470 research outputs found
Effects of dietary crude protein concentration on animal performance and nitrogen utilisation efficiency at different stages of lactation in Holstein-Friesian dairy cows
Publication history: Accepted - 16 May 2022; Published online - 13 June 2022Nitrogen (N) excretion from livestock production systems is of significant environmental concern; however, few studies have investigated the effect of dietary CP concentration on N utilisation efficiency at different stages of lactation, and the interaction between dietary CP levels and stages of lactation on N utilisation. Holstein-Friesian dairy cows (12 primiparous and 12 multiparous) used in the present study were selected from a larger group of cows involved in a whole-lactation study designed to examine the effect of dietary CP concentration on milk production and N excretion rates at different stages of lactation. The total diet CP concentrations evaluated were 114 (low CP), 144 (medium CP) and 173 (high CP) g/kg DM, with diets containing (g/kg DM) 550 concentrates, 270 grass silage and 180 maize silage. During early (70–80 days), mid- (150–160 days) and late (230–240 days) lactation, the same 24 animals were transferred from the main cow house to metabolism units for measurements of feed intake, milk production and faeces and urine outputs. Diet had no effect on BW, body condition score, or milk fat, protein or lactose concentration, but DM intake, milk yield and digestibilities of DM, energy and N increased with increasing diet CP concentration. The effect of diet on milk yield was largely due to differences between the low and medium CP diets. Increasing dietary CP concentration significantly increased urine N/N intake and urine N/manure N, and decreased faecal N/N intake, milk N/N intake and manure N/N intake. Although increasing dietary CP level significantly increased urine N/milk yield and manure N/milk yield, differences in these two variables between low and medium CP diets were not significant. There was no significant interaction between CP level and stage of lactation on any N utilisation variable, indicating that the effects of CP concentration on these variables were similar between stages of lactation. These results demonstrated that a decrease in dietary CP concentration from high (173 g/kg DM) to medium level (144 g/kg DM) may be appropriate for Holstein-Friesian dairy cow to maintain milk production efficiency, whilst reducing both urine N and manure N as a proportion of N intake or milk production.This research received funding from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs of Northern Ireland (project codes: 0700 and 17-4-03)
Lorenz-like systems and classical dynamical equations with memory forcing: a new point of view for singling out the origin of chaos
A novel view for the emergence of chaos in Lorenz-like systems is presented.
For such purpose, the Lorenz problem is reformulated in a classical mechanical
form and it turns out to be equivalent to the problem of a damped and forced
one dimensional motion of a particle in a two-well potential, with a forcing
term depending on the ``memory'' of the particle past motion. The dynamics of
the original Lorenz system in the new particle phase space can then be
rewritten in terms of an one-dimensional first-exit-time problem. The emergence
of chaos turns out to be due to the discontinuous solutions of the
transcendental equation ruling the time for the particle to cross the
intermediate potential wall. The whole problem is tackled analytically deriving
a piecewise linearized Lorenz-like system which preserves all the essential
properties of the original model.Comment: 48 pages, 25 figure
Nonleptonic Weak Decays of Bottom Baryons
Cabibbo-allowed two-body hadronic weak decays of bottom baryons are analyzed.
Contrary to the charmed baryon sector, many channels of bottom baryon decays
proceed only through the external or internal W-emission diagrams. Moreover,
W-exchange is likely to be suppressed in the bottom baryon sector.
Consequently, the factorization approach suffices to describe most of the
Cabibbo-allowed bottom baryon decays. We use the nonrelativistic quark model to
evaluate heavy-to-heavy and heavy-to-light baryon form factors at zero recoil.
When applied to the heavy quark limit, the quark model results do satisfy all
the constraints imposed by heavy quark symmetry. The decay rates and up-down
asymmetries for bottom baryons decaying into and
are calculated. It is found that the up-down asymmetry is negative except for
decay and for decay modes with in the final
state. The prediction for
is consistent with the recent CDF measurement. We also present
estimates for decays and compare with various model
calculations.Comment: 24 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. Uncertainties with form factor q^2
dependence are discusse
Chameleonic Generalized Brans--Dicke model and late-time acceleration
In this paper we consider Chameleonic Generalized Brans--Dicke Cosmology in
the framework of FRW universes. The bouncing solution and phantom crossing is
investigated for the model. Two independent cosmological tests: Cosmological
Redshift Drift (CRD) and distance modulus are applied to test the model with
the observation.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, to be published in Astrophys. Space Sci. (2011
A Phenomenological Analysis of Heavy Hadron Lifetimes
A phenomenological analysis of lifetimes of bottom and charmed hadrons within
the framework of the heavy quark expansion is performed. The baryon matrix
element is evaluated using the bag model and the nonrelativistic quark model.
