Effects of transportation and storage duration of Japanese quail eggs on hatchability

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of transportation from breeder’s farm to hatchery, and of storage duration on the hatchability of quail eggs. Hatching eggs were divided into two groups. The first group was stored for seven days and the second for 14 days. Half of each group was subjected to 200 km transportation before initiation of embryonic development, and the other half was not transported. Relative weight loss ratios varied significantly with storage duration, but did not vary after transportation. Hatchability of fertile eggs varied with storage duration and transportation, but only the effects of storage x transportation were found to be significant. Embryonic mortality for the first period of 14-day storage (22.1%) was significantly higher than those stored for seven days. In the second period (days 10 - 16), embryonic mortality ratios varied significantly with storage and transportation. Transportation after 7-day storage influenced the hatchability of fertile eggs negatively, compared with non-transported eggs stored for seven days. On the other hand, transportation after long-term storage had a higher hatchability of the fertile eggs than the non-transported eggs stored for the long time. These findings suggest that the vibration through transportation over the secondary road after long-term storage influenced the embryonic development of hatching eggs positively. Thus, the discarded chick ratio of the long-term + transport group was lower than short-term + transport group, and improved the hatchability of fertile eggs.Keywords: discarded chick, hatchability of fertile eggs, relative weight los

Physical mapping integrated with syntenic analysis to characterize the gene space of the long arm of wheat chromosome 1A

Background: Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important crops worldwide and its production faces pressing challenges, the solution of which demands genome information. However, the large, highly repetitive hexaploid wheat genome has been considered intractable to standard sequencing approaches. Therefore the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) proposes to map and sequence the genome on a chromosome-by-chromosome basis. Methodology/Principal Findings: We have constructed a physical map of the long arm of bread wheat chromosome 1A using chromosome-specific BAC libraries by High Information Content Fingerprinting (HICF). Two alternative methods (FPC and LTC) were used to assemble the fingerprints into a high-resolution physical map of the chromosome arm. A total of 365 molecular markers were added to the map, in addition to 1122 putative unique transcripts that were identified by microarray hybridization. The final map consists of 1180 FPC based or 583 LTC based contigs. Conclusions/Significance: The physical map presented here marks an important step forward in mapping of hexaploid bread wheat. The map is orders of magnitude more detailed than previously available maps of this chromosome, and the assignment of over a thousand putative expressed gene sequences to specific map locations will greatly assist future functional studies. This map will be an essential tool for future sequencing of and positional cloning within chromosome 1A

Application of a new net primary production methodology: a daily to annual-scale data set for the North Sea, derived from autonomous underwater gliders and satellite Earth observation

Shelf seas play a key role in both the global carbon cycle and coastal marine ecosystems through the draw-down and fixing of carbon, as measured through phytoplankton net primary production (NPP). Measuring NPP in situ and extrapolating this to the local, regional, and global scale presents challenges however because of limitations with the techniques utilised (e.g. radiocarbon isotopes), data sparsity, and the inherent biogeochemical heterogeneity of coastal and open-shelf waters. Here, we introduce a new data set generated using a technique based on the synergistic use of in situ glider profiles and satellite Earth observation measurements which can be implemented in a real-time or delayed�mode system (https://doi.org/10.5285/e6974644-2026-0f94-e053-6c86abc00109; Loveday and Smyth, 2022). We apply this system to a fleet of gliders successively deployed over a 19-month time frame in the North Sea, generating an unprecedented fine-scale time series of NPP in the region. At a large scale, this time series gives close agreement with existing satellite-based estimates of NPP for the region and previous in situ estimates. What has not been elucidated before is the high-frequency, small-scale, depth-resolved variability associated with bloom phenology, mesoscale phenomena, and mixed layer dynamics

The Impact of Dementia on Women Internationally: an Integrative Review

Women are disproportionately affected by dementia, both in terms of developing dementia and becoming caregivers. We conducted an integrative review of English language literature of the issues affecting women in relation to dementia from an international perspective. The majority of relevant studies were conducted in high income countries, and none were from low-income countries. The effects of caregiving on health, wellbeing and finances are greater for women; issues facing women, particularly in low and middle-income countries need to be better understood. Research should focus on building resilience to help people adjust and cope long term

