The effects of clipping pregnant ewes at housing and of feeding different basal roughages

1971 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Rutter ◽  
T. R. Laird ◽  
P. J. Broadbent

SUMMARY1. Forty Greyface (Border Leicester ♂ × Blackface ♀) and 40 North Country Cheviot ewes, due to lamb to a Suffolk ram in April 1969, were housed during December 1968 in eight groups of 10 ewes, the breeds being penned separately.2. One pen of each breed received a basal diet of either hay, grass silage or arable silage with a ‘high’ level of concentrate supplementation and one pen of each breed was given hay with a ‘low’ level of concentrate supplementation. Within each pen, five of the 10 ewes were clipped at housing and the other five were clipped in the following June.3. Voluntary intakes of the basal diets declined with advancing stage of pregnancy, particularly for those receiving grass silage. Feed had no differential effects on the performance of the ewes in terms of wool yield, body-weight change, birth weight of lamb per ewe or perinatal lamb mortality.4. The Greyfaces clipped at housing yielded less wool than those Greyfaces clipped in the following June. Time of clipping had no influence on the wool yield of the Cheviots. Wool grades were not affected by time of clipping. Ewes clipped in December performed significantly better than ewes not clipped until June with a higher proportion of ewes producing multiple births (P<0·1), a higher total birth weight of lamb per ewe (P<0·01) and a reduced perinatal mortality of the lambs (P<0·05). The total effect of this improved performance was that the clipped ewes produced 53 ·5 % more live lambs than those ewes not clipped until the following June.

2001 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. D. SCOLLAN ◽  
A. SARGEANT ◽  
A. B. McALLAN ◽  
M. S. DHANOA

Previous studies have demonstrated that protein sources which are primarily degraded in the rumen such as rapeseed meal or soyabean meal may be as effective as a less rumen degradable protein source such as fishmeal in supporting higher levels of animal performance in young steers fed on grass silage. However, the response to type of protein supplement is likely to be influenced by the composition of the basal diet. This study has examined the effect of supplementing silages prepared from early (EH) and late (LH) harvested grass with two protein sources of differing rumen degradability, rapeseed meal (RSM) and fishmeal (FM) or a mixture of the two (M), thus creating eight experimental diets of LH, LHRSM, LHFM, LHM, EH, EHRSM, EHFM and EHM. Silage was offered ad libitum and supplements were included at 100 g fresh weight/kg silage DM intake. The RSM and M diets were made isonitrogenous with FM diets by the addition of urea. Animals remained on diets for 18 weeks and liveweights were monitored for a further 13 weeks while the animals were at pasture. Dry matter (DM) intakes and liveweight gains were higher with EH than with LH silage (P < 0·001). Response to type of protein supplement was dependent on silage quality. On LH silage, higher intakes were noted on FM and M (82·4 and 82·8 g DM/unit metabolic liveweight/day, respectively) relative to silage only (75·8 g DM/unit metabolic liveweight/day) and this contributed towards higher liveweight gains (P < 0·01). Liveweight gains tended to be higher on LH silage supplemented with FM compared to RSM (0·76 v. 0·67 kg/day, respectively, P = 0·08). In comparison, on EH silage, relative to EH unsupplemented, the intake was highest on M (89·2 v. 96·6 g DM/unit metabolic liveweight/day), but liveweight gains were not significantly different between supplements. On turnout to pasture, those animals fed on silage alone exhibited compensatory growth (P < 0·025) with the result that those fed on LH silage only grew faster and achieved the same liveweight after 13 weeks at grass as those supplemented with RSM or M. There was a tendency for those fed on FM to maintain an advantage in liveweight after the period at pasture. On EH silage, at the end of the grazing period no significant differences in liveweight existed between the different supplements and on average were 23 kg heavier than EH silage unsupplemented. In conclusion, silage type (stage of harvest and quality) and protein supplementation influenced animal performance. On late harvest and poorer digestibility silage, there was some indication that feeding fishmeal was better than rapeseed but this was less evident on early harvest and higher digestibility silage. However, considering the price differential between these two supplements and small difference in animal performance it is concluded that rapeseed meal is as effective as fishmeal when used as a protein supplement for growing cattle fed on grass silage.


