Growth of Wild Gilthead Seabream (Sparus aurata L.) Juveniles for Organic Aquaculture

The majority of organic marine fish farms currently begin the production cycle with non-organic juveniles from conventional hatcheries, permitted by the European Regulation on organic fish origin (EC 710/2009) until the end of 2016. Wild juvenile gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) from coastal lagoons and hatcheries were experimentally reared under organic conditions, in order (1) to investigate differences in fillet lipid content and fatty acids composition, and (2) to propose a possible future source of juveniles destined for organic aquaculture. Wild juveniles were readily distinguishable by their fatty acid signature, showing significantly higher ratio levels of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and n-3/n-6. Fillet lipid composition of organically fed wild S. aurata juveniles was preferable to that from domesticated juveniles. These results seem promising for organic aquaculture, where fish feed is more environmentally sustainable but is of lower nutritional qualit

3D Millimeter-Wave Peer-to-Peer Networks With Boundary Located Destination

This letter presents a theoretical analysis for estimating the coverage probability and the average link capacity of an interfered peer-to-peer millimeter-wave communication, when the destination lies at the boundary of a three-dimensional cell. The proposed model provides closed-form expressions for the statistics of the desired and undesired signal powers, by accounting for the impact of directional antenna gains, path-loss attenuation, mid-scale fading, interference, and noise

Impact of the neighbor’s order on the capacity of millimeter-wave links with Poisson-distributed nodes in line of sight conditions

This paper presents a theoretical model for investigating the average capacity of a millimeter wave (mmWave) communication link in line of sight conditions, when a fixed binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) or a quadrature PSK (QPSK) modulation is used and the nodes are distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP). In particular, as compared to the existing PPP approaches, which often consider the sole nearest neighbor as a possible destination, the proposed analysis enables to evaluate the link performance for a neighbor of any order, thus providing a more complete view of the achievable capacity. Besides, the adoption of the BPSK/QPSK modulations helps to obtain a more realistic estimation with respect to the ideal one provided by the usually adopted Shannon bound. Moreover, the derived formulas, which are expressed in analytical form and checked by extensive simulations, include the influence of all the main mmWave propagation phenomena: path-loss attenuation, small- and mid-scale fading. The developed model is specifically exploited to explore the impact of the average cell radius and of the selected frequency band on the sustainability of the mmWave link as the destination becomes farther from the source

Coverage and Throughput Analysis for Peer-to-Peer 6G Directional Slotted Aloha Bursty Networks

This paper presents a theoretical framework for investigating the coverage and throughput behavior of sixth generation (6G) peer-to-peer (P2P) directional slotted Aloha (DirSA) networks managing bursty traffic flows. Proper channel models, accounting for interference, noise, path-loss, random node location, power fluctuation, and beam pointing error, are adopted to derive analytical expressions for the statistic of the received power in ground, air, and space propagation contexts. The resulting coverage probability, obtained in simple integral form for different omnidirectional/directional transmission/reception modes, is exploited to derive multidimensional Markov chains for estimating the throughput in the absence and in the presence of a feedback mechanism, considering also the impact of the initial access procedure and of the beam training overhead. The theoretical results, which are validated by exhaustive Monte Carlo simulations, are used to evaluate the influence of the code-modulation scheme, of the operating signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), and of the burst length on the performance of 6G terrestrial, aerial, and satellite P2P DirSA subnets

New Fourier Transform Approach to the Synthesis of Shaped Patterns by Linear Antenna Arrays

A new Fourier Transform (NFT) approach is developed for the synthesis of shaped patterns radiated by linear antenna arrays. The proposed method exploits in an innovative way the FT relation between the source distribution and the radiated pattern. Precisely, the finite dimension of real sources is firstly taken into account by using the sampling theorem to approximate the desired pattern as a band-limited function. It is this step that allows one to obtain an important performance improvement. Then, a continuous source is evaluated from the approximate desired pattern to finally obtain the element excitations. Numerical examples validate the method

Random Directional Access with and without Feedback for 5G/6G Peer-to-Peer Networks

