1,246 research outputs found
Effects of Dietary Fatty Acid Saturation on Broiler Chickens Subjected to High Ambient Temperatures
The effects of dietary fat with various fatty acid saturations on physiological
response, performance, carcass fatty acid deposition, and immune response and
disease resistance in heat stressed broiler chicks were studied. Day old male
broilers chicks (Cobb) were brooded and consequently maintained at 24 * 1°C in
an environmentally controlled house. All the chicks were fed a starter ration
without added fat. On day 2 1 onwards, equal numbers of chicks were provided
isocaloric and isonitrogenous finisher diets containing different oil sources
namely 8% menhaden fish oil (FO), 8% soybean oil (SO), 8% coconut oil (CO),
8% palm oil (PO) or no added fat (control). From day 28 to 41, all birds were
exposed to 36 k 1°C for 2 hlday. Following 14 days of the heat challenge, the
PO birds had greater body weights than the other three groups. The control and
PO birds were less hyperthermic and had smaller increases in
heterophiVlymphocyte ratio than those provided FO, SO and CO diets. Although
the mortality rate of PO birds was higher than the control, it was lower than their
FO, SO and CO counterparts. Diets rich in saturated fatty acids (CO) increased
abdominal fat and crude fat per cent of thigh meat as compared to diets rich in
polyunsaturated fatty acids (SO and FO). Tissue fatty acid deposition was
significantly different according to dietary oil sources, specific to tissue type,
fatty acid structure, and the amount of deposition was not proportional to its
intake. Broilers fed 8% fish oil showed higher concentration of long-chain n-3
PUFA (EPA and DHA) in the meat tissue than other counterparts. High
inclusion levels of dietary PUFA could provide the recommended
polyunsaturated to saturated fatty acid ratio in meat tissue of broilers under high
ambient temperatures.
Broiler chicks (Cobb) were used to study dietary self-selection of fat under high
ambient temperatures. Commencing from day 21, chicks were assigned to one
of four dietary treatments: (1) diet with 8% palm oil (PO); (2) diet with 8%
soybean oil (SO); (3) diet without added fat (control); and (4) a choice of PO,
SO and control (CH). From day 28 to 41, all birds were exposed to 34 * 1°C
continuously. High addition of palm oil but not soybean oil improved
survivability and reduced senun creatine kinase levels of broiler chickens during
heat exposure. On day 41, the body weights of PO, SO and CH birds were
greater than controls. Although the intake of control, PO and SO diets was
similar during heat exposure, the CH birds had a lower creatine kinase activity
and mortality rate than those provided SO diet but not significantly different
fkom those fed control and PO diets. It was concluded that a high addition of
palm oil but not soybean oil is beneficial to heat-stressed broiler chickens. Selfselection
of high fat diet can allow birds to match their physiological
requirement under heat stress conditions.
The effects of dietary a-linolenic and linoleic fatty acid on disease resistance and
immune response of heat-stressed broiler chicks (Cobb) were investigated. From
day 21 onwards, broiler chicks were fed isocaloric and isonitrogenous finisher
diets containing either 8% palm oil (neither rich in linolenic or linoleic acid), 8%
soybean oil (rich in linoleic acid) and 8% flaxseed oil (rich in linolenic acid).
