Suplementação dietética de glutamina ou ácido glutâmico para leitões recém-desmamados

The objective of this work was to evaluate the effects of dietary glutamine and glutamic acid supplementation on carbon turnover (δ13C) in the muscles of piglets, on animal performance, and on feed economic feasibility. The diets consisted of: control (C), 1% glutamine (G), and 1% glutamic acid (GA). In experiment I, 111 piglets were used to assess carbon turnover in the Masseter, Psoas major, and Abdominal internal oblique muscles in terms of their isotopic composition and 13C substitution over time. In experiment II, 72 piglets were assigned randomly to blocks (eight replicates per treatment and three animals per experimental unit), in order to evaluate animal performance and feed economic feasibility. The GA diet promoted the best 13C acceleration in the studied muscles. No diet effects were observed on performance variables. The G and GA diets presented higher costs than the C diet. Although supplementation with 1% glutamine or glutamic acid accelerates carbon turnover in the studied muscles, which suggests a faster recovery during post-weaning and proves the anabolic effect of these additives, its use is not economically viable for weanling piglets.O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar os efeitos da suplementação dietética de glutamina e ácido glutâmico no turnover do carbono (δ13C) em músculos de leitões, no desempenho dos animais e na viabilidade econômica das rações. As dietas consistiram em: controle (C), 1% de glutamina (G) e 1% de ácido glutâmico (AG). No experimento I, 111 leitões foram usados para avaliar o turnover do carbono nos músculos Masseter, Psoas major e Abdominal internal oblique, quanto à composição isotópica e à substituição do 13C no tempo. No experimento II, 72 leitões foram alocados em blocos ao acaso (oito repetições por tratamento e três animais por unidade experimental), para avaliar o desempenho dos animais e a viabilidade econômica das rações. A dieta AG promoveu a melhor aceleração de 13C nos músculos estudados. Não se constatou efeito das dietas nas variáveis de desempenho. As dietas G e AG apresentaram maiores custos que a dieta C. Embora a suplementação com 1% de glutamina ou ácido glutâmico acelere o turnover do carbono nos músculos estudados, o que sugere rápida recuperação no pós-desmame e comprova o efeito anabólico desses aditivos, seu uso não é economicamente viável para leitões recém-desmamados

Desempenho operacional de um conjunto trator-Semeadora / Operational performance of a tractor-seeder set

A capacidade de campo efetiva e operacional são parâmetros importantes para que se possa aperfeiçoar o processo de semeadura, com possível redução do número de conjuntos mecanizados em função da maior área trabalhada em mesmo período de tempo. Objetivou-se com esse estudo avaliar a capacidade de campo efetiva e operacional de um conjunto trator-semeadora em função do preparo do solo e do escalonamento de marchas. As avaliações foram realizadas na área experimental do Departamento de Engenharia Agrícola da Universidade Federal do Ceará. Foi utilizada uma semeadora-adubadora de fluxo contínuo, tracionada por um trator 4x2 TDA. O delineamento experimental foi em blocos casualizados em arranjo fatorial 2x3 com 4 repetições. Foram calculados a velocidade, capacidade de campo efetiva e operacional. Os tratamentos foram dois preparos de solo (arado + grade e escarificador), e três escalonamentos de marchas L3T, L3C e L4C, correspondendo as velocidades de 4,56; 5,71 e 7,63 km h-1, respectivamente. Os dados foram submetidos à análise de variância e quando significativo foi aplicado o teste de Tukey a 5% de probabilidade. O preparo convencional (Arado + Grade) proporciona maior capacidade de campo efetiva e operacional do conjunto trator semeadora. A marcha L4C (7,63 km h-1) foi a que apresentou maior capacidade de campo efetiva e operacional

Desempenho na barra de tração de um conjunto trator-semeadora / Performance in the drawbar of a tractor-sower set

Para que se tenha máximo aproveitamento da energia gerada no motor e transmitida para barra de tração, faz se necessários estudos sobre diversas condições de carga na barra de tração. Objetivou-se com esse trabalho avaliar o desempenho na barra de tração de um conjunto trator-semeador em função do preparo do solo e escalonamentos de marchas. Foi utilizada uma semeadora-adubadora da marca Tatu Marchesan, modelo SDA³ de fluxo contínuo de 15 linhas com espaçamento de 0,158 m para semeadura de arroz, tracionada por um trator 4x2 TDA. O delineamento experimental foi em blocos casualizados em arranjo fatorial 2x3 com 4 repetições. Os tratamentos foram constituídos por dois preparos do solo (preparo com arado + grade e escarificador), e três escalonamentos de marchas L3T, L3C e L4C, correspondendo as velocidades de 4,56; 5,71 e 7,63 km h-1, respectivamente. Foram calculados a velocidade de deslocamento, força e potência na barra de tração. Os dados foram submetidos à análise de variância e quando significativos foi aplicado o teste de Tukey a 5% de probabilidade. O melhor desempenho na barra de tração foi obtido no solo preparado com o uso de escarificado. A marcha L4C (7,63 km h-1) foi a que apresentou maior exigência de potência na barra de tração no processo de semeadura

