Effect of intake level during milk-feeding period and protein content in the post-weaning diet on performance and body composition in growing lambs

9 pages, 7 tables.The effect of intake level during the milk-feeding period and dietary protein content during the post-weaning period on performance, weight of components of the digestive tract and carcass and non-carcass chemical composition was investigated in 28 Churra lambs. A 2 X 2 factorial design was used with two intake levels during the milk-feeding period (L-milk: 0.9 and H-milk: 1.5 MJ gross energy per kg M-0.75 daily) and two concentrate supplements (L-protein: barley grain and H-protein: barley grain plus 200 g/kg fish meal) during the post-weaning period. After selecting an initial slaughter group of four 2-day-old lambs, 12 lambs were assigned randomly to each of two intake levels during a 4-week milk-feeding period and given food individually. Four lambs from each intake level were slaughtered at weaning (30 days old) and the remaining 16 were weaned between 30 and 49 days old (weaning period). Eight lambs from each nutritional regimen during the milk-feeding period were further divided into two equal groups and given food individually ad libitum with hay and the post-weaning concentrate, according to the experimental design until the final slaughter weight (20 kg) (post-weaning period). L-milk lambs showed a capacity to grow as well as the H-milk during the weaning and post-weaning period and there were no differences (P > 0.05) in dry-matter intake and food conversion ratio among treatments. Before weaning, the weight of the reticulo-rumen was not affected by the intake level during the milk-feeding period. The most affected component of the gastrointestinal tract tons the small intestine as proportion of the digestive tract which was lower in L-milk lambs (P < 0.05). At 20 kg live weight, the relative size of the reticulo-rumen was greater (P < 0.01) and the abomasum (P < 0.05) and large intestine (P < 0.01) were smaller in lambs which were given the H-protein concentrate after weaning. The organic matter apparent digestibility (OMD, P < 0.05) and crude protein apparent digestibility (CPD, P < 0.05) of the post-weaning diets was greater in L-milk lambs and the H-protein post-weaning diet was associated with a greater dry-matter apparent digestibility, OMD and CPD when lambs were close to final slaughter weight. At 20 kg live weight, the proportion of protein in the carcass of L-milk lambs was greater (P < 0.05) than in H-milk lambs. The greater growth of the reticulo-rumen of the L-milk lambs might have increased solid food intake after the milk-feeding period, led to greater CPD of post-weaning diets and had consequences in terms of carcass composition.This research was funded by the Commission of Science and Technology (Spain) (Project GAN90-0906).Peer reviewe

Progeny selection for enhanced forest growth alters soil communities and processes

Genetic enhancement of tree species is integral to global forest management practices with mass propagation of enhanced plant material being used to reforest whole landscapes. It is unclear, however, how genetic enhancement of basic traits such as tree growth may influence the function of life supporting soil ecosystems. We studied the potential cascading effects of genetic increases in growth of Norway spruce (Picea abies) on a range of soil chemical and biological properties. Because this species is a prime candidate for the genetic enhancement of boreal forest landscapes and it has been introduced around the world, its impacts on soil microbiomes are likely of importance both locally and globally. In a 40-year common garden, we assessed how genetic increases in growth generated through controlled crossing of high-quality "plus" trees from across the central boreal zone of Sweden influenced a range of soil properties beneath the canopies. Properties included pH, carbon, nitrogen, nitrate, ammonium, phosphate, respiration rate, and the composition of microbial communities assessed via phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs). We found that Norway spruce family significantly affected each of the seven chemical properties assessed, with differences of up to 140% among families, and that three of the seven were significantly correlated with mean family growth rate. We also found that fungal PLFAs varied significantly across Norway spruce families, but these differences were not strongly related to mean family growth rate. This study, representing just one cycle of selective breeding, suggests that genetic increases in tree growth rates may also be inadvertently altering soil communities and ecosystem services. Such alterations across forest landscapes may have unexpected implications for the function of forest ecosystems (i.e., nutrient cycling) as well as processes of global significance (i.e., carbon sequestration)

Σύγριση ευστάθειας μετώπου σήραγγας, ανυποστήρικτου και ενισχυμένου με αγκίρια,μέσω τρισδιάστατων αριθμητικών αναλύσεων

134 σ.Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο--Μεταπτυχιακή Εργασία. Διεπιστημονικό-Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών (Δ.Π.Μ.Σ.) "Σχεδιασμός & Κατασκευή Υπογείων Έργων"Έγινε σύγκριση της ευστάθειας μετώπου, τόσο για ανυσποστήρικτο, όσο και για ενισχυμένο με αγκύρια Fibreglass μέτωπο, και μέσω της διαμόρφωσης κατάλληλου συντελεστή, κατέστη δυνατή η επιλογή του οικονομικότερου καννάβου, ανάλογα με τα δεδομένα χαρακτηριστικά του εδάφους. Παράλληλα με τα παραπάνω, διαμορφώθηκε μια σχετικά πλήρης βάση δεδομένων για την έκθλιψη σε ανυποστήρικτα και ενισχυμένα μέτωπα, με διαφόρους καννάβους αγκυρίων, χρησιμοποιώντας μονοδιάστατες, διδιάστατες, και τριδιάστατες εκφράσεις αυτής.The main goal had been to compare the face extrusion between the unsupported state of the tunnel face, and the one when the face was supported using fibreglass anchors, in different densities. Using the results of that comparison, we have been able to export some charts that expressed the minimum density of the required support measures, so the future designer would have the chance to start his analyses using the most inexpensive density. To do the above, we had to built a big database of the extrusion results, for various depths, friction angles, cohesions, Young's Modules, and anhors densities, and to express the extrusion as three different values, using 1D, 2D and 3D forms of it. This database will be available for future research use.Ιάσων Γ. Κωνστάντζο

