Pre‐lab video demonstrations to enhance students' laboratory experience in a first‐year chemical engineering class

The limited capabilities of teaching laboratories, combined with an increasing number of students enrolled in university, require constant augmentation of instructional approaches. By enhancing laboratory demonstrations with digital technology, these structural issues can be addressed while at the same time enhancing student understanding and learning. Our case study focuses on the fermentation lab part of the Reaction Equilibria and Thermodynamics (RET) module, a first-year chemical engineering course at the University of Birmingham. Video demonstrations were used to introduce students to the laboratory set-ups and walk them through each step and technique. The video demonstrations allowed the students to attend the in-person lab sessions having established knowledge and understanding of the processes involved and the outcomes desired, which decreased the burden on the facilities and the staff. A knowledge-based quiz and a student survey conducted at the end of the module showed that the pre-lab videos encouraged more active participation in the laboratory sessions and reinforced learning. Approximately 70% of the students polled in the first survey conducted within this project felt more confident going into the laboratory sessions after watching the pre-lab videos and attempting the knowledge quiz, while 92% of the students polled in the second survey judged the pre-lab video sessions as beneficial to them. Overall, the teaching method has the potential to improve student participation and access, boost confidence and learning, and provided a more structured and flexible approach to laboratory learning outcomes

P and Ca digestibility is increased in broiler diets supplemented with the high-phytase HIGHPHY wheat

Around 70% of total seed phosphorus is represented by phytate which must be hydrolysed to be bioavailable in non-ruminant diets. The limited endogenous phytase activity in non-ruminant animals make it common practice to add an exogenous phytase source to most poultry and pig feeds. The mature grain phytase activity (MGPA) of cereal seeds provides a route for the seeds themselves to contribute to phytate digestion, but MGPA varies considerably between species and most varieties in current use make negligible contributions. Currently, all phytases used for feed supplementation and transgenic improvement of MGPA are derived from microbial enzymes belonging to the group of histidine acid phosphatases (HAP). Cereals contain HAP phytases, but the bulk of MGPA can be attributed to phytases belonging to a completely different group of phosphatases, the purple acid phosphatases (PAPhy). In recent years, increased MGPAs were achieved in cisgenic barley holding extra copies of barley PAPhy and in the wheat HIGHPHY mutant, where MGPA was increased to ~6200 FTU/kg. In the present study, the effect of replacing 33%, 66% and 100% of a standard wheat with HIGHPHY wheat was compared with a control diet with and without 500 FTU of supplemental phytase. Diets were compared by evaluating broiler performance, ileal Ca and P digestibility and tibia development, using nine replicate pens of four birds per diet over 3 weeks from hatch. There were no differences between treatments in any tibia or bird performance parameters, indicating the control diet did not contain sufficiently low levels of phosphorus to distinguish effect of phytase addition. However, in a comparison of the two wheats, the ileal Ca and P digestibility coefficients for the 100% HIGHPHY wheat diets are 22.9% and 35.6% higher, respectively, than for the control diet, indicating the wheat PAPhy is functional in the broiler digestive tract. Furthermore, 33% HIGHPHY replacement of conventional wheat, significantly improved Ca and P digestibility over the diet-supplemented exogenous phytase, probably due to the higher phytase activity in the HIGHPHY diet (1804 v. 1150 FTU). Full replacement by HIGHPHY gave 14.6% and 22.8% higher ileal digestibility coefficients for Ca and P, respectively, than for feed supplemented with exogenous HAP phytase at 500 FTU. This indicates that in planta wheat PAPhys has promising potential for improving P and mineral digestibility in animal feed

Solar energy for preheating ventilating air

Bright Future? is known as Swine Day, 1977The basic concept of the solar energy collector- storage system for preheating ventilating air is sound, and it should be an economic alternative as energy becomes less available and/or more expensive. Based on current energy prices it can’t be justified on a strict economic basis without large tax credits. We plan to continue research, working with other scientists, to develop it so that functional and reliable units can be constructed when our national energy situation demands such a solar energy system

Preheating ventilating air with solar energy

Swine Day '76 is known as Swine Day, 1976When animals are confined inside buildings, ventilating air is required to remove moisture and odors. Young animals require relatively warm temperatures and do not produce enough heat to offset that lost through walls and to warm ventilating air. Supplemental heat required by young animals does not need to be high quality, and heating the air a few degrees is adequate for much of the fall, winter, and spring. For example, assume that a 26-sow, farrowing house has a 500 cfm fan. Current recommendations are to run that size fan continuously during the winter. If the ventilating air is heated 30 degrees, it requires 16,000 Btu per hour or 1 gallon of LP gas every 4.3 hours

Landscape and identity around memorials and symbolic places representative of the Franco regime in Madrid

Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of global R&D occurring in low-income economies rose from 2 per cent to more than 20 per cent. However, this rising commitment to R&D does not easily translate into the emergence of a family of innovations meeting the needs of low-income consumers at the bottom of the pyramid, since much of these technological resources are invested in outdated structures of innovation. A number of transnational corporations are targeting these markets, but it is our contention that much of the previously dominant innovation value chains are either ignorant of the needs of consumers at the bottom of the pyramid or lack the technologies and organizational structures to meet these needs effectively. Instead, the firms and value chains which are likely to be most successful in these dynamic new markets are those which are emerging in China and India and other developing countries, disrupting global corporate and locational hierarchies of innovation