This paper theoretically analyzes the usage of directional slotted Aloha schemes for managing the peer-to-peer random access in fifth and sixth generation (5G/6G) systems. To this aim, the physical layer is modeled by accounting for interference and noise, while a Markov chain approach is developed to investigate the network behavior in the presence and in the absence of a separate feedback channel, which provides information concerning the success or not of each transmission attempt. Closed-form expressions for the coverage probability and for the transition matrices with and without feedback are derived to then evaluate the corresponding throughput. The analytical results, which are validated by independent Monte Carlo simulations, are used to estimate the impact of the antenna gain, of the burst length, and of the node density on the achievable performance, as well as to discuss the directional random access benefit/complexity tradeoff

skeletal muscle expression analysis of fat metabolism genes in pig

Fat content and backfat thickness are important polygenic parameters influencing meat quality and carcass traits in pigs. Up to now, there is a lack of knowledge on the expression level of the genes encoding for enzymes involved in fatty acid metabolism in porcine skeletal muscle. In the present study we analysed, by quantitative real time PCR, the expression of three genes, acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACACA), ATP citrate lyase (ACL) and fatty acid synthase (FASN) in skeletal muscle tissue samples of Italian Large White and Italian Duroc pigs with divergent breeding values for backfat thickness or visible intramuscular fat. Significant differences of the expression level for ACACA gene (P=0.04) and for ACL gene (P=0.02) were observed between the two breeds, comparing the samples selected for backfat thickness trait. The expression analysis of FASN gene in the samples with different genotype at the SNP c.265C>T showed that the TT genotype presented the lowest values in both breeds. The differences observed between breeds should be further considered to investigate the putative involvement of these genes on fat deposition traits. - Ricerca e analisi di espressione di geni candidati per la deposizione di grasso nella carne suina in razze con diversa attitudine alla deposizione di grasso intramuscolare

Explicitly Invertible Approximations of the Gaussian Q-Function: A Survey

Communications and information theory use the Gaussian $Q$ -function, a positive and decreasing function, across the literature. Its approximations were created to simplify mathematical study of the Gaussian $Q$ -function expressions. This is important since the $Q$ -function cannot be represented in closed-form terms of elementary functions. In a noise model with the Gaussian distribution function and various digital modulation schemes, closed-form approximations of the Gaussian $Q$ -function are used to predict a digital communications system's symbol error probability (SEP) or bit error probability (BEP). Another significant scenario pertains to fading channels, whereby it is important to accurately determine, through a closed-form expression, the precise evaluations of complex integrals involved in the computations of SEP or BEP. In addition to the aforementioned scenarios, it is imperative for a communications system designer to ascertain the requisite operational signal-to-noise ratio for the specific application, based on the target SEP (or BEP). In this scenario, the crucial role of the explicit invertibility of the Gaussian $Q$ -function approximation is of significant importance in achieving this objective. In this paper we propose a survey of the approximations of the Gaussian $Q$ -function found in the literature, reviewing also the approximations originally given for the 4 classical special functions related to it, restricting the analysis to the explicitly invertible ones, and classifying them on the basis of their accuracy (on the significant range), simplicity, and easiness of inversion, also distinguishing the bounds from approximations. We also list the inverses of some of them, already published or newly found in this research

On the use of elo rating on harness racing results in the genetic evaluation of trotter

The official results of trotters in Italian harness racings have been used to get AM-BLUP estimates of genetic parameters, EBVs and rTI of three groups of traits: speed (racing time, annual best time, best time in career between 2- and 5-year old), earnings (earnings/start, annual earnings, total earnings between 2- and 5- year old) and Elo system traits (underlying performance and final rating). The Elo system has been used for half a century in chess players rating, and it has been modified and fitted to several games and sports: it has already been used for genetic evaluation of sport horses in France. The highest heritability estimates in each group of traits have been found for best time (.430±.014), total earnings (.271±.013) and Elo final rating (.270±.008). The choice of "k", the Elo ratings updating factor, did not show a key role in affecting the results. The underlying performance heritability and repeatability have been estimated .159±.004 and .420±.007 respectively. The Elo-based systems proved to be very promising in objectively evaluating trotters

Performance Study of a Class of Irregular Near Capacity Achieving LDPC Codes

This paper investigates the performance of a class of irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes through a recently published low complexity upper bound on their beliefpropagation decoding thresholds. Moreover, their performance analysis is carried out through a recently published algorithmic method, presented in Babich et al. 2017 paper. In particular, the class considered is characterized by variable node degree distributions λ(x) of minimum degree i1 > 2: being, in this case, λ0(0) = λ2 = 0, this is useful to design LDPC codes presenting a linear minimum distance growth with the block length with probability 1, as shown in Di et al.'s 2006 paper. These codes unfortunately cannot reach capacity under iterative decoding, since the achievement of capacity requires λ2 ≠ 0. However, in this latter case, the block error probability might converge to a constant, as shown in the aforementioned paper