1987 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 405-424
Author(s):  
Pekka Huhtanen

Two male cattle (live weight 240 kg) fitted with rumen and simple T-piece duodenal cannulas were given a basal diet of 12 kg of silage (227 g/kg DM, 25.7 g N/kg DM), 1 kg of rolled barley and 100 g of mineral mixture. In addition to the basal diet, 0, 450 or 900 g/d of either sucrose or xylose was continuously infused intraruminally. The amount of organic matter (OM) entering the duodenum (P < 0.001) and excreted in the faeces (P < 0.01) was linearly increased with the increased sugar infusion. The proportion of digestible OM apparently digested in the rumen averaged 0.694, and did not differ (P > 0.05) with the level or type of sugar. Rumen ammonia concentration and molar proportions of isovalerate were decreased (P < 0.001) with increased sugar level. The decrease in the ammonia concentration was slightly less (P < 0.05) with xylose than with sucrose. Molar proportions of acetate, propionate and butyrate were not affected by the sugar level but sucrose produced a lower (P < 0.05) proportion of acetate and higher (P < 0.01) proportion of butyrate than did xylose. There was a net loss of N (11.6g/d) between the mouth and duodenum when the basal diet was consumed alone but a net gain (21.6 g/d) with the high level of sugar infusion. Microbial N flow at the duodenum, measured on the basis of RNA purine bases, increased linearly (P 0.05) for sugar levels of 0, 450 and 900 g/d, respectively. The amount of microbial N produced was closely related to rumen ammonia concentration (r—0.86; P < 0.001) and outflow of water at the duodenum (r 0.83; P


Author(s):  
Travis Eiles ◽  
Patrick Pardy

Abstract This paper demonstrates a breakthrough method of visible laser probing (VLP), including an optimized 577 nm laser microscope, visible-sensitive detector, and an ultimate-resolution gallium phosphide-based solid immersion lens on the 10 nm node, showing a 110 nm resolution. This is 2x better than what is achieved with the standard suite of probing systems using typical infrared (IR) wavelengths today. Since VLP provides a spot diameter reduction of 0.5x over IR methods, it is reasonable, based simply on geometry, to project that VLP using the 577 nm laser will meet the industry needs for laser probing for both the 10 nm and 7 nm process nodes. Based on its high level of optimization, including high resolution and specialized solid immersion lens, it is highly likely that this VLP technology will be one of the last optically-based fault isolation methods successfully used.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ha Min Son ◽  
Wooho Jeon ◽  
Jinhyun Kim ◽  
Chan Yeong Heo ◽  
Hye Jin Yoon ◽  
...  

AbstractAlthough computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is used to improve the quality of diagnosis in various medical fields such as mammography and colonography, it is not used in dermatology, where noninvasive screening tests are performed only with the naked eye, and avoidable inaccuracies may exist. This study shows that CAD may also be a viable option in dermatology by presenting a novel method to sequentially combine accurate segmentation and classification models. Given an image of the skin, we decompose the image to normalize and extract high-level features. Using a neural network-based segmentation model to create a segmented map of the image, we then cluster sections of abnormal skin and pass this information to a classification model. We classify each cluster into different common skin diseases using another neural network model. Our segmentation model achieves better performance compared to previous studies, and also achieves a near-perfect sensitivity score in unfavorable conditions. Our classification model is more accurate than a baseline model trained without segmentation, while also being able to classify multiple diseases within a single image. This improved performance may be sufficient to use CAD in the field of dermatology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Amal Alhosban ◽  
Zaki Malik ◽  
Khayyam Hashmi ◽  
Brahim Medjahed ◽  
Hassan Al-Ababneh

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) enable the automatic creation of business applications from independently developed and deployed Web services. As Web services are inherently a priori unknown, how to deliver reliable Web services compositions is a significant and challenging problem. Services involved in an SOA often do not operate under a single processing environment and need to communicate using different protocols over a network. Under such conditions, designing a fault management system that is both efficient and extensible is a challenging task. In this article, we propose SFSS, a self-healing framework for SOA fault management. SFSS is predicting, identifying, and solving faults in SOAs. In SFSS, we identified a set of high-level exception handling strategies based on the QoS performances of different component services and the preferences articled by the service consumers. Multiple recovery plans are generated and evaluated according to the performance of the selected component services, and then we execute the best recovery plan. We assess the overall user dependence (i.e., the service is independent of other services) using the generated plan and the available invocation information of the component services. Due to the experiment results, the given technique enhances the service selection quality by choosing the services that have the highest score and betters the overall system performance. The experiment results indicate the applicability of SFSS and show improved performance in comparison to similar approaches.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Duah Dwomoh