Qualidade da semeadura do arroz em função do preparo do solo e velocidade operacional do conjunto mecanizado / Rice seeding quality as a preparation of the soil and operational speed of the mechanized assembly

O processo de semeadura pode ser interferido por diversos fatores, entre eles podemos citar a velocidade e o preparo do solo. Objetivou-se com esse trabalho avaliar a qualidade da distribuição de sementes de uma semeadora-adubadora de fluxo contínuo em função dos preparos do solo e escalonamento de marchas, bem como a determinação da correlação entre as variáveis estudadas. Utilizou-se a semeadora-adubadora de fluxo contínuo, tracionada por um trator 4x2 TDA.  O delineamento experimental foi em blocos casualizados, em arranjo fatorial 2x3 com 4 repetições. Os tratamentos foram constituídos por dois preparos de solo e três escalonamentos de marchas. Os dados foram submetidos à análise de variância que quando significativos ao nível de 5% de significância. Para comparação de médias realizou-se o teste de Tukey a 5% probabilidade. Os dados também foram submetidos a uma análise de correlação a 5% pelo teste t, que quando significativo realizou-se uma análise gráfica. A semeadora-adubadora apresentou melhor qualidade de semeadura no solo escarificado e na marcha 1, com a distribuição de sementes na quantidade mais próximo da regulagem utilizada

Effect of Glutamine, Glutamic Acid and Nucleotides on the Turnover of Carbon (δC) in Organs of Weaned Piglets

Morphological and physiological alterations occur in the digestive system of weanling piglets, compromising the performance in subsequent phases. This experiment aimed at verifying the influence of glutamine, glutamate and nucleotides on the carbon turnover in the pancreas and liver of piglets weaned at 21 days of age. Four diets were evaluated: glutamine, glutamic acid or nucleotides-free diet (CD); containing 1% glutamine (GD); containing 1% glutamic acid (GAD) and containing 1% nucleotides (ND). One hundred and twenty-three piglets were utilized with three pigs slaughtered at day zero (weaning day) and three at each one of the experimental days (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 20, 27, and 49 post-weaning), in order to collect organ samples, which were analyzed for the δ13C isotopic composition and compared by means of time. No differences were found (p>0.05) among treatments for the turnover of the 13C in the pancreas (T50% = 13.91, 14.37, 11.07, and 9.34 days; T95% = 46.22, 47.73, 36.79, and 31.04 days for CD, GD, GAD, and ND, respectively). In the liver, the ND presented accelerated values of carbon turnover (T50% = 7.36 and T95% = 24.47 days) in relation to the values obtained for the GD (T50% = 10.15 and T95% = 33.74 days). However, the values obtained for the CD (T50% = 9.12 and T95% = 30.31 days) and GAD (T50% = 7.83 and T95% = 26.03 days) had no differences (p>0.05) among other diets. The technique of 13C isotopic dilution demonstrated trophic action of nucleotides in the liver

Purified cellulose, soybean hulls and citrus pulp as a source of fiber for weaned piglets

Dietary fiber is an important component, which has a direct effect on intake, digestion, and absorption of nutrients; and also alters intestinal microbiota and morphology according to solubility. One digestibility trial and one performance experiment were performed to evaluate the effects of sources of fiber in diets for 21 day weaned piglets. The experimental diets used in both trials consisted of a control diet and diets with purified cellulose, soybean hulls or citrus pulp as a main source of dietary fiber. To evaluate the digestibility of nutrients (Assay 1), the total feces and urine collection method was used. The fiber sources did not affect nutrient digestibility, except for soluble fiber, which increased with the inclusion of citrus (Citrus sinensisL.) pulp. To evaluate performance, morphophysiology and microbiology of the digestive tract of weaned piglets, a total of 32 castrated male piglets was used. Slaughter of animals was implemented at 35 and 50 days of age. The use of soybean (Glycine max L.) hulls and citrus pulp in diets increased the number of goblet cells and the density of villi in the jejunum. The viscosities of stomach and cecum contents increased due to the addition of citrus pulp. Soybean hulls and the citrus pulp included in diets reduced the occurrence of E. coli in the small intestines of piglets slaughtered at 35 days of age. Among the fiber sources, purified cellulose in piglet diets promotes better performance of animals, due to the modulation of the small intestine microbiota, with lower E. coli occurrence resulting in higher villus density

The impact of surgical delay on resectability of colorectal cancer: An international prospective cohort study

