Effect of amino acid blend as alternative to antibiotics for growing pigs

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of supplementing arginine (Arg) + glutamine (Gln) replacing antibiotics on performance, immune response, and antioxidant capacity of pigs in the growing phase. One hundred and fifty 63-d-old pigs with initial body weight (BW) of 25.0 ± 1.46 kg were distributed in a randomized block design, with three treatments and ten replicates. The three diets were control; antibiotic, control + 100 mg/kg tiamulin and 506 mg/kg oxytetracycline; amino acid, control + 10 g/kg Arg and 2 g/kg Gln. Dietary treatments were fed from 63 to 77 d. Following the treatment period, all pigs were fed the control diet from 77 to 90 d. Data were analyzed using GLIMMIX and UNIVARIATE in SAS 9.4. From 63 to 70 d, pigs fed diets with antibiotics had improved (P < 0.05) average daily feed intake (ADFI), average daily weight gain (ADG), gain to feed ratio (G:F), and 70 d BW compared to those fed control or amino acid diets. From 70 to 77 d, including antibiotics in the diet increased (P < 0.05) ADG and 77 d BW. From 77 to 90 d, pigs fed the amino acid diet had greater (P < 0.05) ADG and ADFI than those fed an antibiotic diet. From 63 to 90 d, although pig performance was not affected (P > 0.05), growth curve of pigs fed the antibiotic diets was different (P < 0.05) from those fed the control and amino acids diets. At 70 d, serum tumor necrosis factor-α and diamine oxidase (DAO) were lower (P < 0.05) in pigs fed the antibiotic diet than the control diet, and pigs fed the amino acid diet had intermediate results. Ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) was lower (P < 0.05) in pigs fed the amino acid diet than the antibiotic diet, and pigs fed the control diet had intermediate results. At 70 and 77 d, serum urea nitrogen was higher (P < 0.05) in pigs fed the amino acid diet. At 77 d, DAO and serum immunoglobulin G was lower (P < 0.05) in pigs fed the antibiotic diet. FRAP was lower (P < 0.05) in pigs fed the amino acid and control diets. Serum malondialdehyde was higher (P < 0.05) in pigs fed the amino acid diet than those fed the control diet, and pigs fed the antibiotic diet had intermediate results. At 90 d, antibiotics or amino acids did not affect (P > 0.05) serum parameters. Amino acid blend supplementation at the selected doses in this study did not positively affect growing pigs. Although from 63 to 77 d, antibiotics improved performance, when considering the overall study period, growing pigs did not benefit from a diet containing antibiotics.

Viability and Vigor of Cerrado Cashew Seeds (Anacardium humile) on Different Substrates

The little cashew from the Cerrado (Anacardium humile) is a kind of family anacardiáceaceas, a shrubby plant of great incidence in the Brazilian Cerrado. It is a small pseudofruit, of acidic and juicy flavor, which is known to have colors ranging from yellow to red. It can be consumed naturally or in juices, drinks, sweets. However, its true fruit is the chestnut. Seed germination is influenced by factors such as the substrate, which can be improved in order to improve germination, resulting in the acquisition of more vigorous seedlings. The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Tocantins, city of Gurupi/TO, from 26 October 2017 to 15 February 2018. Seeds were collected directly from the pseudofruits. The highest root length value was obtained for seedlings of the following substrates: bs + ws + pb (7.1 cm and 12.5 cm) and ws (6.7 cm and 10.7 cm), intermediate values: or + rs + vl (6.3 cm and 10.0 cm) and hw + vl + sawdust + cp + ws (5.5 cm and 9.5 cm), and lower values on substrates: bs (5.7 cm and 8.0 cm) and bs + rs + sawdust (6,6 cm e 9,0 cm). It was also observed that the highest value referring to the first emergency count and seedling emergence once again stood out the substrates bs + ws + pb (61.0 % and 87.5 %) and ws (56.2% and 86.2 %). Intermediate results were obtained from hw substrates + vl + sawdust + cp + ws(44.0 % and 81.0 %) and or + rs + vl (48.4 % and 81.2 %) and lower for bs substrates (37.5% and 72.0 %) and bs + rs + sawdust (45.3% and 77.0 %). The substrates: bs + ws + pb and washed sand provided the highest values of viability and vigor in cashew seeds.