Abstract Background Ghana did not meet the Millennium Development Goal 4 of reducing child mortality by two-thirds and may not meet SDG (2030). There is a need to direct scarce resources to mitigate the impact of the most important risk factors influencing high neonatal deaths. This study applied both spatial and non-spatial regression models to explore the differential impact of environmental, maternal, and child associated risk factors on neonatal deaths in Ghana. Methods The study relied on data from the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys (GDHS) and the Ghana Maternal Health Survey (GMHS) conducted between 1998 and 2017 among 49,908 women of reproductive age and 31,367 children under five (GDHS-1998 = 3298, GDHS-2003 = 3844, GDHS-2008 = 2992, GDHS-2014 = 5884, GMHS-2017 = 15,349). Spatial Autoregressive Models that account for spatial autocorrelation in the data at the cluster-level and non-spatial statistical models with appropriate sampling weight adjustment were used to study factors associated with neonatal deaths, and a p-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Population density, multiple births, smaller household sizes, high parity, and low birth weight significantly increased the risk of neonatal deaths over the years. Among mothers who had multiple births, the risk of having neonatal deaths was approximately four times as high as the risk of neonatal deaths among mothers who had only single birth [aRR = 3.42, 95% CI: 1.63–7.17, p < 0.05]. Neonates who were perceived by their mothers to be small were at a higher risk of neonatal death compared to very large neonates [aRR = 2.08, 95% CI: 1.19–3.63, p < 0.05]. A unit increase in the number of children born to a woman of reproductive age was associated with a 49% increased risk in neonatal deaths [aRR = 1.49, 95% CI: 1.30–1.69, p < 0.05]. Conclusion Neonatal mortality in Ghana remains relatively high, and the factors that predisposed children to neonatal death were birth size that were perceived to be small, low birth weight, higher parity, and multiple births. Improving pregnant women’s nutritional patterns and providing special support to women who have multiple deliveries will reduce neonatal mortality in Ghana.


Author(s):  
Alison N Beloshapka ◽  
Tzu-Wen L Cross ◽  
Kelly S Swanson

Abstract Resistant starch (RS) is fermentable by gut microbiota and effectively modulates fecal short-chain fatty acid concentrations in pigs, mice, and humans. RS may have similar beneficial effects on the canine gut, but has not been well studied. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4% dietary RS (Hi-maize 260) on apparent total tract macronutrient digestibility, and fecal characteristics, fermentative end-product concentrations, and microbiota of healthy adult dogs. An incomplete 5 x 5 Latin square design with 7 dogs and 5 experimental periods was used, with each treatment period lasting 21 d (d 0-17 adaptation; d 18-21 fresh and total fecal collection) and each dog serving as its own control. Seven dogs (mean age = 5.3 yr; mean BW = 20 kg) were randomly allotted to one of five treatments formulated to be iso-energetic and consisting of graded amounts of 100% amylopectin cornstarch, RS, and cellulose, and fed as a top dressing on the food each day. All dogs were fed the same amount of a basal diet throughout the study and fresh water was offered ad libitum. The basal diet contained 6.25% RS (DM basis), contributing approximately 18.3 g of RS/d based on their daily food intake (292.5 g DM/d). Data were evaluated for linear and quadratic effects using SAS. The treatments included 0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, and 4% of an additional RS source. Because Hi-maize 260 is approximately 40% digestible and 60% indigestible starch, the dogs received the following amounts of RS daily: 0% = 18.3 g (18.3 g + 0 g); 1% = 20.1 g (18.3 g + 1.8 g); 2% = 21.9 g (18.3 g + 3.6 g); 3% = 23.7 g (18.3 g + 5.4 g); and 4% = 25.5 g (18.3 g + 7.2 g). Apparent total tract dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, fat, and gross energy digestibilities and fecal pH were linearly decreased (P &lt; 0.05) with increased RS consumption. Fecal output was linearly increased (P &lt; 0.05) with increased RS consumption. Fecal scores and fecal fermentative end-product concentrations were not affected by RS consumption. Although most fecal microbial taxa were not altered, Faecalibacterium were increased (P &lt; 0.05) with increased RS consumption. The decrease in fecal pH and increase in fecal Faecalibacterium would be viewed as being beneficial to gastrointestinal health. Although our results seem to indicate that RS is poorly and/or slowly fermentable in dogs, the lack of observed change may have been due to the rather high level of RS contained in the basal diet.


