Consumers are concerned about the quality of commercially available eggs. Eggs used in this study were marketed in Portugal and originated from laying hens raised in cages, barns, free-range, organic eggs, and eggs enriched with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), and from native Portuguese breeds. The eggs were analyzed for chemical and physical properties. Results indicated that yolk color was lighter in organic eggs and darker in n-3 PUFA enriched eggs. Eggs from caged hens had lower Haugh units in contrast with organic eggs. Caged hens produced eggs with a higher protein content while organic eggs had the lowest level of protein in the albumen. As might be expected, eggs enriched in n-3 PUFA had the highest n-3 PUFA content. Choosing an egg by its production system or labeling specificities may not be a guarantee of superior product quality. The layer genotype, age, diet, and the quality of the range also may affect egg properties. Due to a different layer diet, enriched eggs seem to be of superior quality.

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Abstract:In standard interval mapping (IM) of quantitative trait loci (QTL), the QTL effect is described by a normal mixture model. When this assumption of normality is violated, the most commonly adopted strategy is to use the previous model after data transformation. However, an appropriate transformation may not exist or may be difficult to find. Also this approach can raise interpretation issues. An interesting alternative is to consider a skew-normal mixture model in standard IM, and the resulting method is here denoted as skew-normal IM. This flexible model that includes the usual symmetric normal distribution as a special case is important, allowing continuous variation from normality to non-normality. In this paper we briefly introduce the main peculiarities of the skew-normal distribution. The maximum likelihood estimates of parameters of the skew-normal distribution are obtained by the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. The proposed model is illustrated with real data from an intercross experiment that shows a significant departure from the normality assumption. The performance of the skew-normal IM is assessed via stochastic simulation. The results indicate that the skew-normal IM has higher power for QTL detection and better precision of QTL location as compared to standard IM and nonparametric IM.

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Objectives To compare the ultrasound characteristics with clinical features, final diagnosis and outcome; and to evaluate the halo size following glucocorticoid treatment in patients with newly diagnosed GCA. Methods Patients with suspected GCA, recruited from an international cohort, had an ultrasound of temporal (TA) and axillary (AX) arteries performed within 7 days of commencing glucocorticoids. We compared differences in clinical features at disease presentation, after 2 weeks and after 6 months, according to the presence or absence of halo sign. We undertook a cross-sectional analysis of the differences in halo thickness using Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Results A total of 345 patients with 6 months follow-up data were included; 226 (65.5%) had a diagnosis of GCA. Jaw claudication and visual symptoms were more frequent in patients with halo sign (P�=0.018 and P�=0.003, respectively). Physical examination abnormalities were significantly associated with the presence of ipsilateral halo (P�<0.05). Stenosis or occlusion on ultrasound failed to contribute to the diagnosis of GCA. During 7 days of glucocorticoid treatment, there was a consistent reduction in halo size in the TA (maximum halo size per patient: r=−0.30, P�=0.001; and all halos r=−0.23, P�<0.001), but not in the AX (P�>0.05). However, the presence of halo at baseline failed to predict future ischaemic events occurring during follow-up. Conclusion In newly diagnosed GCA, TA halo is associated with the presence of ischaemic features and its size decreases following glucocorticoid treatment, supporting its early use as a marker of disease activity, in addition to its diagnostic role.

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