Understanding the evolution of native pinewoods in Scotland will benefit their future management and conservation

Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) is a foundation species in Scottish highland forests and a national icon. Due to heavy exploitation, the current native pinewood coverage represents a small fraction of the postglacial maximum. To reverse this decline, various schemes have been initiated to promote planting of new and expansion of old pinewoods. This includes the designation of seed zones for control of the remaining genetic resources. The zoning was based mainly on biochemical similarity among pinewoods but, by definition, neutral molecular markers do not reflect local phenotypic adaptation. Environmental variation within Scotland is substantial and it is not yet clear to what extent this has shaped patterns of adaptive differentiation among Scottish populations. Systematic, rangewide common-environment trials can provide insights into the evolution of the native pinewoods, indicating how environment has influenced phenotypic variation and how variation is maintained. Careful design of such experiments can also provide data on the history and connectivity among populations, by molecular marker analysis. Together, phenotypic and molecular datasets from such trials can provide a robust basis for refining seed transfer guidelines for Scots pine in Scotland and should form the scientific basis for conservation action on this nationally important habitat

Dehazing Ultrasound using Diffusion Models

Echocardiography has been a prominent tool for the diagnosis of cardiac disease. However, these diagnoses can be heavily impeded by poor image quality. Acoustic clutter emerges due to multipath reflections imposed by layers of skin, subcutaneous fat, and intercostal muscle between the transducer and heart. As a result, haze and other noise artifacts pose a real challenge to cardiac ultrasound imaging. In many cases, especially with difficult-to-image patients such as patients with obesity, a diagnosis from B-Mode ultrasound imaging is effectively rendered unusable, forcing sonographers to resort to contrast-enhanced ultrasound examinations or refer patients to other imaging modalities. Tissue harmonic imaging has been a popular approach to combat haze, but in severe cases is still heavily impacted by haze. Alternatively, denoising algorithms are typically unable to remove highly structured and correlated noise, such as haze. It remains a challenge to accurately describe the statistical properties of structured haze, and develop an inference method to subsequently remove it. Diffusion models have emerged as powerful generative models and have shown their effectiveness in a variety of inverse problems. In this work, we present a joint posterior sampling framework that combines two separate diffusion models to model the distribution of both clean ultrasound and haze in an unsupervised manner. Furthermore, we demonstrate techniques for effectively training diffusion models on radio-frequency ultrasound data and highlight the advantages over image data. Experiments on both \emph{in-vitro} and \emph{in-vivo} cardiac datasets show that the proposed dehazing method effectively removes haze while preserving signals from weakly reflected tissue.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, preprint IEEE submissio

Genotypic variation in a foundation tree (Populus tremula L.) explains community structure of associated epiphytes

Community genetics hypothesizes that within a foundation species, the genotype of an individual significantly influences the assemblage of dependent organisms. To assess whether these intra-specific genetic effects are ecologically important, it is required to compare their impact on dependent organisms with that attributable to environmental variation experienced over relevant spatial scales. We assessed bark epiphytes on 27 aspen (Populus tremula L.) genotypes grown in a randomized experimental array at two contrasting sites spanning the environmental conditions from which the aspen genotypes were collected. We found that variation in aspen genotype significantly influenced bark epiphyte community composition, and to the same degree as environmental variation between the test sites. We conclude that maintaining genotypic diversity of foundation species may be crucial for conservation of associated biodiversity

Survey and scoping of wildcat priority areas

This report summarises the findings of three complementary projects commissioned by SNH to inform the selection of Priority Areas for wildcat conservation; as proposed in the Scottish Wildcat Conservation Action Plan 2013. The scoping projects combined field surveys, taxonomic and genetic assessments, population modelling and a questionnaire survey of public attitudes to wildcat conservation measures. The report makes a recommendations for six wildcat Priority Areas from the nine areas pre-selected by SNH for survey. The sites recommended as Priority Areas all had evidence of cats that were classified as wildcats based on their appearance. However, domestic cats or hybrids (between domestic cats and wildcats) were also found, highlighting the need for conservation actions to reduce the risks they pose to wildcats from hybridisation and disease

High genetic diversity at the extreme range edge: nucleotide variation at nuclear loci in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in Scotland

Nucleotide polymorphism at 12 nuclear loci was studied in Scots pine populations across an environmental gradient in Scotland, to evaluate the impacts of demographic history and selection on genetic diversity. At eight loci, diversity patterns were compared between Scottish and continental European populations. At these loci, a similar level of diversity (θsil=~0.01) was found in Scottish vs mainland European populations, contrary to expectations for recent colonization, however, less rapid decay of linkage disequilibrium was observed in the former (ρ=0.0086±0.0009, ρ=0.0245±0.0022, respectively). Scottish populations also showed a deficit of rare nucleotide variants (multi-locus Tajima's D=0.316 vs D=−0.379) and differed significantly from mainland populations in allelic frequency and/or haplotype structure at several loci. Within Scotland, western populations showed slightly reduced nucleotide diversity (πtot=0.0068) compared with those from the south and east (0.0079 and 0.0083, respectively) and about three times higher recombination to diversity ratio (ρ/θ=0.71 vs 0.15 and 0.18, respectively). By comparison with results from coalescent simulations, the observed allelic frequency spectrum in the western populations was compatible with a relatively recent bottleneck (0.00175 × 4Ne generations) that reduced the population to about 2% of the present size. However, heterogeneity in the allelic frequency distribution among geographical regions in Scotland suggests that subsequent admixture of populations with different demographic histories may also have played a role