An unusual cause of traumatic reticulitis/reticuloperitonitis in a herd of Swiss dairy cows nearby an airport.

This report describes the findings in five cows from one dairy herd, in which all 31 cows were slaughtered or euthanised because of traumatic reticuloperitonitis. All the cows had numerous thin sharp pieces of metal attached to a magnet in the reticulum, giving the magnet a hedgehog-like appearance. Investigation revealed that the cattle had eaten forage harvested from a field immediately adjacent to an airport. The snow was cleared from the airport runways with a machine that had a wire-bristle brush attachment. Mechanical wear resulted in numerous wire bristles breaking and these were blown with the snow onto the field in question. The wire then became accidentally incorporated into the hay and grass silage at harvest the next summer and was ingested by the cattle in the fall and winter. To prevent further cases, approximately 200 tonnes of hay and grass silage contaminated with wire were discarded and 30 hectares of the 50-hectare field were cultivated and re-sown. The wire-bristles of the snow plow were replaced with plastic bristles. The cost of this and the livestock loss was several hundred thousand Swiss Francs.

Random-number generation and the menstrual cycle: preliminary evidence for a premenstrual alteration of frontal lobe functioning.

20 women (M age = 30.4 yr.) were given the "Mental Dice Task" (randomization of the numbers from 1 to 6) once during the preovulatory and once during the premenstrual phases of their menstrual cycles. In addition, for both test sessions a premenstrual-symptom score was assessed reflecting self-rated severity of cognitive, affective, and somatic complaints during the preovular and the premenstrual phases. In comparison to series of real dice throws, the Mental Dice sequences of all the subjects showed a relative lack of repetitions and an excess of counting at both times of testing. Counting bias was significantly enhanced in the sequences generated during the premenstrual testing and the size of this bias was positively correlated with the self-rated severity of premenstrual symptoms. Pronounced counting despite the instruction to randomize was interpreted as reflecting decreased ability to suppress task-irrelevant cues and indicating a relative impairment of frontal lobe functioning. Resistance of the Mental Dice Task towards expectation biases renders a sociopsychological interpretation of these results improbable. We conjecture that, like other cognitive processes, frontal lobe functions also fluctuate with hormonal changes.

[Diagnosis of cerebrovascular diseases in the elderly]. / Dijagnostika cerebrovascularnih bolesti kod starnih osoba.

Modern diagnostical methods and treatment of geriatric patients depend on the course and nature of cerebrovascular diseases. They require special individual therapy. The incidence of stroke increases with the age of a patient. This fact can be explained by the effect of risk factors associated with the statistically significant frequency of cardiac arrhythmias and heart decompensation. The loss of consciousness, convulsions and metabolic disorders predominate in the clinical picture of old people. The evolution of flexion contractions on paretic and non-paretic sides is usually faster and easier in this population. Taking into account the general condition of old people and frequent existence of other diseases in them, the diagnostic procedure should give priority to the treatment with non-invasive methods.