Cardoon meal as alternative protein source to soybean meal for limousine bulls fattening period: Effects on growth performances and meat quality traits

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Beef cattle feeding strategies are commonly based on soybean meal utilization as a fundamental protein source. This feed, though, might have negative environmental impacts on the major areas of production and is becoming very expensive. Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus L.) is a resilient crop which represents a good opportunity in reclaiming and remediating unutilized lands. Cardoon seeds are rich in oil, which is extracted for industrial purposes, and the related by-products (press cake and meal) are characterized by high protein content and essential fatty acids. The aim of this study was to evaluate cardoon meal as a protein source during the Limousine bulls’ fattening period, in order to study a suitable alternative to develop and create low-input and low-emission feeding strategies. The results obtained in terms of growth performances showed no statistical difference between bulls fed the by control diet (containing soybean meal as main protein source) and animals fed by the experimental diet, where soybean meal was partially replaced by one containing cardoon meal. Meat quality traits were measured, and no differences between the groups were found. Hence, these by-products could be considered as a valuable solution in Limousine bulls’ fattening periods and could be used to represent a key factor to improve cattle-feeding sustainability. ABSTRACT: Soybean meal is the most important protein source in beef cattle feeding. The research of alternative protein sources to replace soy use, avoiding negative effects on in vivo performance and on the product’s quality, is an important issue. In this context, cardoon represents a non-OGM resilient crop that can be cultivated in marginal lands for extracting its seed oil (utilized for biodiesel and biodegradable bioplastic production) and whose and the residual meal from its seed oil (utilized for biodiesel and biodegradable bioplastic production) could be a suitable by-product for animal feeding, due to its fairly high protein content. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of using cardoon meal as an innovative protein source during the Limousine bulls’ fattening period. Thirty-two bulls were divided into two groups and fed with a diet containing soybean meal (SG) or partially replacing soybean meal with cardoon meal as a protein source (CG), respectively. The feeding trial lasted about 11 months. Growth performances and meat physical–chemical traits were evaluated. No statistical differences in feed efficiency, average daily gain, or in the main meat quality indicators, as well as in fatty acid profiles were found among the groups. Therefore, cardoon meal could be considered as an alternative to soybean meal in fattening Limousine bulls in order to enhance the sustainability of the farming system

A national clinician–educator program: a model of an effective community of practice

Background: The increasing complexity of medical training often requires faculty members with educational expertise to address issues of curriculum design, instructional methods, assessment, program evaluation, faculty development, and educational scholarship, among others. Discussion: In 2007, The Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada responded to this need by establishing the first national clinician–educator program. We define a clinician–educator and describe the development of the program. Adopting a construct from the business community, we use a community of practice framework to describe the benefits (with examples) of this program and challenges in developing it. The benefits of the clinician–educator program include: improved educational problem solving, recognition of educational needs and development of new projects, enhanced personal educational expertise, maintenance of professional satisfaction and retention of group members, a positive influence within the Royal College, and a positive influence within other Canadian academic institutions. Summary: Our described experience of a social reorganization – a community of practice – suggests that the organizational and educational benefits of a national clinician–educator program are not theoretical, but real

Orienting dart-free clique-Helly chordal graphs

In this paper we acyclic orient dart-free clique-Helly chordal graphs in which each directed path is contained in at most two maximal cliques. As shown by the authors in previous works, this allows to give performance guarantee approximation results on a wide class of optimization problems

Partitioning Cliques of Claw-free Strongly Chordal Graphs

In this paper we find a particular partition of the vertex set of claw-free strongly chordal graphs in which each element is a clique, and we show that the adjacency graph of these cliques is a tree. In particular, the presented results imply the existence of an ordering of the vertices, and a corresponding edge orientation, such that each directed path is contained in at most two maximal cliques. As shown by the authors in previous works, this allows to give performance guarantee approximation results on a wide class of optimization problems

An approximation result for the interval coloring problem on claw-free chordal graphs

We study the problem of finding an acyclic orientation of an undirected graph, such that each (oriented) path is covered by a limited number k of maximal cliques. This is equivalent to finding a k-approximate solution for the interval coloring problem on a graph. We focus our attention on claw-free chordal graphs, and show how to find an orientation of such a graph in linear time, which guarantees that each path is covered by at most two maximal cliques. This extends previous published results on other graph classes where stronger assumptions were made. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

A Linear Time Approximation Algorithm for Interval Coloring on Proper Interval Graphs

Given a set of intervals on the real line, an interval graph is de®ned by a set of vertices associated to the intervals with edges between two vertices when the corresponding intervals overlap. If no interval properly contains another, we have a proper interval graph. When weights are associated to vertices, the interval coloring problem on a graph consists in assigning to each vertex a number of consecutive colors equal to the weight, such that adjacent vertices do not share any color and the total number of used colors is minimized. In this paper, we prove that this optimization problem on proper interval graphs is NP-hard. We give a linear time 2-approximation algorithm for it, and show that the bound is tight. Moreover, by exploiting the particular problem representation, the structure of the provided solutions are guaranteed to remain 2-approximated for any vertex weight function

An Auction Based Approach in Decentralized Project Scheduling

We consider project scheduling problems on a decentralized decisional framework, where a project is partitioned into different sub-projects each one managed by a local decision maker. A coordination mechanism has to be considered to resolve shared resource allocation conflicts between different sub-projects. We propose a multi agent system model to represent the decentralized decisional problem, where each agent interacts with the others using an auction mechanism to perform his/her activities and to resolve the conflicts derived from the limited shared resources capacity