Inputs as related to output in milkfish production in the Philippines

Recall and recordkeeping surveys of 324 farms demonstrate the potential for improving yields in Philippine milkfish farms. Implications of observed economies of scale are also discussed.Fish culture, Aquaculture economics, Production costs, Milkfish culture, Philippines, Chanos chanos

WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY FOR VALUE ADDED BRED HEIFER CHARACTERISTICS

Livestock Production/Industries,

Fishmeal replacement research for shrimp feed in Australia

The global expansion and intensification of aquaculture has brought with it an increasing requirement for formulated feeds. Feeds for carnivorous fish and shrimp contain a large proportion ingredient of marine origin, particularly fishmeal. However, despite the continuing increase in demand for fishmeal, world fishmeal production is unlikely to increase further. The identification and development of alternative feed ingredients that can replace fishmeal is recognised as an international research priority. A nationally coordinated research program in Australia has evaluated a wide range of ingredients produced by Australia’s agricultural industries. Information has been obtained on the chemical composition, apparent digestibility (AD) and subsequent assimilation and utilisation of each of the ingredients evaluated. The research focused on three key warmwater species endemic to Australia: the omnivorous marine crustacean, black tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon; the euryhaline carnivorous fish, barramundi or Asian seabass Lates calcarifer and the freshwater omnivorous fish, silver perch Bidyanus bidyanus. Across the three key species, the AD for crude protein was highest for fishmeal though the more refined, high-protein ingredients of plant origin were equally well digested. The AD of energy was relatively low in ingredients with a high carbohydrate or fibre content. Dehulled lupins (L. angustifolius) and high-protein, low-ash meat meals were found to have the greatest potential to replace fishmeal in shrimp diets. Meat meal can replace about half of the digestible crude protein, and dehulled lupins can replace a quarter of the digestible crude protein, in a shrimp diet without significantly affecting biological performance, provided that the balance of the crude protein in the diet comes predominantly from high quality ingredients of marine origin. When the diets contain these ingredients of marine origin at inclusions of at least 50 g.kg-1, specific feeding effectors do not appear to necessary to maintain the palatability of the diets

A demand-driven approach for a multi-agent system in Supply Chain Management

This paper presents the architecture of a multi-agent decision support system for Supply Chain Management (SCM) which has been designed to compete in the TAC SCM game. The behaviour of the system is demand-driven and the agents plan, predict, and react dynamically to changes in the market. The main strength of the system lies in the ability of the Demand agent to predict customer winning bid prices - the highest prices the agent can offer customers and still obtain their orders. This paper investigates the effect of the ability to predict customer order prices on the overall performance of the system. Four strategies are proposed and compared for predicting such prices. The experimental results reveal which strategies are better and show that there is a correlation between the accuracy of the models' predictions and the overall system performance: the more accurate the prediction of customer order prices, the higher the profit. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Acute pulmonary embolectomy

Acute pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common condition frequently associated with a high mortality worldwide. It can be classified into non-massive, sub-massive and massive, based on the degree of haemodynamic compromise. Surgical pulmonary embolectomy, despite having been in existence for over 100 years, is generally regarded as an option of last resort, with expectedly high mortality rates. Recent advances in diagnosis and recognition of key qualitative predictors of mortality, such as right ventricular stress on echocardiography, have enabled the re-exploration of surgical pulmonary embolectomy for use in patients prior to the development of significant circulatory collapse, with promising results. We aim to review the literature and discuss the indications, perioperative workup and outcomes of surgical pulmonary embolectomy in the management of acute P

A review and update of the conservation status of Kalanchoe species (Crassulaceae subfam. Kalanchooideae) in the flora of Southern Africa region

An overview and update is provided of the conservation status of the twenty species of Kalanchoe (Crassulaceae subfam. Kalanchooideae) indigenous in southern Africa. Fourteen of the species grow abundantly in extensive natural geographical distribution ranges and from a conservation perspective are of Least Concern. One species, K. laciniata, has a very wide global distribution range but is restricted to Namibia in the southern African region. The other five Kalanchoe species that are of conservation concern are all southern African endemics, being additionally endemic to specific Regions or Centres of Endemism. These are: K. alticola (Barberton Centre of Endemism), K. crouchii (Wolkberg Centre of Endemism), K. crundallii (Soutpansberg Centre of Endmism), K. longiflora (Maputaland-Pondoland Region of Endemism) and K. winteri (Wolkberg Centre of Endemism).Es wird ein Überblick und eine Aktualisierung des Erhaltungszustands der 20 im südlichen Afrika heimischen Kalanchoe- Arten (Crassulaceae subfam. Kalanchooideae) gegeben. Vierzehn der Arten kommen zahlreich in weiträumigen natürlichen Verbreitungsgebieten vor und sind aus Artenschutzsicht ungefährdet. Eine Art, K. laciniata, hat ein sehr großes, weltweites Verbreitungsgebiet, ist aber im südlichen Afrika auf Namibia beschränkt. Die anderen fünf Kalanchoe- Arten, die aus Sicht des Artenschutzes relevant sind, sind alle im südlichen Afrika endemisch, d. h. sie kommen nur in bestimmten Regionen oder Endemismuszentren vor. Diese sind: K. alticola (Barberton-Endemiszentrum), K. crouchii (Wolkberg-Endemismuszentrum), K. crundallii (Soutpansberg-Endemismuszentrum), K. longiflora (Maputaland-Pondoland-Endemiszentrum) und K. winteri (Wolkberg-Endemismuszentrum).https://bioone.org/journals/bradleyaam2022Plant Production and Soil Scienc