AIM: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to explore the impact of surgical delays on cancer resectability. This study aimed to compare resectability for colorectal cancer patients undergoing delayed versus non-delayed surgery. METHODS: This was an international prospective cohort study of consecutive colorectal cancer patients with a decision for curative surgery (January-April 2020). Surgical delay was defined as an operation taking place more than 4 weeks after treatment decision, in a patient who did not receive neoadjuvant therapy. A subgroup analysis explored the effects of delay in elective patients only. The impact of longer delays was explored in a sensitivity analysis. The primary outcome was complete resection, defined as curative resection with an R0 margin. RESULTS: Overall, 5453 patients from 304 hospitals in 47 countries were included, of whom 6.6% (358/5453) did not receive their planned operation. Of the 4304 operated patients without neoadjuvant therapy, 40.5% (1744/4304) were delayed beyond 4 weeks. Delayed patients were more likely to be older, men, more comorbid, have higher body mass index and have rectal cancer and early stage disease. Delayed patients had higher unadjusted rates of complete resection (93.7% vs. 91.9%, P = 0.032) and lower rates of emergency surgery (4.5% vs. 22.5%, P < 0.001). After adjustment, delay was not associated with a lower rate of complete resection (OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.90-1.55, P = 0.224), which was consistent in elective patients only (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.69-1.27, P = 0.672). Longer delays were not associated with poorer outcomes. CONCLUSION: One in 15 colorectal cancer patients did not receive their planned operation during the first wave of COVID-19. Surgical delay did not appear to compromise resectability, raising the hypothesis that any reduction in long-term survival attributable to delays is likely to be due to micro-metastatic disease

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Polpa cítrica e complexo enzimático para suínos nas fases de crescimento e terminação

Foram conduzidos dois ensaios para avaliar a utilização de polpa cítrica, com ou sem a adição do complexo enzimático, nas dietas de suínos nas fases de crescimento e terminação. 0 primeiro ensaio teve o objetivo de determinar os coeficientes de digestibilidade da polpa cítrica e foram utilizados 16 suínos, com peso inicial de 30,42 ± 2,44kg, os quais foram alojados em gaiolas de estudos metabólicos. Por apresentar 1677 kcal de EM/kg, 23,09% de FDN e 18,47% de FDA, a polpa cítrica mostrou-se um ingrediente viável de ser utilizado nas rações de suínos. No segundo ensaio, foram utilizados 72 suínos, com peso inicial de 25,71 ± 7,51 kg e final de 98,81 ± 10,64kg, que receberam rações contendo diferentes níveis de polpa cítrica (0, 5, 10 e 15%), com ou sem a adição do complexo enzimático, sendo avaliados quanto ao desempenho, digestibilidade das dietas, características das carcaças e avaliação econômica do uso das dietas. Conclui-se que a inclusão de até 15% de polpa cítrica com ou sem a adição do complexo enzimático nas dietas para suínos, dos 70 aos 130 dias de idade, diminui o CDR e melhora a CA, porém, os animais apresentam respostas adaptativas no período total do experimento, não sendo observadas diferenças no desempenho. A digestibilidade dos nutrientes não é modificada, na ausência do complexo enzimático, sendo que na presença do produto, há melhora na digestibilidade de todos os nutrientes. As caracteristicas de carcaça não são influenciadas pelos níveis de polpa cítrica, exceto o rendimento de carcaça, que diminui linearmente. A relação gordura/carne também diminui linearmente, a medida em que aumentam os níveis de polpa cítrica, na ausência do complexo enzimático. Na presença do produto, a relação gordura/carne, apresenta...Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the use of citrus pulp, with or without the addition of an enzyme complex, in the diets growing and finishing pigs. The first trial was to determine the digestibility coefficients of citrus pulp and 16 pigs were used, with initial weight of 30.42 ± 2.44 kg, which were housed in cages for metabolic studies. To present 1677 kcal / kg, 23.09% neutral detergent fiber and 18.47% acid detergent fiber, the citrus pulp was a viable ingredient to be used in the feed for pigs. In the second trial, 72 barrows, were used with initial weight of 25.71 ± 7.51 kg and final weight of 98.81 ± 10.64kg, which received diets containing different levels of citrus pulp (0, 5, 10 and 15%), with or without the addition of an enzyme complex, and were assessed for performance, digestibility of diets, carcass characteristics and economic evaluation about the use of diets. Conclude that inclusion of up to 15% of citrus pulp with or without the addition of the enzyme complex in diets for pigs from 70 to 130 days of age, decrease the CDR, and improves the CA, however, the animals showed adaptive responses in the total experiment, no differences being observed in performance, being what the digestibility of nutrients was not modified in the absence of the enzyme complex. In the presence of the product, there is improvement in the digestibility of all nutrients. The carcass characteristics are not influenced by levels of citrus pulp, except the carcass yield, which decreases linearly. The fat/meat relationship also decreases linearly, as they increase the levels of citrus pulp in the absence of the enzyme complex. In the presence of the product the fat/meat relationship has a quadratic behaviour and the level of 7.78% citrus pulp, provides the better relation. The use of... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq