Randy Shaver, PhD, PAS, Dipl. ACAS-Animal Nutrition 

It is a pleasure to serve as your president. My term is quickly nearing the halfway point, so it is time for a brief update.

Marit Arana, our past president, is chairing a Strategic Planning Committee composed of Ken Cummings, Bill Braman, Andy Cole, Keith Lusby, Jeff DeFrain, and myself. Arana is leading the committee’s development of an online survey of the ARPAS membership. Early next year, you will receive information about the survey. Please take some time to thoughtfully complete the survey questionnaire—we value your input and need it to make the planning process worthwhile for the organization and continue the success of ARPAS into the future!

Darrell Johnson, our past-past president, is chairing a Foundation Committee composed of Ken Cummings, Bill Braman, Andy Cole, Carl Hunt, Moe Bakke, Dana Tomlinson, Marit Arana, and myself. Johnson is leading the committee’s development of bylaws, fund-use guidelines, and fund-raising ideas for the recently established ARPAS Foundation.

President-Elect Bill Braman and his Program Committee have been coordinating topics and speakers for the Annual Symposium at the 2010 Joint Annual Meeting in Denver.

Just a reminder, check out the updated ARPAS Web site (http://www.arpas.org/) for online CEU submission and a listing of conferences that have been preapproved by ARPAS for CEUs. The Governing Council will hold our annual midyear conference call in January to discuss the ongoing activities of the organization and to begin our look forward to Denver in July.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve as your president! Please let me know of any ideas that emerge or suggestions that you might have. I can be reached by phone at (608) 263-3491 or by e-mail at rdshaver@wisc.edu.

Kenneth Cummings, PhD, PAS, Dipl ACAN 

December is the month we start winding down those activities that are controlled by our annual calendar. We hope we have completed them or at least come up with a good reason why we can put them off until the new year. Some things are final, however, such as our tax year (for most of us) or fulfilling our last New Year’s resolution.
Other things may have a little leeway. Your ARPAS dues are payable before year end, but we won’t kick you out on January 1 if you haven’t paid them. Your CEUs for all those meetings attended in 2009 need to be recorded, but if you don’t get that done until January, that is okay also. This is just a gentle reminder from the ARPAS staff that we don’t need your holiday card or a present, only your dues and your CEUs. By the way, encourage your peers to become members of ARPAS, and also remind your boss, if you work for a company, that sponsorship of ARPAS is a highly visual way for your company to foster professionalism in animal science and show recognition of you as a professional animal scientist.
As for New Year’s resolutions, resolve to start an ARPAS chapter in your geographic area if one does not exist. Chapters are the way to insure that every member has a link to ARPAS, which cannot be achieved by having only national membership. Several chapters are renewing their efforts to have meetings and programs accessible to all ARPAS members they serve. Your ARPAS Governing Council leadership will also review the ARPAS bylaws to see if changes are needed to accommodate member needs that foster greater chapter involvement.
ARPAS committees and officers are busily working on several significant fronts. The ARPAS Foundation Committee, headed by Past-President Darrell Johnson, is developing guidelines or mini-bylaws for governing the foundation. Past-President Marit Arana has her Strategic Planning Committee working on our long-overdue plan. I am sure you will be contacted for your thoughts on the future direction of ARPAS. As you can tell by this newsletter, the Publications Committee, chaired by Stephen Emanuele, has been busy as well. This committee is responsible for all ARPAS publications as well as the newsletter.
ARPAS is your organization, and the basic organizational mechanism for work is by committee. We have the committees listed on our Web site, and new members are appointed annually by your president-elect. Please consider service to ARPAS for the near future by letting President-Elect Bill Braman know of your willingness to serve on one of these committees.
Last, our very capable and important administrative assistant Susie Rahn is on disability leave to have hip replacement and a knee operation. We wish her well as she faces these major events. In the meantime, ARPAS is well served at FASS by Yvona Vlach and Debi Seymour. Debi has worked closely with Susie and is very aware of our activities and will be working closely with Yvona to insure a smooth transition of services. Please contact Yvona at YvonaV@assochq.org if you need assistance with CEUs, the exam, dues, or any of the administrative activities of your ARPAS membership.

Carl Hunt, PhD, PAS, Dipl ACAN, ARPAS 

Our organization continues to do quite well financially. We have reached the point in our fiscal year when we are beginning to receive new revenues from 2010 dues. The good news is that we reached this point of the year without dipping into our reserves—a good sign that ARPAS is living within its means. The last financial reports, dated September 31, indicate that we are on pace with all major budgeted revenues and expenditures. Also, as you might expect, unrealized investment gains of our equity investments have begun a rebound from the recent downturn in financial markets. Look for a more detailed report in the January newsletter, but until then, be assured that all is well with ARPAS finances!

Marit Arana, PhD, PAS, Dipl ACAS 

At the request of President Shaver, I am chairing the Strategic Plan/Vision Committee for ARPAS. ARPAS has not had a long-range planning committee since the 2003 Business Planning Committee created a strategy to get us out of our financial troubles. The planning committee is currently creating an online survey that we will send to the membership in early 2010. Your input and feedback is greatly needed and appreciated during this process.

Past-Presidents Green and Johnson and I are also at work on the Nominating Committee for 2010. We will be finding candidates for president-elect, western director, and northeast director for the next election cycle.

If you have questions or comments about any of these items, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me at marit.arana@algilbert.com.

