Factors Influencing the Green House Gas Footprint of US Dairy Farms

Environmental Economics and Policy, Livestock Production/Industries,

Performance Comparison Between HMLP, MLP And Recurrent Networks With Applications To Carbon Monoxide Concentrations Forecasting.

This paper compares the performance of Hybrid Multilayered Perceptron (HMLP) network, Multilayered Perceptron (MLP) network and Recurrent network. These networks are used to model and forecast carbon monoxide (CO) concentration

Shape Classification of Harumanis Mango using Discriminant Analysis (DA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM)

The perceived quality of fruits, such as mangoes, is greatly dependent on many parameters such as ripeness, shape, size, and is influenced by other factors such as harvesting time. Unfortunately, a manual fruit grading has several drawbacks such as subjectivity, tediousness and inconsistency. By automating the procedure, as well as developing new classification technique, it may solve these problems. This paper presents the novel work on the using visible Imaging as a Tool in Quality Monitoring of Harumanis Mangoes. A Fourier-Descriptor method was developed from CCD camera images to grade mango by its shape. Discriminant analysis (DA) and Support vector machine (SVM) were applied for classification process and able to correctly classify 98.3% for DA and 100% for SVM

No effect of 14 day consumption of whole grain diet compared to refined grain diet on antioxidant measures in healthy, young subjects: a pilot study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Epidemiological evidence supports that a diet high in whole grains is associated with lowered risk of chronic diseases included coronary heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and some types of cancer. One potential mechanism for the protective properties of whole grains is their antioxidant content. The aim of this study was to compare differences in antioxidant measures when subjects consumed either refined or whole grain diets.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Twenty healthy subjects took part in a randomized, crossover dietary intervention study. Subjects consumed either a refined grain or whole grain diet for 14 days and then the other diet for the next 14 days. Male subjects consumed 8 servings of grains per day and female subjects consumed 6 servings of grains per day. Blood and urine samples were collected at the end of each diet. Antioxidant measures included oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) in blood, and isoprostanes and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) in urine.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The whole grain diet was significantly higher in dietary fiber, vitamin B6, folate, selenium, copper, zinc, iron, magnesium and cystine compared to the refined grain diet. Despite high intakes of whole grains, no significant differences were seen in any of the antioxidant measures between the refined and whole grain diets.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>No differences in antioxidant measures were found when subjects consumed whole grain diets compared to refined grain diets.</p

Experimental study on flexural behaviours of fresh or aged hollow reinforced concrete girders strengthened by prestressed CFRP plates

The paper presents a well-rounded experimental study on the flexural performance of Reinforced Concrete (RC) box girders strengthened with prestressed carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates. The motivation behind the study was twofold: the rising need for structural reinforcement of existing aged and heavily utilised hollow RC box girders, and the absence of prior attempts to integrate prestressed CFRP plate strengthening for those hollow girders. Previous experimental studies are scarce and fewer studies are focused on the combined prestress and thin-wall effects, such as prestress-related stress condensation and shear lag. However, experimental results are important in directing further analytical studies for hollow sections with more complex behaviours than solid sections since there is a need to predict the behaviour of the prestress-strengthened hollow RC structures for routine design. This pivotal experimental study aims to quantify the structural interactions initiated by prestress in hollow sections and evaluate the impact of age while promoting further analytical initiatives. In this study, two types of CFRP plates, ordinary CFRP and steel-wire-CFRP (SW-CFRP), were used on different specimen beams with varying prestressing levels, sizes of the CFRP plates, and pre-damaged states representing aged and over-used members. Their performance indexes, including cracking load, yield load, ultimate load, structural stiffness, ductility, and crack resistance, were tested and summarised in this paper. The CFRP plates of the eight specimen beams were prestressed to different levels (non-prestressed, and 30% and 40% of the CFRP plate's ultimate strength). The test results suggest that the crack load increased by 86% and 134%, when the specimens were enhanced with the combinations of 30% prestress level for the same CFRP cross-section, and 40% prestress level with a thicker CFRP plate, respectively. The flexural capacity also increased by 42% and 72%, and flexural stiffness increased by 3% and 63%, respectively. The experimental results proved that the proposed prestressed CFRP plate technology effectively strengthens the new or aged RC box girders, but the ductility is sacrificed. These first-hand test results provide an excellent target dataset for further development in the analysis and design of prestressed CFRP plate-strengthened RC box girders

Growth temperature and genotype both play important roles in sorghum grain phenolic composition.

