Effects of stocking density on growth and skin quality of grower Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus)

Intensive Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) farming operates with considerable variation in housing and stocking density. In this study, current commercial stocking densities for crocodilians were investigated using 261 grower-phase crocodiles (15 months old, average total body length 94.5 cm, and average weight 2.7 kg). Low (2.60 m2 per crocodile), medium (1.24 m2 per crocodile), and high (0.41 m2 per crocodile) stocking densities were tested. Growth, morphometric measures, Fulton’s condition scores and skin qualities were assessed over a six-month (May - November 2017) period. High stocking density had no adverse effects on the growth of grower Nile crocodiles. Crocodiles stocked at medium and high densities outperformed those that were stocked at low density in Fulton’s body condition scores, change in body condition from the start to the end of the trial, and feed conversion efficiencies. However, the high and, to a lesser extent, the medium stocking densities resulted in lower skin quality scores compared with those in the low-density treatment because of teeth marks from more aggressive behaviour. The results indicated that the medium pen density treatment is closer to the ideal than either the high or low stocking density groups. Stocking densities that provide 0.41 m2 per crocodile or less should be avoided because of lower skin quality scores, which weigh more heavily than growth and feed efficiency responses in the financial viability of commercial crocodile farming in typical South African production systems

The influence of household characteristics on cattle off-take rates in the North West Province of South Africa

This paper evaluates the socio-economic characteristics of small-holder cattle producers in the North West Province and investigates the relationship between these characteristics with cattle off-take. A questionnaire aimed at capturing cross-sectional data on factors affecting cattle off-take for 2011 breeding season was administered through face-to-face interviews of 308 respondents. Respondents were predominantly middle and old age males. Households headed by seniors (>65 years) tended to be larger than others. The majority (58%) of household heads regarded farming as their form of self-employment while only 15% had temporary or permanent employment outside agriculture. Most (82%) households relied on income from cattle followed by other livestock (55%) and social grants (47%). Female headed household relied on small businesses, which correlated positively with the sale of cattle and sheep. Households which depend on employment had less number of persons attending tertiary education and sold more cows. As expected, farmers sold more male animals (62.8%) than females mainly through auction sales. Unlike previous studies, our study shows that income from outside agriculture supplements cattle off-take. Households owning herds smaller than 11 head had higher overall herd off-take, as well as off-take for females than steers. Affiliation to and official position in community associations suppressed the cow sales but induce steer off-take. We conclude that financial burdens in households with smaller herds compel those households to sell potential breeding stock. We recommend the development of an animal recording system and that future interventions focus on the strengthening of women and community associations.http://www.lrrd.orgam2016Animal and Wildlife Science

Herd mortality and cattle off-take rates among smallholder producers in the North West Province of South

This study was done to determine the influence of herd mortality on off-take rates through face to face interviews of 308 smallholder cattle producers from Dr RSM District Municipality, North West. Most deaths were caused by diseases (50%) and drought (34%). Producer’s gender had no influence on herd performance and off-take even though extension ward with higher proportion of women had higher mortality and lower off-take rates. The sale of steers decreased significantly (P<0.05) as the death of adult animals as well as that of the overall herd increased. Herd off-take also declined as mortality of suckling calves as well as that for overall herd, increased. Herd mortality logically reduces stock and therefore suppresses sales. It is recommended that herd mortality should be monitored through animal recording to improve the competitiveness of small-holder production systems.http://www.academicjournals.org/AJARam2016Animal and Wildlife Science

Sources of information for small-holder cattle farmers in Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati district municipality in the North West Province, South Africa

The purpose of this paper was to identify sources of information used by small-holder cattle enterprises and evaluate their influence on productivity of those enterprises. Results showed that public extension is the main (85-87%) source of information for small-holder cattle producers, followed by radio (52%) and other farmers (47-48%). More educated farmers prefer magazine and TV to extension officers while women prefer office visits to magazine, TV and commercial farmers (P<0.05). Older farmers tend not to rely on magazine, radio, TV, commercial farmers and veterinarian while owners of larger herds prefer these sources to office visits (P<0.05). Older farmers tend not to rely on magazine, radio, TV, commercial farmers and veterinarian while owners of larger herds prefer these sources to office visits (P<0.05). Source commonly used by more educated farmers, men, younger farmers and owners of large herds such as radio, TV and commercial farmers, suppressed the sale of cattle and small stock (P<0.05). Reliance on other small-holder farmers for agricultural information, resulted in lower calving rates while reliance on both commercial and small-holder farmers suppressed the sale of small stock (P<0.05). Sources preferred by women such as office visits and telephone stimulated the sale of sheep and small stock in general. We recommend that age, gender, education and herd size should guide the selection channels for disseminating information to small-holder cattle producers and that the extension content be enriched to include markets and entrepreneurship in the study area.http://www.sasas.co.za/aahrdam2016Animal and Wildlife Science

Mapping the rotational diffusion of fluorophores in cells with time-resolved wide-field fluorescence anisotropy imaging

CLEO/EUROPE ; EQEC European Quantum Electronics Conference, Munich ICM, Germany, 22-27 June, 2003N

Law, politics and the governance of English and Scottish joint-stock companies 1600-1850

This article examines the impact of law on corporate governance by means of a case study of joint-stock enterprise in England and Scotland before 1850. Based on a dataset of over 450 company constitutions together with qualitative information on governance practice, it finds little evidence to support the hypothesis that common-law regimes such as England were more supportive of economic growth than civil-law jurisdictions such as Scotland: indeed, levels of shareholder protection were slightly stronger in the civil-law zone. Other factors, such as local political institutions, played a bigger role in shaping organisational forms and business practice

