Phoenician maritime pioneering and Punic expansion : reconstructing trade and dietary patterns

Perhaps the most significant legacy attributed to the Phoenicians was their mastery of the seas, which led them to establish the first grand commercial Mediterranean network, expanding from Lebanon to beyond the Pillars of Hercules between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. The Punic culture, which flourished in the central and western Mediterranean from Phoenician colonies, maintained the exceptional navigation skills of the Phoenicians, but developed into more settled and structured territories that allowed the communities to intensify their exploitation of Mediterranean resources. Their rise to prominence can be measured by the threat they posed to the Roman Republic, while the salvage of the agronomic treatises by Mago after the sacking of Carthage attests to their renowned agrarian competence. The paucity of Phoenician and Punic written sources essentially means that material culture provides the data with which to model community lifeways, including daily dietary patterns, and trade more generally. The aim of this session was to bring together research focused on diet and trade in the Phoenician and Punic world, building on the work that has been done on foodways to model community interaction (Mata Parreño et al. 2010; Delgado and Ferrer 2011a and 2011b). The session comprised five oral contributions and a poster presentation. The focus was on central and western Mediterranean mainland regions and island territories. Findings from more recent archaeological excavations were described and discussed, and scientific applications to archaeological material were outlined and interpretations put forward and discussed.peer-reviewe

Rumen degradation and nutritive utilization of wheat straw, corn stalks and sugarcane bagasse ensiled with multienzymes

Agricultural wastes such as wheat straw, corn stalks and sugarcane bagasse are carbohydrate-rich materials with a large potential as a source of dietary energy for ruminants. However, such feeds have poor nutritional value with low nitrogen and high fibre content (Tang et al. 2013; Ghorbani et al. 2014; Kholif et al. 2014). Although ruminant production systems depend mainly on forages as the main nutritional components, the digestion of these fibrous forages in the rumen is limited by their high content of fibre and inefficient fibre degradation (Krause et al. 2003; Khattab et al. 2013), thus limiting their use as the sole feed for actively growing or high-performing ruminants (Dean et al. 2013). The high fibre content also prevents the access of ruminal hydrolytic enzymes to cellulose and hemicellulose (Chesson 1984).The aim of this study was to determine the effect of anaerobic ensiling of raw agricultural wastes with a fibrolytic enzyme cocktail (EZ) as a cleaner and sustainable biological product for animal feed. Ten 1-kg samples of wheat straw, corn stalks and sugarcane bagasse were chopped at 5 cm length and mixed with EZ at three levels of 0, 1 or 3 L enzyme/ton of feed, moistened to a relative humidity of approximately 50% and ensiled in plastic bales for 30 days. Additionally, fibrous samples were incubated for 72 h with rumen liquor to determine the digestion of dry matter (DM), neutral detergent fibre and acid detergent fibre. Increasing enzyme level lowered ether extract and nitrogen-free extract contents of fibrous feeds and increased the biodegradation of acid detergent lignin of wheat straw. Anaerobic ensiled corn stalks and sugarcane bagasse with EZ improved the biodegradation of DM and fibre fractions. It could be concluded that ensiling fibres of the three wastes with EZ improved and enhanced their ruminal digestion with the biodegradation rate at 3 L/ton and subsequently produced a cleaner product for animal feed from agriculture wastes

The capacitated vehicle routing problem:stronger bounds in pseudo-polynomial time

The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) is a classic combinatorial optimization problem for which many heuristics, relaxations and exact algorithms have been proposed. Since the CVRP is NP-hard in the strong sense, a natural research topic is relaxations that can be solved in pseudo-polynomial time. We consider several old and new relaxations of this kind, all of which are based on column generation. We also analyze the effect of adding some known inequalities. Computational experiments demonstrate that the best of our new relaxations yields extremely tight lower bounds

In vitro Ruminal Gas Production Kinetics of Four Fodder Trees Ensiled With or Without Molasses and Urea

