DURATION AND EFFECTIVENESS OF LIFETIME USE OF DAIRY COWS DEPENDENDING ON THEIR FATHER'S COUNTRY ORIGIN
Productive longevity is a very important feature, which is determined by a combination of genotype factors in specific environments. It is known that in recent decades to improve of productive qualities of domestic dairy cattle, the Holstein breeders of different breeds are used. Such measures, although allowed to increase the milk productivity of cows significantly, however, led to reduction in the duration of their productive use. Therefore, the purpose of our research was to study the duration and effectiveness of lifetime use of dairy cows, depending on the country of origin of their father. The research was conducted on animals of Holstein (n = 2902), Ukrainian Black-and-White (n = 14876) and Ukrainian Red-and-White (n = 2176) breeding in various regions of Ukraine.
It was established that the controllable number of Holstein cows came from 116 bulls from five different countries. Cows originated from the bulls of Hungarian selection had the longest life and lactation. Cows that came from Canadian bulls had the best life-long yields and life-long number of milk fat. Cows from French bulls were characterized by the worst indicators of productive longevity. Among the descendants of the German bulls, the daughters of the following bulls: Lord 661287, Trend 2761400782690, Bg. Rodeo 27642626161 and Ingo 27677179331, American selection – daughters of B. Astronomer 2160438 and Bob Hubby 2109267, Canadian – daughters of Rock 373840409 and H. R. Artist 6284191, Hungarian – daughters of V.Vilmos 3101733688 and E.Samba 3035115974 and French – daughters of Brico 5794006324 had the best indicators of the duration and efficiency of lifelong use.
The studied population of cows of Ukrainian Black-and-White dairy breed came from 167 bulls from eight countries. The largest number of daughters was obtained from domestic bulls (34.6%) and German (29.5%) selection. However, cows of Russian selection had the highest rates of longevity, productive use, lactation, the number of lactations per life, life expectancy and lifetime of milk fat. Daughter Valentina 373840175, Matadora 373840109, Piclenda 373880102 and Tigris 373880127 were lactured more than 4 lactations and had lifelong yield of over 25,000 kg, among the descendants of Russian bulls. Of the descendants of the domestic selection the daughters of the Abrykos 5806 lactated in an average of 6.2 lactation, and their lifetime yields were 38,401 kg. By the number of lactations per life and life-long yields of the daughters of the German bulls, the leader was Presbyter 27621490100, the American – Bob Hubby 2109267 and T. D. Fiasco 1709950, the Canadian – B. Goldgate 6387868 and B. Regensy 394223, the Netherlands – G. Tristan 3021652032 and Baneliai 243931215, Hungarian – E. Samba 3035115974 and P. Selvichar 3023006464.
The controlled population of cows of Ukrainian Red-and-White dairy breed came from 69 bulls from five countries. More than 50% of cows of this breed are derived from bulls of German selection. However, the longest duration of productive use and the greatest lifelong yields had daughters of bulls from Canada and Ukrainian selection. Among the descendants of the domestic bulls, according to the indicators of lifetime productivity, the daughters of Khlor 2052 differ markedly. They lacted in average 7.7 lactations, and lifetime longevity was 41,000 kg. Among the descendants of Canadian bulls, the best of their productive use and their lifelong yields had daughters of V. Texel 393522, V.N.Dan 5510544 and Inhibitor 402151, German – Roman 660886883 and Tumpi 112367468, and American – Addikshn 17143107.
The influence of the father's country origin on the longevity, productive use, lactation and the number of lactations per life, depending on the breed and the indicator, was within the range of 1.4–17.1, on the indicators of lifetime productivity – within 1.5–9.7%, and the influence of the father on these indicators was, respectively, 9.9–19.9 and 11.4–29.3%.
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In order to better understand the history and the caracteristics of the Amarone it is important to focus on the roots of its production: the drying of the grapes.
The drying of the grapes, Appassimento in Italian, is a very ancient wine making technique, still used today to make many dessert wines.
Uncertain are the reasons why such a particular wine making technique, which goes back to 3500 years ago, devoloped.
