Water intake in sheeps fed different levles of prickly pear (Opuntia Ficus Indica) in Brazil

En 45 ovinos machos Santa Inés (peso vivo medio de 27,50 ± 0, 48 kg) se evaluó el consumo de agua, al consumir raciones con niveles crecientes (0, 25, 50, 75, 100%) de nopal (Opuntia fícus indica Mill) en sustitución al maíz molido. El diseño fue en bloques al azar con nueve repeticiones. El consumo de materia seca respondió de modo cuadrático, perjudicando el peso final, que disminuyó, con el aumento del nopal en la dieta. Aumentó el consumo de materia natural disminuyendo el de agua, el consumo total de agua aumentó en el tratamiento con mayor cantidad de nopal. La relación de consumos: agua voluntaria/ materia seca, disminuyó al aumentar el nopal. El nopal constituye una reserva de agua para ovinos Santa Inés en condiciones semiáridas de Brasil.The water intake in 45 male (27.50 ± 0.48 kg of mena body weight) Santa Ines sheep fed with increasing levels (0, 25, 50, 75, 100% DM basis) of prickly pear (Opuntia ficus indica Mill) to replace corn was studied. A completely randomized block design with nine replications per treatment was used. Quadratic behavior was observed for the intake of dry matter, hitting the final weight, which decreased with increasing the cactus in the diet. There was an increase in the intake of natural material and a decrease in voluntary water intake; total water intake increased, and the ratio of intakes: water/dry matter, decreased in the treatment with larger cactus proportion. The pryckly pear constitues a water reservoir for Santa Inês sheep in Brazilian semiarid conditions

Laryngeal Vocal And Endoscopic Alterations After Thyroidectomy Under Local Anesthesia And Hypnosedation

Vocal alterations after thyroidectomy are generally related to laryngeal nerve injury or laryngotracheal mobility disorders caused by postoperative fibrosis or strap muscle lesion. Aim: this study aims to evaluate the frequency of vocal and rima glottidis disorders after thyroidectomy. Materials and method: This is a prospective study based on 35 patients submitted to thyroidectomy under local anesthesia and hypnosedation. All patients underwent voice auditory perception evaluation, voice acoustic tests and videolaryngostroboscopy preoperatively, and at one week and at 30 days postoperatively. Bilateral cricothyroid muscle electromyography was performed on the thirtieth day after surgery to confirm the presence of injury in the external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve. Results: 14.3% of the patients presented posterior glottis deviation before surgery and normal electromyography findings. Transient and permanent vocal alteration occurred in 25.7% and 14.2% of the patients respectively. Conclusion: voice disorders evaluated after voice auditory perceptive evaluation and voice acoustic tests were more intense in the group with superior laryngeal nerve external branch injury than in the injury-free dysphonic patient group. Oblique glottis can be present in normal patients; however its onset after thyroidectomy is indicative of superior laryngeal nerve external branch lesion. © Revista Brasileira de Otorrinolaringologia. All Rights reserved.754511516Fernandez, F.H., Cervical block anesthesia in thyroidectomy (1984) Int Surg, 69, pp. 309-311Hochman, M., Fee Jr., W.E., Thyroidectomy under local anesthesia (1991) Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg, 117, pp. 405-407Lo Gerfo, P., Ditkoff, B.A., Chabot, J., Feind, C., Thyroid surgery using monitored anesthesia care: An alternative to general anesthesia (1994) Thyroid, 4, pp. 437-439Sinagra, D.L., Montesinos, M.R., Tacchi, V.A., Moreno, J.C., Falco, J.E., Mezzadri, N.A., Debonis, D.L., Curutchet, H.P., Voice changes after thyroidectomy without recurrent laryngeal nerve injury (2004) Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 199 (4), pp. 556-560. , DOI 10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2004.06.020, PII S1072751504009342Vellar, I.D., Thomas Peel Dunhill: Pioneer thyroid surgeon (1990) ANZ J Surg, 69, pp. 375-387Hisham, A., Richard, B., Reeve, T., Delbridge, L., Recognition of the avascular space medial to the upper pole of the thyroid and its surgical implications (2000) J Surg, 23 (1), pp. 86-89Lore, J.M., Kokocharov, S.I., Richmond, A., Kaufman, S., Sundquist, N., Thirty-eight-year evaluation of a surgical technique to protect the external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve during thyroidectomy (1998) Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, 107 (12), pp. 1015-1022Carrara De Angelis, E., Netto, I.P., Fae, A., Vartanian, J.G., Barros, A.P.B., Correia, L.M., Toledo, R.N., Voice and vocal self-assessment after thyroidectomy (2006) Head & Neck, pp. 1106-1114Stojadinovic, A., Shaha, A.R., Orlikoff, R.F., Nissan, A., Kornak, M.-F., Singh, B., Boyle, J.O., Kraus, D.H., Prospective functional voice assessment in patients undergoing thyroid surgery (2002) Annals of Surgery, 236 (6), pp. 823-832. , DOI 10.1097/00000658-200212000-00015Robinson, J.L., Mandel, S., Sataloff, R.T., Objective voice measures in nonsinging patients with unilateral superior laryngeal nerve paresis (2005) Journal of Voice, 19 (4), pp. 665-667. , DOI 10.1016/j.jvoice.2005.04.001, PII S0892199705000408Hong, K.H., Kim, Y.K., Phonatory characteristics of patients undergoing thyroidectomy without laryngeal nerve injury (1997) Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg, 117, pp. 399-404Arnold, G.E., Physiology and pathology of the cricothyroid muscle (1961) Laryngoscope, 71, pp. 687-753Dedo, H.H., The paralysed larynx: An electromyographic study in dogs and humans (1970) Laryngoscope, 80, pp. 1455-1517Faaborg-Andersen, K., Jensen, A.M., Unilateral paralysis of the superior laryngeal nerve (1964) Acta Otolaryngolol, 57, pp. 155-159Ward, P.H., Berci, G., Calcaterra, T.C., Superior laryngeal nerve paralysis: An often overlooked entity (1977) Transactions of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, 84 (1), pp. ORL-78-89Adour, K.K., Schneider, G.D., Hilsinger, R.L., Acute superior laryngeal nerve palsy: Analysis of 78 cases (1980) Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg, 88, pp. 418-424Bevan, K., Griffiths, M.V., Morgan, M.H., Cricothyroid muscle paralysis: Its recognition and diagnosis (1989) Journal of Laryngology and Otology, 103 (2), pp. 191-195Jansson, S., Tisell, L.-E., Hagne, I., Sanner, E., Stenborg, R., Svensson, P., Partial superior laryngeal nerve (SLN) lesions before and after thyroid surgery (1988) World Journal of Surgery, 12 (4), pp. 522-527. , DOI 10.1007/BF0165543

