarom® is designed to drive greater weight gain and milk replacer and calf starter intakes. In addition, a new product line extension was launched for the Full Potential milk replacers. ColdFront™ milk replacer formulation uniquely and effectively helps dairy calves face nutrition and health challenges during cold weather stress.

The new calf grower feed was developed for calves raised on AMPLI-Calf® starter feed. When fed AMPLI-Calf® grower feed vs. traditional grower feed during weeks 12-24, calves gained 70 lbs more, grew longer and taller, and had better average daily gains and feed efficiency. The Young Animal team led by Dr. Dari Brown ensured that the product feeding amounts and inclusion of hay are optimal for rumen development in calves. Land O’Lakes Purina Feed patented its breakthrough system and method for feeding ruminants based on rumen morphology.
Launched in 2006, MetaPro® Nutrition program has been the highest-selling program in the Dairy Feed portfolio. It is a great tool to optimize the amount of protein fed to dairy cows while optimizing the herd’s milk production and pounds of milk protein potential. MetaPro® Nutrition program now includes USA Lysine, the most bio-available lysine product in the industry marketed exclusively by Land O’Lakes Purina Feed.
Source: Land O’Lakes Purina Feed



http://www.wdexpo.org/2011/12/27/three-new-feed-innovations-introduced/

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Climate change poses serious threat to food security

Area of dry land will increase by 11 per cent, says ICRISAT expert

Climate change poses the most serious threat to agriculture world over and to the food security, with countries like India facing the most unfavourable crop prospects, according to Chief Operating Officer of NutriPlus Knowledge Programme of ICRISAT Saikatdatta Mazumdar.

Area of dry land would increase by 11 per cent in the coming years due to climate change;  1.8 billion people would live in countries with absolute water scarcity and the hardest hit would be the rain-fed agriculture which covers 96 per cent of all cultivated land in Sub-Sahara Africa, 87 per cent in South America and 61 per cent in Asia, and the climate variability would aggravate loss of land productivity,  Dr. Mazumdar said in his keynote address at a national seminar on sustainable food security and safety organised by GITAM University's Mircobiology and Food and Science Technology Department recently.

On the activities of ICRISAT, Dr. Mazumdar said that it had developed 610 crop varieties and hybrids which were released in 77 countries during the last four decades. ICRISAT was providing the knowledge, initial germ plasm and crop management practices to farmers. The crops improved by ICRISAT were important in ensuring food and nutritional security of more than 565 million poor people in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Recently, ICRISAT had introduced Agri Business Innovation Platform (AIP) to enhance its public-private partnerships and as a model for fostering agro-business to bring its R and D innovations and partners together to reach the market faster and for a more impact.

ICRISAT initiated an Agri Business Incubation (ABI) set-up in partnership with the Central Government's Department of Science and Technology (DST) to promote public-private partnerships. ABI would support business initiatives with a host of services and facilities in the area of technology commercialisation and new venture creation.

UGC member K.Ramamurhty Naidu, GITAM University Vice-Chancellor G. Subramanyam, Principal of Institute of Science N. Lakshmana Das, organising secretary of the seminar R. Gnana Prasuna, and convener L. Anitha participated.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Visakhapatnam/article2749281.ece

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Big yields lead to low protein

THE SOFT spring throughout much of Australia is a major factor in the glut of ASW and APW wheat across the country, according to Grain Growers’ general manager of grower services Michael Southan.
Mr Southan said the cool finish meant wheat plants filled extra grains, which dropped protein levels.
“There is weather damaged grain about, but more so lots of sound grain that just had low protein.
“The plant puts its energy into increasing yield and with the low temperatures, there is more carbohydrate and less protein in the grain.”
He said it meant alternate markets to traditional hard wheat buyers had to be found for the lower protein grain.
“There is a market for the softer milling wheats, but obviously the prices are significantly lower.”
“It’s a year with high stocks, so we have to just ride through that, the markets will be there, the prices are just depressed.”
“There will be a premium to feed wheat, but certainly, you’d expect prices for ASW to be closer to feed values than hard wheat quotes.”
“The trade will be trying its traditional markets to see whether they will try some parcels of something different.”
In recent years, rusted-on Asian buyers of Australian wheat have been using other wheat, such as North American products, when Australian supplies were low due to the drought.
“There is more willingness now to substitute, which is good and bad – good because it gives you a chance to break into a market, bad because other competitors will try and get their foot in the door.”
However, there will also be hard wheat about, according to Mr Southan.
“It was a very big crop, and while hard wheat as a percentage may be well down, there are patches that did produce hard wheat.
“South Australia, for example, had much more hard wheat than it normally does, while later sown crops in NSW also had better protein levels, to go with their lower yields.”





http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/grains-and-cropping/general/big-yields-lead-to-low-protein/2401855.aspx

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Be prepared for farm succession, speaker says

Alberta family carries on after parent’s tragically killed in accident

As part of their continuing commitment to educate and support farm clients and agribusiness associates, BDO presented an information session dealing with risk management, farm management and positioning the family farm for the future.