2015 ◽  
Vol 114 (6) ◽  
pp. 3351-3358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania de Vito ◽  
Marine Lunven ◽  
Clémence Bourlon ◽  
Christophe Duret ◽  
Patrick Cavanagh ◽  
...  

When we look at bars flashed against a moving background, we see them displaced in the direction of the upcoming motion (flash-grab illusion). It is still debated whether these motion-induced position shifts are low-level, reflexive consequences of stimulus motion or high-level compensation engaged only when the stimulus is tracked with attention. To investigate whether attention is a causal factor for this striking illusory position shift, we evaluated the flash-grab illusion in six patients with damaged attentional networks in the right hemisphere and signs of left visual neglect and six age-matched controls. With stimuli in the top, right, and bottom visual fields, neglect patients experienced the same amount of illusion as controls. However, patients showed no significant shift when the test was presented in their left hemifield, despite having equally precise judgments. Thus, paradoxically, neglect patients perceived the position of the flash more veridically in their neglected hemifield. These results suggest that impaired attentional processes can reduce the interaction between a moving background and a superimposed stationary flash, and indicate that attention is a critical factor in generating the illusory motion-induced shifts of location.


2010 ◽  
Vol 105 (9) ◽  
pp. 1311-1319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ya-Fan Chiang ◽  
Huey-Mei Shaw ◽  
Mei-Fang Yang ◽  
Chih-Yang Huang ◽  
Cheng-Hsien Hsieh ◽  
...  

We previously reported that, in rodents, a diet with a high oxidised frying oil (OFO) content leads to glucose intolerance associated with a reduction in insulin secretion. The present study aimed at investigating the impairment of pancreatic islets caused by dietary OFO. C57BL/6J mice were divided into three groups to receive a low-fat basal diet containing 5 g/100 g of fresh soyabean oil (LF group) or a high-fat diet containing 20 g/100 g of either fresh soyabean oil (HF group) or OFO (HO group). After 8 weeks, mice in the HO group showed glucose intolerance and hypoinsulinaemia, and their islets showed impaired glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (P < 0·05; HO group v. LF and HF groups). Significantly higher oxidative stress and a lower mitochondrial membrane potential were observed in the islets in the HO group compared with the LF and HF groups. Immunoblots showed that the reduction in insulin levels in HO islets was associated with activation of the c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase and a reduction in levels of pancreatic and duodenal homeobox factor-1. In a second study, when dietary OFO-induced tissue vitamin E depletion was prevented by large-dose vitamin E supplementation (500 IU(1·06 mmol all-rac-α-tocopherol acetate)/kg diet; HO+E group), the OFO-mediated reduction in islet size and impairment of glucose tolerance and insulin secretion were significantly attenuated (P < 0·05; HO group v. HO+E group). We conclude that a high level of dietary OFO ingestion impairs glucose metabolism by causing oxidative damage and compromising insulin secretion in pancreatic islets, and that these effects can be prevented by vitamin E supplementation.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-312
Author(s):  
P. H. Rhodes

The value judgments about medicine are contributed to by the public image. Formerly this has been one of a devoted, caring, self-sacrificing, somewhat unworldly group of people, dedicated to their work for the suffering and diseased. But the doctors are not separate from society and they are affected by its values. These have been adopted by the profession so that it is coming to be seen as no worse and no better than any other group of comparable education and training. Its status has diminished and this has called into question its compensation at a high level. Status cannot be maintained when its base has been eroded.


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