Preslaughter diet management in sheep and goats: effects on physiological responses and microbial loads on skin and carcass

Sixteen crossbred buck goats (Kiko x Spanish; BW = 32.8 kg) and wether sheep (Dorset x Suffolk; BW = 39.9 kg) were used to determine the effect of preslaughter diet and feed deprivation time (FDT) on physiological responses and microbial loads on skin and carcasses. Experimental animals were fed either a concentrate (CD) or a hay diet (HD) for 4 d and then deprived of feed for either 12-h or 24-h before slaughter. Blood samples were collected for plasma cortisol and blood metabolite analyses. Longisimus muscle (LM) pH was measured. Skin and carcass swabs were obtained to assess microbial loads. Plasma creatine kinase activity (863.9 and 571.7 ± 95.21 IU) and non-esterified fatty acid concentrations (1,056.1 and 589.8 ± 105.01 mEq/L) were different (P < 0.05) between sheep and goats. Species and diet treatments had significant effects on the ultimate pH of LM. Pre-holding total coliform (TCC) and aerobic plate counts (APC) of skin were significantly different between species. Goats had lower (P < 0.05) TCC (2.1 vs. 3.0 log(10) CFU/cm(2)) and APC (8.2 vs. 8.5 log(10) CFU/cm(2)) counts in the skin compared to sheep. Preslaughter skin E. coli counts and TCC were different (P < 0.05) between species. Goats had lower (P < 0.05) counts of E. coli (2.2 vs. 2.9 log(10) CFU/cm(2)) and TCC (2.3 vs. 3.0 log(10) CFU/cm(2)) in the skin compared with those in sheep. Diet, species, and FDT had no effect (P > 0.05) on E. coli and TCC in carcass swab samples. The APC of carcass swab samples were only affected (P < 0.05) by the FDT. The results indicated that preslaughter dietary management had no significant changes on hormone and blood metabolite concentrations and sheep might be more prone for fecal contamination than goats in the holding pens at abattoir

Effect of non-use of antibiotics on the zootechnical performance of cobb 500 broiler chickens at the Diallo farm in the commune of Korhogo, northern Côte d'Ivoire.

This study was conducted at the Diallo farm in the commune of Korhogo, precisely in the new district. The general objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of not using antibiotics on the zootechnical performance of Cobb 500 broiler chickens. The experimental device consisted of constituting 2 batches of 50 broiler chickens. Batch 1, which is the control batch, did not receive antibiotics after the start until the end of the experiment. Batch 2 received antibiotics for six (6) weeks. The results showed that the broilers of batch 1 obtained the best zootechnical performance. After 42 days of breeding, the chickens of this batch consumed 6300 ml of water and 3150 g of food per bird. They obtained an average weight of 2230g against 1950g for batch 2. Similarly, they obtained a low mortality rate (8%) and a better carcass yield (75.33%). Ultimately, breeders would benefit from avoiding antibiotics for better zootechnical performance in broilers and to preserve human health

Response of CsI(Tl) scintillators over a large range in energy and atomic number of ions (Part I): recombination and delta -- electrons

A simple formalism describing the light response of CsI(Tl) to heavy ions, which quantifies the luminescence and the quenching in terms of the competition between radiative transitions following the carrier trapping at the Tl activator sites and the electron-hole recombination, is proposed. The effect of the delta rays on the scintillation efficiency is for the first time quantitatively included in a fully consistent way. The light output expression depends on four parameters determined by a procedure of global fit to experimental data.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Nucl. Inst. Meth.

Multifragmentation process for different mass asymmetry in the entrance channel around the Fermi energy

The influence of the entrance channel asymmetry upon the fragmentation process is addressed by studying heavy-ion induced reactions around the Fermi energy. The data have been recorded with the INDRA 4pi array. An event selection method called the Principal Component Analysis is presented and discussed. It is applied for the selection of central events and furthermore to multifragmentation of single source events. The selected subsets of data are compared to the Statistical Multifragmentation Model (SMM) to check the equilibrium hypothesis and get the source characteristics. Experimental comparisons show the evidence of a decoupling between thermal and compresional (radial flow) degrees of freedom in such nuclear systems.Comment: 28 pages, 15 figures, article sumitted to Nuclear Physics

Higher order WKB corrections to black hole entropy in brick wall formalism

We calculate the statistical entropy of a quantum field with an arbitrary spin propagating on the spherical symmetric black hole background by using the brick wall formalism at higher orders in the WKB approximation. For general spins, we find that the correction to the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy depends logarithmically on the area of the horizon. Furthermore, we apply this analysis to the Schwarzschild and Schwarzschild-AdS black holes and discuss our results.Comment: 21 pages, published versio