The last topic is something Leona Dargis, a self-professed farm girl, is all too familiar with. In 2007, at the age of 21, Dargis and her four younger sisters lost both their parents and their grandmother in a tragic airplane crash.
"We didn't have a succession plan. We were still all so young," said Dargis, a St. Vincent, Alberta native. Her sister Lynn, 20 at the time, took over the operation of the farm and the business operations, while each sister still has holding in the land.
"You need to sit down with your family members and have the discussion about who wants to keep farming and what the future will hold," she said.
And while each sister has taken a different path, they all still come home to help with the busy times at seeding and harvest.
The family farm was started from scratch and grew to 4,000 head of cattle and 7,000 cash crop acres.
"The farm was a real family effort and we were given responsibilities. It gave us a boost and self-confidence to know that we really had a role in the farm operation. We worked as hard as we needed too," she said in Mitchell last Thursday, Dec. 15.
Dargis said at the time of her parent's death, she decided to take a step back from the business.
"It was more important for us to maintain our connection as a family," she said.
The Dargis' were all about family and living life to the fullest.
"Life is what you make of it," she added. "We have to make choices every day, in our attitude, in what we say and how we act.

"We get to be where we are in life because of the choices we make. With every challenge lies an opportunity," she said.

Dargis' love of farming and her caring nature led her to be a member of the Canadian Young Farmer's Forum, the Royal Agriculture Society of the Commonwealth and is the youngest recipient of the Nuffield Scholarship. Her involvements in these farm organizations have taken her around the world to help better farm practices around the world.
She said from her travels, she has learned that most agricultural industries around the world are in the same boat.
"There is an urban and rural disconnect, concerns about food safety, the global markets and the world population," she said.
Dargis said what she has realized is that farmers need to be accepting of change and open to trying new things.
"Most of all you have to love what you do and have fun doing it," she said.



http://www.mitchelladvocate.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3416703

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Mercado de Derivados 3 de 9 - Cobertura con futuros (Video)

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Farm size, productivity show dramatic growth in 25 years

By Jim Webster

The latest is this month‟s “The Changing Organization of U.S. Farming” from USDA‟s

Economic Research Service. It may not be as ambitious as the Carter Administration‟s structure

report or as prescriptive as the ideas in the report from the second Bush Administration. It is,

however, an illuminating description of an agriculture dominated by larger farms, more

businesslike, more productive and more profitable than the conventional wisdom in much of

non-farm America.

Its nine authors have assembled a wealth of data in support of what has become obvious of late -

that fewer, larger and more efficient farms and ranches are producing more with fewer

chemicals, less labor, less land and less water. In other words, it is the story of a dramatically

impressive leap ahead in productivity over the 25 years that the paper chronicles.

Among factors that the authors cite as drivers of productivity are “innovations in farm

organization, business arrangements and production practices.”

The increased adoption of risk management tools such as contracts and crop insurance have
contributed to the more than 45 percent increase in U.S. agricultural productivity since 1982, they say.
Contracting helps productivity by transferring risk to contractors who also (in the case of production contracts)
may provide production inputs, allowing more time to expand production or pursue off-farm income.

“Economies of scale, technological advances and government policies may also help explain

why production per farm is increasing and why production is becoming more specialized

over time,” the report notes. Scale economies are particularly notable in livestock because

average costs fall as farm size increases. That‟s less so in crop operations, where larger, faster

equipment has been a factor.

Another force driving productivity is the entrance of new farms. The authors posit that new

entrants tend to implement new technologies immediately while existing farmers may be slower

to adopt and become less competitive. “Across a variety of commodities, new entrants tend to be

the largest farms, both in terms of size and scope,” they add.

The report cites another factor that applies more to program crops than livestock: “Recent

evidence suggests that government payments may also play a role in the consolidation of

production. Researchers have found that government payments may provide a means for some

farms to grow, leading to more concentrated production.” The conclusion, though not spelled

out, is that farm programs have not saved the small farm, but rather hastened its decline.

Farms with sales above $1 million increased their share of all farm production from 27% to 59%

between 1982 and 2007, the authors say. They also expect “a continued shift in production to

very large farms” while smaller commercial farms continue to decline in number. The very

smallest farms, however, “exist independent of the farm economy” and are less likely decline

because their operators rely heavily on off-farm income. One statistic that doesn‟t change much:

family-owned farms have stayed at 97-99% of all farms all along.

The 77-page report acknowledges the growth of organic agriculture, but points out that the 2.6

million acres of certified organic cropland amounts to 0.35 percent of all U.S. land in crops.

Organic milk cows account for 2.7 percent of the dairy herd but organic meat and poultry

remains minuscule: organic beef cattle constitute only 0.19 percent, broilers 0.10 percent and

hogs only 0.02 percent.