All birds were vaccinated against Newcastle disease on day 7 and 21. From day
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36 to 50, equal numbers of birds fkom each dietary group were exposed to 38 *
t°C and 80% relative humidity for 2 hiday. The remaining birds were
maintained under 24 * 1 "C. Feed and water were not provided throughout the
heat challenge period. On day 37, all chicks were intranasally challenged with
an infectious bursal disease vaccine, V877 strain (Malaysia Vaccine and
Pharmaceuticals Sdn Bhd, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). Bursal samples were
taken for histopathological examination, determination of viral RNA and fatty
acid analysis. Significantly less viral replications were detected in both heated
and non-heated broiler chicks fed did containing 8% flaxseed oil on day 7 post
infection. Broiler chicks fed 8% palm oil showed significantly higher viral
replications on day 7 post infection under both lower and higher ambient
temperatures. Mortality, hetemphil/lymphocyte ratio, antibody production and
bursal lesion scores were not significantly affected which suggests that palm oil
may enhance tolerance to infectious bursal disease under both ambient
temperatures
Incremental redocumentation using literate programming
The primary aim of this research is to investigate means of improving program comprehension through redocumentation. In particular it will concentrate on using Literate Programming as a method for program redocumentation. Documentation is crucially important as an aid to understanding software systems. The Incremental Redocumentation Using Literate Programming System analyses the existing source code and merges in a range of other information, in order to create a complete documentation package. This may include not only traditional paper documents, but also hypertext facilities, animated specifications and output from other analysis tools. The status of the documentation is implicitly elevated to that of an integral part of the system, rather than an optional extra. Where a configuration management system is used to manage different versions of a system, the documentation can also be brought under its control. The literate programming paradigm provides the encouragement and capability to produce high quality code and documentation simultaneously. Conceptually, literate programming systems are document preparation systems. The primary goal of a literate program is to be understandable to the programmers who are going to have to read it at some later date - often while involved in maintenance, or perhaps when trying to determine the possibility of reusing parts of the code for later projects. This thesis presents a structures of C programs and literate C programs, and describes the features of captured literate C programs. A method of the capture process and also the functions of the redocumentation process are described. In addition, this thesis outlines how the individual stages in the capture process and the edit process are used to redocument a C program. The results of application of the process are highlighted by way of example programs. The evaluation process is performed by comparing the results of an existing literate program with those resulting from the application of the method described within this thesis. The results have shown that the captured redocumented literate C program is more readable and understandable than source code only, and that it provides a basis for subsequent maintenance and further redocumentation
The Modified Direct Analysis Method: an Extension of the Direct Analysis Method
The purpose of this research project is to study an innovative method for the stability assessment of structural steel systems, namely the Modified Direct Analysis Method (MDM). This method is intended to simplify an existing design method, the Direct Analysis Method (DM), by assuming a sophisticated second-order elastic structural analysis will be employed that can account for member and system instability, and thereby allow the design process to be reduced to confirming the capacity of member cross-sections. This last check can be easily completed by substituting an effective length of KL = 0 into existing member design equations. This simplification will be particularly useful for structural systems in which it is not clear how to define the member slenderness L/r when the laterally unbraced length L is not apparent, such as arches and the compression chord of an unbraced truss. To study the feasibility and accuracy of this new method, a set of 12 benchmark steel structural systems previously designed and analyzed by former Bucknell graduate student Jose Martinez-Garcia and a single column were modeled and analyzed using the nonlinear structural analysis software MASTAN2. A series of Matlab-based programs were prepared by the author to provide the code checking requirements for investigating the MDM. By comparing MDM and DM results against the more advanced distributed plasticity analysis results, it is concluded that the stability of structural systems can be adequately assessed in most cases using MDM, and that MDM often appears to be a more accurate but less conservative method in assessing stability
Quality of Service (QoS)-Based Network Resource Allocation in Software Defined Networking (SDN)
With the rapid growth of network technologies, the development of the domain is shifting from providing connectivity to providing a number of services and applications with desirable quality. These applications and services have different service features and their own quality demand. Therefore, implementing a network which can provide accessible performance for all traffic types becomes a very hard challenge. In this paper, we present a resource allocation scheme for bandwidth allocation that satisfies Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for all priority flows by using Open vSwitch, based on Software Defined Networking (SDN). The main goal of this system is to provide high QoS performance for high priority flows. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is described on the emulated SDN network. The proposed scheme is compared with the conventional shortest path scheme, multipath routing scheme in simple network topology. The results of the experiments showed that the proposed approach achieves better performance in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay and packet loss rate than that of traditional shortest-path and multipath routing
Research and Development of Feature Extraction from Myanmar Palm Leaf Manuscripts for the Myanmar Character Recognition System
This paper proposed Myanmar palm leaf manuscript handwriting OCR system. Each text area in the Myanmar palm-leaf manuscript is segmented. This segmented character text image is needed to be recognized to transform to Myanmar handwritten characters which express Myanmar’s precious historical and invaluable information. This paper involves two essential steps: preprocessing and feature extraction. The preprocessing is carried out to extract the attractive palm-leaf manuscript region from the Images automatically are taken by the camera and to support the enhanced images for subsequence processes of Myanmar character recognition from Myanmar palm leaves. The one-dimensional segmentation approach is used to crop leaf area in the image which is taken with high resolution. Line count analysis is also done to extract the region for using enough line count. After that, line segmentation is carried out using Object Frequency Histogram along the horizontal lines which can find the best optimal points between the lines. Similarly, the same technique but vertically is used to get each character or smallest group of characters. Totally 18 features are extracted to recognize the Myanmar palm-leaf manuscript characters. Although the experimental results are good enough but some difficulties are still needed to take account related to the connected components.