Spears and shields: attacking and defending deep model co-inference in vehicular crowdsensing networks

Vehicular CrowdSensing (VCS) network is one of the key scenarios for future 6G ubiquitous artificial intelligence. In a VCS network, vehicles are recruited for collecting urban data and performing deep model inference. Due to the limited computing power of vehicles, we deploy a device-edge co-inference paradigm to improve the inference efficiency in the VCS network. Specifically, the vehicular device and the edge server keep a part of the deep model separately, but work together to perform the inference through sharing intermediate results. Although vehicles keep the raw data locally, privacy issues still exist once attackers obtain the shared intermediate results and recover the raw data in some way. In this paper, we validate the possibility by conducting a systematic study on the privacy attack and defense in the co-inference of VCS network. The main contributions are threefold: (1) We take the road sign classification task as an example to demonstrate how an attacker reconstructs the raw data without any knowledge of deep models. (2) We propose a model-perturbation defense to defend against such attacks by injecting some random Laplace noise into the deep model. A theoretical analysis is given to show that the proposed defense mechanism achieves $$\epsilon$$ ϵ -differential privacy. (3) We further propose a Stackelberg game-based incentive mechanism to attract the vehicles to participate in the co-inference by compensating their privacy loss in a satisfactory way. The simulation results show that our proposed defense mechanism can significantly reduce the effects of the attacks and the proposed incentive mechanism is very effective.

EVALUATING URBAN INTENSITY THROUGH A CITY INFORMATION MODEL – INTERMEDIATE RESULTS FROM AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT

Urban planning is a very complex task, especially considering the many challenges it faces, including an increasing need for housing in response to demographic growth and a need to limit abusive land artificialisation. As part of an interdisciplinary action-research project focused on experimenting with various uses of an existing City Information Model (CIM) for urban design, we are developing a new indicator to characterize urban intensity and a method to quantify it through the City Information Model (CIM) of a French eco-district. Our project is ongoing, and, in this paper, we present intermediate results on the potential of this CIM to support the automated quantification of our urban intensity indicator. We also describe the solutions currently implemented so that our experimental CIM can provide the necessary information for a more complete and automated urban intensity analysis. Finally, we shed light on key issues regarding the use of CIM, specifically CIM made up of various BIM models (of buildings lots and public spaces) for urban analysis at the district scale during the design phase. These issues include the need to generalize BIM entities and to manage property sets and nomenclatures to allow automation of analyses at the district scale, as long as there is no BIM+ data model allowing for urban analysis.

The pattern of health insurance economic resilience in the Covid 19 pandemic shock

Objective Health insurance is based on people’s significant risks in receiving health services that they cannot afford alone. Since the outbreak of the corona epidemic, the health insurance system has suffered many economic problems. Designing a model of a health insurance system based on the requirements of a resilient economy can improve the functions of this system in the corona crisis. Results In this research 12, structural components were obtained in the form of 4 conceptual components. The 4 main conceptual components are Knowledge-based economy, Economic stability, Economic resilience, and justice. The knowledge-based economy is the basis for the formation of economic resilience in the health insurance systems. Health insurance systems will achieve two crucial intermediate results, namely economic resilience, and economic stability, by building the basic infrastructure of a knowledge-based economy. In the long run, maintaining such intermediate results is the foundation of justice in the health insurance system.

Fiberglass as an alternative to metals in ship repair

The article presents the intermediate results of a study carried out to determine the prospects for reducing the metal consumption of ship repair. The area of research is ship repair, in particular, the repair of hulls and superstructures of metal ships, and the object is fiberglass used in the repair, in particular, their strength and durability. The studies were carried out using well-known methods - spontaneous peeling, shearing, limiting states. The results obtained made it possible to establish that the use of fiberglass plastics can reduce the metal consumption of ship repairs by three times. In addition, the article describes a method for calculating the thickness of a fiberglass coating, which is equivalent in strength to a metal backup, and also provides expressions for evaluating the calculated resistance of the coating, which determines its durability. In conclusion, it was concluded that it is necessary to expand the study area of the applicability of fiberglass during the repair of ships, not limiting it only to such obvious objects of repair as the hull, superstructure, pipelines.

