Effects of dietary supplementation of Chinese herb medicine mixture on rumen fermentation, nutrient digestion and blood profile in goats

Twenty adult goats, fitted with ruminal cannulae, were used to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) mixtures on rumen fermentation, nutrient digestion and blood profiles. The wethers were assigned equally to one of the two dietary treatments according to a randomized controlled trial design. One dietary treatment was the basal diet, while the other was the CHM mixture diet consisting of the basal diet and the CHM mixture. Chinese Mosla, Atractylodes rhizome, Officinal Magnolia bark, white hyacinth bean and Liriope root tuber were mixed with a weight ratio of 8:4:4:4:5 to make up the CHM mixture. This mixture was added to the basal diet at 15 g/kg feed. The dietary supplementation of the mixture increased ruminal fluid concentrations of acetate, butyrate and total volatile fatty acids, and the ruminal activities of avicelase, carboxymethyl cellulase, cellobiase and xylanase. It also improved the ruminal effective degradability of dry matter, organic matter and amylase-treated ash-free neutral detergent fibre from the forage, apparent total tract digestibility of gross energy, dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, amylase-treated ash-free neutral detergent fibre, ash-free acid detergent fibre and calcium. Whole blood pH and concentrations of actual bicarbonate, buffer excess and magnesium ion, plasma concentrations of leptin, total protein, albumin, globulin, C-reactive protein, immunoglobulin A/G/M and complement 3/4 increased. Furthermore, plasma activities of nitric oxide synthase, glutathione peroxidase and total superoxide dismutase and plasma total antioxidative capacity increased. However, plasma concentrations of adrenocorticotropic hormone, aldosterone, cortisol, glucose, urea nitrogen and lactic acid and plasma activities of alanine transaminase, creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase decreased. These results indicated that the dietary supplementation of the CHM mixture exerted some positive regulating effects on the nervous system, the endocrine system and the immune system of goats, thus improving the functions of immunity and antioxidation, as well as the digestion and metabolism of nutrients. However, the CHM mixture did not affect their rumen fermentation patterns.Keywords: Chinese herbal medicine, rumen environmental parameter, digestibility, blood indicator, ruminan

Keynote Presentation: Investigating the Critical Success Factors for the Management of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Projects

The use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology offers much promise in regard to the capture of major levels of waste carbon dioxide produced from the burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation and from industrial processes. This is needed in order to reduce the impact of fossil fuel burning on global warming and the resulting climate change. Indeed CCS technology is poised to play a significant role in helping nations to meet the obligations set out in the Paris Climate Conference of December 2015, where 195 countries adopted a legally binding agreement and action plan to work towards limiting global warming to well below 2°C. This paper provides the results from an investigative study of carbon capture and storage projects in order to highlight the main areas to be considered when designing and commissioning new CCS projects. The study provides the results of a literature review in order to identify the critical success factors for CCS projects, including technology, economic, policy and regulatory related factors. This is supplemented by an exploratory economic analysis based on a regression model of the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for CCS, including results from LCOE trend analysis of CCS adoption for natural gas and coal fired plants. The LCOE approach is based on calculating the present value of costs per unit of electricity that is generated over the life of a specific power plant. A comprehensive treatment of LCOE is provided by Short et al. The paper also includes synthesis of a proposed research agenda on CCS projects to inform future studies in the area

Exponential stability of variable coefficients Rayleigh beams under boundary feedback controls: A Riesz basis approach

In this paper, we study the boundary stabilizing feedback control problem of Rayleigh beams that have non-homogeneous spatial parameters. We show that no matter how non-homogeneous the Rayleigh beam is, as long as it has positive mass density, stiffness and mass moment of inertia, it can always be exponentially stabilized when the control parameters are properly chosen. The main steps are a detail asymptotic analysis of the spectrum of the system and the proving of that the generalized eigenfunctions of the feedback control system form a Riesz basis in the state Hilbert space. As a by-product, a conjecture in Guo (J. Optim. Theory Appl. 112(3) (2002) 529) is answered. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.postprin

Exponential stabilization of laminated beams with structural damping and boundary feedback controls

We study the boundary stabilization of laminated beams with structural damping which describes the slip occurring at the interface of two-layered objects. By using an invertible matrix function with an eigenvalue parameter and an asymptotic technique for the first order matrix differential equation, we find out an explicit asymptotic formula for the matrix fundamental solutions and then carry out the asymptotic analyses for the eigenpairs. Furthermore, we prove that there is a sequence of generalized eigenfunctions that forms a Riesz basis in the state Hilbert space, and hence the spectrum determined growth condition holds. Furthermore, exponential stability of the closed-loop system can be deduced from the eigenvalue expressions. In particular, the semigroup generated by the system operator is a Co-group due to the fact that the three asymptotes of the spectrum are parallel to the imaginary axis. © 2005 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.published_or_final_versio