#30

For more Agri-Pulse news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com

http://www.agri-pulse.com/farm_productivity_growth_12262011.asp

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Experts tap knowledge on climate change trends to boost farming

Scientists have issued an analysis of East Africa’s future climate as the first step in a new programme that will help farmers grow crops that will best thrive in the changed weather conditions 20 years from now, a new study has shown.

“Climate change will significantly alter growing conditions, but in most places the new farming environment will not be novel in the global context,” said Julian Ramirez, a scientist based at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia and a lead author of the study.

The report is compiled by the Consultative Group on International on International Agricultural Research programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.

Titled, Climate Analogues: Finding Tomorrow’s Agriculture Today, the report forms the platform of a global programme to exchange knowledge between communities on current agriculture practices that can help maintain productivity in the future, despite potentially dramatic shifts in growing conditions.

“The situation in the future will closely resemble conditions that already exist in other parts of the world. Making these links might offer clues about practical, proven approaches that could enable poor people dependent on agriculture to adapt their farming to changes in temperature and precipitation,” he said during the release of the report. “We will take farmers to a site that is similar to their future and help them understand what they need to do to ensure that their production stays the same,” he said.

According to the analysis, by 2030, maize producers in East Africa could face a one degree increase in temperature during the maize growing season, which would cut yields by about 20 per cent in the absence of adaptive measures. However, farmers in Argentina and Uruguay are already growing their maize successfully at average temperatures that are three degrees higher than the norm in Kenya. Similarly, soybean farmers in Argentina, as well as in the central and southern United States, are already managing conditions similar to the ones that soybean growers around Shanghai, China, will experience within about 20 years.

Crop varieties

“So what this means is farmers in East Africa who insist in growing these crops when temperatures climb will need to look at the kinds of farming practices and crop varieties that farmers in Argentina and Uruguay use,” said Dr Raphael Oloo from KARI.

CCAFS researchers note that the climate tool currently compares locations based on similarities in precipitation and temperature. It is also designed to identify areas based on other features, such as soil type and even social and economic conditions. The tool can also be used in the reverse - looking at one particular location to identify where similar climates might be in 2030. To illustrate the concept, an analysis of present-day Los Angeles, California shows that the southern parts of the US eastern seaboard and France, northern Germany, and the Netherlands might experience Hollywood’s traditionally mild winter months, December to February, by 2030. In 2012, the research team will pilot a series of farmer exchanges between sites in East and West Africa and South Asia to help farmers see effects of climate change.

- African Laughter

http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Experts+tap+knowledge+on+climate+change+trends+to+boost+farming/-/1248928/1295128/-/ba225dz/-/

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Why Some Wild Animals Are Becoming Nicer

Nature is supposed to be red in tooth and claw, and domestication an artificial process for making animals gentle. But it appears that some corners of the animal kingdom are becoming kinder, gentler places. Certain creatures may be domesticating themselves.
This possibility is most apparent in bonobos, a close cousin of chimpanzees. Unlike their violent cousins, bonobos are generally peaceful. And while many animals have evolved to be socially agreeable, bonobos — and possibly other species — seem to be experiencing something more precise and profound: the physical and behavioral changes specifically described in studies of domestication, but as a natural evolutionary process.
“Normally you think of domestication as something that happens at the hands of humans,” said Brian Hare, a Duke University evolutionary anthropologist and co-author of a bonobo research review published Jan. 20 in Animal Behaviour. “The idea that a species domesticated itself is a bit crazy, but there are some species that outcompeted others by becoming nicer.”

The essence of domestication is a loss of aggression. Because this is such a basic trait, involving modifications to nervous and endocrine systems, and alterations of complex gene networks with multiple functions, it generates a variety of changes. Researchers call them a “domestication syndrome,” and while aspects are seen in all domesticated animals, the principles are distilled in a famous Russian experiment on foxes.
Starting in 1959 with 130 farm-bred but wild foxes and continuing until today, researchers allowed only those individuals most tolerant of human contact to breed. In less than 50 years, the fierce-tempered and untouchable foxes became playful, face-licking sweethearts who loved to be held. Those traits are typically seen in wild pups, but disappear as they grow up.
With juvenile behaviors came juvenile appearances: Even as adults, foxes in the experiment now have spotted coats, floppy ears, curly tails and short legs. They’re evolutionarily suspended in childhood — and that, said Hare, may explain bonobos. “I have a lot of bonobos who are ‘friends,’ and I look at them and say, ‘I don’t understand how you evolved. You are too goofy, too nice, too silly. How did you not get eaten?” he said. “But they are very successful.”

