Effects of antioxidants consumption and low protein diets on liver and intestine histopathology and performance of Japanese quails (Coturnix coturnix japonica)

The study investigated the effects of two types of antioxidants, a natural antioxidant (Eselenium) and a synthetic antioxidant (loxidan) in diets containing protein value lower than essential requirements, on performance and histopathological changes in the liver and intestine of Japanese quails. The experimental diets were: Group A – basal diet (control), Group B – 15 % crude protein reduction without recommended antioxidant, Group C – 15 % crude protein reduction plus 1 g/kg E-selenium, Group D – 15 % reduction in crude protein plus 0.2 g/kg loxidan, Group E – 30 % reduction in crude protein without recommended antioxidant, Group F – 30 % reduction in crude protein plus 1 g/kg E-selenium. Group G - 30 % reduction in crude protein plus 0.2 g/kg loxidan. Birds in groups B and E showed a significant reduction (p<0.05) in body weight compared to the control group. Birds fed E-selenium and loxidan exhibited significantly better (p<0.05) body weights compared to the birds in groups D and F groups. Birds in group E fed with 30 % reduction in the dietary protein had significantly higher (p<0.05) liver weights. The relative weight of the intestine decreased in the birds in groups B and E compared to the control group. 15 and 30 % reduction in dietary protein intake of birds caused mild hyperemia and edema of the intestine. The severity of liver congestion and edema were lower in group E birds when compared with birds in group B. Results indicated that the used of two kinds of antioxidants (natural and synthetic) effect on the performance parameters of Japanese quails which were exposed to nutritional stresses (such as reducing dietary protein) compensated parts of the adverse effects. Therefore, antioxidants intake is useful for recovery of quails performance fed low-protein diets.Keywords: E-Selenium, Loxidan, Intestine, Liver, Performance, Protein, Quai

EFFECTS OF DIETARY FUNCTIONAL ADDITIVES ON CHARACTERISTICS AND MINERALS OF TIBIA BONE AND BLOOD PARAMETERS OF JAPANESE QUAILS (COTURNIX COTURNIX JAPONICA)

ABSTRACT: The aim of present study was to evaluate the comparison influences of probiotic, prebiotic and synbiotic on physical characteristics and minerals of tibia and related blood parameter of Japanese Quails. Total of 192 one-day old Japanese quail chicks were randomly assigned in four treatments and four replicates. The experimental diets consisted of a basal diet without additive (Control), probiotic (Protexin®), prebiotic (Fermacto®) and synbiotic (Biomin®IMBO) added to the basal diet. At the end of Experiment, blood samples were taken and then birds slaughtered for tibia bone analysis. The synbiotic consumption, caused to elevation of alkaline phosphates activity (p<0.05) in males. But in females, enzyme activity was depressed by consumption of additives (p<0.05). In males, the tibia length/tibia weight indicator, increased by additives consumption (p<0.05). Diaphysis diameter in relative to body weight with use of additives declined in males and elevated only in probiotic fed in females group (p<0.05). The medullar canal diameter was greater than other groups (p<0.05) in females fed by probiotic. The wall thickness of midpoint decreased in males of prebiotic fed group and in females of probiotic fed group (p<0.05). The calcium and phosphorous of tibia bone structure were elevation in males fed by synbiotic (p<0.05). The robusticity index in males had been show elevation by additive consumption (p<0.05). Results indicated that response of birds to additives is dependent to gender and synbiotic is a more affective to bone parameters. But, all of these effects do not positive for bone characteristics. Therefore, the more researches are necessary to clearing for reasons of some negative effects

Effect of different concentrations of aqueous extract of ginger (Zingiber officinale) on performance and carcass characteristics of male broiler chickens in wheat-soybean meal based diets

