Nutritional Immunomodulation as an Approach to Decreasing the Negative Effects of Stress in Poultry Production

Stress can lead to changes in the immune response resulting in both increased and decreased resistance to opportunistic bacterial pathogens. Growth-promoting antibiotics have been a major tool in modulating hostpathogen interactions and limiting clinical and subclinical bacterial infection in confined animal production. Regulatory pressures to limit antibiotic use in poultry production and recent international marketing agreements that prohibit treating poultry with antibiotics have limited the disease-fighting tools available to poultry and livestock producers, particularly in Europe. There is a need to evaluate potential antibiotic alternatives to improve both production and disease resistance in high-intensity food animal production. Nutritional approaches to counteract the debilitating effects of stress and infection may provide producers with useful alternatives to antibiotics. Improving disease resistance in food animals, particularly in the absence of antibiotic treatment, is a key strategy in the effort to increase food safety. ARS research has demonstrated the efficacy of several nutritional immunomodulators, including vitamin D3 and yeast cell wall products, to protect against bacterial infection due to stress and challenge with opportunistic pathogens. These studies also provide an animal model for testing the efficacy of nutritional strategies that may affect the response to stress and related infection in humans

Heat and mass transfer on MHD flow through a porous medium over a stretching surface with heat source

An attempt has been made to study the heat and mass transfer effect on the flow over a stretching sheet in the presence of a heat source. The novelty of the present study is to consider the span wise variation of magnetic field strength, heat source and heat flux. It is also considered the effect of viscous dissipation. The method of solution involves similarity transformation which leads to an exact solution of velocity field. The coupled non-linear and non homogeneous heat equation has been solved by applying Kummer’s function. The non-homogeneity of the heat equation is contributed by the consideration of viscous dissipative energy. KYEWORDS: Heat source, Viscous dissipation, Porous medium, Kummer’s function

Diamond electro-optomechanical resonators integrated in nanophotonic circuits

Diamond integrated photonic devices are promising candidates for emerging applications in nanophotonics and quantum optics. Here we demonstrate active modulation of diamond nanophotonic circuits by exploiting mechanical degrees of freedom in free-standing diamond electro-optomechanical resonators. We obtain high quality factors up to 9600, allowing us to read out the driven nanomechanical response with integrated optical interferometers with high sensitivity. We are able to excite higher order mechanical modes up to 115 MHz and observe the nanomechanical response also under ambient conditions.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Critical Evaluation of Bacteriophage to Prevent and Treat Colibacillosis in Poultry

There is a continuing need to find alternatives to antibiotics in animal and human medicine. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria, with no known activity to plant and animal cells. We have conducted research to critically evaluate the efficacy of bacteriophage to both prevent and treat colibacillosis in poultry. Bacteriophages lytic to an Escherichia coli pathogenic to poultry were isolated from municipal waste water treatment plants and poultry processing plants. Two bacteriophage isolates were selected to use in studies designed to determine the efficacy of these bacteriophage to prevent and treat severe colibacillosis in poultry. Colibacillosis was induced by injecting 6 X 104 cfu of E. coli into the thoracic airsac when the birds were 1 week of age. Initial studies demonstrated that mortality was significantly reduced when the challenge culture was mixed with bacteriophage prior to challenging the birds. In subsequent studies, we have shown that an aerosol spray of bacteriophage given to the birds prior to this E. coli challenge can prevent the disease, and that an intramuscular injection of bacteriophage provides an effective treatment of this disease. We have demonstrated that bacteriophage can be used to both prevent and treat colibacillosis in poultry and may provide an effective alternative to antibiotic use in animal and human medicine

Evolution of microstructure and optical properties of TiO2/Au nanocomposite

TiO2/Au nanocomposite has been synthesized by mixing Au with milled TiO2 nanopowder through wet chemical route. The effect of Au on the microstructural and optical properties of TiO2 nanopowder has been studied by XRD, FESEM, UV Visible, PL and FTIR techniques. Our study indicates that Au causes the decrease of crystallite size of TiO2 by accumulating on the circumference of these nanoparticles. TiO2/Au nanocomposite exhibits strong spectral response in the visible range due to the surface plasmon effect. Band gap of TiO2 nanopowder reduces from 3.4 eV to 3.1 eV while making composite with Au. The PL spectra showed that emission peak intensity of TiO2 nanopowder decreases in the presence of Au. The reductions in band gap and electron-hole recombination in TiO2/Au nanocomposite suggest that TiO2/Au could be a good candidate for photocatalysis