"I have a lot of bonobos who are 'friends,' and I look at them and say, 'I don't understand how you evolved. You are too goofy,'" said Hare. Photo: Pelican/Flickr

Bonobos are very different than chimpanzees, from whom they split taxonomically about one million years ago. Chimp males struggle constantly and violently for dominance; bonobo males almost never fight, and stage virility contests involving non-confrontational stick-dragging. Male chimps often coerce females into sex; bonobos ask for permission. At the group level, chimpanzees regularly engage in something like low-level warfare, with lethal consequences; bonobos don’t. Mostly they hang out, play, and exchange sexual favors with frequency so astounding they’ve become pop-culture tropes.
Lab tests back up in-the-wild observations. Relative to chimps, bonobos are stressed by competition, attentive to others’ needs, and eager to cooperate and share. Brain regions crucial to behavior and development, like the amygdala and occipital frontal cortex, are arranged differently. And in keeping with theories of domestication, bonobos play like juvenile chimpanzees, but throughout their lives. Their skulls also have smaller jawbones and teeth, or what anatomists call “paedomorphic” — child-shaped — features. They also have a white tail tuft and extra-pink lips, a possible analogue to the white spots often seen in, for example, cats and dogs.
According to Hare and study co-author Richard Wrangham, one of the world’s foremost primatologists, these are likely signs of domestication. But why and how could natural selection tame the bonobo? One possible narrative begins about 2.5 million years ago, when the last common ancestor of bonobos and chimpanzees lived both north and south of the Zaire River, as did gorillas, their ecological rivals. A massive drought drove gorillas from the south, and they never returned. That last common ancestor suddenly had the southern jungles to themselves.
As a result, competition for resources wouldn’t be as fierce as before. Aggression, such a costly habit, wouldn’t have been so necessary. And whereas a resource-limited environment likely made female alliances rare, as they are in modern chimpanzees, reduced competition would have allowed females to become friends. No longer would males intimidate them and force them into sex. Once reproduction was no longer traumatic, they could afford to be fertile more often, which in turn reduced competition between males.
“If females don’t let you beat them up, why should a male bonobo try to be dominant over all the other males?” said Hare. “In male chimps, it’s very costly to be on top. Often in primate hierarchies, you don’t stay on top very long. Everyone is gunning for you. You’re getting in a lot of fights. If you don’t have to do that, it’s better for everybody.” Chimpanzees had been caught in what Hare called “this terrible cycle, and bonobos have been able to break this cycle.” In doing so, they rose to primate supremacy in a region roughly the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River, and reigned unchallenged until Homo sapiens came along.
All this, at least, is the hypothesis: It’s important to note that it’s a proposed rather than certain scenario. It’s at least conceivable, if highly unlikely, that bonobos started out peaceful and chimpanzees became more aggressive. Conclusive proof would require a time machine. Still, the evidence is suggestive and the scenario plausible.
“High aggression is likely costly,” said Frank Albert, an evolutionary anthropologist at Princeton University who studies the genetics of domestication. “So it seems not very surprising that some of the bonobo-chimp ancestors may have benefited from evolving reduced aggression — and eventually become today’s bonobos.”
Not that bonobos will soon be peeking out of cardboard boxes on Cute Overload. On the trajectory from wild to domestic, they’re something like certain wolves were tens of thousands of years ago, after reduced aggression allowed them to exploit a new ecological niche at the edges of growing human settlements, said Hare. At that time, people hadn’t yet started keeping and breeding dogs. Once they did, it accelerated a domestication already naturally underway.
But why stop with dogs and bonobos? Hare and Wrangham suspect self-domestication is happening elsewhere, and new niches around human habitation remain a likely place look. Large cities and suburbs are new to much of Earth’s surface, and represent opportunity to animals that can exploit them. A lack of aggression isn’t absolutely necessary — learning to hide quietly in brush by a sidewalk can represent wariness, not amiability — but it could help.
“I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and we’re overrun by deer. I keep seeing deer in my neighborhood with the star mutation,” said Hare, referencing the Bambi-style spotting traditionally seen in young deer and domesticated animals. “I’d love to know whether, if you did a study where there’s no urbanization, would you see a lower rate of the star mutation?” One study of Florida Keys deer, an endangered subspecies of white-tailed deer, didn’t look at pigmentation, but did find that urbanized deer were less fearful and lived in larger groups than before.
(If it seems like such significant evolution shouldn’t happen so quickly, remember that many changes underlying the domestication syndrome don’t involve mutations to genes, but so-called epigenetic changes in the timing of gene activity. Epigenetics allows change to occur more rapidly than is possible through genetic mutation alone. “Evolution can happen very fast. It’s happening now,” Hare said.)
Another possible example is the Tonkean macaque, which is less aggressive than any other macaque species. They live in cohesive social groups and fight rarely. Unlike other macaques, their conflicts are followed by acts of reconciliation. They also have a habit of baring their teeth, but whereas in other macaques it signals submission, in Tonkeans it’s exchanged between equals. “This display is used like a smile,” said ethologist Bernard Thierry of the University of Strasbourg.
Thierry has tried to understand why Tonkean macaques are so exceptionally agreeable. It’s almost certainly the result of some evolutionary pressure, and that pressure could be self-domestication, though it hasn’t yet been demonstrated. “We still don’t know why some are nicer than others,” he said.
Self-domestication may also be favored on islands, where limited space and high population densities turn territorial defense into a constant fight. In such circumstances, aggression becomes self-destructive. “At very high densities, it becomes impossible to defend anything,” said Judy Stamps, the University of California, Davis evolutionary ecologist who studied how behaviors change on islands. “In that situation, the animals might as well just relax. Instead of competing aggressively, animals might begin to cooperate with each other.”
That seems to be happening in Panamanian island populations of Central American spiny rats, which are significantly less aggressive than their mainland brethren. Hare even wonders if historical tales of island animals treating the first human arrivals without fear reflect not inexperience, but possible self-domestication.
Finally, Hare has one more candidate for self-domestication: Homo sapiens. At some point in our prehistory, we became much less aggressive and much more social. Some researchers link this to domestication-like changes in our biology. It’s impossible to say for sure, and sociobiological origin stories — special diets, tool use, hunting, symbolism — are legion. But perhaps it’s time for one more. Maybe, just maybe, somewhere along the line, we simply got nicer.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/self-domestication/

