Performance and Carcass Characteristics of Broiler Chickens Fed Various Components of Candlenut Kernel

One-hundred male broiler chickens (Cobb500) were assigned randomly in a completely randomized design (CRD) into four dietary treatment groups to determine the effects of various components (whole kernel, kernel oil, kernel defatted) of candlenut (Aleurites moluccana) kernel on growth performance, carcass yield, and proximate and fatty acid composition in meat during the grower-finisher stage. Each treatment consisted of 5 replicates with 5 birds for each replications. From 21 to 42 days of age, the birds  were offered either one of the following dietary treatments namely;  Basal diet containing no candlenut kernel (T1), Basal diet containing 2.5% whole candlenut kernel (T2), Basal diet containing 2.5% candlenut kernel oil (T3), and Basal diet containing 2.5% candlenut kernel defatted (T4). The significant difference was determined when the probability level was p<0.05. Birds fed the experimental diets showed no significant difference on growth performance, carcass yield, and proximate and fatty acid compositions in meat. However, birds fed diets containing various components of candlenut had small effect on reducing feed intake, decreasing crude protein and crude fat contents in meat, and increasing total C18:2n-6 and n-6 PUFA. In conclusion, supplementation of various components of candlenut kernel in broiler diet did not improve growth performance, carcass yield, and proximate and fatty acid compositions in meat

Eaodv: A*-based Enhancement Ad-hoc on Demand Vector Protocol to Prevent Black Hole Attacks

Black hole attack is an attack where a node that responds to RREQ from the source node by replying a fake freshness information and false hop count. The black hole nodes do not respond to distributed co-operation in routing protocol to absorb all the packets, as a result, the network performance will drop. Most previous works are focused on anomaly detection through dynamic trusted of the neighbouring nodes. We find out that the internal comparisons take a long time. This loss can be shortened by changing the routing mechanism. We propose an enhancement of AODV protocol, named EAODV, that is able to prevent black hole attacks. The EAODV can find a shortest path of routing discovery using A* heuristic search algorithm. Values of hop count and estimate time to reach the destination node are used as input in the heuristic equation and one-way hash function is used to make a secure value and then to casting it to all neighbouring nodes. Experiments were conducted in NS2 to simulate EAODV in different running time with and without black hole nodes. The EAODV performance results are indicated better in terms Packet loss and Average End-to-End delay

Effects of Dietary Oil Supplementation with Different Fatty Acid Profiles on Rumen Fibre Degrading Bacteria Population in Goats

Effects of dietary oil supplementation on the predominant rumen fibre-degrading bacteria population were investigated. In this experiment, rumen fibre-degrading bacteria population were evaluated on 16 fistulated male goats that were randomly assigned to four treatment groups: T1: control/basal diet (CNT); T2: basal diet + olive oil (OL); T3: basal diet + palm olein oil (PO); and T4: basal diet + sunflower oil (SF). The oil content was supplemented at 6% of DM bases. Rumen content was collected from each individual animal and the DNA was extracted accordingly. The number of rumen fibre-degrading bacteria was enumerated via real-time PCR method. Significant difference (P0.05) were observed for Ruminococcus albus in supplemented diet as compared to T1. The other two fibre-degrading bacteria, Fibrobacter succinogenes and R. flavefaciens were not highly affected by the supplementation of the dietary oils. This study has demonstrated that supplementation of dietary oils with differing fatty acid components has no impact on the predominant rumen fibre-degrading bacteria which benefit the animals by providing extra energy from the dietary oil supplementation without compromising the ability of rumen fibre digestion process

Voltage variations identification using gabor transform and rule-based classification method

This paper presents a comparatively contemporary easy to use technique for the identification and classification of voltage variations. The technique was established based on the Gabor Transform and the rule-based classification method. The technique was tested by using mathematical model of Power Quality (PQ) disturbances based on the IEEE Std 519-2009. The PQ disturbances focused were the voltage variations, which included voltage sag, swell and interruption. A total of 80 signals were simulated from the mathematical model in MATLAB and used in this study. The signals were analyzed by using Gabor Transform and the signal pattern, time-frequency representation (TFR) and root-mean-square voltage graph were presented in this paper. The features of the analysis were extracted, and rules were implemented in rule-based classification to identify and classify the voltage variation accordingly. The results showed that this method is easy to be used and has good accuracy in classifying the voltage variation

On brain atlas choice and automatic segmentation methods: a comparison of MAPER & FreeSurfer using three atlas databases.