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of using different concentrations of ginger extract (Zingiber officinale) on performance and carcass characteristics of male broiler chickens. Three hundred one-day-old commercial male broilers (Cobb-500) were randomly allocated in 20 floor pens (15 chicks each). Animals of each pen were supplemented with five different concentrations of ginger and the experiment was performed in quadruplicate. The broilers were fed a wheat-soybean meal based diet containing different concentrations of ginger extract (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1%) supplemented to drinking water. Feed intake, body weight gain and feed conversion ratio were measured during 1 to 10, 11 to 21, 22 to 42 and 1 to 42 days of age. At 42 days of age, two birds from each pen were selected and after weighing and slaughtered were dissected manually. Carcass yield, liver, abdominal fat and gut weight is expressed as percentage of live body weight. The results showed that there is no significant difference in the feed intake, body weight gain and feed conversion ratio between the different treatments except the feed conversion ratio of the period 1 to 10 days of age (p<0.05). Also, different supplemented concentrations of ginger extract to drinking water of broilers influenced the carcass yield (p<0.05)

Effects of probiotic (live and inactive Saccharomyces cerevisiae) on meat and intestinal microbial properties of Japanese quails

The present work evaluated the effect of probiotic (live and inactive Saccharomyces cerevisiae) on meat and intestinal microbial properties of Japanese quails. Twenty-four (24) 1-day-old Japanese quails were obtained from a commercial hatchery. The birds were randomly divided into 2 groups. The dietary treatments were: 1) basal diet (control), 2) basal diet plus 0.1% live S. cerevisiae and 0.05% inactive S. cerevisiae. The Japanese quails were fed with the diets from day 1 to day 72. At the end of the experiment, 12 Japanese quails per experimental group were slaughtered, and meat and intestinal samples were taken. Collected meat and intestinal samples were transported at 4°C to the laboratory of food hygiene in Islamic Azad University, Tabriz branch. In this study, each sample of 25 g was prepared according to the standard methods of Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran; No: 356, 1810, 2197, 2946, 1194 and 437 for preparation, culture and detection of bacterial total count, Lactobacilli bacteria, Coliforms bacteria, Clostridium perfringens, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus sp. According to the results of effects of probiotic (active and inactive S. cerevisiae) on intestinal and meat microbial properties of Japanese quails, in the probiotic cases, a significant reduction in the properties of total bacterial count (p = 0.007), Streptococcus sp. (p = 0.046), Coliform (p = 0.041) and Lactobacillus (p = 0.032) in intestinal microbial properties and only significant reduction on properties of total bacterial count was observed (p = 0.01). Probiotics may help in reducing the microbial properties of meat and intestine, and the present study had provided evidences that supplementation of probiotics in the diet of Japanese quails had a significant effect on microbial properties reduction, especially on intestinal microbial flora.Keywords: Probiotic, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, microbial properties, Japanese quail

Study of the ulnar nerve compromise at the wrist of patients with carpal tunnel syndrome

Introduction: That the ulnar nerve compromise occurs concomitant with the carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) has been cited by previous studies. It seems that the previously mentioned incidence is much higher than what we observe in our electrodiagnosis studies. Material and Method: A prospective study was designed to evaluate the incidence of ulnar nerve compromise in patients with electrodiagnostic evidence of CTS according to age and sex, and also to determine the site of ulnar nerve involvement. Results: One hundred and sixty five limbs with standard elestrodiagnostic criteria of CTS were evaluated. In 9.7 of the tested limbs, the ulnar nerve was involved. The site of the involvement was the wrist area in 43.75. The elbow region was involved in 43.75, and in 12.5, the forearm region was involved. The most prevalent age range of concomitant involvement was 45-54 years old. In patents who had sensory symptoms in the 4th and 5th fingers, the incidence of concomitant ulnar nerve compromise was significantly higher (p < 0.001) than the patients without these symptoms. Discussion: In patients with CTS, concomitant ulnar nerve compromise is much lower than the incidence mentioned in previous researches. Apparently the rate of involvement in wrist and elbow are equal. It is recommended that in evaluation of patients for CTS especially when the patient has sensory symptoms in the hand, special attention is paid to ulnar nerve involvement and two nerve comparison tests are interpreted with caution

