The Effect of Music on Livestock: Cattle, Poultry and Pigs

The welfare of animals, especially those kept in intensive production systems, is a priority for modern agriculture. This stems from the desire to keep animals healthy, to obtain a good-quality final product, and to meet the demands of today’s consumers, who have been increasingly persuaded to buy organic products. As a result, new sound-based methods have been pursued to reduce external stress in livestock. Music therapy has been known for thousands of years, and sounds were believed to improve both body and spirit. Today, they are mostly used to distract patients from their pain, as well as to treat depression and cardiovascular disorders. However, recent studies have suggested that appropriately selected music can confer some health benefits, e.g., by increasing the level and activity of natural killer cells. For use in livestock, the choice of genre, the loudness of the music and the tempo are all important factors. Some music tracks promote relaxation (thus improving yields), while others have the opposite effect. However, there is no doubt that enriching the animals’ environment with music improves their welfare and may also convince consumers to buy products from intensively farmed animals. The present paper explores the effects of music on livestock (cattle, poultry and pigs) on the basis of the available literature.

A Three-Dimensional Finite Element Analysis of Displacement and Stress Distributions of Unilateral and Bilateral Cleft Lips by Using Developed Pre-Surgical Treatment Architecture

Cleft lips and cleft palates are the most common birth defects in newborns. Pre-surgical correction of unilateral and bilateral cleft lips and palates has been the subject of interest of many previous works. This condition has necessitated the evolution of many surgical and non-surgical techniques to mitigate the problem of this deformity in children. In this study, we proposed a new architecture that can be used instead of the conventional pre-surgical treatment. The proposed architecture has mechanical and electronic parts. This architecture was adopted to apply external stress to the cleft bones and cleft edges using an airbag that is located in the mechanical part. The amount of air in the airbag can be controlled by an available control unit in the electronic part. The effect of external stress on the cleft bones and the cleft edges was analyzed by using the finite element analysis (FEA) method. The FEA study aimed to analyze the displacement, amount of tensile and compressive forces, and Von Mises stress distributions on the cleft bones, cleft edges, nasal septum, and superior alveolar part of the maxillary jaw of unilateral and bilateral cleft models during pre-surgical treatment with the novel architecture. The results show that displacement and stress affected the clefts of both models. Displacement had a significant effect of gradually bringing the clefts closer to each other and returning them to the posterior. The analysis also investigated the effects of stress on the cleft bone and cleft edge. It was found from the results that the stresses helped to bring the incisions closer to the most appropriate position for plastic surgeons. The results prove that the positive and negative X-displacements move in the opposite direction, which means that the cleft edges gradually converge toward each other. Moreover, the negative Z-displacement affected the movement of cleft bones and cleft edges from outside to inside and gradually returned them to a suitable position. The findings show that the proposed architecture can be contributed to the pre-surgical treatment of the unilateral and bilateral clefts as an alternative to the traditional method.

A Bio-Based Render for Insulating Agglomerated Cork Panels

Natural and bio-based thermal insulation materials play an important role in the lifecycle impact of buildings due to their influence on the amount of energy used in indoor temperature control and the environmental impact of building debris. Among bio-based materials, cork is widespread in the Mediterranean region and is one of the bio-based materials that is most frequently used as thermal insulation for buildings. A particular problem is the protection of the cork-agglomerated panels from external stress and adverse weather conditions; in fact, cork granulates are soft and, consequently, cork panels could be damaged by being hit or by excessive sun radiation. In this study, an innovative external coat for cork-agglomerated panels made of a blending composite of beeswax and rosin (colophony) is proposed. The performance of this composite, using different amounts of elements, was analysed to discover which mix led to the best performance. The mix of 50% beeswax and 50% rosin exhibited the best performance out of all the mixes. This blend demonstrated the best elongation and the lowest fracture density, characteristics that determine the durability of the coating. A performance comparison was carried out between cork panel samples coated with lime render and beeswax–rosin coating. The coating of beeswax and resin highlighted a detachment value about 3.5 times higher than the lime plaster applied on the side of the cork.

Influence of Mo Segregation at Grain Boundaries on the High Temperature Creep Behavior of Ni-Mo Alloys: An Atomistic Study

Based on molecular dynamics simulations, the creep behaviors of nanocrystalline Ni before and after the segregation of Mo atoms at grain boundaries are comparatively investigated with the influences of external stress, grain size, temperature, and the concentration of Mo atoms taken into consideration. The results show that the creep strain rate of nanocrystalline Ni decreases significantly after the segregation of Mo atoms at grain boundaries due to the increase of the activation energy. The creep mechanisms corresponding to low, medium, and high stress states are respectively diffusion, grain boundary slip and dislocation activities based on the analysis of stress exponent and grain size exponent for both pure Ni and segregated Ni-Mo samples. Importantly, the influence of external stress and grain size on the creep strain rate of segregated Ni-Mo samples agrees well with the classical Bird-Dorn-Mukherjee model. The results also show that segregation has little effect on the creep process dominated by lattice diffusion. However, it can effectively reduce the strain rate of the creep deformation dominated by grain boundary behaviors and dislocation activities, where the creep rate decreases when increasing the concentration of Mo atoms at grain boundaries within a certain range.

