This study describes the spread of intramammary infections (IMI) during the first lactation of heifers that were naturally infected with Staphylococcus aureus before parturition and introduced into a herd with a high prevalence of this organism. The heifers were monitored during their first lactation to determine potential spread and persistence of IMI and to characterize the isolates that caused IMI. Milk samples were obtained from all the cows in the lactating herd at the beginning of the study and one year later. S. aureus isolated at both these sampling times were compared with those obtained from the heifers to analyse their clonal and phylogenetic relationships, employing pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multi-locus sequence typing and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Most S. aureus isolated from mammary secretions of heifers before parturition established chronic IMI during the first lactation. PFGE typing discriminated 3 clusters that were associated with origin of isolates, number of lactations and clonal complex. Differences both in the presence and expression of genes associated with virulence determinants among the major pulsotypes infecting lactating cows and those from heifers that developed persistent IMI were detected, which are indicative of distinct adaptive capacities to generate IMI.

Is an account of hair or nails as negotiable as one of the Demiurge? It should not be. The aim of this paper is to supplement existing interpretations of Timaeus’ eikōs logos in order to provide well-grounded answers to this and similar questions. More specifically, I shall demonstrate that Timaeus’ account cannot be confined to a single epistemological field, namely that of unstable likeliness, because it exhibits a much more nuanced and graduated structure, just as do the realities it deals with, and, as a whole, leaves minimal room for refutation and scepticism.

Latin America was one of the regions hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to assess the evolution of family income inequality and its components from the onset of the pandemic to the end of 2021 in six Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay. The unequalising impact of the worsening of the labour market during the contraction period was associated with the significant loss of informal jobs. This effect was partially offset by the equalising role of cash transfer policies. During the recovery period, the distributive impacts of these income sources were the opposite of those observed during the contraction period, as most countries gradually reduced or ceased these transfers while labour incomes partially rebounded. Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, income inequality in most countries either remained the same or had decreased compared to 2019, even though total family incomes are still below the levels of that year.

This research paper compares fertility traits, health indicators and health management routines of Swiss dairy farms characterized by short vs. long productive lifespans (SPL vs. LPL). We evaluated whether a longer productive lifespan will result in poorer cow health based on herdbook data from breeders associations (n = 142), farm questionnaire data (n = 67), veterinary treatment data (n = 64) and data obtained during farm visits (n = 30). Dairy farms were selected in such a way that they contrasted in terms of length of productive lifespan, but were representative of the Swiss dairy sector. Fertility performance was better on farms with LPL indicated by a lower number of inseminations per heifer, shorter average number of days open and shorter calving intervals. Consistently, the proportion of antibiotic veterinary treatments due to fertility problems was by tendency higher on SPL farms, as was the number of antibiotic treatments due to other problems (i.e. other than fertility, udder or locomotion problems). Other types of veterinary medical treatments did not differ by productive lifespan profiles. Average somatic cell score and proportions of test day records with elevated somatic cell count (SCC) were significantly higher on farms with LPL. However, this increase was smaller than what could be expected due to the age difference between contrasting productive lifespan profiles and was not associated with higher treatment incidences for clinical mastitis. Locomotion scores and lameness incidence did not differ by productive lifespan profile. Apart from a slightly higher proportion of farms with LPL practicing abrupt drying off, cow health management routines did not differ significantly between farms of contrasting productive lifespans. We conclude that a longer productive lifespan is not at the expense of health, even if the SCC level increased with age. Fertility, limb and udder health should be the main focus when aiming for a long productive lifespan.

Several problems that were composed and/or solved by the tenth century Islamic mathematician Abu Sahl al-Kuhi reached us via the writings of Abd al-Jalil al-Sijzi, another tenth century Islamic mathematician who, according to [1], was presumably a student of al-Kuhi’s. Twelve of these (sets of) problems and theorems are discussed in [1] and are referred to as The Fragments. The theorem of al-Kuhi alluded to in the title is Fragment #9, which is presented below, together with Fragment #5 and their proofs, in Section 2. Section 3 is devoted to the generalisation referred to in the title. Section 4 describes a relation to angle trisection and Sections 5 and 7 a relation too a configuration of Serenus. Section 6 contains a speculation on what motivated Fragment #9.

This article examines Catholic architecture in Ireland prior to the passage of An act for the relief of His Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects (10 Geo IV, c. 7), popularly known as the Act of Emancipation, in 1829. It focuses on one case study building — the chapel, now church, of St John the Baptist in Cashel, County Tipperary. Bringing together a range of documentary and visual sources, this building is analysed according to its site, its specific architectural stylistic features, and in relation to the social and liturgical contexts for its development. The article contributes to the ongoing reassessment of the impact of the penal laws and the varied experiences of Catholics through the late eighteenth-century period of relief and reform, through its spatial, formal and contextual close reading of one hitherto overlooked building. In doing so, it deepens understanding of how architecture was used as a statement of civic identity and political intention by Catholics of status and means. It also contributes to contemporary understandings of regional classicism and to the specific meaning of ecclesiastical architectural style in late-eighteenth-century Ireland across denominations. Finally, this article considers the treatment and ‘strategic forgetting’ of this period of pre-1829 Catholic building activity during the era of grand architectural expansion at the end of the nineteenth century.

This essay queries how ideas about school choice traversed the Pacific in the late twentieth century. Specifically, it reconstructs and deconstructs the visits of two African American proponents of parental school choice, Annette “Polly” Williams and Howard Fuller, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1990s. Drawing from oral histories, newspapers, and archives in the United States and Aotearoa New Zealand, this essay explores Fuller’s and Williams’s travels and the responses they generated to better understand how and why choice-based educational policies, including school vouchers, gained traction, or failed to do so, at the close of the twentieth century. A close-up analysis of one small strand of the transnational voucher movement reveals that educational ideas and policies did not drift naturally from one place to another. To the contrary, they were cultivated; and that cultivation, particularly when done across vastly different contexts, represented both a political act and an expression of power. This essay also prompts historians to understand the global ascendancy of school choice at the end of the twentieth century by looking to other transnational frameworks and ideologies in addition to neoliberalism: decolonization, Indigenous activism, Pan-Africanism, and the “Black Pacific,” among others. Finally, this essay hopes to encourage more historians of education, including Americanists, to peer beyond national boundaries when investigating the cultivation, development, and dissemination of educational ideas and practices. A close analysis of the transpacific travels of Fuller and Williams can serve as a tangible model for how historians might utilize microhistory to reap the benefits of transnational inquiry while avoiding its analytical hazards: broad generalizations, oversimplifications, and cultural misinterpretations.