It was commonly believed that drying grapes helped in increasing sugar content of grapes that, due to the high production caused by Pergola (canopy) vine growing system, and by the colder climate of the past, was not enough to obtain a quality wine. There is some truth in this theory. Nevertheless very recent researches on the DNA of Corvina grape, the most important grape varietals in the blend that constitues all Valpolicella wines, discovered that stress caused by the dehydration, activates portions of the genes in Corvina that do not activate in other grape varietals, devoloping unique flavours and aromas in the resulting wine. This is the proof of how Valpolicella grapes evolved adapting not only to a very specific territory, but also to the traditional wine making techniques that develped in that territory.
The Drying Process
All the bunches, harvested between September and October, selected for the production of the Amarone have to dry for four months. In order to avoid mould and rotting during the drying process, bunches have to be perfectly healty, without any bruise and berries loosely packed to allow internal air circulation. All these elements must be taken into consideration when selcting grapes during harvest which is strictly done by hand, and therefore requires experienced staff.
After the first selection, bunches have to be laid on a single layer and all in the same direction on river reeds racks, wood or plastic boxes. Like for many other traditional and manual activities, also for the slection of the Amarone grapes, people willing to learn and continue the tradition, often women, are becoming fewer and fewer.
Especially during the first few weeks of drying, when bunches are still full of water and outside temperature is still high, it is important to check grapes every day, removing berries or bunches that develop mould.
Few wineries are still using the traditional racks made of water reeds or bamboo, piled one on top of the other in old garrets once used also for the silkworm breeding. Water reeds have a better humidity absorption and with their round shape offer a smaller surface contact to grape berries increasing air circulation. Others producers prefer to use modern wooden or plastic boxes, which can be filled directly in the vineyards, avoiding the excessive handling of grapes.
Boxes or racks are stored in loft above wineries or in specifically build houses called fruttaio, where they rest until January or February. Many wineries use still a totally natural drying system, leaving open the windows in lofts so that the wind can help the drying process. Others use temperature and humidity controlled rooms. The perfume in the drying rooms between September and January is something that is simply to hard to describe and must be experienced with a tour in an Amarone winery. Autumn is the best period of the year for a wine tour in Valpolicella.
Valpolicella Wine Tours
The best time of the year to visit Valpolicella with one of our wine tours is Autumn, around the end of September, begninning of October. Not only you will have the chance to experience the hectic atmoshpeare of the harvest, but it will be also possible to visit the fruttaio, the loft where the grapes for the production of Amarone are dried with the Appassimento technique. No words can describe the wonderful perfume of drying grapes.
For further information about our wine tours in Valpolicella you can send us an e-mail at email@example.com or call +39 389 983 5269.


The international history of the Brothers
When John Baptist de La Salle founded the Brothers in France in 1679, he had only a handful of men to help him. At the time of his death in 1719 there were 100 Brothers in 22 schools, teaching 5000 students throughout France. Today over 5,000 Brothers and many thousands of lay partners continue in the De La Salle tradition. They minister to more than 900,000 students in universities, schools and other educational and welfare institutions in over 80 countries around the world.
The Brothers history in Australasia
Twelve De La Salle Brothers from Ireland and France arrived in Sydney on 6th January 1906. Within a month they opened De La Salle College Armidale, in country New South Wales. The French Brothers had difficulty adjusting to the Australian culture and left just three months later. Fortunately in 1909, six other Irishmen volunteered for the Australian mission. From Armidale the Brothers expanded throughout Australia and to New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. In 1946, the Brothers opened a Teachers’ Training College in Papua New Guinea, followed by a number of primary and secondary schools. The first two Lasallian schools in New Zealand began in 1953. Currently, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia all have Lasallian schools. In 2012, Pakistan officially became part of the Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea District. In Pakistan the Brothers care for and educate some of the poorest young people in the country.
Where are the Brothers now?
From their beginnings in Armidale in 1906, the Brothers now work in 20 different locations across three countries. The Brothers Lasallian Mission in Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Papua New Guinea encompass twenty-six schools, involving more than 800 co-workers in touch with more than 10,000 young people.
In addition the Brothers are also responsible for the welfare work of BoysTown, Australia’s largest children’s charity which founded the Kids Help Line and other initiatives, and the Lasallian Foundation which funds projects for disadvantaged youth across Asia-Pacific. As recently as 2005, the Lasallian Foundation was established to fund developmental and emergency relief projects in the Asia Pacific Region.