Layer Partition-based Matching Algorithm of DDM
High Level Architecture (HLA) is architecture for
reuse and interoperation of simulations. In HLA paradigm, the
Runtime Infrastructure (RTI) provides a set of services. Data
Distribution Management (DDM) service reduces message traffic
over the network. DDM aims to control and limit the data exchanged
between federates during federation. Each federate may inform the
RTI about its intention to publish some data or it may subscribe to
receive a subset of the published data. DDM services are used to
reduce the transmission and receiving of irrelevant data and aimed at
reducing the communication over the network. These services rely on
the computation of the intersection between “update” and
“subscription” regions. When calculating the intersection between
update regions and subscription regions, the higher computation
overhead can occur. Currently, there are several main DDM filtering
algorithms. This paper proposes the layer partition-based matching
algorithm for DDM in the HLA-based large-scale distributed
simulations. The new algorithm chooses the dynamic pivot based on
regions distribution in the routing space. The binary partition-based
algorithm is fundamentally based on a divide and conquers approach.
This algorithm always chooses the midpoint as the pivot point of
routing space. This approach promises low computational overhead,
since it does not require unnecessary comparisons within regions in
different partitions. The proposed algorithm firstly calculates the
regions distribution. Then, the partitioning among regions performs
based on the result of choosing pivot based on region detection and
defines the matching area that entirely covers all regions which need
to match with regions at pivot point. The proposed algorithm
provides the more definite matching area between update region and
subscription region during matching process. This algorithm
guarantees low computational overheads for matching process based
on the overlapping degree between the regions and reduce the
irrelevant message among federates
The Opsin 3/Teleost multiple tissue opsin system: mRNA localization in the retina and brain of medaka (Oryzias latipes)
The photoreceptor protein, opsin, is one of the major components for vision and photoreceptive function in animals. Although many opsins have been discovered from animal genomes, only a few nonimage‐forming functions mediated by opsins have been identified. Understanding the mRNA distribution of photoreceptor proteins is one crucial step in uncovering their photoreceptive function in animals. Here, we focus on the medaka fish (Oryzias latipes) Opsin 3 (Opn3)/Teleost multiple opsin (Tmt) system, which constitutes a separate phylogenetic group, having putative blue light photoreceptors for nonimage‐forming functions. In medaka, there is one opn3 and five tmt‐opsin orthologs. The expression pattern of the opn3/tmt‐opsins in the retina and brain was investigated by in situ hybridization. mRNAs for opn3/tmt‐opsins were distributed in the retinal ganglion cells as well as interneurons and specific brain nuclei. Specifically, hybridization signals were observed in the glutamate decarboxylase 1 (gad1)‐expressing amacrine cells for opn3, tmt1a, tmt1b, and tmt2, in the caudal lobe of the cerebellum for tmt1b and tmt2, in the cranial nerve nuclei for opn3, tmt1a, tmt1b, tmt2, and in the rostral pars distalis (adenohypophysis) for opn3. These expression patterns suggest that blue light sensing in the fish retina and brain may be involved in the integration of visual inputs, vestibular function, somatosensation, motor outputs, and pituitary endocrine regulation
Implementing Distributed Data Management System In Dynamic Objects By Using Improved Sort Based Algorithm
In the
High Level Architecture (HLA) paradigm, the
Runtime Infrastructure (RTI) provides a set of services,
such as data distribution and management (DDM) among
federates. Each federate may inform the RTI about its
intention to publish some data or it may subscri be to
receive a subset of the published data. DDM services are
used to reduce the transmission and receiving of
irrelevant data and aimed at reducing the communication
over the network. These services rely on the computation
of the intersection between “up date” and “subscription”
regions. Currently, there are several main DDM filtering
algorithms. Our proposed system describes data
management and filtering mechanism on tank simulation
in battlefield area. This system intends to detect the
movement of the ta nk ob ject s, search overlap between the
tank object and every regional regiment (extent). When
overlapping information is getting from one of the
simulation object (OverlapDetector), another simulation
object (Coordinator) connects the relevant extent that
conta ining the tank object. That extent continued to send
the tank information to other regional regiments
according to the predefined list. In this paper, we present
the design and implementation of a simulation platform
used to implement one of the fil tering algorithms, the
improved sort based algorithm, and report the overhead
of reducing network traffic and ensuring that the
forwarding data receive federates only who need the data
Cytology and fertility of hybrids