his study investigated if the addition of urea (U), molasses (M) or their 1:1 (v/v) mixture during ensiling increases the nutritional value of forage from four fodder trees (Prunus persica, Leucaena esculenta, Acacia farnesiana, and Prunus domestica). Forage samples of fodder trees were collected in triplicate (three individual samples of each species) and subjected to an in vitro gas production (GP) procedure. Fermentation at 24 h (GP24), short-chain volatile fatty acids (SCFA), and microbial crude protein production (MCP), in vitro organic matter digestibility (OMD), metabolizable energy (ME) and dry matter degradability (DMD) were estimated. Forage samples were incubated for 72 h in an incubator at 39ºC and the volume of GP was recorded at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 24, 48, and 72 h of incubation using the reading pressure technique. The rumen fermentation profiles were highest for P. persica, which showed the highest (P<0.0001) DMD, ME, OMD, SCFA, GP24 and MCP. On the other hand L. esculenta had the lowest (P<0.0001) DMD, SCFA, MCP; P. domestica had the lowest (P<0.0001) OMD. The addition of M to silage increased (P<0.0001) ME and OMD, as well as GP. However, the addition of U and the mixture of U and M reduced (P<0.0001) DMD, ME, OMD, SCFA, GY24 and MCP. These results show that P. persica has the highest nutritive value and L. esculenta the lowest for ruminants. Additionally, the addition of M to forage from fodder trees increases rumen GP and fermentation, which may improve nutrient utilization in ruminants

Computational and Experimental Evaluation of Peroxide Oxidants for Amine-Peroxide Redox Polymerization

Amine–peroxide redox polymerization (APRP) is the prevalent method for producing radical-based polymers in the many industrial and medical applications where light or heat activation is impractical. We recently developed a detailed description of the APRP initiation process through a combined computational and experimental effort to show that APRP proceeds through SN2 attack by the amine on the peroxide, followed by the rate-determining homolysis of the resulting intermediate. Using this new mechanistic understanding, a variety of peroxides were computationally predicted to initiate APRP with fast kinetics. In particular, the rate of APRP initiation can be improved by radical and anion stabilization through increased π-electron conjugation or by increasing the electrophilicity of the peroxy bond through the addition of electron-withdrawing groups. On the other hand, the addition of electron-donating groups lowered the initiation rate. These design principles enabled the computational prediction of several new peroxides that exhibited improved initiation rates over the commonly used benzoyl peroxide. For example, the addition of nitro groups (NO₂) to the para positions of benzoyl peroxide resulted in a theoretical radical generation rate of 1.9 × 10⁻⁹ s⁻¹, which is ∼150 times faster than the 1.3 × 10⁻¹¹ s⁻¹ radical generation rate observed with unsubstituted benzoyl peroxide. These accelerated kinetics enabled the development of a redox-based direct-writing process that exploited the extremely rapid reactivity of an optimized redox pair with a custom inkjet printer, capable of printing custom shapes from polymerizing resins without heat or light. Furthermore, the application of more rapid APRP kinetics could enable the acceleration of existing industrial processes, make new industrial manufacturing methods possible, and improve APRP compatibility with biomedical applications through reduced initiator concentrations that still produce rapid polymerization rates

Fecal Gas Production of Ten Common Horse Feeds Supplemented With Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Concentrate feeds are needed when a horse cannot meet its energy and protein requirements from forage alone. Straws and hays are the most popular and less expensive sources of fiber for horses. Moreover, forage feeding to horses can provide many of the essential nutrients and prevent nutritional disorders because forage fibers maintain gastrointestinal health and well-being of horses [2]. Increasing dietary fiber to at least 1% of the horse’s body weight with decreasing starch and sugar levels can reduce such disorders [2]. Therefore, feeding adequate amounts of fibrous feeds is required for normal digestive system function.The study aimed to assess the nutritive value of 10 feeds (grains and forages) commonly used in horse nutrition in Mexico, on the basis of their chemical composition, in vitro organic matter digestibility (IVOMD) and in vitro gas production measurements with or without the supplementation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (SC) at 4 mg/g DM. Fecal inoculum was obtained from 4 adult English Thoroughbred horses fed on restricted amount of concentrate and oat hay ad libitum. Substrates tested were: 6 concentrates (corn gluten meal, soybean meal, steam-rolled corn, steam-rolled barley, oat grain, and wheat bran) and 4 roughages (soybean hulls, corn stover, alfalfa hay, and oat hay). Gas production (GP) was recorded at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 24, 48, and 70 hours using the pressure transducer technique. Some ingredient yeast interactions were observed (P .020) for the asymptotic GP and GP at 48 and 70 hours of incubation. Yeast addition increased (P .05) the fermentation of other feeds. Supplementation with SC improved fermentation of feeds with higher effects on concentrates compared to roughages. It was concluded that although SC mainly improves concentrate utilization by horses, it also improves fiber digestion when used on high-roughage diets fed to horses

Integración de los estilos de aprendizajes a los sistemas tutoriales inteligentes