Several automatic image segmentation methods and few atlas databases exist for analysing structural T1-weighted magnetic resonance brain images. The impact of choosing a combination has not hitherto been described but may bias comparisons across studies. We evaluated two segmentation methods (MAPER and FreeSurfer), using three publicly available atlas databases (Hammers_mith, Desikan-Killiany-Tourville, and MICCAI 2012 Grand Challenge). For each combination of atlas and method, we conducted a leave-one-out cross-comparison to estimate the segmentation accuracy of FreeSurfer and MAPER. We also used each possible combination to segment two datasets of patients with known structural abnormalities (Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis (HS)) and their matched healthy controls. MAPER was better than FreeSurfer at modelling manual segmentations in the healthy control leave-one-out analyses in two of the three atlas databases, and the Hammers_mith atlas database transferred to new datasets best regardless of segmentation method. Both segmentation methods reliably identified known abnormalities in each patient group. Better separation was seen for FreeSurfer in the AD and left-HS datasets, and for MAPER in the right-HS dataset. We provide detailed quantitative comparisons for multiple anatomical regions, thus enabling researchers to make evidence-based decisions on their choice of atlas and segmentation method

Comparison of conjugated linoleic acid and other fatty acid content of milk fat of mafriwal and jersey cows.

Special attention has been given to the milk Fatty Acids (FA) that have a beneficial effect for human health such as mono and poly unsaturated fatty acids in particularly the Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA). This study was undertaken to investigate the milk fat contents of CLA variables (CLA and CLA-desaturase index) and other FA composition of Mafriwal and Jersey cows under same feeding system. In addition, the relationship between these two CLA variables with milk production and milk fat percent was determined. All the cows were grazed on pasture and given 5.5 kg of concentrate per head daily. Milk FA composition was determined using gas chromatography after extraction of milk fat using modified Folch's method. The results showed a significant variation (p<0.05) in the FA contents of the two breeds. The cis-9, trans-II CLA and CLA-desaturase index in milk fat of Mafriwal were significantly higher (p<0.05) than that of Jersey cows. Mafriwal cows produced significantly (p<0.05) higher concentrations of C18:0, C18:1cis-9, C18:3 and C20:1 than that of Jersey, while Jersey cows produced significantly (p<0.05) higher concentrations of C12:0 and C14:0 than Mafriwal cows. Additionally, significant positive correlations were observed between CLA variables and milk production. This study indicates that the breed of cows has an effect on CLA and other FA composition of milk fat and Mafriwal cows produced significantly higher percentages of CLA than Jersey cows which would provide better benefits for human health. Furthermore, the milk fat content of CLA and CLA-desaturase index were positively related to the milk production

A fifth order runge-kutta RK(5,5) method with error control

In this paper a new Runge-Kutta RK(5, 5) method is introduced. The theory and analysis of its properties are investigated and compared with the more well known RKF(4, 5) and RK(4, 5) – Merson methods

The effect of price discount and free gift on online entrepreneurs’ business performance in social commerce

Marketing is one of the two main activities in social commerce (s-commerce) where this type of e-commerce is dominated by sole entrepreneurs. Marketing requires a large allocation of cost while financial resources of the online entrepreneurs are limited. Thus, they need to focus on the most effective marketing strategy. Studies pertaining to the effect of marketing tools for online entrepreneurs’ business performance in s-commerce are rather limited. As such, this study assessed the relationships between marketing tools (price discount and free gift) and online entrepreneurs’ business performance in the s-commerce platform. The findings of this study may serve as guideline for online entrepreneurs, apart from adding to the body of knowledge in the fields of entrepreneurship, marketing, and s-commerce

The effect of polarity on the lightning breakdown voltages of palm oil and coconut oil under a non-uniform field for transformers application

This paper presents a study of the lightning breakdown voltages of Palm Oil (PO) and Coconut Oil (CO) under a non-uniform field with consideration on the polarity effect at various gap distances. All tests were carried based on a needle-sphere electrode configuration and various gap distances ranging from 2 to 25 mm under positive and negative voltage polarities. Three different testing techniques were used in this study including rising-voltage, up-and-down and multiple-voltage methods. The PO used in this study was Refined, Bleached and Deodorised Palm Oil (RBDPO) Olein. Three different samples of RBDPO and one sample of CO were tested. The Weibull distribution was used as a statistical approach to determine the withstand voltages of all samples at 1% and 50% probabilities for each type of oil. Under positive voltage polarity, it was found that the 50% breakdown voltages of RBDPO and CO were comparable with Mineral Oil (MO) whereby the highest percentage of difference among all gap distances was less than 15%. RBDPO and CO have lower 50% breakdown voltages than MO under a negative lightning impulse for which the highest percentage of difference can be up to 40%