What makes us who we are?
It is a clumsy sentence, but I recently asked my students that question because it makes up the claim for their persuasive essay. While it is a graded assignment for them, it is a complex question for me (and for anybody, really). I think there are a lot of answers to this question, but complete responses can really be found in the pages of just about every poem or book we read.
I mean, think about it, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster learns that life is loneliness and ostracism without friendship and love; so, we could conclude that humans need those things to prosper. Dr. Frankenstein loses his wife, his friends, and his family all due to spontaneous shunning, and, of course, the monster reacts badly. Love and friendship, in this instance, are crucial to our existence.
We can learn that from an author.
We have to reflect as individuals to find answers to complex problems (metacognition), because if we just blunder forward into the future, we will never know what works and what does not; thus, we are doomed to repeat ourselves over and over again. Also, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror every morning to see the person we have become, so that we can either stay the course, or change the stream.
What authors tell us about spirituality
In Banana Yoshimoto’s short story “Newlywed,” found in her collection Lizard, we learn about a young man on a subway transit who refuses to go home to his wife because he is conflicted about a lot of things in his new life. While aboard the bus (and confused), he encounters an old man who morphs into a beautiful woman. This woman, perhaps a reflection of some deep spiritual divisiveness, helps him come to grips with his life.
At the end of the story, the young man realizes that though he is spiritually perplexed, he can continue with his life. Essentially, as it relates to this musing, this epiphany happens to many of us in life, because existence is complicated and often we feel as though we have made the wrong choice, whether that be due to regretful marriages, our treatment of other humans, or the various other reasons we might wake from a dead sleep in the middle of the night.
What authors tell us about our morality
In Frank O’Connor’s “First Confession,” we see a young boy afraid of the punishment ahead of him after acting violently toward his family. His actions are in response to the death of his grandfather and because his grandmother now lives with them. While very much a story about Catholic guilt, “First Confession” wrestles deeply with morality and ethics opposed to Yoshimoto’s spirituality in “Newlywed,” which asks us to question our own goodness outside of spiritual necessity. That is to say, if even in the eyes of God the sinners should be treated kindly, what does that make of our belief in justice and punishment?
Through both works we see that spirituality and morality live in a kind of conjoined stasis. We must have one in order to support the other. Most, if not all, of morality in our society has some amount of hypocrisy tied to it because we live in an unfair and unjust world that is both painful and hard to deal with (our choices and our epiphanies see to that); but our spirituality and understanding of ourselves drive our decision-making process, which means we will either do good things or bad things—or neither.
Putting the two together
Lastly, in Kay Ryan’s “The Fabric of Life,” the author shows the reader that the complexity of life is challenging through a playful poem, and that, yes, we are “loath to continue” slogging through the pain and failure that we have to constantly endure. Through this we can say that the spiritual and moral side of life are the “bee stings” that hurt us, but when we make connections after the fact, our humanity shines through.
Here is the poem:
It is very stretchy.
We know that, even if
many details remain
sketchy. It is complexly
woven. That much too
has pretty well been
proven. We are loath
to continue our lessons
which consist of slaps
as sharp and dispersed
as bee stings from
a smashed nest
when any strand snaps—
hurts working far past
the locus of rupture,
far beyond anything
we would have said
(Kay Ryan | The Fabric of Life)
Humans are complex beasts, but we can take it in stride, considering the density of our choices and our feelings about those choices. In this way, authors help us see ourselves for what we are—humans stuck in an intricate web of spiritual chaos and moral uncertainty trying to make connections to solve those problems. So maybe if we read enough and learn enough about what other’s think (such as authors), we can easily make sense of that confusion when it infects our lives.
O’Connor, Frank. “Traverller’s Samples.” Macmillan, 1951.
Ryan, Kay. “THE FABRIC OF LIFE by Kay Ryan | Poetry Magazine.” Poetry Magazine, 4 Sept. 2021, poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40887/the-fabric-of-life.
Yoshimoto, Banana. “Lizard.” Shinchosha, 1993.


