my other side

What dog owner has not come home to a broken vase or other valuable items and a guilty-looking dog slouching around the house? By ingeniously setting up conditions where the owner was misinformed as to whether their dog had really committed an offense, Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor from Barnard College in New York, uncovered the origins of the “guilty look” in dogs in the recently published “Canine Behaviour and Cognition” Special Issue of Elsevier’s Behavioural Processes.
During the study, owners were asked to leave the room after ordering their dogs not to eat a tasty treat. While the owner was away, Horowitz gave some of the dogs this forbidden treat before asking the owners back into the room. In some trials the owners were told that their dog had eaten the forbidden treat; in others, they were told their dog had behaved properly and left the treat alone. What the owners were told, however, often did not correlate with reality.
This study sheds new light on the natural human tendency to interpret animal behavior in human terms. Anthropomorphisms compare animal behavior to human behavior, and if there is some superficial similarity, then the animal behavior will be interpreted in the same terms as superficially similar human actions. This can include the attribution of higher-order emotions such as guilt or remorse to the animal.

Johne’s disease (pronounced yo-knees) is a contagious, chronic and usually fatal bacterial infection that mainly infects the small intestine of such ruminants as cattle, sheep and goats as well as farm-raised deer, elk, llamas, alpaca, bison and zoological wildlife.

Until now, the only way to prevent the disease was to identify and cull infected animals and then prevent the spread of the disease with management changes. The Cornell team identified and prepared the antigen necessary for the vaccine development. Their antigen is licensed to the Biotechnology Research and Development Corp.

Johne’s disease is caused by the Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, a hardy bacterium known to survive for up to a year in the outside environment, and related to the agents of leprosy and tuberculosis. Found worldwide, the bacterium causes a thickening of the intestinal wall that blocks the normal absorption of food. Infected animals eat normally but cannot absorb any nutrients, which results in wasting and death.

Scientists at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine have developed a vaccine that prevents Johne’s disease, a condition that leads to $220 million to $250 million in losses annually to the U.S. dairy industry. The breakthrough will be published in the January 2009 issue of the journal Vaccine.

The ESAVS Certificate of Small Animal Veterinary Practice is granted by the ESAVS of the University of Luxemburg, complying with the rules and regulations laid down by the Ministry of Higher Education of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg.

It offers structured formal education to veterinarians seeking to become competent small animal practitioners and promotes continuous life-long professional development in the field of small animal veterinary medicine.

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Here are some wonderfully creative ads that should make you sit up and take notice if you pass by.

It is no wonder that a large portion of all funny and creative content actually comes from ads and commercials. Full list can be found here

Good Widgets follow a strict bad widget non-proliferation policy. The widgets are nurtured and given the proper care to ensure maximum goodness. Made from only the finest of technologies, the widgets exceed even high expectations. If you have a website, blog, social network page or heck even email you can share your customized widgets with the world. They have Good Widgets standing by, so Sign Up now!

Good widgets is a really neat widget service. Quite a few photo sharing widgets are out there, but the style and simplicity of Goodwidgets’ selection makes your photo galleries look good

A sets of 10 high-quality vector illustrations, created with Adobe Illustrator and available as .eps source files. These illustrations were created by Designious.com

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Blogger is a very powerful platform to publish your blog. It’s free and with some features which you can customize how you prefer, without limits. Antonio Lupetti illustrates some tips which can help you to improve your Blogger template to design a professional layout for your blog. Check this awesome post

Veterinary Assistant Needed. AAHA accredited hospital has an immediate opening for a full time, experienced veterinary assistant in Richmond VA. They have an excellent client who want the best medicine available for their pet. High quality medicine and individual patient care are stressed over volume. If you are outgoing, pay attention to details, a team player, and always strive for excellence, we are the practice for you. Very Competitive pay with great benefits offered. Find more vet jobs at http://bestvetstore.com/vetjobs/

What makes a veterinarian a “specialist”, and should your pet be seen by one?

• must first earn an undergraduate degree, which takes 4 years
• must undergo additional extensive training after vet school graduation
• must undergo additional extensive training after vet school clinical experience
• publish a clinical case or research findings in journal articles

How does one arrange to see a veterinary specialist? In many cases, your veterinarian will suggest a referral to a specialist if the case is a difficult one. Some speciality practices only work with referrals, meaning cases sent in by veterinarians; other specialty practices will see new patients directly, no referral needed.

Nowadays, broadband connections are widespread amongst the internet. Finally, video can be effectively added to website. But which format to go for? (Flash!). And how to get it done?

Video quality of the different formats widely vary. MPG compression is quite bad, a thing from the past. Regular FLV, WMV and MP4 have a similar, decent quality/ file size performance. Quicktime 7 introduced a superior new codec (H.264) in 2004, which is used in MP4 and MOV files. Flash Player 8 introduced a similar impressive new codec, the ON2 VP6. And the latest Windows Media (version 10) has the excellent VC-1 codec. What does this mean? If you use one of these newer codecs you get great video quality at small file sizes, but since the software is less widely adopted, it’s possible that your visitors first need to upgrade their plugin. But, The JW Player could do it better…