Multifragmentation in Xe(50A MeV)+Sn Confrontation of theory and data

We compare in detail central collisions Xe(50A MeV) + Sn, recently measured by the INDRA collaboration, with the Quantum Molecular Dynamics (QMD) model in order to identify the reaction mechanism which leads to multifragmentation. We find that QMD describes the data quite well, in the projectile/target region as well as in the midrapidity zone where also statistical models can be and have been employed. The agreement between QMD and data allows to use this dynamical model to investigate the reaction in detail. We arrive at the following observations: a) the in medium nucleon nucleon cross section is not significantly different from the free cross section, b) even the most central collisions have a binary character, c) most of the fragments are produced in the central collisions and d) the simulations as well as the data show a strong attractive in-plane flow resembling deep inelastic collisions e) at midrapidity the results from QMD and those from statistical model calculations agree for almost all observables with the exception of ${d^2 \sigma \over dZdE}$. This renders it difficult to extract the reaction mechanism from midrapidity fragments only. According to the simulations the reaction shows a very early formation of fragments, even in central collisions, which pass through the reaction zone without being destroyed. The final transverse momentum of the fragments is very close to the initial one and due to the Fermi motion. A heating up of the systems is not observed and hence a thermal origin of the spectra cannot be confirmed.Comment: figures 1 and 2 changed (no more ps -errors

GENETIC EVALUATION OF SEED TRAITS FROM INTRASPECIFIC CROSSING OF GENETICALLY DISTINCT WATERMELON VARIETIES

Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsumura and Nakai (Cucurbitaceae) is an important cucurbit crop worldwide. Global production of watermelon is about 90 million metric tonnes per annum, making it among the top five most consumed fresh fruits. The objective of this study was to evaluate seed variability in different segregating populations, and determine heritability of traits of watermelon. Interspecific crosses were made between two cultivars of C. lanatus (Bebu and Wl\ueawl\uea Small Seeds (WSS) were performed at Research Station of Nangui Abrogoua University in Abidjan, C\uf4te d\u2019Ivoire. There was wide variability between parental, F1, BC1 (first generation of back-crossing) and F2 seeds. Seeds of all hybrid populations were intermediate versus those of the parents. Also, crossing did not affect F1 and F2 seed characters, but affected those of BC1 because of maternal effects. Thus, back-crossing on Bebu cultivar produced seeds which looked like those of Bebu; while back-crossing on WSS cultivar produced seeds similar to those of WSS. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and individuals repartitioning revealed that Bebu and WSS cultivars were genetically distinct and showed three main groups: two groups from each parental line and one from a recombinant line (hybrids). F2 population had a wide individual\u2019s dispersion, and contained seeds of all other populations. High heritability was observed for all evaluated characters.Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsumara et Nakai (Cucurbitac\ue9e) est une importante cucurbite dans le monde entier. La production annuelle globale est d\u2019environ 90 million de tonne, ce qui place cette culture parmi les cinq fruits les plus consomm\ue9s crus. L\u2019objectif de cette \ue9tude est d\u2019\ue9valuer la variabilit\ue9 des graines de diff\ue9rentes populations en s\ue9gr\ue9gation et de d\ue9terminer l\u2019h\ue9ritabilit\ue9 des caract\ue8res chez l\u2019esp\ue8ce Citrullus lanatus. Pour cela, un croisement intersp\ue9cifique entre deux cultivars de Citrullus lanatus (Bebu et Wl\ueawl\uea \ue0 petites graines (WSS)) a \ue9t\ue9 effectu\ue9 \ue0 la station de recherche de l\u2019Universit\ue9 Nangui Abrogoua d\u2019Abidjan (C\uf4te d\u2019Ivoire). Il existe une variabilit\ue9 importante entre les graines parentales, F1, BC1 (premi\ue8re g\ue9n\ue9ration de back-cross) et F2. Les graines de toutes les populations hybrides sont interm\ue9diaires \ue0 celles des parents. Aussi, le sens de croisement n\u2019affecte pas les caract\ue8res des graines F1 et F2 mais affecte ceux des graines BC1 \ue0 cause de l\u2019effet maternel. Ainsi, un backcross effectu\ue9 sur le cultivar Bebu produit des graines semblables aux graines de Bebu tandis qu\u2019un backcross effectu\ue9 sur le cultivar WSS produit des graines semblables aux graines de WSS. L\u2019Analyse en Composantes Principales et la r\ue9partition des individus dans le plan permettent d\u2019observer que les cultivars Bebu et WSS sont g\ue9n\ue9tiquement distincts et montrent trois principaux groupes\ua0: deux groupes de chaque type parental et un type recombinant (hybride). La population F2 a une large dispersion et se compose des graines de toutes les autres populations. Une forte h\ue9ritabilit\ue9 a \ue9t\ue9 observ\ue9e pour tous les caract\ue8res \ue9valu\ue9s. En somme, la variabilit\ue9 des graines observ\ue9es dans les populations en s\ue9gr\ue9gation chez C. lanatus pourrait \ueatre due \ue0 des effets g\ue9n\ue9tique

Effect of the intermediate velocity emissions on the quasi-projectile properties for the Ar+Ni system at 95 A.MeV

The quasi-projectile (QP) properties are investigated in the Ar+Ni collisions at 95 A.MeV taking into account the intermediate velocity emission. Indeed, in this reaction, between 52 and 95 A.MeV bombarding energies, the number of particles emitted in the intermediate velocity region is related to the overlap volume between projectile and target. Mean transverse energies of these particles are found particularly high. In this context, the mass of the QP decreases linearly with the impact parameter from peripheral to central collisions whereas its excitation energy increases up to 8 A.MeV. These results are compared to previous analyses assuming a pure binary scenario