Dietary supplementation with calcium propionate could beneficially alter rectal microbial composition of early lactation dairy cows

Dietary supplementation with calcium propionate can effectively alleviate negative energy balance and hypocalcemia of dairy cows in early lactation. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of calcium propionate feeding levels on the immune function, liver function, and fecal microbial composition of dairy cows in early lactation. Thirty-two multiparous Holstein cows were randomly assigned to four treatments after calving. Treatments were a basal diet plus 0, 200, 350, and 500 g calcium propionate per cow per day throughout a 5-week trial period. Cows were milked three times a day, and blood was sampled to measure immune function and liver function on d 7, 21, and 35. The rectal contents were sampled and collected on d 35 to analyze the microbial composition using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The results indicated that increasing amounts of calcium propionate did not affected the serum concentrations of total protein, IgG, IgM, and calcium, but the concentrations of albumin and IgA changed quadratically. With the increase of calcium propionate, the activity of serum alanine transaminase and aspartate aminotransferase increased linearly, in contrast, the activity of alkaline phosphatase decreased linearly. Moreover, dietary supplementation with increasing levels of calcium propionate tended to quadratically decrease the relative abundance of Firmicutes while quadratically increased the abundance of Bacteroidetes, and consequently linearly decreased the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio in the rectal microbiota. Additionally, the supplementation of calcium propionate increased the relative abundances of Ruminococcaceae_UCG-005 and Prevotellaceae_UCG-004 linearly, and Ruminococcaceae_UCG-014 quadratically, but decreased the relative abundances of Lachnospiraceae_NK3A20_group and Family_XIII_AD3011_group quadratically. Compared with the CON group, the calcium propionate supplementation significantly decreased the relative abundance of Acetitomaculum but increased the abundances of Rikenellaceae_RC9_gut_group and Alistipes. In summary, these results suggested that the supplementation of calcium propionate to dairy cows in early lactation could beneficially alter the rectal microbiota

Analysis of factors affecting visual comfort in hotel lobby

From the perspective of emotion, utilizing eye tracking technology, this paper proposes 12 different 3D hotel lobby models to investigate how would the light illuminance, wall color, decoration style and music genre affect the visual comfort specifically. The experiment results show that the illuminance of the lamp, the color of the wall, and the decoration style have a significant impact on visual comfort. The music genre would not affect consumer’s visual comfort perception of lamp illuminance, wall color and decoration style. Normal illuminance brings the most comfort, followed by bright illuminance, and then dim illuminance; Warm color brings more comfort than cool color; and Chinese style lobby brings more comfort than European style

Dry Bulk Carrier Investment Selection through a Dual Group Decision Fusing Mechanism in the Green Supply Chain

Uncertain linguistic variables and scoring evaluations are two important evaluation mechanisms in the decision making field. Sustainability requirements for ship investment lead to the complexity of influence factors and the decision making process. The uncertain linguistic assessment features a large amount of ambiguity and subjectivity, while the scoring evaluation features high precision and distinct gradations. This paper constructs a criteria system in the green supply chain and proposes a dual group decision fusing mechanism for integrating the linguistic variable and scoring evaluation into a unified evaluation term. A hierarchical cloud of linguistic variable terms is constructed based on scoring via a reverse cloud generator, and then, the ship investment linguistic terms are transformed into prospect values. In addition, the consistency and investment selection performance are measured after aggregating the individual decision matrices for group decision making. The empirical research results on the selection of dry bulk carriers for investment show that dual group decision fusing mechanisms could effectively improve the consistency, decision making efficiency, and accuracy of dry bulk ship investment choices and reduce the cost of feedback adjustment for group decisions. In comparison with the trapezoidal fuzzy and fuzzy TOPSIS methods of group decision making, the proposed method performs better when there are a large number of alternatives

Regulations on the corporate social irresponsibility in the supply chain under the multiparty game: Taking China's organic food supply chain as an example

This paper considers the lack of corporate social responsibility in the organic food supply chain in a new context, that is, the fraudulent subsidies claiming behavior of the manufacturers and the lack of organic food supervision of the fast-growing e-commerce retailers in China. We construct a three-party evolutionary game model among government regulatory departments, manufacturers and e-commerce retailers to analyze the evolution process of the behaviors of manufacturers and e-commerce retailers under government's changing regulation. The results show that: (1) The government can promote the production of organic food by the moderate supervision of manufacturers; Low intensity supervision cannot restrain fraudulent subsidies claiming behavior, while high intensity supervision will restrain the orderly development of organic food industry. (2) The greater the government subsidies on technology and R &amp; D of manufacturers, the more conducive the manufacturerss will be to overcome technical problems and realize the scale of the organic food industry, so that it will eventually evolve towards the direction of active production of organic food. (3) The government's low-intensity fine on e-commerce retailers when they fail to fulfill their responsibilities is not enough to prompt them to choose the strategy of responsibility fulfillment, and the greater the fine is, the more conducive it is for them to evolve towards fulfilling their social responsibilities. (4) Appropriate government funding for e-commerce retailers will encourage them to fulfill their responsibility, but excessive funding will make e-commerce retailers over rely on government funding. Our research provides a better understanding of the irresponsible behavior of organic food supply chain enterprises, our management insights can help improve the government's regulation performance of such behavior, and can also provide a reference for other countries facing similar challenges.</p