SO(10) unified models and soft leptogenesis

Motivated by the fact that, in some realistic models combining SO(10) GUTs and flavour symmetries, it is not possible to achieve the required baryon asymmetry through the CP asymmetry generated in the decay of right-handed neutrinos, we take a fresh look on how deep this connection is in SO(10). The common characteristics of these models are that they use the see-saw with right-handed neutrinos, predict a normal hierarchy of masses for the neutrinos observed in oscillating experiments and in the basis where the right-handed Majorana mass is diagonal, the charged lepton mixings are tiny. In addition these models link the up-quark Yukawa matrix to the neutrino Yukawa matrix Y^\nu with the special feature of Y^\nu_{11}-> 0 Using this condition, we find that the required baryon asymmetry of the Universe can be explained by the soft leptogenesis using the soft B parameter of the second lightest right-handed neutrino whose mass turns out to be around 10^8 GeV. It is pointed out that a natural way to do so is to use no-scale supergravity where the value of B ~1 GeV is set through gauge-loop corrections.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures. Added references, new appendix of a relevant fit and improved comment

Quantification of chemical and mechanical bioerosion rates of six Caribbean excavating sponge species found on the coral reefs of Curaçao

Excavating sponges are among the most important macro-eroders of carbonate substrates in marine systems. Their capacity to remove substantial amounts of limestone makes these animals significant players that can unbalance the reef carbonate budget of tropical coral reefs. Nevertheless, excavating sponges are currently rarely incorporated in standardized surveys and experimental work is often restricted to a few species. Here were provide chemical and mechanical bioerosion rates for the six excavating sponge species most commonly found on the shallow reef of Curaçao (southern Caribbean): Cliona caribbaea, C. aprica, C. delitrix, C. amplicavata, Siphonodictyon brevitubulatum and Suberea flavolivescens. Chemical, mechanical and total bioerosion rates were estimated based on various experimental approaches applied to sponge infested limestone cores. Conventional standing incubation techniques were shown to strongly influence the chemical dissolution signal. Final rates, based on the change in alkalinity of the incubation water, declined significantly as a function of incubation time. This effect was mitigated by the use of a flow-through incubation system. Additionally, we found that mechanically removed carbonate fragments collected in the flow-through chamber (1 h) as well as a long-term collection method (1 wk) generally yielded comparable estimates for the capacity of these sponges to mechanically remove substratum. Observed interspecific variation could evidently be linked to the adopted boring strategy (i.e. gallery-forming, cavity-forming or network-working) and presence or absence of symbiotic zooxanthellae. Notably, a clear diurnal pattern was found only in species that harbour a dense photosymbiotic community. In these species chemical erosion was substantially higher during the day. Overall, the sum of individually acquired chemical and mechanical erosion using flow-through incubations was comparable to rates obtained gravimetrically. Such consistency is a first in this field of research. These findings support the much needed confirmation that, depending on the scientific demand, the different approaches presented here can be implemented concurrently as standardized methods

Minimum information guideline for spectrophotometric and fluorometric methods to assess biofilm formation in microplates

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bioflm.2019.100010.The lack of reproducibility of published studies is one of the major issues facing the scientific community, and the field of biofilm microbiology has been no exception. One effective strategy against this multifaceted problem is the use of minimum information guidelines. This strategy provides a guide for authors and reviewers on the necessary information that a manuscript should include for the experiments in a study to be clearly interpreted and independently reproduced. As a result of several discussions between international groups working in the area of biofilms, we present a guideline for the spectrophotometric and fluorometric assessment of biofilm formation in microplates. This guideline has been divided into 5 main sections, each presenting a comprehensive set of recommendations. The intention of the minimum information guideline is to improve the quality of scientific communication that will augment interlaboratory reproducibility in biofilm microplate assays.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska – Curie grant agreement No 722467, as part of the Print-Aid consortium. The information and views set out in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein. This work received additional financial support by: project UID/EQU/00511/2019 - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy – LEPABE funded by national funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC); Project “LEPABE-2-ECO-INNOVATION” – NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000005, funded by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A critical review of adverse effects to the kidney: mechanisms, data sources and in silico tools to assist prediction

Introduction: The kidney is a major target for toxicity elicited by pharmaceuticals and environmental pollutants. Standard testing which often does not investigate underlying mechanisms has proven not to be an adequate hazard assessment approach. As such, there is an opportunity for the application of computational approaches that utilise multi-scale data based on the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) paradigm, coupled with an understanding of the chemistry underpinning the molecular initiating event (MIE) to provide a deep understanding of how structural fragments of molecules relate to specific mechanisms of nephrotoxicity. The aim of this investigation was to review the current scientific landscape related to computational methods, including mechanistic data, AOPs, publicly available knowledge bases and current in silico models, for the assessment of pharmaceuticals and other chemicals with regard to their potential to elicit nephrotoxicity. A list of over 250 nephrotoxicants enriched with, where possible, mechanistic and AOP-derived understanding was compiled. Expert opinion: Whilst little mechanistic evidence has been translated into AOPs, this review identified a number of data sources of in vitro, in vivo and human data that may assist in the development of in silico models which in turn may shed light on the inter-relationships between nephrotoxicity mechanisms