A note on the effect of supplementation with microbial phytase and organic acids on feed intake and growth performance of growing pigs

peer-reviewedThis experiment was designed to investigate the effects of supplementation with phytase, either alone or in combination with organic acids, on feed intake and growth of pigs from 8 to 89 kg live weight. Some 240 pigs were used in four experimental treatments comprising: (1) control, (2) control plus phytase, (3) control plus phytase plus liquid organic acids (formic, propionic), and (4) control plus phytase plus powdered organic acids (formic, fumaric, propionic). Feed intake and growth rate in the weaner stage were increased (P < 0.05) by phytase supplementation, with some additional benefits from organic acid inclusion. Interval to slaughter was reduced (P < 0.05) by phytase supplementation

Effects of Alzheimer’s Disease on Visual Target Detection: A “Peripheral Bias”

Visual exploration is an omnipresent activity in everyday life, and might represent an important determinant of visual attention deficits in patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The present study aimed at investigating visual search performance in AD patients, in particular target detection in the far periphery, in daily living scenes. Eighteen AD patients and 20 healthy controls participated in the study. They were asked to freely explore a hemispherical screen, covering ±90°, and to respond to targets presented at 10°, 30°, and 50° eccentricity, while their eye movements were recorded. Compared to healthy controls, AD patients recognized less targets appearing in the center. No difference was found in target detection in the periphery. This pattern was confirmed by the fixation distribution analysis. These results show a neglect for the central part of the visual field for AD patients and provide new insights by mean of a search task involving a larger field of view

Externally Dispersed Interferometry for Precision Radial Velocimetry

Externally Dispersed Interferometry (EDI) is the series combination of a fixed-delay field-widened Michelson interferometer with a dispersive spectrograph. This combination boosts the spectrograph performance for both Doppler velocimetry and high resolution spectroscopy. The interferometer creates a periodic spectral comb that multiplies against the input spectrum to create moire fringes, which are recorded in combination with the regular spectrum. The moire pattern shifts in phase in response to a Doppler shift. Moire patterns are broader than the underlying spectral features and more easily survive spectrograph blurring and common distortions. Thus, the EDI technique allows lower resolution spectrographs having relaxed optical tolerances (and therefore higher throughput) to return high precision velocity measurements, which otherwise would be imprecise for the spectrograph alone.Comment: 7 Pages, White paper submitted to the AAAC Exoplanet Task Forc

Effects of added phytase on growth performance, carcass traits, and tibia ash of broiler chickens fed diets with reduced amino acid, crude protein, and phosphorus concentration

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of phytase supplementation in diets reduced in amino acids (AA), crude protein (CP), and phosphorus (P) on growth performance, carcass traits, and tibia ash of broiler chickens. A total of 2,240 unsexed Ross 308 broiler chickens were used in 56 floor pens with 40 birds each and fed one of eight dietary treatments in seven replicates until 35 d of age. A positive control (PC) diet and diets with dietary AA/CP level reduced by 2, 4, and 6% were used with and without supplementation with 1,500 FTU phytase/kg. Starter, grower, and finisher diets were fed from d 1 to 10, d 10 to 25, and d 25 to 35, respectively. For the total period, no significant interaction effects between AA/CP level and phytase supplementation were detected for any measured traits. The ADG, ADFI, carcass weight, breast weight, and tibia ash weight were lower and FCR was higher compared to the PC diets when the AA/CP level was reduced by more than 2%. Phytase supplementation increased ADG, ADFI, final BW, and tibia ash weight. Tibia ash measurements showed that birds were adequately supplied with digestible phosphorus in all treatments, although dietary phosphorus and calcium were reduced in the phytase-supplemented diets. This enabled the feeding of broiler chickens without mineral phosphate supplements in grower and finisher diets. The results showed that supplementation with 1,500 FTU phytase/kg diminished the growth-decreasing effect of lower dietary AA/CP at all reduction steps.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dynamic assessment of children with language impairments: A pilot study

This article describes the construction of a procedure for dynamic assessment of the expressive grammar of children already identified with language impairments. Few instruments exist for the dynamic assessment of language, and those that have been developed have been largely used to successfully differentiate language impaired from culturally different or typically developing populations. The emphasis in this study was on eliciting clinically useful information that may be used to inform intervention for children with specific language impairment (SLI). The method was piloted on three children with specific language impairments.The test—train—retest format made use of standardized administration of the CELF-3 (UK) before and after a designated training protocol. The training procedure required the children to formulate sentences from randomly presented words, assisted by mediation from the assessor. Results showed that the task used was valuable and appropriate for use as a dynamic measure, and elicited differentiated amounts of change in the children in response to the mediated training phase. Pre-test—post-test results were inconclusive, however, and the frameworks for summarizing information could benefit from revision

Attosecond electron thermalization by laser-driven electron recollision in atoms

Nonsequential multiple ionization of atoms in intense laser fields is initiated by a recollision between an electron, freed by tunneling, and its parent ion. Following recollision, the initial electron shares its energy with several bound electrons. We use a classical model based on rapid electron thermalization to interpret recent experiments. For neon, good agreement with the available data is obtained with an upper bound of 460 attoseconds for the thermalization time.Comment: 5 pages revtex and 4 figures (eps files