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• Three commercial botanical feed additives did not show significant effects on the parameters studied. • Cohen's size effect indicated a strong response of all treatments on egg excretion. • Only mugwort treatment showed a high Cohen's d on larval development. • Anthelmintic efficacy of each treatments was less than 39 %. The increasing emergence of anthelmintic-resistant parasitic isolates prompts us to reassess the management of intestinal strongylosis in horses. Additionally, societal demand is shifting toward reducing the use of chemical treatments, aligning with environmentally-friendly practices and the exploration of natural alternatives. In this context, we provide an initial view of the antiparasitic activity and the effect on immune circulating blood cells of three commercialized plant-based feed additives in ponies. Three treatments, based either on mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), echinacea (Echinacea purpurea) or curcumin (Curcuma longa) were administrated to 18 (six per treatment) Welsh female ponies naturally infected with cyathostomins to mimic their practical use in farming conditions. Another group of six untreated ponies was used as a control. Fecal egg count (FEC), the larval development percentage and the number of red blood cells, lymphocytes, monocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils and basophils were measured the first and the last day of each treatment, and compared with those characterizing the control group. None of the three treatments showed a significant effect on the studied parameters. Moreover, the efficacy of treatments, measured from the FEC reduction compared to the control group, was weak (≤ 38.6 %). Therefore, these results do not support the practical use of these additives in equine farming, even if the determination of Cohen's d values associated with the three treatments revealed some incidences on FEC and blood immune cell counts, as well as on larval development for mugwort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2008.05.001 Byline: S. Michel (a), N. Perrot (b), F. Vanderbeck (c) Keywords: Knapsack problem; Fixed cost; Setup; Variable upper bound; Branch-and-bound Abstract: Knapsack problems with setups find their application in many concrete industrial and financial problems. Moreover, they also arise as subproblems in a Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition approach to more complex combinatorial optimization problems, where they need to be solved repeatedly and therefore efficiently. Here, we consider the multiple-class integer knapsack problem with setups. Items are partitioned into classes whose use implies a setup cost and associated capacity consumption. Item weights are assumed to be a multiple of their class weight. The total weight of selected items and setups is bounded. The objective is to maximize the difference between the profits of selected items and the fixed costs incurred for setting-up classes. A special case is the bounded integer knapsack problem with setups where each class holds a single item and its continuous version where a fraction of an item can be selected while incurring a full setup. The paper shows the extent to which classical results for the knapsack problem can be generalized to these variants with setups. In particular, an extension of the branch-and-bound algorithm of Horowitz and Sahni is developed for problems with positive setup costs. Our direct approach is compared experimentally with the approach proposed in the literature consisting in converting the problem into a multiple choice knapsack with pseudo-polynomial size. Author Affiliation: (a) ISEL-LMAH, Universite du Havre, Quai Frissard, BP 1137, 76063 Le Havre Cedex, France (b) Orange Labs, recherche and developpement, 38-40 rue General Leclerc, 92794 Issy-Les-Moulineaux Cedex 9, France (c) Institut de Mathematiques de Bordeaux, Universite Bordeaux 1, 351 Cours de la Liberation, F-33405 Telence Cedex, France Article History: Received 30 April 2007; Accepted 1 May 2008

Objective: To retrospectively review the causes of categorization errors using O-RADS-MRI score and to determine the presumptive causes of these misclassifications. Methods: EURAD database was retrospectively queried to identify misclassified lesions. In this cohort, 1194 evaluable patients with 1502 pelvic masses (277 malignant / 1225 benign lesions) underwent standardized MRI to characterize adnexal masses with histology or 2 years' follow-up as a reference standard. An expert radiologist reviewed cases with two junior radiologists and lesions termed misclassified if malignant lesion was scored ≤ 3, a benign lesion was scored ≥ 4, the site of origin was incorrect, or a non-adnexal mass was incorrectly categorized as benign or malignant. Results: There were 139 / 1502 (9.2%) misclassified masses in 116 women including 109 adnexal and 30 non-adnexal masses. False-negative cases corresponded to 16 borderline or invasive malignant adnexal masses rated score ≤ 3 (16 / 139, 11.5%). False-positive cases corresponded to 88 benign masses were rated score 4 (67 / 139, 48.2%) or 5 (18 / 139,12.9%) or considered suspicious non-adnexal lesions (3 / 139, 2.2%). Misclassifications were only due to origin error in 12 adnexal masses (8 benign, 4 malignant) (8.6%, 12 / 139) and 23 non-adnexal masses (18 benign, 5 malignant,16.5%, 23 / 139) perceived respectively as non-adnexal and adnexal masses. Interpretive error (n = 104), failure to recognize technical insufficient exams (n = 9), and perceptual errors (n = 4) were found. Most interpretive was due to misinterpretation of solid tissue or incorrect assignment of mass origin. Eighty-four out of 139 cases were correctly reclassified by the readers with strict adherence to the score rules. Conclusion: Most errors were due to misinterpretation of solid tissue or incorrect assignment of mass origin. Key Points: • Prospective assignment of O-RADS-MRI score resulted in misclassification of 9.25% of sonographically indeterminate pelvic masses. • Most errors were interpretive (74.8%) due to misinterpretation of solid tissue as defined by the lexicon or incorrect assignment of mass origin. • Pelvic inflammatory disease is a common source of misclassification (8.9%) (12 / 139). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]