D. Wayne Kellogg, PhD, PAS 

The 25th volume of The Professional Animal Scientist (PAS) was completed recently with 815 pages. This issue was larger than the 684 and 742 pages in the previous two issues. Review papers were published on “Omega-3 Fatty Acids in Metabolism, Health, and Nutrition and for Modified Animal Product Foods,” “Limit-feeding with Altered Forage-to-Concentrate Levels in Dairy Heifers,” “Transport Losses in Market Weight Pigs,” and “Reproductive Traits and Their Heritabilities in Beef Cattle.” In addition, there were 77 research articles and 16 case studies that were printed during 2009 (compared with 57 and 21, respectively, in 2008). The average time required was 51 days to the first decision and 78 days from submission to the final decision (acceptance or rejection) of a manuscript.

The PAS journal seeks articles from a broad base and includes experiments that relate to applied problems in the animal sciences, including dairy, poultry, meat animals, horses, and other species. There were 48 articles concerning the beef industry, 16 articles related to swine, 14 about dairy cattle topics, 5 applied to horses, and 8 articles about general topics or forages. It should be noted that there was increased interest from equine researchers this year.

It is probably worth emphasizing that research papers should be about procedures on important topics that are ready, or nearly ready, for application. Admittedly, applicability is difficult to determine in some cases. Research papers must be based on adequately replicated studies, and this has been the primary cause for rejection of a manuscript. Data on which papers are based must be from original unpublished research, case studies, field trials, scientific literature, or a combination thereof. Data gleaned from the literature are acceptable only if pooled for the purposes of analyzing, summarizing, and interpreting data.

Case studies and technical notes are acceptable when they have unique applications in any area of animal agriculture or a related discipline. These manuscripts should have literature citations, although they are usually more limited and generally more recent than those of technical reviews or original research manuscripts. The topic of the case study can be biological or economic, or it may deal with public or producer attitudes and perceptions.

Letters to the editor, policy, statements, or book reviews from ARPAS members or PAS subscribers will be published in a special section. Letters may offer comments or questions about articles previously published in PAS; technical questions requesting a scientist’s response; or educational notes about new or innovative approaches in teaching, extension, or industry programs.

Betsy Wagner, PhD, PAS 

Renewing your membership with ARPAS includes keeping current with changes and advances in animal science. Members are required to have 16 continuing education units (CEUs) per year, with one CEU generally equivalent to one hour of attendance or participation in an approved activity. Now is the time to check your CEU balance and make any updates from approved meetings you attended since your last CEU update. A list of approved meetings is available on the ARPAS Web site and also in the left-hand navigation bar of this electronic newsletter.

When you log in on the ARPAS Web site, your CEU balance appears below your personal welcome on the left-hand navigation bar. You can also check your CEU approval history by selecting “Your Online CEU History” from the Membership Services drop-down menu.

Members have two ways to submit their CEU updates. Select “CEU Online Submission” from the Membership Services menu and follow the steps to enter your credits earned or go to: http://www.arpas.org/member.asp?view=ceu_meetings

A printable form is also available for downloading and submitting via mail or fax.

James Woodford, PhD, PAS 

The 2010 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Branch of ADSA and Midwestern Section of ASAS will be held March 15–17, 2010, at the Polk County Convention Center in Des Moines, Iowa. The program includes oral and poster scientific sessions, undergraduate student oral and poster competitions, graduate student oral and poster competitions, an Academic Quadrathlon, and a job resource center.

The Midwestern Section Annual Meeting is a traditional exposition of dairy and animal sciences research that supplements the annual FASS meetings held each summer. Informative symposia and invited speakers are also scheduled. A listing of presentations is available on the branch Web site.

Housing information and participating hotels can be found on the Web site, http://adsa.asas.org/midwest/2010/. The deadline for housing registration is February 17, 2010. We hope that you plan on attending the upcoming meeting. Please encourage colleagues and students to attend this important event.

Bill Braman, PhD, PAS, Program Committee Chairman 

ARPAS will sponsor a symposium titled “Nutrition Models—Where Are We Going in the Next Decade” at the 2010 ADSA-ASAS meetings to be held in July 2010 in Denver, Colorado. Dairy and beef models are used every day in the feed manufacturing industry, nutrition business, and research. Significant progress has been made with research in several of these areas since the NRC Nutrient Requirements for Beef Cattle (1996) and Dairy Cattle (2001) were released.

The ARPAS Symposium is an extension of ideas from the informal Animal Science Modeler’s Group that is held every year on the Saturday before the ADSA-ASAS meetings. This symposium will address research and field models and provide a timely update for nutritionists in academia and industry.

The planned three-hour symposium will address the following topics:
• The roles of models in animal nutrition
• Nitrogen recycling in ruminants
• The variable efficiencies in postabsorptive amino acid utilization
• VFA production and absorption and effect on energy availability
• Predicting dry matter intake responses
• Comparisons of models with whole animal calorimetry


ARPAS and the Ruminant Symposium Committee are seeking sponsors to support speakers who are not ADSA or ASAS members and international invited speakers. The ARPAS annual business meeting will precede the symposium.

Bill Price, PhD, PAS, Dipl ACAN 

Three meetings have been held since August. Our September speaker was Richard Erdman, professor at the University of Maryland, who spoke on “An American’s Sabbatical Experience: New Science, New Confidence, New Zealand.” Our October speaker was Frank O’Mara, acting director of agriculture research at Teagasc, Ireland: “Teagasc is the agriculture and food development authority in Ireland. Its mission is to support science-based innovation in the agri-food sector and the broader bioeconomy that will underpin profitability, competitiveness and sustainability.” Our November speaker was Laura Hungerford, senior advisor for science policy with FDA-CVM, who spoke on “Emerging Zoonotic Diseases in Livestock.” Monthly meetings are planed for January through March, with an afternoon symposium banquet planned for April.

Ken Cummings has prepared a history of ACAS, and it should be added to our ARPAS Web site in the near future.