Abstract: Discriminative learning abilities were studied in 12 mature, malnourished horses. All horses initially received a condition score (CS) between 2 and 4 on a scale of 1 (poor) to 9 (extremely fat). Then horses were assigned to one of 3 treatments based on their eventual, rehabilitated CS during discrimination testing: thin, CS 1-3; moderate, CS 4-6; and fat, CS 7-9. The discrimination learning task was performed for 14 days with a maximum of 20 trials per day. Daily criterion was set at eight consecutively correct trails. Total trials to first criteria and total errors during testing were recorded. Analysis of variance showed that treatments did not differ (P>0.05) in total trials to first criterion, however horses on the fat treatment did have higher total error scores (P<0.05) than horses on the thin or moderate treatments. This difference was probably owing to lack of motivation in the fat treatment horses, rather than to true learning ability differences. The sex of the horse did not significantly affect either learning score.

Abstract: Temperature-dependent EPR and temperature-jump measurements have been carried out, in order to examine the high-spin to low-spin transition of aquomethemogobin (pH 6.0). Relaxation rates and equilibrium constants could be determined as a function of temperature. As a reaction mechanism for the high-spin to low-spin transition, the binding of N epsilon of His E7 to the heme iron had been proposed; the same mechanism had been suggested for the ms-effect, found in temperature-jump experiments on aquomethemoglobin. A comparison of the thermodynamic quantities, deduced form the measurements in this paper, gives evidence that indeed the same reaction is investigated in both cases. Our results and most of the findings of earlier studies on the spin-state transitions of aquomethemoglobin, using susceptibility, optical, or EPR measurements, can be explained by the transition of methemoglobin with H2O as ligand (with high-spin state at all temperatures) and methemoglobin with ligand N epsilon of His E7 (with a low-spin ground state). Thermal fluctuations of large amplitude have to be postulated for the reaction to take place, so this reaction may be understood as a probe for the study of protein dynamics.

Abstract: Book Description
The success of the first edition of Generalized Linear Models led to the updated Second Edition, which continues to provide a definitive unified, treatment of methods for the analysis of diverse types of data. Today, it remains popular for its clarity, richness of content and direct relevance to agricultural, biological, health, engineering, and other applications. The authors focus on examining the way a response variable depends on a combination of explanatory variables, treatment, and classification variables. They give particular emphasis to the important case where the dependence occurs through some unknown, linear combination of the explanatory variables. The Second Edition includes topics added to the core of the first edition, including conditional and marginal likelihood methods, estimating equations, and models for dispersion effects and components of dispersion. The discussion of other topics-log-linear and related models, log odds-ratio regression models, multinomial response models, inverse linear and related models, quasi-likelihood functions, and model checking-was expanded and incorporates significant revisions. Comprehension of the material requires simply a knowledge of matrix theory and the basic ideas of probability theory, but for the most part, the book is self-contained. Therefore, with its worked examples, plentiful exercises, and topics of direct use to researchers in many disciplines, Generalized Linear Models serves as ideal text, self-study guide, and reference.