Feeding Traits and Body Dimensions of Lime and Parkote Buffaloes Raised by Small-Scale Farms in Kaski, Nepal

Thirty farms that raised Lime or Parkote female buffaloes in Kaski were selected for the survey of animal census, feeding traits and body dimensions in the rainy season and the dry season. The average number per farm was 0.76 in Lime and 0.27 in Parkote. The average of age and parity was 8.2 years old and 4.4 in Lime, and 6.6 years old and 2.8 in Parkote, respectively. The mean dry matter (DM) supply of roughage, supplemental feed and total feed was higher in the dry season than in the rainy season (11.8 kg/head/day vs. 10.3 kg/head/day, 1.2 kg/head/day vs. 0.8 kg/head/day, 13.0 kg/head/day vs. 11.1 kg/head/day, respectively, P<0.05). Although the average DM supply of roughage per body weight (BW) and total feed supply per BW had no significant differences between the seasons, the mean DM supply of supplemental feed per BW was higher in the dry season than in the rainy season (0.35% of BW vs. 0.22% of BW, P<0.01). The BW, heart girth (HG) and hip born width (HW) of Parkote were higher than those of Lime (401.7 kg vs. 368.0 kg, 185.7 cm vs. 179.8 cm, 50.4 cm vs. 48.4 cm, respectively, P<0.05). However, the body length, wither height (WH) and criss-cross height showed no significant differences between Lime and Parkote (127.4 cm and 129.8 cm, 118.7 cm and 119.5 cm, 118.0 cm and 119.4 cm, respectively). The BW estimation using body dimensions may play a significant role to know about the buffalo body condition. With the measured BW, HG, WH and HW in this survey, the formulae to estimate BW of Lime and Parkote buffaloes were established

Productive and Reproductive Performances of Indigenous Lime and Parkote Buffaloes in the Western hills of Nepal

Livestock is an integral part for the most rural livelihoods in Nepal. A very high proportion of poor and marginalized farmers depend on livestock as main or supplemental resources for their income. Cattle and buffalo contribute to more than 70% of the livestock sector. The Lime, Parkote and Gaddi are the indigenous buffalo breeds of Nepal. The productive and reproductive performances of indigenous buffalo breeds, Lime and Parkote, were studied in Regional Agricultural Research Station (RARS), Lumle in Nepal. The lactation data of the indigenous buffaloes recorded by RARS livestock farm for 14 years (from 2000 to 2014) was collected and analyzed to assess the production and reproduction traits. The productive performance was 964.0±33.0 litre/lactation in Lime and 878.5±66.3 litre/lactation in Parkote, while a daily milk yield of Lime was 3.2±0.1 litre/day and that of Parkote was 2.9±0.2 litre/day. The milk constituents of Lime were 9.0% fat, 9.2% solids not fat (SNF) and 3.8% protein. The milk contents of Parkote were 8.9% fat, 9.8% SNF and 4.0% protein. The maximum mating was found in October (30%), while the minimum mating was in June (1%) in both the breeds. The calving time of Lime and Parkote was maximum in September (36%). The Lime and Parkote buffaloes are high potential milking animals in the western hills of Nepal. Furthermore, the value chain and organic production approaches would be very useful for the conservation and utilization of these indigenous buffaloes

Changes of Milk Production and Reproductive Performance of Dairy Buffaloes in Nepal During Recent 15 Years

Consumption of buffalo milk has been increasing in Nepal. Thus, further development of dairy buffalo is required for efficient production. However, the changes of milk production and reproductive performance of buffaloes in the country remain obscure. Hence, the study is conducted for identifying the dairy production and reproduction of buffaloes raised in Nepal during 15 years. The records of daily milk yield (MY) from July 1997 to July 2012 were collected at Livestock Development Farm, Nepal. Lactation MY, 305 days MY, lactation length, MY per day of lactation, peak MY, days to attain peak MY, calving interval and dry period were calculated. The results were summarized every 5 years (Period 1: July 1997 - July 2002, Period 2: July 2002 - July 2007, Period 3: July 2007 - July 2012). The lactation MY, 305 days MY, daily MY per lactation and peak MY were lower in Period 1 than in Period 2 and 3. On the other hand, the days to attain peak MY was longer in Period 1 than in the other periods. However, the lactation length had no significant difference among the periods. The milk production was assumed to improve from Period 1 to Period 2 and 3. The calving interval was longer in Period 3 than in Period 2. The dry period was longest in Period 3. The efficiency of buffalo reproduction during the recent 5 years assumed to be declined. The deterioration of reproduction possibly has been caused by changes in nutritional and environmental conditions during the surveyed period

Exploiting resource contention in highly mobile environments and its application to vehicular ad-hoc networks

As network resources are shared between many users, resource management must be a key part of any communication system as it is needed to provide seamless communication and to ensure that applications and servers receive their required Quality-of-Service. However, mobile environments also need to consider handover issues. Furthermore, in a highly mobile environment, traditional reactive approaches to handover are inadequate and thus proactive techniques have been investigated. Recent research in proactive handover techniques, defined two key parameters: Time Before Handover and Network Dwell Time for a mobile node in any given networking topology. Using this approach, it is possible to enhance resource management in common networks using probabilistic mechanisms because it is possible to express contention for resources in terms of: No Contention, Partial Contention and Full Contention. This proactive approach is further enhanced by the use of a contention queue to detect contention between incoming requests and those waiting for service. This paper therefore presents a new methodology to support proactive resource allocation for future networks such as Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks. The proposed approach has been applied to a vehicular testbed and results are presented that show that this approach can improve overall network performance in mobile heterogeneous environments