We find that bottom-baryon lifetimes follow the pattern
.
However, neither the lifetime ratio nor the
absolute decay rates of the baryon and mesons can be explained.
One way of solving both difficulties is to allow the presence of linear
corrections by scaling the inclusive nonleptonic width with the fifth power of
the hadron mass rather than the heavy quark mass . The hierarchy
of bottom baryon lifetimes is dramatically modified to
: The
longest-lived among bottom baryons in the OPE prescription now
becomes shortest-lived. The replacement of by in nonleptonic
widths is natural and justified in the PQCD-based factorization approach
formulated in terms of hadron-level kinematics. For inclusive charmed baryon
decays, we argue that since the heavy quark expansion does not converge, local
duality cannot be tested in this case. We show that while the ansatz of
substituting the heavy quark mass by the hadron mass provides a much better
description of the charmed-baryon lifetime {\it ratios}, it appears unnatural
and unpredictive for describing the {\it absolute} inclusive decay rates of
charmed baryons, contrary to the bottom case.Comment: 35 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. The CDF result on the lifetime
ratio of Lambda_b and B_d is discusse
The energy spectrum of all-particle cosmic rays around the knee region observed with the Tibet-III air-shower array
We have already reported the first result on the all-particle spectrum around
the knee region based on data from 2000 November to 2001 October observed by
the Tibet-III air-shower array. In this paper, we present an updated result
using data set collected in the period from 2000 November through 2004 October
in a wide range over 3 decades between eV and eV, in which
the position of the knee is clearly seen at around 4 PeV. The spectral index is
-2.68 0.02(stat.) below 1PeV, while it is -3.12 0.01(stat.) above 4
PeV in the case of QGSJET+HD model, and various systematic errors are under
study now.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted by Advances in space researc
A probabilistic method for the detection of obstructed cracks of beam-type structures using spatial wavelet transform
This paper reports both the theoretical development and the numerical verification of a practical wavelet-based crack detection method, which identifies first the number of cracks and then the corresponding crack locations and extents. The value of the proposed method lies in its ability to detect obstructed cracks when measurement at or close to the cracked region is not possible. In such situations, most nonmodel-based methods, which rely on the abnormal change of certain indicators (e.g., curvature and strain mode shapes) at or close to the cracks, cannot be used. Most model-based methods follow the model updating approach. That is, they treat the crack location and extent as model parameters and identify them by minimizing the discrepancy between the modelled and measured dynamic responses. Most model-based methods in the literature can only be used in single- or multi-crack cases with a given number of cracks. One of the objectives of this paper is to develop a model-based crack detection method that is applicable in a general situation when the number of cracks is not known in advance. To explicitly handle the uncertainties associated with measurement noise and modelling error, the proposed method uses the Bayesian probabilistic approach. In particular, the method aims to calculate the posterior (updated) probability density function (PDF) of the crack locations and the corresponding extents. The proposed wavelet-based crack detection method is verified and demonstrated through a comprehensive series of numerical case studies, in which noisy data were generated by a Bernoulli-Euler beam with semi-rigid connections. The results show that the method can correctly identify the number of cracks even when the crack extent is small. The effects of the number of cracks and the crack extents on the results of crack detection are also studied and discussed in this paper. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.H.F. Lam, C.T. N
Moon Shadow by Cosmic Rays under the Influence of Geomagnetic Field and Search for Antiprotons at Multi-TeV Energies
We have observed the shadowing of galactic cosmic ray flux in the direction
of the moon, the so-called moon shadow, using the Tibet-III air shower array
operating at Yangbajing (4300 m a.s.l.) in Tibet since 1999. Almost all cosmic
rays are positively charged; for that reason, they are bent by the geomagnetic
field, thereby shifting the moon shadow westward. The cosmic rays will also
produce an additional shadow in the eastward direction of the moon if cosmic
rays contain negatively charged particles, such as antiprotons, with some
fraction. We selected 1.5 x10^{10} air shower events with energy beyond about 3
TeV from the dataset observed by the Tibet-III air shower array and detected
the moon shadow at level. The center of the moon was detected
in the direction away from the apparent center of the moon by 0.23 to
the west. Based on these data and a full Monte Carlo simulation, we searched
for the existence of the shadow produced by antiprotons at the multi-TeV energy
region. No evidence of the existence of antiprotons was found in this energy
region. We obtained the 90% confidence level upper limit of the flux ratio of
antiprotons to protons as 7% at multi-TeV energies.Comment: 13pages,4figures; Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic
Prokaryotic expression of a novel mouse pro-apoptosis protein PNAS-4 and application of its polyclonal antibodies
Pharmacological separation of early afterdepolarizations from arrhythmogenic substrate in ΔKPQ Scn5a murine hearts modelling human long QT 3 syndrome
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