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The objective of this study was to quantify the farm gate nitrogen (N) offset potential of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.; PRG) white clover (Trifolium repens L.; WC) swards by comparing the herbage and milk production from dairy farmlets that were simulations of full farming systems. A study was established where 120 cows were randomly assigned to 4 farmlets of 10.9 ha (stocking rate: 2.75 cow/ha), composed of 20 paddocks each. Cows were fed 526 kg of DM of concentrate on average each year. The 4 grazing treatments were PRG-only at 150 or 250 kg of N/ha and PRG-WC at 150 or 250 kg of N/ha. Cows remained in their treatment group for an entire grazing season and were re-randomized as they calved across treatments each year. As cows calved in the spring as standard practice in Ireland, they were rotationally grazed from early February both day and night (weather permitting) to mid-November, to a target postgrazing sward height of 4.0 cm. Mean sward WC content was 18.1% and 15.4% for the 150 and 250 kg of N/ha PRG-WC treatments, respectively over the 3-yr period. When WC was included, lowering the N rate did not reduce pregrazing yield, pregrazing height, or herbage removed, but those factors decreased significantly when WC was absent. Total annual herbage DM production was 13,771, 15,242, 14,721, and 15,667 kg of DM/ha for PRG-only swards receiving 150 or 250 kg of N/ha and PRG-WC swards receiving 150 or 250 kg of N/ha, respectively. In addition, when WC was present, compressed postgrazing sward heights were lower (4.10 vs. 4.21 cm) and herbage allowance (approximately 17 kg/cow feed allocation per cow per day) higher than the high-N control (+ 0.7 kg of DM/cow per day). There was a significant increase in milk production, both per cow and per hectare, when WC was included in PRG swards. Over the 3-yr study, cows grazing PRG-WC had greater milk (+304 kg) and milk solids (+31 kg of fat + protein) yields than cows grazing PRG-only swards. This significant increase in milk production suggests that the inclusion of WC in grazing systems can be effectively used to increase milk production per cow and per hectare and help offset nitrogen use. This result shows the potential to increase farm gate N use efficiency and reduce the N surplus compared with PRG-dominant sward grazing systems receiving 250 kg of N/ha, without negatively affecting milk solids yield or herbage production, thus increasing farm profit by €478/ha. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic aerobic exercise lowers blood pressure (BP), peripheral resistance and cardiac work, and is used widely in antihypertensive and cardiac rehabilitation programmes. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the cardiovascular benefits of training would occur progressively over several weeks and would diminish over a similar time course on termination of training. In all, 17 young, healthy men undertook a 4-week programme of cycle ergometry (30 min at 60% VO2peak 3–4 times/week) and 13 subjects matched for age, body mass index and fitness acted as controls. Resting BP and rate-pressure product (RPP) had fallen significantly after only 1 week's training and reached a nadir after 2 weeks training. At this time, BP had fallen from 121±7/66±6 to 110±5/57±7 mmHg and resting RPP had fallen from 85±10 to 71±9 (mmHg (beats min−1))−2 (P<0.001 each). In parallel, resting forearm conductance had risen from 0.026±0.010 to 0.052±0.029 (ml min−1) 100 ml−1 mmHg−1 and peak reactive hyperaemia following 3 min brachial artery occlusion was increased from 0.105±0.031 to 0.209±0.041 (ml min−1) 100 ml−1 mmHg−1 (P<0.001 each). No significant further circulatory changes occurred over weeks 3–4 of training. On cessation of training, all values returned to pretraining levels within between 1 (SBP, RPP, vascular conductance) and 2 (DBP, MAP, heart rate, reactive hyperaemia) weeks. The results indicate that the optimal cardiovascular benefits of moderate exercise occur rapidly. At least with short training programmes, the benefits regress once training stops just as quickly as they appeared.Journal of Human Hypertension (2006) 20, 193–200. doi:10.1038/sj.jhh.1001970; published online 5 January 2006 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]