823 research outputs found
Shortening Sow Restraint Period During Lactation Improves Production and Decreases Hair Cortisol Concentrations in Sows and Their Piglets
Food animal welfare is an issue of great concern, as society has a responsibility for animals under human care. Pork is the most consumed meat worldwide, with more than a billion pigs being slaughtered globally every year. Still, in most countries, sows are restrained in farrowing crates throughout lactation. In these crates, sows arc confined with bars to an area that is just slightly larger than their body. Thus, moving and turning around, grooming, or expressing other natural behaviors are typically impossible. In this study, we utilized a simple and practical modification of conventional farrowing crates to designed farrowing pens, by removable confinement bars, which provide the flexibility to change the housing system from one to another. Our objective was to examine the parameters of production and hair cortisol concentrations after different restraint periods during lactation. Analyses included data from 77 sows and their 997 piglets. Sows were housed in farrowing crates, but the confinement bars were removed after different periods, from 3 days post-farrowing to full restraint. For certain analyses, sows were grouped into Short or Long Restraint groups (3-10 days vs 13-24 days, respectively). Multiple linear regression revealed that for any additional day in restraint of the sows, piglets\u27 weaning rate decreases by 0.4% (P \u3c 0.05). Moreover, the total number of weaned piglets per litter was higher in the Short Restraint group as compared to the Long Restraint group (10.4 +/- 0.3 vs 9.7 +/- 0.3, respectively; P \u3c 0.05). Accordingly, total litter weight on the weaning day tended to be higher in the Short Restraint group (68.8 +/- 2.2 vs 64.9 +/- 1.8 kg; P = 0.1210). The requirement for medical treatments during lactation (e.g., antibiotics, NSAID) tended to be less frequent in the Short Restraint group (Sows: 21.9% vs 40%; P = 0.1219. Piglets: 2.4% vs 17.1%; P = 0.0609). Hair cortisol as a marker for chronic stress during lactation decreased when the restraint period was shortened in both sows and piglets. Our analysis revealed that sows\u27 hair cortisol is a significant mediator between the restraint of the sow and its piglets\u27 hair cortisol (Sobel test; P \u3c0.05). For every day of sows\u27 restraint sows\u27 hair cortisol increased by 05 pg/mg, and for any additional unit of sows\u27 hair cortisol, piglets\u27 hair cortisol increased by 0.36 pg/mg. In condusion, sustainable swine farming management can be beneficial for both animals and farmers; limiting sow restraint during lactation is expected to reduce stress, enhance welfare and production, and potentially improve the economics of swine operations. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Animal Consortium
Enhancement of the Detection of the TCP SYN Flooding (DDoS) Attack
The major of DDoS attacks use TCP protocol and the TCP SYN flooding attack is the most common one among them. The SYN Cookie mechanism is used to defend against the TCP SYN flooding attack. It is an effective defense, but it has a disadvantage of high calculations and it doesn’t differentiate spoofed packets from legitimate packets. Therefore, filtering the spoofed packet can effectively enhance the SYN Cookie activity. Hop Count Filtering (HCF) is another mechanism used at the server side to filter spoofed packets. This mechanism has a drawback of being not a perfect and final solution in defending against the TCP SYN flooding attack. An enhanced mechanism of Integrating and combining the SYN Cookie with Hop Count Filtering (HCF) mechanism is proposed to protect the server from TCP SYN flooding. The results show that the defense against SYN flood DDoS attack is enhanced, since the availability of legitimate packets is increased and the time of SYN Cookie activity is delayed
Frequency behavior of Raman coupling coefficient in glasses
Low-frequency Raman coupling coefficient of 11 different glasses is
evaluated. It is found that the coupling coefficient demonstrates a universal
linear frequency behavior near the boson peak maximum and a superlinear
behavior at very low frequencies. The last observation suggests vanishing of
the coupling coefficient when frequency tends to zero. The results are
discussed in terms of the vibration wavefunction that combines features of
localized and extended modes.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure
Hawking's radiation in non-stationary rotating de Sitter background
Hawking's radiation effect of Klein-Gordon scalar field, Dirac particles and
Maxwell's electromagnetic field in the non-stationary rotating de Sitter
cosmological space-time is investigated by using a method of generalized
tortoise co-ordinates transformation. The locations and the temperatures of the
cosmological horizons of the non-stationary rotating de Sitter model are
derived. It is found that the locations and the temperatures of the rotating
cosmological model depend not only on the time but also on the angle. The
stress-energy regularization techniques are applied to the two dimensional
analog of the de Sitter metrics and the calculated stress-energy tensor
contains the thermal radiation effect.Comment: 13 pages, LaTex format, accepted for publication Astrophysics and
Space Science, Springer; Journal ID: 10509, Article ID: 606, Date 2011-01-1
Can a CPT Violating Ether Solve ALL Electron (Anti)Neutrino Puzzles?