Contextual Motifs: Increasing the Utility of Motifs using Contextual Data

Motifs are a powerful tool for analyzing physiological waveform data. Standard motif methods, however, ignore important contextual information (e.g., what the patient was doing at the time the data were collected). We hypothesize that these additional contextual data could increase the utility of motifs. Thus, we propose an extension to motifs, contextual motifs, that incorporates context. Recognizing that, oftentimes, context may be unobserved or unavailable, we focus on methods to jointly infer motifs and context. Applied to both simulated and real physiological data, our proposed approach improves upon existing motif methods in terms of the discriminative utility of the discovered motifs. In particular, we discovered contextual motifs in continuous glucose monitor (CGM) data collected from patients with type 1 diabetes. Compared to their contextless counterparts, these contextual motifs led to better predictions of hypo- and hyperglycemic events. Our results suggest that even when inferred, context is useful in both a long- and short-term prediction horizon when processing and interpreting physiological waveform data.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted for oral presentation at KDD '1

Intuitive learnability of touch gestures for technology-naïve older adults

Touch-based interactions, if intuitive and natural, should be highly learnable. However, the learnability of touch gestures as a computer interaction modality cannot be taken for granted and should be evaluated empirically. This is especially true when technology-naïve older adults are concerned, given the psychological and physical constraints associated with this age range. To investigate this issue, we conducted a study with 17 technology-naïve older adults, whose experience with technology was mostly limited to making calls with mobile phones. Specifically, the participants were presented with three simple digital games on an interactive tabletop surface and asked to play the games on their own with minimal instruction or help. The first two games required the use of a drag gesture whereas the third game required the use of a rotate gesture. The main research question was whether the older adults could learn the gestures effectively and efficiently. A set of variables such as task duration and gesture accuracy were measured. Results showed that the learnability of a drag gesture was relatively high and that the participants could transfer this skill across the games. In contrast, the learnability of a rotate gesture was low and most of the participants failed to demonstrate any improvement over the tasks of the game. These findings partially corroborate those of earlier work. Implications for future work are drawn, especially exploring the potential of social interactions between older adults for enhancing the learning effects

On-body device localization for health and medical monitoring applications

Abstract—We present a technique to discover the position of sensors on the human body. Automatic on-body device localization ensures correctness and accuracy of measurements in health and medical monitoring systems. In addition, it pro-vides opportunities to improve the performance and usability of ubiquitous devices. Our technique uses accelerometers to capture motion data to estimate the location of the device on the user’s body, using mixed supervised and unsupervised time series analysis methods. We have evaluated our technique with extensive experiments on 25 subjects. On average, our technique achieves 89 % accuracy in estimating the location of devices on the body. Keywords-On-body device localization, Unsupervised activity discovery, Motion analysis I

Augmenting forearm crutches with wireless sensors for lower limb rehabilitation

Forearm crutches are frequently used in the rehabilitation of an injury to the lower limb. The recovery rate is improved if the patient correctly applies a certain fraction of their body weight (specified by a clinician) through the axis of the crutch, referred to as partial weight bearing (PWB). Incorrect weight bearing has been shown to result in an extended recovery period or even cause further damage to the limb. There is currently no minimally invasive tool for long-term monitoring of a patient's PWB in a home environment. This paper describes the research and development of an instrumented forearm crutch that has been developed to wirelessly and autonomously monitor a patient's weight bearing over the full period of their recovery, including its potential use in a home environment. A pair of standard forearm crutches are augmented with low-cost off-the-shelf wireless sensor nodes and electronic components to provide indicative measurements of the applied weight, crutch tilt and hand position on the grip. Data are wirelessly transmitted between crutches and to a remote computer (where they are processed and visualized in LabVIEW), and the patient receives biofeedback by means of an audible signal when they put too much or too little weight through the crutch. The initial results obtained highlight the capability of the instrumented crutch to support physiotherapists and patients in monitoring usage