Leaf morphological traits as adaptations to multiple climate gradients

1. Leaf morphological traits vary systematically along climatic gradients. However, recent studies in plant functional ecology have mainly analysed quantitative traits, while numerical models of species distributions and vegetation function have focused on traits associated with resource acquisition; both ignore the wider functional significance of leaf morphology. 2. A data set comprising 22 leaf morphological traits for 662 woody species from 92 sites, representing all biomes present in China, was subjected to multivariate analysis in order to identify leading dimensions of trait covariation (correspondence analysis), quantify climatic and phylogenetic contributions (canonical correspondence analysis with variation partitioning), and characterize co-occurring trait syndromes (k-means clustering) and their climatic preferences. 3. Three axes accounted for > 20% of trait variation in both evergreen and deciduous species. Moisture index, precipitation seasonality and growing-season temperature accounted for 8–10% of trait variation; family 15–32%. Microphyll or larger, mid- to dark green leaves with drip-tips in wetter climates contrasted with nanophyll or smaller glaucous leaves without drip-tips in drier climates. Thick, entire leaves in less seasonal climates contrasted with thin, marginal dissected, aromatic, and involute/revolute leaves in more seasonal climates. Thick, involute, hairy leaves in colder climates contrasted with thin leaves with marked surface structures (surface patterning) in warmer climates. Distinctive trait clusters were linked to the driest and most seasonal climates, for example the clustering of picophyll, fleshy and succulent leaves in the driest climates and leptophyll, linear, dissected, revolute or involute, and aromatic leaves in regions with highly seasonal rainfall. Several trait clusters co-occurred in wetter climates, including clusters characterised by microphyll, moderately thick, patent, and entire leaves or notophyll, waxy, dark green leaves. 4. Synthesis. The plastic response of size, shape, color and other leaf morphological traits to climate is muted, thus their apparent shift along climate gradients reflects plant adaptations to environment at a community-level as determined by species replacement. Information on leaf morphological traits, widely available in floras, could be used to strengthen predictive models of species distribution and vegetation function

A Design of Robust Feedback Control for Flexible Robotic Mechanisms

We study flexible robotic arms that are free to rotate and bend in the horizontal plane but are stiff in vertical bending and torsion. A motor connected to the hinged end drives the arm to a prescribed target position and it is the aim of this paper to design boundary feedback controller to stabilize the arm once it reaches the atarget position. A distinct difficulty is the non-dissipativity that arises from the requirement that the designed feedback should retain 0 as an eigenvalue in order not to change the rigid body mode shape of the arm. On preserving this zero eigenvalue, we have successfully constructed a boundary feedback that is robustly stable with respect to the target position by showing it is exponentially stable there.published_or_final_versio

Asymptotic Frequency Distributions for Variable Coefficients Rayleigh Beams under Boundary Feedback Control

The analysis of the boundary damping rate for eigenmodes of a Rayleigh Beam with variable coefficients is usually difficult because explicit solution formula are hard to come by. In this paper, by using the estimating devices of [9], we can carry out an asymptotic analysis and conclude that there is a uniform damping rate for the high frequency modes. As a result, Riesz basis property and exponential stability can be deduced and a conjecture in [3] is settled.published_or_final_versio

Enabling Thin and Flexible Solid-State Composite Electrolytes by the Scalable Solution Process

All solid-state batteries (ASSBs) have the potential to deliver higher energy densities, wider operating temperature range, and improved safety compared with today's liquid-electrolyte-based batteries. However, of the various solid-state electrolyte (SSE) classes - polymers, sulfides, or oxides - none alone can deliver the combined properties of ionic conductivity, mechanical, and chemical stability needed to address scalability and commercialization challenges. While promising strategies to overcome these include the use of polymer/oxide or sulfide composites, there is still a lack of fundamental understanding between different SSE-polymer-solvent systems and its selection criteria. Here, we isolate various SSE-polymer-solvent systems and study their molecular level interactions by combining various characterization tools. With these findings, we introduce a suitable Li7P3S11SSE-SEBS polymer-xylene solvent combination that significantly reduces SSE thickness (∼50 μm). The SSE-polymer composite displays high room temperature conductivity (0.7 mS cm-1) and good stability with lithium metal by plating and stripping over 2000 h at 1.1 mAh cm-2. This study suggests the importance of understanding fundamental SSE-polymer-solvent interactions and provides a design strategy for scalable production of ASSBs