PREVENTION OF PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES USE AMOUNG SCHOOLCHILDREN

The article describes the relevance and necessity of primary prevention of psychoactive substances use among schoolchildren, considers the need for scientific substantiation and evidence of the effectiveness of the use of programs for the prevention of psychoactive substances use in different countries. A short literature review of the experience of primary prevention of the use of psychoactive substances in Belarus, Russia and the non-CIS countries has been made. The elaborated, tested and implemented in practice curriculum of optional classes aimed at the formation of students’ skills of responsible and safe behavior «We are ourselves» for grades 5-8 of general secondary education establishments is presented in detail. The goals of the extracurricular program as well as its structure are described, and its tasks are detailed. The organizational and methodological work that was carried out for the successful implementation of the cycle is highlighted (seminars with educational psychologists, individual consultations on request, summing up intermediate results after 5 lessons and a seminar on the final stage of testing methodological materials and definitive results). The primary results on the program effectiveness are given, that were obtained with the help of a survey of students, their parents and teachers, as well as the results concerning the distribution and implementation of monitoring the curriculum «We are ourselves» in Vitebsk region, which demonstrated its relevance and the prospects for its use. Based on the results of the article, the conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of prophylactic work with schoolchildren to prevent the use of psychoactive substances and methods of its improvement.

ANALYSIS OF INTERMEDIATE RESULTS OF A COMPARATIVE MULTICENTER RANDOMIZED TENDERA STUDY INVESTIGATING THE DISTAL RADIATION ACCESS

Objective. To prove the safety and efficacy of distal radial artery (DRA) puncture for endovascular interventions versus the traditional forearm radial artery (RA) puncture site by comparing immediate and long-term results. Methods. In 2017, a multicenter, open, randomized (1:1) study TENDERA (Comparison between Traditional Entry Point and Distal Puncture of Radial Artery) was started. During 2 years, 520 patients were included, mean age 63.4±10.0 years. The observation group (DRA puncture) included 271 patients, the comparison group (RA puncture) - 249 patients. The study included both stable patients and those with NSTEMI: the observation group - 39 (14.4%), the comparison group - 34 (13.7%), p=0.809. The primary endpoint is immediate (hospital) or late radial thrombosis. Secondary endpoints are: 1 - composite point, complications from the access artery; 2 - puncture parameters. Results. The average difference in the diameters of the RA and DRA was 0.3 mm and 0.4 mm, in some patients the DRA diameter corresponded to the RA or even exceeded it. The diameter of RA and DRA in men and women significantly differs, 2.65±0.44 mm and 2.36±0.36 mm (p=0.001), 2.31±0.39 mm and 2.13±0.38 mm (p=0.001). Technical success of DRA access requre the number of attempts. 94.1% - the percentage of successful cardiac catheterization performed through the distal radial artery approach, which is significantly less than via RA - 100% (p<0.001). In the observation group, significantly fewer rebleedings and rehemostasis were occured. In the long-term period, there were registered outstandingly more hematomas in the observation group at the time of discharge and after 1 week. Conclusion. Intermediate analysis of the results of the TENDERA study shows that there is no significant difference in the primary endpoint, but the number of complications in the observation group associated with the puncture markedly - hematoma more than 5 cm to the day of discharge and after 7 days. What this paper adds Intermediate results of the first multicenter open randomized (1:1) study devoted to the comparison of distal puncture of the radial artery versus the traditional entry point of puncture of the radial artery on the forearm during the endovascular interventions have been presented. A significant reduction of the number of local complications has been revealed in the group of distal puncture of the radial artery and the absence of differences according to the primary endpoint: early and late radial artery thrombosis.