The impact of ocean biogeochemistry on physics and its consequences for modelling shelf seas

We use modelling and assimilation tools to explore the impact of biogeochemistry on physics in the shelf sea environment, using North-West European Shelf (NWES) as a case study. We demonstrate that such impact is significant: the attenuation of light by biogeochemical substances heats up the upper 20 m of the ocean by up to 1 °C and by a similar margin cools down the ocean within the 20–200 m range of depths. We demonstrate that these changes to sea temperature influence mixing in the upper ocean and feed back into marine biology by influencing the timing of the phytoplankton bloom, as suggested by the critical turbulence hypothesis. We compare different light schemes representing the impact of biogeochemistry on physics, and show that the physics is sensitive to both the spectral resolution of radiances and the represented optically active constituents. We introduce a new development into the research version of the operational model for the NWES, in which we calculate the heat fluxes based on the spectrally resolved attenuation by the simulated biogeochemical tracers, establishing a two-way coupling between biogeochemistry and physics. We demonstrate that in the late spring–summer the two-way coupled model increases heating in the upper oceanic layer compared to the existing model and improves by 1–3 days the timing of the simulated phytoplankton bloom. This improvement is relatively small compared with the existing model bias in bloom timing, but is sufficient to have a visible impact on model skill in the free run. We also validate the skill of the two-way coupling in the context of the weakly coupled physical–biogeochemical assimilation currently used for operational forecasting of the NWES. We show that the change to the skill is negligible for analyses, but it remains to be seen how much it differs for the forecasts

The impact of ocean biogeochemistry on physics and its consequences for modelling shelf seas

We use modelling and assimilation tools to explore the impact of biogeochemistry on physics in the shelf sea environment, using North-West European Shelf (NWES) as a case study. We demonstrate that such impact is significant: the attenuation of light by biogeochemical substances heats up the upper 20 m of the ocean by up to 1 °C and by a similar margin cools down the ocean within the 20–200 m range of depths. We demonstrate that these changes to sea temperature influence mixing in the upper ocean and feed back into marine biology by influencing the timing of the phytoplankton bloom, as suggested by the critical turbulence hypothesis. We compare different light schemes representing the impact of biogeochemistry on physics, and show that the physics is sensitive to both the spectral resolution of radiances and the represented optically active constituents. We introduce a new development into the research version of the operational model for the NWES, in which we calculate the heat fluxes based on the spectrally resolved attenuation by the simulated biogeochemical tracers, establishing a two-way coupling between biogeochemistry and physics. We demonstrate that in the late spring-summer the two-way coupled model increases heating in the upper oceanic layer compared to the existing model and improves by 1–3 days the timing of the simulated phytoplankton bloom. This improvement is relatively small compared with the existing model bias in bloom timing, but is sufficient to have a visible impact on model skill in the free run. We also validate the skill of the two-way coupling in the context of the weakly coupled physical-biogeochemical assimilation currently used for operational forecasting of the NWES. We show that the change to the skill is negligible for analyses, but it remains to be seen how much it differs for the forecasts

Copernicus Ocean State Report, issue 6

The 6th issue of the Copernicus OSR incorporates a large range of topics for the blue, white and green ocean for all European regional seas, and the global ocean over 1993–2020 with a special focus on 2020

Eql: Event Query Language For The Sharing Of Internet-Of-Things Infrastructure And Collaborative Applications Pevelopment

A user-friendly and functional query language for complex events in an IoT environment, along with the query processing techniques involved therein, are introduced in this paper. In an IoT environment which smart services provide a uniform Boolean abstraction to handle massive device heterogeneity, the proposed query language, EQL (Event Query Language), allows application developers to access event streams from smart services. Our approach allows application developers without domain knowledge to more intuitively formulate queries using temporal and logical operators. The processing of EQL queries takes into account the soft real-time event response requirement of the IoT environment