Surveillance, trust, and policing at music festivals

Music festivals are often the highlight of summertime, but they are also spaces increasingly policed for drugs, pickpockets, sexual assault, and terrorist attacks. The pop-up nature of festival spaces creates a tension between organizers ensuring safe environments and festival-goers seeking community and fun. We conducted an online survey of festival-goers to determine their safety concerns and feelings about security measures. The biggest safety concern was authorities, including police, private security, and surveillance. We found significant differences between males and females. Females had more concerns about personal safety and males had negative attitudes about surveillance and security—perhaps reflecting a male privilege. The negative attitude towards surveillance and police was common across demographic groups but stronger in males. A striking finding is that 87% of our participants felt that the ethos of a festival best creates a feeling of safety, while surveillance changes the nature of these public spaces—56% of our respondents felt it creates a bad vibe and 44% said it causes anxiety. We speculate that this sentiment parallels the Defund the Police movement following the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States—community is key to a safe city and surveillance is viewed as creating negative spaces

Variable phenotype expression in a family segregating microdeletions of the NRXN1 and MBD5 autism spectrum disorder susceptibility genes

Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental condition of early childhood onset, which impacts socio-communicative functioning and is principally genetic in etiology. Currently, more than 50 genomic loci are deemed to be associated with susceptibility to autism spectrum disorder, showing de novo and inherited unbalanced copy number variants and smaller insertions and deletions (indels), more complex structural variants, as well as single-nucleotide variants deemed of pathological significance. However, the phenotypes associated with many of these genes are variable, and penetrance is largely unelaborated in clinical descriptions. This case report describes a family harboring two copy number variant microdeletions, which affect regions of NRXN1 and MBD5 - each well-established in association with risk of autism spectrum disorder and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Although each copy number variant would likely be categorized as pathologically significant, both genomic alterations are transmitted in this family from an unaffected father to the proband, and shared by an unaffected sibling. This family case illustrates the importance of recognizing that phenotype can vary among exon overlapping variants of the same gene, and the need to evaluate penetrance of such variants in order to properly inform on risks

Methylomic profiles reveal sex-specific differences in leukocyte composition associated with post-traumatic stress disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating mental disorder precipitated by trauma exposure. However, only some persons exposed to trauma develop PTSD. There are sex differences in risk; twice as many women as men develop a lifetime diagnosis of PTSD. Methylomic profiles derived from peripheral blood are well-suited for investigating PTSD because DNA methylation (DNAm) encodes individual response to trauma and may play a key role in the immune dysregulation characteristic of PTSD pathophysiology. In the current study, we leveraged recent methodological advances to investigate sex-specific differences in DNAm-based leukocyte composition that are associated with lifetime PTSD. We estimated leukocyte composition on a combined methylation array dataset (483 participants, ∼450 k CpG sites) consisting of two civilian cohorts, the Detroit Neighborhood Health Study and Grady Trauma Project. Sex-stratified Mann-Whitney U test and two-way ANCOVA revealed that lifetime PTSD was associated with significantly higher monocyte proportions in males, but not in females (Holm-adjusted p-val < 0.05). No difference in monocyte proportions was observed between current and remitted PTSD cases in males, suggesting that this sex-specific difference may reflect a long-standing trait of lifetime history of PTSD, rather than current state of PTSD. Associations with lifetime PTSD or PTSD status were not observed in any other leukocyte subtype and our finding in monocytes was confirmed using cell estimates based on a different deconvolution algorithm, suggesting that our sex-specific findings are robust across cell estimation approaches. Overall, our main finding of elevated monocyte proportions in males, but not in females with lifetime history of PTSD provides evidence for a sex-specific difference in peripheral blood leukocyte composition that is detectable in methylomic profiles and that may reflect long-standing changes associated with PTSD diagnosis