Milk yield measured by oxytocin plus hand milking and weigh-suckle-weigh methods in ewes originating from local crossbred in Turkey

Milk yield of ewes crossbred between Kivircik and Akkaraman (KAB(1)) and crossbred between Chios and Akkararnan breeds (CAB(1)) was evaluated during the whole lactation period. Two methods were compared: the weigh-suckle-weigh (WSW) and oxytocin plus hand milking (O plus HM) methods and the correlations between milk yield and growth of lambs were estimated. A total of 44 ewes and 52 lambs (36 single, 16 twins) were used. Measurements of milk yield for 6 hours were determined at 14-day intervals using the two methods (WSW and O plus HM). Overall mean milk yield estimates determined using O plus HM were significantly higher than those evaluated from the WSW method. CAB(1) ewes produced significantly more milk than the KAB(1) ewes. The milk yield differences between ewes suckling single and twin lambs were highly significant. The results showed that milk yield estimated by method of hand milking after oxytocin injection is higher than method of weigh-suckle-weigh during the entire lactation period, and that milk production of CAB(1) ewes is higher than that of KAB(1) ewes. The results also indicated that lamb live weight and milk production are highly correlated during early and middle lactation and these correlation coefficients decline as lactation progresses

Maintaining Reading Experience Continuity Across E-Book Revisions

E-book reader supports users to create digital learning footprints in many forms like highlighting sentences or taking memos. Nowadays, it also allows an instructor to update their e-books in the e-book reader. However, e-book users often face problems when trying to find learning footprints they made in a new version e-book. Thus, users’ reading experience continuity across e-book revisions is hard to be maintained and seems to become a shortcoming within the e-book system. In this paper, in order to maintain users’ reading experience continuity, we deal with the transfer of learning footprints such as a marker, memo, and bookmark across e-book revisions on an e-book reader in a coursework scenario. We first give introduction and related works to demonstrate how researchers dedicated on the problem mentioned in this paper and page similarity comparison. Then, we compare three page similarity comparison methods using similarity computing models to compute page pairwise similarity in image level, text level, and image & text level. In the analysis, for each level, we analyze the performance of transferring learning footprint across e-book revisions and also the optimal threshold for similar page determination. After that, we give the analysis results to show the performances of three methods in image level, text level, and image & text level, and then, the error analysis is presented to specify the error types that occur in the results. We then propose page image & text similarity comparison as the optimal method to automatically transfer learning footprints across e-book revisions based on the analysis results and error analysis among three compared methods. Finally, the discussion and conclusions are shown in the end of this paper.PubMedScopu

Cloning, Production and Characterization of a Glycoside Hydrolase Family 7 Enzyme from the Gut Microbiota of the Termite Coptotermes curvignathus

Coptotermes curvignathus is a termite that, owing to its ability to digest living trees, serves as a gold mine for robust industrial enzymes. This unique characteristic reflects the presence of very efficient hydrolytic enzyme systems including cellulases. Transcriptomic analyses of the gut of C. curvignathus revealed that carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZy) were encoded by 3254 transcripts and that included 69 transcripts encoding glycoside hydrolase family 7 (GHF7) enzymes. Since GHF7 enzymes are useful to the biomass conversion industry, a gene encoding for a GHF7 enzyme (Gh1254) was synthesized, sub-cloned and expressed in the methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris. Expressed GH1254 had an apparent molecular mass of 42 kDa, but purification was hampered by its low expression levels in shaken flasks. To obtain more of the enzyme, GH1254 was produced in a bioreactor that resulted in a fourfold increase in crude enzyme levels. The purified enzyme was active towards soluble synthetic substrates such as 4-methylumbelliferyl-β-d-cellobioside, 4-nitrophenyl-β-d-cellobioside and 4-nitrophenyl-β-d-lactoside but was non-hydrolytic towards Avicel or carboxymethyl cellulose. GH1254 catalyzed optimally at 35 °C and maintained 70% of its activity at 25 °C. This enzyme is thus potentially useful in food industries employing low-temperature conditions