The creation of Intelligent Tutoring System had as its main purpose the system exhibited a similar behavior of a human tutor, who had freedom to act and change their form of interaction based on the needs of each student, identifying how it solves a problem for additional help when the student committed any error. In this system the interactions between students and teachers were framed in theories of learning and teaching applicable to such interaction was important not only knowledge provided by the teacher to the student, but the way in which this knowledge was introduced to improve the procurement and construction of knowledge. The tutor system builds a profile of the student, it links with learning style and choose the appropriate teaching technique that best suits your learning style, to adapt the teaching mode to the student’s needs to improve its performance through each class, with the incorporation of methods and techniques for more effective teaching. With the development of intelligent tutoring system is able to design a customizable system to background evolution and the ability of each student and the conceptions underlying teaching practices. Besides being flexible enough to allow each student, according to its initial level and learning style to choose their own method of teaching.La creación del Sistema Tutor Inteligente tuvo como propósito principal que el sistema exhibiera un comportamiento similar al de un tutor humano, quien poseía libertad para actuar y cambiar su forma de interacción basándose en las necesidades de cada uno de los estudiantes, identificando la forma en que el mismo resuelve un problema para brindarle ayuda cuando el estudiante cometía algún tipo de error. En este sistema las interacciones entre el estudiante y docente estuvieron enmarcadas en teorías de aprendizaje y enseñanza aplicable a dicha interacción, no sólo fue importante el conocimiento facilitado por el docente hacia el alumno, sino la forma en que este conocimiento fue presentado, para mejorar el proceso de adquisición y construcción de conocimiento. El sistema tutor construye un perfil del alumno, lo vincula con su estilo de aprendizaje y procede a elegir la técnica de enseñanza que mejor se adapte a su estilo de aprendizaje, permitiendo adaptar el modo de enseñanza a las necesidades del alumno a fin de mejorar su rendimiento a través de cada clase, con la incorporación de los métodos y técnicas de enseñanza más eficaces. Con el desarrollo del sistema tutor inteligente se logró diseñar un sistema adaptable a los conocimientos previos, y a la capacidad de evolución de cada alumno y las concepciones que subyacen en las prácticas de enseñanza. Además de ser lo suficientemente flexible para permitir que cada alumno, de acuerdo a su nivel inicial y a su estilo de aprendizaje pueda elegir su propio método de enseñanza

Digital Dance-theatre as a Multidimensional Romance Notes on the production of C8's Flatland

This paper is an account of practice-based research and artistic work carried out by the authors in the field of digital dance theatre (C8’s Flatland). The work addresses the question of body-machine interaction from the point of view of a relationship (or digital romance), involving continuous and discontinuous processes of movement characteristic both to humans and technological machines. The essay explores Andre Leroi-Gourhan’s notion of ‘multidimensional graphism’ to speak of a type of digital writing that does not give prevalence to textual writing, to choreographic writing (or the virtual embodied writing of dance), to visuals, or code, but which functions as an amalgam of all these. We speak to Brian Rotman’a idea of gesturo-haptic language, as a kind of lingua franca that enables machines and bodies to relate to one another as part of the same intercommunictaional transaction, and as part of the same creative process for the emergence, and self-emergence of multidimensional artistic form

The Return: A Native Environmental Health Story

The Native Tradition, Environment And Community Health (TEACH) Project began in 2008 with a small collaborative grant funded by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. The Northwest Indian College and the Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health at the University of Washington shared the funding and co-managed the project. In the Western scientific tradition, “Environmental Health” is the study of how the environment affects people in order to promote healthier lives. One of the goals of the Native TEACH Project was to find out how Native ways of understanding the world and our place in it might lead to a unique understanding of environmental health – a “NATIVE Environmental Health Science.” To do this, we got input from Tribal college students, staff and faculty from 30 Tribal colleges around the U.S. We did this through a combination of talking circles, interviews, and written surveys administered at the Northwest Indian College and at the 2009 American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) student conference in Missoula, MT. When we sifted through the information we gathered, we identified three core themes that seemed to appear over and over: Community, Wellness, and Inter-Relationship. Each of these core themes contains many rich associations and layers. Each theme can best be understood as a circle. Native Environmental Health Science is the study of how these three circles intersect and overlap, and what this means for our actions as individuals and communities. The Return is an original story based on our research findings. With it, we hope to share the essence of what we learned from the rich conversations we had with Tribal college students, staff and faculty. It can be read quietly or aloud, used as a coloring book, or even serve as the spark for a group or classroom discussion. Mostly though, it is meant as a gift back to the many people who helped create it by sharing their time, insights, and wisdom.https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/ias_books/1086/thumbnail.jp