STRATEGIES FOR BEEF CATTLE ADAPTATION TO FINISHING DIETS, RACTOPAMINE HYDROCHLORIDE UTILIZATION, AND MATURE SIZE GENETIC SELECTION

A cattle finishing experiment was conducted to evaluate effects of intermittent feeding of Optaflexx compared to none or continuous feeding. Four treatments were evaluated, the negative control consisted of 63 days on the same diet without Optaflexx, wherea the positive control consisted of Optaflexx supplemented daily during the last 35 days before harvest. The 4-day intermittent treatment consisted of feeding Optaflexx for7 days, followed by 4 days of no Optaflexx, and the 7-day intermittent treatment 7 d on Optaflexx, followed by 7 days off. Regardless of the delivery pattern, feeding Optaflexx increased ADG, DMI, and live BW compared to negative control. Feeding 200 mg per steer daily of Optaflexx for a total of 35 days in either 4-day or 7-day intermittent patterns was as effective as continuous feeding. A study was conducted to estimate genetic parameters for weights and heights of mature cows using a repeatability model from field data provided by the American Angus Association. The results show that the heritability of both traits is large and correlations between them are positive and strong. Results suggest that either trait would response favorably to selection and changing one would lead to a correlated response in the other. A feedlot cattle finishing experiment and two 39-day metabolism trials were conducted using a combination of modified distillers grains and wet corn gluten feed to adapt beef cattle to finishing diets. During adaptation, DMI tended to be greater for traditional adaptation with forage compared to the co-product blend during the first period, but not different in subsequent periods. Average ruminal pH was lower for the co-product blend on step 1 and 2 compared to forage in Exp. 1 with no difference observed in Exp. 2. No difference in ruminal pH was observed between treatments for step 3 and 4. Significant difference was observed for DM digestibility between treatments during step 1 with higher values for the co-product treatment. Results from the feedlot experiment were not significantly different between treatments. Results indicate that a combination of MDGS and WCGF may be a viable method to adapt beef cattle to finishing high-concentrate diets for feedlots

STRATEGIES FOR BEEF CATTLE ADAPTATION TO FINISHING DIETS, RACTOPAMINE HYDROCHLORIDE UTILIZATION, AND MATURE SIZE GENETIC SELECTION

A cattle finishing experiment was conducted to evaluate effects of intermittent feeding of Optaflexx compared to none or continuous feeding. Four treatments were evaluated, the negative control consisted of 63 days on the same diet without Optaflexx, wherea the positive control consisted of Optaflexx supplemented daily during the last 35 days before harvest. The 4-day intermittent treatment consisted of feeding Optaflexx for7 days, followed by 4 days of no Optaflexx, and the 7-day intermittent treatment 7 d on Optaflexx, followed by 7 days off. Regardless of the delivery pattern, feeding Optaflexx increased ADG, DMI, and live BW compared to negative control. Feeding 200 mg per steer daily of Optaflexx for a total of 35 days in either 4-day or 7-day intermittent patterns was as effective as continuous feeding. A study was conducted to estimate genetic parameters for weights and heights of mature cows using a repeatability model from field data provided by the American Angus Association. The results show that the heritability of both traits is large and correlations between them are positive and strong. Results suggest that either trait would response favorably to selection and changing one would lead to a correlated response in the other. A feedlot cattle finishing experiment and two 39-day metabolism trials were conducted using a combination of modified distillers grains and wet corn gluten feed to adapt beef cattle to finishing diets. During adaptation, DMI tended to be greater for traditional adaptation with forage compared to the co-product blend during the first period, but not different in subsequent periods. Average ruminal pH was lower for the co-product blend on step 1 and 2 compared to forage in Exp. 1 with no difference observed in Exp. 2. No difference in ruminal pH was observed between treatments for step 3 and 4. Significant difference was observed for DM digestibility between treatments during step 1 with higher values for the co-product treatment. Results from the feedlot experiment were not significantly different between treatments. Results indicate that a combination of MDGS and WCGF may be a viable method to adapt beef cattle to finishing high-concentrate diets for feedlots

An annotated water-filled, and dry potholes dataset for deep learning applications.