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Bringing The Cows To The Feed In Winter

Hay bales at the Hein Ranch in central North Dakota aren’t piled up in the yard at home in December.
They are set out at a certain distance to each other in several different pastures for their cattle to do bale grazing this winter.
Some Northern Plains ranchers are letting beef cows graze on bales, cover crops and grass out in winter pastures as a way to keep cattle healthier, improve soil health and often lower feed costs, according to Josh Dukart, certified holistic management educator and rancher near Hazen, N.D.
“We’re not trying to bring the feed to the cows; we’re trying to bring the cows to the feed and let them have at it,” Dukart said. “Some planning and strategy has to go along with it and each operation is different. We’re not looking at any one item whether it is marketing or calving dates, we’re looking at the whole big picture and seeing what model can move the operation forward.”
Producer Ron Hein, who runs a cow/calf operation near Wing, with his wife, Julie, and in collaboration with his cousin, Sanford Williams, is in his second year of bale grazing. The relatives have found since their land is next to each other, that it works out better for their quality of life if Ron takes care of the cows and Sanford handles the calves after weaning.
“The cows are out on native grass right now (Dec. 1), then they have corn stalks and sunflower stubble,” Hein said. “I’ll go this way as long as the weather lets me and when I don’t feel comfortable anymore, I’ll start bale grazing.”
When bale grazing, Hein uses temporary fencing to move his cow herd around to the section of bales he wants them in. The wire and all the equipment he needs for the fencing is loaded on the back of a four-wheeler so he can just drive up on the snow and set up the fence.
“I have one fence, then I have another one ahead of them, so if they break through one fence, there is another ahead of them to stop them,” Hein said.
He plans to move his fence every three days and plans 10 bales per 280 cows, but other producers move the fence every seven days and calculate a different number of bales.
Hein sets out his best quality hay bales for bale grazing on one of his best grass pastures when the cows will need the most nutrition in the third trimester and during calving.
Dukart said Hein has a planned bale grazing system so the quality of bales and the areas he uses for grazing coincide with critical time periods such as calving.
“We moved our calving to May, June,” said Hein. “It made a lot of sense.”
Hein has a nephew with a doctorate in animal science who works in feedlots, and he wanted Hein to plan the calving and the grazing this way.
“You try to match your calving time to when the cows need the most nutritious grass,” he said. With a planned grazing system, the cows have access to good hay and good grass in the third trimester, and the weather is warmer. “I think the quality of feed is less in the winter.”
Hein said he and Williams will wean in the first two weeks of December.
“I ran them one year until February and I didn’t like that. I kind of like to get the calves off. It is a lot easier to manage the cows without a calf on them,” he said.
While a lot of cows do fine with the calf on them through the winter, the condition of some cows is dragged down with the calf, he said. However, that is not always the case if the herd genetics are improved, he added.
He always stays flexible with his grazing system.
“Last year we had a blizzard in April. I took them home (and) opened the gate,” Hein said, adding that he put them in a feedlot and fed them for three days, then took them back out again. “Your comfort level is the biggest thing and the hardest thing to get past. If it is your comfort zone to feed them in a feedlot – it’s hard to get past that.”
Cow/calf producer Ken Miller, who is also a technician at the Burleigh County Soil Conservation District, also believes in bale grazing in winter after fall grazing crop fields, but doesn’t set the bales out on native prairie.
“I don’t want to introduce other grasses into my native grass,” Miller said.
When placing bales on hay land for bale grazing, producers can take advantage of the nutrients available in the bale, he said. The hay decomposes quite quickly when combined with trampling action from the cattle. For that reason, producers often place the bales on bare spots that they want to fill in.
“You can easily double your grass production the next year when you do this,” Miller said, adding the urine and manure from the cattle, as well as the leftover hay, also fertilize the soil. “The bales leave a lot of carbon for a good grass response next year.”
Bale grazing like Miller does by using temporary electric fence and moving his fence whenever he wants the herd to move to the next set of bales is healthier than feeding his herd at home in the yard, and they eat less when they are out on pasture.
Even in tough winters, cattle prefer being out on pasture and will continue to graze as long as they can see the hay bales or the forage, Miller said.
“If you have stockpiled feed out there, the snow can be quite deep, and it is amazing how those cattle change their behavior. You can really cut your costs. Last year, I burned less than two tanks of fuel to winter 90 cows and calves, and that also included clearing the road out,” he said.