Matrix Estimation for Individual Fairness

In recent years, multiple notions of algorithmic fairness have arisen. One such notion is individual fairness (IF), which requires that individuals who are similar receive similar treatment. In parallel, matrix estimation (ME) has emerged as a natural paradigm for handling noisy data with missing values. In this work, we connect the two concepts. We show that pre-processing data using ME can improve an algorithm's IF without sacrificing performance. Specifically, we show that using a popular ME method known as singular value thresholding (SVT) to pre-process the data provides a strong IF guarantee under appropriate conditions. We then show that, under analogous conditions, SVT pre-processing also yields estimates that are consistent and approximately minimax optimal. As such, the ME pre-processing step does not, under the stated conditions, increase the prediction error of the base algorithm, i.e., does not impose a fairness-performance trade-off. We verify these results on synthetic and real data.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, ICML 202

Study of absorption loss effects on acoustic wave propagation in shallow water using different empirical models

Efficient underwater acoustic communication and target locating systems require detailed study of acoustic wave propagation in the sea. Many investigators have studied the absorption of acoustic waves in ocean water and formulated empirical equations such as Thorp's formula, Schulkin and Marsh model and Fisher and Simmons formula. The Fisher and Simmons formula found the effect associated with the relaxation of boric acid on absorption and provided a more detailed form of absorption coefficient which varies with frequency. However, no simulation model has made for the underwater acoustic propagation using these models. This paper reports the comparative study of acoustic wave absorption carried out by means of modeling in MATLAB. The results of simulation have been evaluated using measured data collected at Desaru beach on the eastern shore of Johor in Malaysia. The model has been used to determine sound absorption for given values of depth (D), salinity (S), temperature (T), pH, and acoustic wave transmitter frequency (f). From the results a suitable range, depth and frequency can be found to obtain best propagation link with low absorption loss

Optimizing farmyard manure and cattle slurry applications for intensively managed grasslands based on UK-DNDC model simulations

Fertilizer applications can enhance soil fertility, pasture growth and thereby increase production. Nitrogen fertilizer has, however, been identified as a significant source of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions fromagriculture if not used correctly and can thereby increase the environmental damage costs associatedwith agricultural production. The optimumuse of organic fertilizers requires an improved understanding of nutrient cycles and their controls. Against this context, the objective of this research was to evaluate the scope for reducing N2O emissions from grassland using a number of manure management practices including more frequent applications of smaller doses and differentmethods of application.We used amodified UK-DNDCmodel and N2O emissions from grasslands at Pwllpeiran (PW), UK during the calibration period in autumn, were 1.35 kg N/ha/y (cattle slurry) and 0.95 kgN/ha/y (farmyardmanure), and 2.31 kg N/ha/y (cattle slurry) and 1.08 kgN/ha/y (farmyardmanure) during validation period in spring, compared to 1.43 kg N/ha/y (cattle slurry) and 0.29 kgN/ha/y (farmyard manure) during spring at NorthWyke (NW), UK. The modelling results suggested that the time period between fertilizing and sampling (TPFA), rainfall and the daily average air temperature are key factors for N2O emissions. Also, the emission factor (EF) varies spatio-temporally (0–2%) compared to uniform 1% EF assumption of IPCC. Predicted N2O emissions were positively and linearly (R2≈1) related with N loadings under all scenarios. During the scenario analysis, the use of high frequency, lowdose fertilizer applications compared to a single one off application was predicted to reduce N2O peak fluxes and overall emissions for cattle slurry during the autumn and spring seasons at the PWand NW experimental sites by 17% and 15%, respectively. These results demonstrated that an optimized application regime using outputs from the modelling approach is a promising tool for supporting environmentally-friendly precision agriculture

Scaling and Formulary cross sections for ion-atom impact ionization

The values of ion-atom ionization cross sections are frequently needed for many applications that utilize the propagation of fast ions through matter. When experimental data and theoretical calculations are not available, approximate formulas are frequently used. This paper briefly summarizes the most important theoretical results and approaches to cross section calculations in order to place the discussion in historical perspective and offer a concise introduction to the topic. Based on experimental data and theoretical predictions, a new fit for ionization cross sections is proposed. The range of validity and accuracy of several frequently used approximations (classical trajectory, the Born approximation, and so forth) are discussed using, as examples, the ionization cross sections of hydrogen and helium atoms by various fully stripped ions.Comment: 46 pages, 8 figure

Anterior Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome With Thrombosed Dorsalis Pedis Artery: A Case Report

Introduction: The aanterior tarsal tunnel syndrome denotes the entrapment of the deep peroneal nerve under the inferior extensor retinaculum. Although various etiological factors have been reported to cause anterior tarsal syndrome, its occurrence with thrombosed dorsalis pedis artery has not been reported in the English literature. Case Presentation: A 40 -year-old male patient was presented with the history of persistent pain along the dorsal surface of right foot, which was aggravated with the activities. Conservative management was tried without much relief. Diagnosis of anterior tarsal tunnel syndrome was made and the patient was planned for surgery. Thrombosed dorsalis pedis artery was found along with two adjacent collateral vessels. Retinaculum was released and nerve was mobilized. Tight compartment got released. Postoperative period was uneventful. No recurrence was seen on follow-up. Conclusion: The anterior tarsal tunnel syndrome is a known disease. A high index of clinical suspicion is required while dealing with the chronic cases. A detailed history to rule out any traumatic event is necessary too. Timely investigations and surgical release give dramatic relief