Metagenomic insights into effects of thiamine supplementation on ruminal non-methanogen archaea in high-concentrate diets feeding dairy cows

Abstract Background Overfeeding of high-concentrate diet (HC) frequently leads to subacute ruminal acidosis (SARA) in modern dairy cows’ production. Thiamine supplementation has been confirmed to attenuate HC induced SARA by increasing ruminal pH and ratio of acetate to propionate, and decreasing rumen lactate, biogenic amines and lipopolysaccharide (LPS). The effects of thiamine supplementation in HC on rumen bacteria and fungi profile had been detected in our previous studies, however, effects of thiamine supplementation in HC on rumen non-methanogen archaea is still unclear. The objective of the present study was therefore to investigate the effects of thiamine supplementation on ruminal archaea, especially non-methanogens in HC induced SARA cows. Results HC feeding significantly decreased dry matter intake, milk production, milk fat content, ruminal pH and the concentrations of thiamine and acetate in rumen fluid compared with control diet (CON) (P < 0.05), while the concentrations of propionate and ammonia-nitrogen (NH3-N) were significantly increased compared with CON (P < 0.05). These changes caused by HC were inversed by thiamine supplementation (P < 0.05). The taxonomy results showed that ruminal archaea ranged from 0.37 to 0.47% of the whole microbiota. Four characterized phyla, a number of Candidatus archaea and almost 660 species were identified in the present study. In which Euryarchaeota occupied the largest proportion of the whole archaea. Furthermore, thiamine supplementation treatment significantly increased the relative abundance of non-methanogens compared with CON and HC treatments. Thaumarchaeota was increased in HC compared with CON. Thiamine supplementation significantly increased Crenarchaeota, Nanoarchaeota and the Candidatus phyla, however decreased Thaumarchaeota compared with HC treatment. Conclusions HC feeding significantly decreased ruminal pH and increased the content of NH3-N which led to N loss and the increase of the relative abundance of Thaumarchaeota. Thiamine supplementation increased ruminal pH, improved the activity of ammonia utilizing bacteria, and decreased Thaumarchaeota abundance to reduce the ruminal NH3 content and finally reduced N loss. Overall, these findings contributed to the understanding of thiamine’s function in dairy cows and provided new strategies to improve dairy cows’ health under high-concentrate feeding regime

Metagenome sequencing to analyze the impacts of thiamine supplementation on ruminal fungi in dairy cows fed high-concentrate diets

Abstract Ruminal thiamine deficiencies occur when dairy cows are overfed with high-concentrate diet, and thiamine supplementation has been proved to attenuate high-concentrate diet induced SARA. However, there is limited knowledge of the relationship between thiamine supplementation in high-concentrate diets and ruminal fungi. In order to investigate the impacts of thiamine supplementation on ruminal fungi, twelve Chinese Holstein dairy cows were randomly assigned into three treatments: control diet (CON; 20% starch, dry matter basis), high-concentrate diet (HC; 33.2% starch, dry matter basis) and high-concentrate diet supplemented with 180 mg thiamine/kg dry matter intake. Dry matter intake and milk production were recorded during the experimental periods. On day 21, rumen fluid samples were collected at 3 h postfeeding and ruminal pH, thiamine concentration and volatile fatty acids were measured. Metagenome sequencing method was conducted to detect ruminal fungi composition. Feeding HC significantly decreased dry matter intake, milk production, ruminal pH, ruminal acetate and thiamine concentration, however, significantly increased propionate and isovalerate (P < 0.05). These changes were inversed by thiamine supplementation (P < 0.05). Totally, seven phyla and almost 1050 species of rumen fungi were identified across all samples in which especially, 3 genera and 10 species of strictly anaerobic fungi phylum Neocallimastigomycota was found. Principal coordinate analysis indicated that feeding HC and thiamine supplementation caused a significant inverse in ruminal fungi composition. Feeding HC significantly decreased the abundance of fungi compared with CON (P < 0.05) while thiamine supplementation significantly increased the abundance of ruminal fungi (P < 0.05). These results indicated that thiamine supplementation may effectively attenuate rumen metabolic disorder caused by HC diet through buffering the ruminal pH, shifting the rumen fermentation pattern and increasing the abundance of ruminal fungi. The findings in this study could therefore contribute to the further understanding of the mechanism of thiamine’s function in dairy cows