http://www.farmandranchguide.com/feature/livestock_guide/bringing-the-cows-to-the-feed-in-winter/article_f0040df2-2d8c-11e1-980f-0019bb2963f4.html

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Mercado de Derivados 2 de 9 - Especulación con futuros (Video)

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Larger Cows Need Better Management

During the last 20 years, cow size has increased over 200 lbs. As cow size increases, producers need to be more aware of their cow's nutritional requirements. During his presentation at the recent Range Beef Cow Symposium in Mitchell, NE, Ken Olson, South Dakota State University (SDSU) beef specialist, asked producers if they knew what their cows weigh.
“If everyone had a scale at their ranch, this would be known,” he says.
Instead, producers must rely on other alternatives such as the scale weights of their cull cows, adjusted for any differences between the culls and the cows that remain in the herd. Another alternative is estimating mature cow size based on the live weight of their finished offspring.
“The general rule of thumb is that mature cow weight and live weight of their progeny at slaughter should be similar,” Olson explains.
Data from the USDA Germplasm Evaluation Program showed a head-to-head comparison of several sire breeds. The average cow weight across all breeds was 1,390 lbs. in 2009. The data also indicated British breeds have surpassed continental breeds in mature cow size. In the data, the mature cow weight of a Hereford was 1,419 lbs.; Angus, 1,410; Red Angus, 1,409; Simmental, 1,404; Gelbvieh, 1,323; Limousin, 1,391; and Charolais, 1,371.
“This may be a function of genetic trends that are changing the size of cows in each breed at different rates,” Olson explains of the data. “The breeds that produce the bigger cattle may still be changing."
With mature cow size averaging 1,300 to 1,400 lbs., producers need to manage the size of their cows so they don't get any larger.
To see the full article, click here.





http://beefmagazine.com/sectors/cow-calf/1226-large-cow-management

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Raymond Ansotegui and the art of artificially inseminating cattle

It's an early June morning on Montana's 60,000-acre Bair Ranch, north of the Crazy Mountains. Black cow-calf pairs dot the pastures under a frigid rain. It streams from the hats and soaks the chaps of the men and women who exit the bunkhouse, fully caffeinated and sated by steak and eggs. They are here to artificially inseminate 510 Angus/Simmental-cross cows under the direction of Raymond P. Ansotegui, a wiry 64-year-old with rascally brown eyes, bushy chops and a tobacco-tinged moustache.