Many calculation made by cosmologists about the universe start with the assumption that it is uniform and is not stretched or distorted. If this assumption turned out to be false, then all such calculations would be invalidated, so is it true?
The idea that it is uniform does not appear to be correct when you consider just how clumpy it appears to be, for example planets orbiting stars and then lots of empty space between stars. Scale up, and you have stars bunched up into galaxies and lots of space between galaxies, but keep scaling up and you reach a point at which the distribution of matter is more or less uniform. This is known as the cosmological principle.
How can you make such a principle?
OK, so think of it this way, since the forces are expected to act uniformly throughout the universe, then we should not find irregularities. Well yes, obviously Earth is not the same as the Sun and obviously the Sun is not the same as a black hole, so clearly at that scale it is not uniform. The universe itself is more akin to foam with clusters of galaxies and voids, but none of that defies basic physics and so the observation is that it is all more or less the same in every direction and there are no weird bumps in the large scale distribution of matter.
Is this testable?
Well basically yes.
If true then no matter where you are in the universe it should look the same and obviously no matter what direction you look, it should look the same.
Is this a new Idea?
Nope, Newton first wrote this down within The Principia (or to give it it’s full name, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)) when he articulated the idea that gravitation was universal and applied to all the planets and stars …
“the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the Sun, … and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other, [God] hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another”
OK, so why are you writing about it now?
The basic idea has been coming under stress, for example observations of large scale structures in the universe, so asking if it is really true is wholly appropriate.
The latest news is that scientists from University College London and Imperial College London tested the basic idea by examining the cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps to see if they could find any patterns that conflicted with the idea that the universe was indeed Uniform. The Imperial college article on the study explains …
The maps were produced using measurements of the CMB taken between 2009 and 2013 by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, providing a picture of the intensity and, for the first time, polarisation (in essence, the orientation) of the CMB across the whole sky.
Previously, scientists had looked for patterns in the CMB map that might hint at a rotating universe. The new study considered the widest possible range of universes with preferred directions or spins and determined what patterns these would create in the CMB.
A universe spinning about an axis, for example, would create spiral patterns, whereas a universe expanding at different speeds along different axes would create elongated hot and cold spots
Dr Stephen Feeney, from the Department of Physics at Imperial, worked with a team led by Daniela Saadeh at University College London to search for these patterns in the observed CMB. The results, published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, show that none were a match, and that the universe is most likely directionless.
If they had discovered that the cosmological principle was wrong, then that would have been huge and would have rippled out into so much that assumes it is true.
Dr Stephen Feeney, from the Department of Physics at Imperial …
“This work is important because it tests one of the fundamental assumptions on which almost all cosmological calculations are based: that the universe is the same in every direction. If this assumption is wrong, and our universe spins or stretches in one direction more than another, we’d have to rethink our basic picture of the universe.
We have put this assumption to its most exacting examination yet, testing for a huge variety of spinning and stretching universes that have never been considered before. When we compare these predictions to the Planck satellite’s latest measurements, we find overwhelming evidence that the universe is the same in all directions”
Lead author Daniela Saadeh from University College London …
“You can never rule it out completely, but we now calculate the odds that the universe prefers one direction over another at just 1 in 121,000. We’re very glad that our work vindicates what most cosmologists assume. For now, cosmology is safe.”
The paper in Physical Review Letters – How Isotropic is the Universe? (Sorry folks, paywall there)
A fundamental assumption in the standard model of cosmology is that the Universe is isotropic on large scales. Breaking this assumption leads to a set of solutions to Einstein’s field equations, known as Bianchi cosmologies, only a subset of which have ever been tested against data. For the first time, we consider all degrees of freedom in these solutions to conduct a general test of isotropy using cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization data from Planck. For the vector mode (associated with vorticity), we obtain a limit on the anisotropic expansion of (σV/H)0<4.7×10−11(95% C.L.), which is an order of magnitude tighter than previous Planck results that used cosmic microwave background temperature only. We also place upper limits on other modes of anisotropic expansion, with the weakest limit arising from the regular tensor mode, (σT,reg/H)0<1.0×10−6(95% C.L.). Including all degrees of freedom simultaneously for the first time, anisotropic expansion of the Universe is strongly disfavored, with odds of 121 000:1 against.