Effect of feeding maize fiber in wet, dry and silage form with cotton cake supplementation on intake, nutrient utilization and performance in Nellore Brown sheep

Maize fiber was evaluated in wet, dry and silage form with 200 g cotton cake supplementation in growing Nellore Brown ram lambs (24.8±0.96) using six sheep per treatment in a growth-cummetabolism trial of 90 days with collection of feed, leftover, feces and urine samples during the last ten days. Average daily gain (g), nutrient digestibility (OM, CP, NDF, ADF) tended to be higher (P = 0.07 to 0.09) and intake of OM, DOM, CP (gld) and ME (MJ!d) and nitrogen retention were significantly (P = 0. 0002 to 0. 002) higher in lambs when fed maize fiber in silage rather than in wet and dry form. Depending on input such as labor required ensilaging or drying of maize fiber seems an economically more beneficial and from a food security point of view a safer way than feeding wet maize fiber

How to find discrete contact symmetries

This paper describes a new algorithm for determining all discrete contact symmetries of any differential equation whose Lie contact symmetries are known. The method is constructive and is easy to use. It is based upon the observation that the adjoint action of any contact symmetry is an automorphism of the Lie algebra of generators of Lie contact symmetries. Consequently, all contact symmetries satisfy various compatibility conditions. These conditions enable the discrete symmetries to be found systematically, with little effort

Assessment of atmospheric aerosols from two reanalysis products over Australia

Assessments of atmospheric aerosols from reanalysis are important for understanding uncertainty in model simulations, and ultimately predictions, such as for solar power or air quality forecasts and assessments. This study intercompares total aerosol optical depth (AOD) and dust AOD (DAOD) from two global reanalyses datasets, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (MACC) and the NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research-2 (MERRA-2). These are evaluated against AeroSpan (Aerosol characterisation via Sun photometry: Australian Network) ground observations which forms part of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) over the Australian continent for the 2002–2012 period. During dust storms, AeroSpan/AERONET AOD measurements were missing due to cloud screening. To overcome validation limitations in sun photometry for dust events, a nephelometer's scattering coefficient is qualitatively compared against reanalysis of DAOD at a key dust storm activation site, Tinga Tingana in South Australia (~200 km east of Lake Eyre). A specific extreme event that occurred in 2009 originating from the Lake Eyre basin, a major dust source covering one-sixth of Australia, was studied. The results show that MERRA-2 reanalysis overestimates monthly total AOD twice as much compared to AeroSpan/AERONET ground observations but seems better correlated against AeroSpan/AERONET than ECMWF/MACC. Mean data of MERRA-2 time series over 10 years provide lower DAOD values and lower dust aerosol estimates than ECMWF/MACC reanalysis (over the Lake Eyre basin with spatial averaging). Specifically at Tinga Tingana, the correlation from MERRA-2 (0.45 correlation) and ECMWF/MACC (0.43 correlation) against AeroSpan/AERONET's AOD were similar. Between MERRA-2 and ECMWF/MACC decade long daily gridded DAOD, the correlation coefficient was high at 0.73, again indicating similarity between the datasets. MERRA-2 total AOD correlation is significantly higher (by 0.26) against AeroSpan/AERONET than ECMWF/MACC. MERRA-2 also provides higher AOD values in extreme cases which may correspond to dust storms. During dust storms, a hybrid strategy using nephelometers and hourly reanalysis from MERRA-2 is able to identify dust storms better than AeroSpan/AERONET. Overall, this work can enable and inform better aerosol data assimilation into forecast models such as for solar energy, agriculture or air quality over Australia

Comparisons of ensiled maize, sorghum and pearl millet forages fed to sheep

Water-use efficient sorghum (7) and pearl millet (5) forages were compared with reference maize forage as silage tested with Nellore Brown sheep. Mean silage organic matter intake was 352, 297 and 137g!d in maize, sorghum and pearl millet silage, respectively Current pearl millet forage cultivars do not match maize forage in terms of fodder quality Of the 7 sorghum cultivars several were on par with maize though the cultivar dependent variation in intake was huge (254 to 343g!d). Anti-nutritive factors associated with sorghum like dhurrin were undetectable in the silages, although present in the fresh forage. A routine laboratory trait does not seem to describe sorghum and pearl millet forages adequately More research is required to understand the true nutritional potential of sorghum and in particular pearl millet forages. Dissemination of these forages based on only biomass yield should be discouraged

Instantons and Non-Perturbative Dynamics of N=2 Supersymmetric Abelian Gauge Theories in Two Dimensions

We study N=2 supersymmetric Abelian gauge model with the Fayet-Iliopoulos term and an arbitrary number of chiral matter multiplets in two dimensions. By analyzing the instanton contribution we compute the non-perturbative corrections to the mass spectrum of the theory and the quantum deformation of the classical vacua space. In contrast to known examples the non-perturbative bosonic potential is saturated by the one-instanton contribution and can be directly found within the semiclassical expansion around the one-instanton saddle point.Comment: journal versio

Dyons in N=4 Gauged Supergravity

We study monopole and dyon solutions to the equations of motion of the bosonic sector of N = 4 gauged supergravity in four dimensional space-time. A static, spherically symmetric ansatz for the metric, gauge fields, dilaton and axion leads to soliton solutions which, in the electrically charged case, have compact spatial sections. Both analytical and numerical results for the solutions are presented.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Minor changes, references adde

Dyonic Non-Abelian Black Holes

We study static spherically symmetric dyonic black holes in Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs theory. As for the magnetic non-abelian black holes, the domain of existence of the dyonic non-abelian black holes is limited with respect to the horizon radius and the dimensionless coupling constant $\alpha$, which is proportional to the ratio of vector meson mass and Planck mass. At a certain critical value of this coupling constant, $\hat \alpha$, the maximal horizon radius is attained. We derive analytically a relation between $\hat \alpha$ and the charge of the black hole solutions and confirm this relation numerically. Besides the fundamental dyonic non-abelian black holes, we study radially excited dyonic non-abelian black holes and globally regular gravitating dyons.Comment: LaTeX, 22 pages, 16 figures, three figures added, file manipulation error in previous replac

Are commercial total mixed rations viable in intensifying sheep production?

Total Mixed Rations (TMRs)having different metabolizable energy (8.73 and 10.53 MJ/kg) and crude protein (14% and 16% per kg) designed by a private feed enterprise in Nellore were compared with a control diet (7.74 MJ ME and 12% CP) for fattening two different breeds of sheep (Rambouillet and Judipi). Ten sheep each were allotted to three treatments in each breed and feed intake (DMI) recorded daily and weight gain (ADG) twice monthly. No significant differences were foundin DMIand ADG between the TMRs. Average DMIin high TMR ranged was 1069 g/d (946 – 1463g/d), in medium TMR 1001 g/d (711 –1341 g/d)and control 1016 g/d (743 – 1210 g/d). Average ADGin high TMR was 139 g/d (93– 189g/d), in medium TMR 123 g/d (94 – 175 g/d)and in control 128 g/d (107 – 161 g/d) in Rambouillet. In Judipiin high TMR average ADG was 93 g/d (75-126 g/d),in medium TMR 73 g/d (47–105g/d) and in control 81 g/d (59 – 104), respectively. Between the breeds significant differences were found for DMI intake and ADG(P < 0.01) and FCR (P<0001)which was 8and 10.4 kg per kg ADG in Rambouillet and Judipi, respectively