Polyphenols in sorghum grains are a source of dietary antioxidants. Polyphenols in six diverse sorghum genotypes grown under two day/night temperature regimes of optimal temperature (OT, 32/21 °C and high temperature (HT, 38/21 °C) were investigated. A total of 23 phenolic compounds were positively or tentatively identified by HPLC-DAD-ESIMS. Compared with other pigmented types, the phenolic profile of white sorghum PI563516 was simpler, since fewer polyphenols were detected. Brown sorghum IS 8525 had the highest levels of caffeic and ferulic acid, but apigenin and luteolin were not detected. Free luteolinidin and apigeninidin levels were lower under HT than OT across all genotypes (p ≤ 0.05), suggesting HT could have inhibited 3-deoxyanthocyanidins formation. These results provide new information on the effects of HT on specific polyphenols in various Australian sorghum genotypes, which might be used as a guide to grow high antioxidant sorghum grains under projected high temperature in the future

Gut microbiome composition is linked to whole grain-induced immunological improvements

The involvement of the gut microbiota in metabolic disorders, and the ability of whole grains to affect both host metabolism and gut microbial ecology, suggest that some benefits of whole grains are mediated through their effects on the gut microbiome. Nutritional studies that assess the effect of whole grains on both the gut microbiome and human physiology are needed. We conducted a randomized cross-over trial with four-week treatments in which 28 healthy humans consumed a daily dose of 60 g of whole-grain barley (WGB), brown rice (BR), or an equal mixture of the two (BR+WGB), and characterized their impact on fecal microbial ecology and blood markers of inflammation, glucose and lipid metabolism. All treatments increased microbial diversity, the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio, and the abundance of the genus Blautia in fecal samples. The inclusion of WGB enriched the genera Roseburia, Bifidobacterium and Dialister, and the species Eubacterium rectale, Roseburia faecis and Roseburia intestinalis. Whole grains, and especially the BR+WGB treatment, reduced plasma interleukin-6 (IL-6) and peak postprandial glucose. Shifts in the abundance of Eubacterium rectale were associated with changes in the glucose and insulin postprandial response. Interestingly, subjects with greater improvements in IL-6 levels harbored significantly higher proportions of Dialister and lower abundance of Coriobacteriaceae. In conclusion, this study revealed that a short-term intake of whole grains induced compositional alterations of the gut microbiota that coincided with improvements in host physiological measures related to metabolic dysfunctions in humans

A Genome Wide Association Study of arabinoxylan content in 2-row spring barley grain

In barley endosperm arabinoxylan (AX) is the second most abundant cell wall polysaccharide and in wheat it is the most abundant polysaccharide in the starchy endosperm walls of the grain. AX is one of the main contributors to grain dietary fibre content providing several health benefits including cholesterol and glucose lowering effects, and antioxidant activities. Due to its complex structural features, AX might also affect the downstream applications of barley grain in malting and brewing. Using a high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) method we quantified AX amounts in mature grain in 128 spring 2-row barley accessions. Amounts ranged from ~ 5.2 μg/g to ~ 9 μg/g. We used this data for a Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) that revealed three significant quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with grain AX levels which passed a false discovery threshold (FDR) and are located on two of the seven barley chromosomes. Regions underlying the QTLs were scanned for genes likely to be involved in AX biosynthesis or turnover, and strong candidates, including glycosyltransferases from the GT43 and GT61 families and glycoside hydrolases from the GH10 family, were identified. Phylogenetic trees of selected gene families were built based on protein translations and were used to examine the relationship of the barley candidate genes to those in other species. Our data reaffirms the roles of existing genes thought to contribute to AX content, and identifies novel QTL (and candidate genes associated with them) potentially influencing the AX content of barley grain. One potential outcome of this work is the deployment of highly associated single nucleotide polymorphisms markers in breeding programs to guide the modification of AX abundance in barley grain