Potholes have long posed a challenging risk to automated systems due to their random and stochastic shapes and the reflectiveness of their surface when filled with water, whether it is "muddy" water or clear water. This has formed a significant limitation to autonomous assistive technologies such as Electric-Powered Wheelchairs (EPWs), mobility scooters, etc. due to the risk potholes pose on the user's well-being as it could cause severe falls and injuries as well as neck and back problems. Current research proved that Deep Leaning technologies are one of the most relevant solutions used to detect potholes due to the high accuracy of the detection. One of the main limitations to the datasets currently made available is the lack of photos describing water-filled, rabble-filled, and random coloured potholes. The purpose of our dataset is to provide the answer to this problem as it contains 713 high-quality photos representing 1152 manuall-annotated potholes in different shapes, locations, colours, and conditions, all of which were manually-collected via a mobile phone and within different areas in the United Kingdom along with two additional benchmarking videos recorded via a dashcam

Probing Majorana neutrinos in rare K and D, D_s, B, B_c meson decays

We study lepton number violating decays of charged K, D, D_s, B and B_c mesons of the form M^+\to {M'}^-\ell^+\ell^+, induced by the existence of Majorana neutrinos. These processes provide information complementary to neutrinoless double nuclear beta decays, and are sensitive to neutrino masses and lepton mixing. We explore neutrino mass ranges m_N from below 1 eV to several hundred GeV. We find that in many cases the branching ratios are prohibitively small, however in the intermediate range m_\pi < m_N < m_{B_c}, in specific channels and for specific neutrino masses, the branching ratios can be at the reach of high luminosity experiments like those at the LHC-b and future Super flavor-factories, and can provide bounds on the lepton mixing parameters.Comment: 25 page

Viscoelastoplastic cyclic behaviour of sail materials

International audienceA tensorial visco-elasto-hysteresis model has been used previously in order to describe the thermomechanical behaviour of woven fabrics. Thus, it takes into account the essential features of behaviour, such as the steady state viscous stress as a function of strain and strain rate, the time-independent irreversible behaviour and the instantaneous modulus increasing with the strain. The aim of the study is to suggest the interest of the theory in the field of sail fabrics concerning characterization, testing and design. Moreover, we focus attention on two questions which are of fundamental interest, both at the level of principles and in the field of technological research, namely the viscous behaviour of sail fabrics and his nonlinear character

Influence of the C/O ratio on titanium and vanadium oxides in protoplanetary disks

Context. The observation of carbon-rich disks have motivated several studies questioning the influence of the C/O ratio on their gas phase composition in order to establish the connection between the metallicity of hot-Jupiters and that of their parent stars. Aims. We to propose a method that allows the characterization of the adopted C/O ratio in protoplanetary disks independently from the determination of the host star composition. Titanium and vanadium chemistries are investigated because they are strong optical absorbers and also because their oxides are known to be sensitive to the C/O ratio in some exoplanet atmospheres. Methods. We use a commercial package based on the Gibbs energy minimization technique to compute the titanium and vanadium equilibrium chemistries in protoplanetary disks for C/O ratios ranging from 0.05 to 10. Our calculations are performed for pressures ranging from 1e-6 to 1e-2 bar, and for temperatures ranging from 50 to 2000 K. Results. We find that the vanadium nitride/vanadium oxide and titanium hydride/titanium oxide gas phase ratios strongly depend on the C/O ratio in the hot parts of disks (T > 1000 K). Our calculations suggest that, in these regions, these ratios can be used as tracers of the C/O value in protoplanetary disks.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Supersymmetric contributions to direct CP violation in K -> pi pi gamma decays

We analyze the supersymmetric contributions to direct-CP-violating observables in $K \to \pi\pi\gamma$ decays induced by gluino-mediated magnetic-penguin operators. We find that \epsp_{+-\gamma} and the differential width asymmetry of $K^\pm \to \pi^\pm \pi^0 \gamma$ decays could be substantially enhanced with respect to their Standard Model values, especially in the scenario where \epsp/\eps is dominated by supersymmetric contributions. These observables could therefore provide a useful tool to search for New Physics effects in $|\Delta S|=1$ transitions, complementary to \epsp/\eps and rare decays.Comment: 14 pages, Latex. Numerical error in Eq.(36) corrected, conclusions unchanged; version to appear in Phys. Lett.