Assuming that CPT is violated in the neutrino sector seems to be a viable
alternative to sterile neutrinos when it comes to reconciling the LSND anomaly
with the remainder of the neutrino data. There are different (distinguishable)
ways of incorporating CPT violation into the standard model, including
postulating m different from \bar{m}. Here, I investigate the possibility of
introducing CPT violation via Lorentz-invariance violating effective operators
(``Ether'' potentials) which modify neutrino oscillation patterns like ordinary
matter effects. I argue that, within a simplified two-flavor like oscillation
analysis, one cannot solve the solar neutrino puzzle and LSND anomaly while
still respecting constraints imposed by other neutrino experiments, and comment
on whether significant improvements should be expected from a three-flavor
analysis. If one turns the picture upside down, some of the most severe
constrains on such CPT violating terms can already be obtained from the current
neutrino data, while much more severe constraints can arise from future
neutrino oscillation experiments.Comment: 10 pages, 1 eps figure; version to appear in PRD. Comment added,
mistake corrected, results and conclusions unchange
Strangeness Enhancement in p-A Collisions: Consequences for the Interpretation of Strangeness Production in A-A Collisions
Published measurements of semi-inclusive Lambda production in p-Au collisions
at the AGS are used to estimate the yields of singly strange hadrons in
nucleus-nucleus A-A collisions. Results of a described extrapolation technique
are shown and compared to measurements of K+ production in Si-Al, Si-Au, and
Au-Au collisions at the AGS and net Lambda production in Su-Su, S-Ag, Pb-Pb,
and inclusive p-A collisions at the SPS. The extrapolations can account for
more than 75% of the measured strange particle yields in all of the studied
systems except for very central Au-Au collisions at the AGS where RQMD
comparisons suggest large re-scattering contributions.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
The effect of morphemic analysis instruction on ESL secondary school students’ vocabulary development
The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of explicit teaching of morphemic analysis on vocabulary development among ESL low proficiency secondary school students. As the research states that morphology knowledge is vital for decoding complex words, an increase in vocabulary learning was predicted. Learners’ morphology knowledge in this study was assessed based on analytic word formation after the morphemic analysis intervention. The
Morpheme Identification Test adapted from Carlisle (2000) was employed to measure the students’ ability to decode morphemic units in English complex words. The paired sample test was employed to report the results of the study.The result showed a higher score on the post test and students have better morphemic decoding skills after the morphemic analysis intervention.Thus, the study points to the benefits of morphemic analysis instruction on students’ vocabulary development
Does Solar Physics Provide Constraints to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles?
We investigate whether present data on helioseismology and solar neutrino
fluxes may constrain WIMP--matter interactions in the range of WIMP parameters
under current exploration in WIMP searches. We find that, for a WIMP mass of 30
GeV, once the effect of the presence of WIMPs in the Sun's interior is
maximized, the squared isothermal sound speed is modified, with respect to the
standard solar model, by at most 0.4% at the Sun's center. The maximal effect
on the Boron-8 solar neutrino flux is a reduction of 4.5%. Larger masses lead
to smaller effects. These results imply that present sensitivities in the
measurements of solar properties, though greatly improved in recent years, do
not provide information or constraints on WIMP properties of relevance for dark
matter. Furthermore, we show that, when current bounds from direct WIMP
searches are taken into account, the effect induced by WIMPs with dominant
coherent interactions are drastically reduced as compared to the values quoted
above. The case of neutralinos in the minimal supersymmetric standard model is
also discussed.Comment: 31 pages, 2 tables and 9 figures, typeset with ReVTeX4. The paper may
also be found at http://www.to.infn.it/~fornengo/papers/helio.ps.gz or
through http://www.to.infn.it/astropart/index.htm
Neutrino oscillation parameters from MINOS, ICARUS and OPERA combined
We perform a detailed analysis of the capabilities of the MINOS, ICARUS and
OPERA experiments to measure neutrino oscillation parameters at the atmospheric
scale with their data taken separately and in combination. MINOS will determine
and to within 10% at the 99% C.L. with
10 kton-years of data. While no one experiment will determine with much precision, if its value lies in the combined
sensitivity region of the three experiments, it will be possible to place a
lower bound of O(0.01) at the 95% C.L. on this parameter by combining the data
from the three experiments. The same bound can be placed with a combination of
MINOS and ICARUS data alone.Comment: Version to appear in PR
Oscillation enhanced search for new interaction with neutrinos
We discuss the measurement of new physics in long baseline neutrino
oscillation experiments. Through the neutrino oscillation, the probability to
detect the new physics effects such as flavor violation is enhanced by the
interference with the weak interaction. We carefully explain the situations
that the interference can take place. Assuming a neutrino factory and an
upgraded conventional beam, we estimate the feasibility to observe new physics
numerically and point out that we can search new interactions using some
channels, for example , in these experiments. We also
discuss several models which induce the effective interactions interfering with
the weak interaction, and show that some new physics effects are large enough
to be observed in the oscillation enhanced way.Comment: 25 pages, 20 figure
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