Tin Whiskers’ Behavior under Stress Load and the Mitigation Method for Immersion Tin Surface Finish

Since the use of the most stable Pb-based materials in the electronic industry has been banned due to human health concerns, numerous research studies have focused on Pb-free materials such as pure tin and its alloys for electronic applications. Pure tin, however, suffers from tin whiskers’ formation, which tends to endanger the efficiency of electronic circuits, and even worse, may cause short circuits to the electronic components. This research aims to investigate the effects of stress on tin whiskers’ formation and growth and the mitigation method for the immersion of the tin surface’s finish deposited on a copper substrate. The coated surface was subjected to external stress by micro-hardness indenters with a 2N load in order to simulate external stress applied to the coating layer, prior to storage in the humidity chamber with environmental conditions of 30 °C/60% RH up to 52 weeks. A nickel underlayer was deposited between the tin surface finish and copper substrate to mitigate the formation and growth of tin whiskers. FESEM was used to observe the whiskers and EDX was used for measuring the chemical composition of the surface finish, tin whiskers, and oxides formed after a certain period of storage. An image analyzer was used to measure the whiskers’ length using the JEDEC Standard (JESD22-A121A). The results showed that the tin whiskers increased directly proportional to the storage time, and they formed and grew longer on the thicker tin coating (2.3 μm) than the thin coating (1.5 μm). This is due to greater internal stress being generated by the thicker intermetallic compounds identified as the Cu5Sn6 phase, formed on a thicker tin coating. In addition, the formation and growth of CuO flowers on the 1.5 μm-thick tin coating suppressed the growth of tin whiskers. However, the addition of external stress by an indentation on the tin coating surface showed that the tin whiskers’ growth discontinued after week 4 in the indented area. Instead, the whiskers that formed were greater and longer at a distance farther from the indented area due to Sn atom migration from a high stress concentration to a lower stress concentration. Nonetheless, the length of the whisker for the indented surface was shorter than the non-indented surface because the whiskers’ growth was suppressed by the formation of CuO flowers. On the other hand, a nickel underlayer successfully mitigated the formation of tin whiskers upon the immersion of a tin surface finish.

Influence of Nanoscale Inhomogeneity Incorporating Interface Effect on Crack Nucleation at Intersection of Twin and Grain Boundary in Nanocomposite

Nanocracks can generate at the intersection of the deformation twin and grain boundary (GB). A mathematical model is built to study the nanoinhomogeneity effect on nanocrack nucleation and propagation in the nanocrystalline matrix. The boundary condition at the interface between the nanoinhomogeneity and the matrix is modified by incorporating the interface effect. The influence of the nanoinhomogeneity shear modulus, the nanoinhomogeneity radius, the nanoinhomogeneity position, the interface effect, and the external stress on the nanocrack nucleation and propagation is investigated in detail. The results indicate that the stiff nanoinhomogeneity suppresses nanocrack nucleation and propagation and thereby improves the tensile ductility of nanocomposites without loss of their predominantly high strength. Both the positive interface residual tension and interface elastic constants suppress nanocrack nucleation and propagation, while the negative interface residual tension and interface elastic constants promote nanocrack nucleation and propagation. Furthermore, the effect of interface residual tension is rather significant. The interface elastic constants have a weak effect on nanocrack nucleation and propagation.

Characterisation of the chemo-mechanical behaviour of clays polluted by BTEX: a case study of benzene

In chemo-mechanical coupling of clays, chemical phenomena are likely to have a stronger influence on the mechanical behaviour and mechanical actions can modify the chemical behaviour. The understanding of these different phenomena, taking into account the coupled mechanisms, is essential in the context of the problem of the durability of structures and works built on polluted sites. Thus, the laboratory characterisation of the chemo-mechanical behaviour of a clay contaminated by light hydrocarbon pollutant (BTEX: benzene) was carried out. First in the absence of pollutants, i.e., by the presence of water only, then under the influence of the pollutant, all in two stages: with no external stress, then under imposed external stress. This study presents an experimental protocol based on a series of uniaxial consolidation tests, specific oedometric tests and direct shear strength, this tests performed under controlled saturation conditions and in the presence of organic contamination by benzene. All results confirm the influence of pollutants in different concentrations on the mechanical behaviour of the soil. They show a strong increase in compressibility and a significant increase in swelling, the soil becomes more cohesive, low friction and less elastic. Furthermore, the results show that external load forces play a major role in modifying the behaviour of clay.

Extracellular Vesicles and DAMPs in Cancer: A Mini-Review

Certain cancer therapy has been shown to induce immunogenic cell death in cancer cells and may promote tumor progression instead. The external stress or stimuli may induce cell death and contribute toward the secretion of pro inflammatory molecules. The release of damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) upon induction of therapy or cell death has been shown to induce an inflammatory response. Nevertheless, the mechanism as to how the DAMPs are released and engage in such activity needs further in-depth investigation. Interestingly, some studies have shown that DAMPs can be released through extracellular vesicles (EVs) and can bind to receptors such as toll-like receptors (TCRs). Ample pre-clinical studies have shown that cancer-derived EVs are able to modulate immune responses within the tumor microenvironment. However, the information on the presence of such DAMPs within EVs is still elusive. Therefore, this mini-review attempts to summarize and appraise studies that have shown the presence of DAMPs within cancer-EVs and how it affects the downstream cellular process.