Ansotegui, whose Basque name is pronounced an-SOH´-tuh-ghee, has been artificially inseminating cattle (AIing) for almost 45 years. An expert on bovines, he has a Ph.D. in ruminant nutrition and a minor in reproductive physiology. He taught animal science at Montana State University in Bozeman for three decades before retiring in 2007. The license on his Ford F250 reads "OEC," for overeducated cowboy.
In Montana, where beef is big business, you won't find a better AIer than Ansotegui. Every spring, the Livingston, Mont., resident hits the road like a touring rock star, AIing upwards of 3,000 cattle. A revolving cast of characters -- the merry pranksters of AI -- leave their day jobs to work with him in the so-called Shaggin' Wagon, a custom-built mobile breeding barn. Today they include his wife, Linda, a retired banker, and former students and colleagues.
The mud in the Shaggin' Wagon is deep and black, but the mood is jovial. Ansotegui works alongside former students Brian Engle, who built the floorless gooseneck trailer, and Harve VanWagoner. While VanWagoner thaws semen packaged in plastic straws from a tank of liquid nitrogen, Ansotegui and Engle AI. They wear surgical gloves on one hand, armpit-length pink plastic gloves on the other. Each faces a chute holding a cow.
What follows is "a fascinating and disgusting bit of art," says Mark S. Roberson, chair of Biomedical Sciences, Cornell University, and another former Ansotegui student. "You're fighting manure to put gametes together to make one of the most important commodities in agriculture -- the calf." Ansotegui slowly extends his left arm up the rectum of the cow as his right hand threads a slender pipette called a gun up her vagina. Through her colon wall, he grasps her cervix, placing it over the gun tip. As he depresses the plunger, 20-40 million bovine sperm are deposited in her uterus. The men can breed hundreds of cows a day, calmly inseminating each one in under a minute.
The procedure requires a sensitive touch. "The hardest person to teach AI is a guitar player," says Ansotegui, referring to the musicians' calluses. Engle and VanWagoner chuckle.
"Dad knows how to feed and breed cows to make the perfect steak," says Ansotegui's son, Raymond D. Ansotegui, a reclamation scientist. The elder Ansotegui not only looks like he walked off the set of a Western, he is the real deal, a Basque buckaroo from the Great Basin of Oregon and Nevada, where his grandfather and granduncles settled in the early 1900s.
Ansotegui spent his youth working cattle, chasing mustangs and learning the "cowboy code." His family moved often, and by the time he graduated high school in 1965, they owned a prosperous lumberyard in Fallon, but there was no large family ranch for him to run. "I graduated second in my class, so I got scholarships to Reno," he says. There, at the University of Nevada, he earned a bachelor's in animal science, then a master's in range nutrition. He also learned the two key skills that would shape his career: how to fistulate cattle (a fistula is a surgically installed "door" into the digestive system a living cow), and how to AI.
Ansotegui went on to work for American Breeder Services, selling bull semen and teaching AI, moving his growing family to Montana in 1974. Two years later, tired of being on the road, he took a one-time, one-year teaching contract in the Animal and Range Sciences Department of MSU. "It took me 31 years to get out of it," he laughs, his eyes crinkling with smile lines.
He taught over 30 different courses, conducted groundbreaking research, published 80 academic papers and abstracts, and won numerous teaching awards. During that time, he also earned a Ph.D. for a seminal nutrition study that remains one of his crowning scientific achievements.
By fistulating calves at 45 days of age, a feat thought impossible, Ansotegui was the first to document their transformation from milk-sucklers to grass-munching ruminants, a process that requires ingesting digestive bacteria from their mothers. "The biggest source of rumen bugs," he explains, "is cow manure." With him every summer, elbow deep in rumen goop, were Linda, their son, Raymond, their daughter, Denise, now a microbiologist, and various students.
Ansotegui is known for mumbling dry one-liners through his moustache: "Eat every egg you see, so there's one less chicken in the world." Or, "Salad is what food eats." His dry wit and occasional cow-centric saltiness are a form of self-effacement. "The only reason they offered me the (graduate school) assistantship was they needed a cowboy," he says.
Time is of the essence today, because all the Bair Ranch cows come into heat within a matter of days. Ansotegui synchronized their ovulation in advance with two injections of naturally occurring hormone-like compounds, including prostaglandin. Prostaglandin, which is metabolized almost instantly, revolutionized the industry by reducing breeding time from three weeks (a cow's natural cycle) to days. Pioneering research done by Ansotegui through MSU in the late '70s was instrumental in getting the drug approved. "We were using it before it was cleared," he says.
Linda Ansotegui, a topnotch ranch hand, sits elegantly astride her palomino mare, her blue eyes scanning the sodden, shooting star-dotted pasture in search of "hots" -- cows mounting each other. It's a sure sign that the cow being ridden is in standing estrous and will ovulate in 24 hours. Linda also looks for activated estrous detection patches, nifty new inventions that are stuck to the cows' rumps and turn neon colors when rubbed, like lottery tickets.
Ideally, about 80 percent of the cows Ansotegui's team inseminates will conceive. The rest may be bred by a "clean-up" bull, or sold. AI ensures a high conception rate and enables ranchers to manipulate herd genetics without having to purchase or maintain a stable of bulls, which can be costly and dangerous. (In fact, man-killing dairy bulls motivated the development of AI.) "You can use superior genetics," Ansotegui explains. "Your calf will weigh more at weaning time. He's gonna be more fertile, have a higher carcass quality, and better rates of gain. And he's gonna do it on less feed."
Seed bulls are rated on genetically determined characteristics, including feed efficiency, calving ease (how readily a sire's female offspring give birth), and even scrotal size -- a marker of fertility. Semen is a multimillion dollar business: Whereas one bull may naturally breed 20 cows a season, one harvested ejaculation, by electronic anal stimulation, may fill up to 100 straws, translating into tens of thousands of offspring. Straws range in price from $5 to thousands, and can be frozen indefinitely.
Although AI is an increasingly important part of modern ranching, the National Association of Animal Breeders estimates that only 10 percent of beef producers participate. AI can pay for itself, but it's time-consuming and best suited to ranches that keep replacement heifers to develop their herd. And ensuring conception this way requires an old-school approach: skilled manual labor.
Teaching those abilities is arguably what Ansotegui does and loves best. He has mentored generations of OECs -- overeducated cowboys -- ranchers, veterinarians and cowhands who have shaped the cattle industry worldwide. At MSU, Ansotegui taught hands-on, requiring his AI students to breed 50 cows using their dominant hand, then switch. "Ray can bring it down to the practical level," says rancher and former student Matt Pierson, "because he has real-world experience." Despite his retirement, Ansotegui still teaches, lecturing for feed companies and at AI schools, and doing private consultation. And, of course, he continues to AI. After all, he says, "It's a cowboy job that pays."
The rain has ceased. Linda Ansotegui carefully thaws semen and loads guns, her waist-length hair in a braid. Abruptly, she turns to the door and says, disgustedly, "You know when I say, 'Crap!' I mean it -- literally." She wipes splattered manure from her mouth. Everyone outside laughs. From inside the Shaggin' Wagon, Ray inquires wryly, "They gettin' enough salt in their diets?" Linda nods and laughs, "Yes, yes."





