Terri O'Sullivan, DVM, PhD
I am looking forward with great anticipation to the 2014 volume of JSHAP. We have an interesting line-up of manuscripts planned for the early issues, and the year promises to be filled with new ideas to move swine health and production forward in this fast-paced world of ours. The journal’s success remains possible due to the continued support of authors, reviewers, the editorial board, the industry support council, the staff in the AASV office, and the journal staff. Thank you for all of your hard work in 2013.
To keep up with the electronic world, the journal is now available as a single PDF file to download for reading on your iPad or Android phone. It was with the support of the AASV Board of Directors and the hard work of our AASV Webmaster, David Brown, that this has been made possible. Future issues will be provided in this format, and we are interested in your comments and thoughts on the feature. But please don’t “text-and-drive” or “JSHAP-and-drive.” We hope you enjoy this accessibility.
In each issue we publish a photo of a commercial swine barn or pigs on the front cover, as well as on the back cover. We aim to use photos that are submitted by our readers. The photo on the cover of this issue is one that I took last winter almost exactly 1 year ago. Tina Smith, our graphic artist, was asking for some nice cold winter photos for our stock supply. So I took it upon myself to get a picture of a wintery pig-barn scene. It may not be obvious in the photo, but it was certainly cold that morning when I got out of my truck to get in a better position for the shot. I looked at my truck thermometer, in fact, and it was -30°C (approximately -22°F, which is cold no matter what unit of measure you use). The student travelling with me thought I was a bit crazy…yes, perhaps…, but I felt committed to getting a photo for Tina. Our winter photo supply is still lean, and so this winter I encourage you to get out of your trucks and take some shots for the journal. It is actually kind of fun to see your own photo in print. And then you can tell the story of how you hiked through a snowbank to get that perfect image for JSHAP.
A few tips for a successful photo for the cover of JSHAP
Please ensure that the photos do not include people, and your digital images must be 300 dpi to accommodate the requirements of print media. You will need to set your digital camera or cell phone to take the largest image size available. This means that you will use the quality or compression setting which allows you to store the smallest number of images on the memory card. I actually have my cellphone settings JSHAP-photo ready! If the camera will save a TIF file, then select that option. Please do not be tempted to resize, crop, rotate, or color-correct the image prior to submission to the journal. Just send us the original image. Please send the images by e-mail attachment to tina@aasv.org. Tina will also need to know your name, affiliation, and the approximate location of the image, or other details that you would like to submit which describe the image. Perhaps a description along the line of “The JSHAP editor asked us to take photos so I walked through howling wind in -40°F (exaggeration helps) up a hill (both ways) to take this photo of a pig barn.” But don’t despair if you are not hardy enough to tackle this cold winter task, as we also need spring, summer, and autumn images. Get your cameras or cell phones out – we look forward to seeing your photos!
Terri O’Sullivan, DVM, PhD Executive Editor