1. Serial cytological observations were made on one abnormal seedling from the thornless segregants of the F2 progeny from crossing two tetraploid (2n=28) Rubus species. The number of root tip chromosomes was found to vary from 9 to 48 per cells, with the mode always at 35. The wide variation in chromosome number decreased with time, until at one point there was almost stability at 2n=35. 2. The number of satellites per cell was proportional to the number of nuoleoli per cell. Evidence from the number of satellites per cell suggests that different chromosomes were being involved in the different complements. 3. There was a correlation between the chromosome number and corresponding cell sizes within the aneuploid series. 4. Virus infection was not responsible for the variation of somatic chromosome numbers from cell to cell. 'The cause of the instability was not definitely located but it is suggested that its initiation arose from the egg sell as Rubus pollen is sensitive to chromosome unbalance. 5. Chromosome number instability of this plant is discussed in relation to other examples from the same and different genera
Computer-based assessments of high school mathematics in Myanmar
Computer-based assessment (CBA) is a versatile educational tool in the twenty-first century. It offers many new opportunities for innovation in educational assessment through rich new assessment tasks and improves the learning progress of students. Educators have begun to benefit from CBA as it reduces the timing in reporting scores and increases assessment efficiency that enables immediate feedback. However, assessments in Myanmar high schools are mainly in paper-and-pencil test (PPT). Due to the large class and a limited number of teachers, this regular assessment causes them more workload in administering tests and providing scores and feedback. As a result, teachers spend most of their time assessing, scoring, and providing feedback. These activities negatively affect allocated hours of teaching and learning, which, in turn, are ineffective on the learning progress of students. The aims are: (1) to examine high schools in Myanmar whether computer-based assessment, this is, linear-online test (LOT) and computer-adaptive test (CAT) is more effective test mode than PPT as a formative assessment for the learning progress of students; (2) to identify contextual scales that influence students learning progress due to computer-based assessments and regular paper-and-pencil test. Of intervention design with explanatory mix-method, this study applied counter-balanced quasi-experimental research to compare effects of computer-based and paper-based assessments in terms of the achievement improvement of students. This study conducted surveys among students and teachers, followed by semi-structured interviews from five high schools in Yangon Region, Myanmar. Students from these high schools took the computer-based test and paper-based format as formative assessments. For constructing an online formative assessment test, both the Concerto platform and online Monkey Survey were applied, and through the Rasch Dichotomous model, items are assembled in the item-banks of the computer-based assessment. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to examine the effect of the test modes. The results of the computer-based test mode showed that students who received their specific scores and feedback immediately improved their mathematics achievement significantly higher than those who received the delayed score and feedback from the paper-based test mode. Structural equation modelling is used to analyse the structural relationship between measured variables. This model shows that positive attitude of students towards either computer-based or paper-based is the ultimate mechanism for more remarkable achievement. Although the two test delivery media may affect different groups of participant students in different ways, this concerns equity issues. For example, findings showed that educational background of parents, students’ gender, and attitude towards paper-based assessment or computer-based assessment could influence or affect the achievement of students. In addition, the specific practices of teachers towards formative assessment influence the attitude of students. The attitude of teachers concerning computers and technology affects the attitude of students towards innovative assessment formats. As shown by hierarchical linear modelling, the cross-level interaction effect from the teacher-level on the slope of the attitude of students towards paper-based assessment and their achievement improvement is specific practices of formative assessment. In addition, this study showed that the attitude of students to information and communications technology (ICT) and the attitude of teachers to formative assessment and ICT directly affect the achievement improvement of students. This thesis reveals significant gaps in understanding concerning formative assessment in Myanmar and contributes to the theoretical, practical, and methodological implications in mathematics assessment and learning. In addition, the findings provide (albeit for Myanmar educational systems) a practical resource for assessment developers and a useful framework for the discussion of innovative assessment formats and use in computer-based settings.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Education, 202
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