http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.22/raymond-ansotegui-and-the-art-of-artificially-inseminating-cattle

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Tractores John Deere serie 5E

La serie 5e de tractores John Deere, esta diseñada para productores que necesitan realizar todo tipo de actividades. Esta serie viene dada en 5 modelos, variando su potencia de motor.

• 5045 serie E 45hp
• 5065 serie E 65hp
• 5075 serie E 75hp
• 5078 serie E 78hp
• 5085 serie E 85hp

El modelo base de la Serie E, en este caso el 5045E posee tracción simple, mientras que los demás modelos de esta serie, poseen la opción de tracción simple o doble. Este modelo de tractor John Deere se adapta muy bien a para la utilización como un tractor con pala de carga frontal

 Características generales tractores John Deere serie 5E

• Buen rendimiento con poco consumo de combustible, lo que lo hace muy económico
• Palancas de controles laterales
• costo bajo de mantenimiento
• Posibilidad de colocar cargadores  frontalesJohn Deere (pala)
• Agilidad para realizar actividades varias
• Tanque de combustible de 105l.

http://campoconsulta.com.ar/tractores-john-deere-serie-5e/

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Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture

UC Riverside scholar co-edits timely handbook on the subject
When climatic patterns shift, the spatial distribution of croplands, habitats and fish populations soon follows, significantly impacting agriculture and food production. For example, droughts, floods and storms frequently kill livestock and damage crops, and impact world market prices and food availability.

Ariel Dinar, the director of the Water Science and Policy Center at the University of California, Riverside, and Robert Mendelsohn at Yale University have co-edited a “Handbook on Climate Change and Agriculture” (Edward Elgar Publishing Inc., December 2011) that explores, as its title suggests, the interaction between climate change and agriculture.

With contributions from international scholars, the handbook analyzes a variety of topics, including direct agronomic effects, economic impacts on agriculture, agricultural impacts on the economy, agricultural mitigation, and farmer adaptation. The authors argue that climate change is likely to have a large impact on agriculture around the world; this impact would be manifest through changes in temperature, precipitation, concentrations of carbon dioxide, and available water flows.

“Developing countries already face food problems,” said Dinar, a professor of environmental economics and policy. “The effects of climate change on agriculture in these and other countries will depend on how well the agricultural sector can adapt through technology institutions, and better management practices. Developing countries are better able to engage in adaptation since mitigation is much harder for these countries to do.”

Dinar mentioned that this is the first book to use a multidisciplinary approach in providing up-to-date information about the impact of climate change on agriculture. According to him, the handbook would be helpful to anyone interested in exploring the impacts of climate change on agriculture and agriculture’s ability to adapt.

The book’s chapters tackle a number of issues, including the mitigation of the effects of climate change, adaptation to climate change, the future of bio-fuel, and the “Clean Development Mechanism,” which allows some countries to meet their carbon dioxide reduction obligations in a cost-effective way and has resulted in nearly 8000 projects worldwide.

Dinar began researching climate change in 1994 when he saw its impact neatly displayed in a set of color maps he came across of the United States. He realized then that a cartographic approach could be applied to study the impact of climate change in developing countries.

“The livelihood of people and nations is crucially dependent on agriculture, especially in the developing world,” he said. “The economic, social and political ramifications of any impact on agriculture are, therefore, significant.”

In became evident to Dinar in 1994 that agriculture had been largely neglected in climate change studies. He decided to research the topic.


“It soon became clear to me that people did not know much about adaptation to the effects of climate change,” he said. “The net effect of climate change on agricultural production is still not well understood. It’s not just the production of food from crops that is involved, but also livestock. Agriculture suffers from climate change, but it also contributes to it through land use and abuse, as well as the adoption of practices that are unsustainable where climate change is concerned such as unsuitable cropping patterns and irrigation technologies.”

The “Handbook on Climate Change and Agriculture” took two years to edit.

“Two factors kept us on schedule: The book was thoroughly planned, and all the contributors were extremely responsive,” Dinar said.




http://newsroom.ucr.edu/2817

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