Goats in a comfortable and stressed environment consuming saline water: performance, digestibility, nitrogen balance, and urinary mineral concentrations

ABSTRACT The objective was to evaluate the effect of water salinity and environmental temperature on the nutrient consumption, digestibility, nitrogen balance, and mineral excretion of creole goats. Thirty-six males with an average age of 5.0±0.6 months and an average weight of 20.0±2.3kg were housed in metabolic cages. They are distributed in a completely randomized design, with a 2×3 type crossover (2 temperatures (T1 = 26±0.6ºC and T2 = 32±1.2ºC) and three levels of salinity (1.0, 6.0, and 12.0 dS m-1). The temperature influenced (P0.05) of temperatures or water salinity levels; the animals consumed and retained averages of 10.31 and 4.19 g day-1 of nitrogen in the body, respectively. The different water salinity levels influenced (P<0.05) water intake and increased the excretions of potassium and sodium in urine. Total solids levels ranging from 640 to 9,600mg L-1 in water for goats increase water consumption, as does urine potassium and sodium excretion in urine

Nutritional and mineral composition of Opuntia stricta Haw: Balance of macrominerals, renal function and blood metabolites in sheep

ABSTRACT This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the inclusion of spineless cactus (Opuntia stricta Haw) in the diet of sheep on the balance of macrominerals, renal function, and blood metabolites. Five sheep cannulated in the rumen (61.5±9.5kg body weight) were used in a 5 × 5 Latin square composed of five diets and five experimental periods. The experimental period lasted 105 days, with five periods of 21 days each. Four diets containing levels of spineless cactus (121, 245, 371, and 500g/kg of dry matter (DM)), and a control diet were evaluated. Samples of the ingredients, orts, feces, urine, and blood were collected. Spineless cactus inclusion in sheep diets increased the DM intake, ash, oxalate, and all macrominerals intake (P 0.05). It is possible to verify that the inclusion of spineless cactus, up to the level of 500g/kg of DM in the sheep diets, does not appear to cause damage to the animal’s health. Its inclusion does not compromise kidney function or blood metabolites evaluated herein

Resonant Photonic Quasicrystalline and Aperiodic Structures

We have theoretically studied propagation of exciton-polaritons in deterministic aperiodic multiple-quantum-well structures, particularly, in the Fibonacci and Thue-Morse chains. The attention is concentrated on the structures tuned to the resonant Bragg condition with two-dimensional quantum-well exciton. The superradiant or photonic-quasicrystal regimes are realized in these structures depending on the number of the wells. The developed theory based on the two-wave approximation allows one to describe analytically the exact transfer-matrix computations for transmittance and reflectance spectra in the whole frequency range except for a narrow region near the exciton resonance. In this region the optical spectra and the exciton-polariton dispersion demonstrate scaling invariance and self-similarity which can be interpreted in terms of the ``band-edge'' cycle of the trace map, in the case of Fibonacci structures, and in terms of zero reflection frequencies, in the case of Thue-Morse structures.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Horizontal Branch Stars: The Interplay between Observations and Theory, and Insights into the Formation of the Galaxy

We review HB stars in a broad astrophysical context, including both variable and non-variable stars. A reassessment of the Oosterhoff dichotomy is presented, which provides unprecedented detail regarding its origin and systematics. We show that the Oosterhoff dichotomy and the distribution of globular clusters (GCs) in the HB morphology-metallicity plane both exclude, with high statistical significance, the possibility that the Galactic halo may have formed from the accretion of dwarf galaxies resembling present-day Milky Way satellites such as Fornax, Sagittarius, and the LMC. A rediscussion of the second-parameter problem is presented. A technique is proposed to estimate the HB types of extragalactic GCs on the basis of integrated far-UV photometry. The relationship between the absolute V magnitude of the HB at the RR Lyrae level and metallicity, as obtained on the basis of trigonometric parallax measurements for the star RR Lyrae, is also revisited, giving a distance modulus to the LMC of (m-M)_0 = 18.44+/-0.11. RR Lyrae period change rates are studied. Finally, the conductive opacities used in evolutionary calculations of low-mass stars are investigated. [ABRIDGED]Comment: 56 pages, 22 figures. Invited review, to appear in Astrophysics and Space Scienc