Effect of colostrum feeding method and presence of dam on the sleep, rest and sucking behaviour of newborn calves

"In rats, sucking milk reduces anxiety and promotes non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, and in calves it induces resting but the effect on sleep is unknown. Here, we investigated how calves' sleep was affected by colostrum feeding methods. Forty-one calves were blocked by birth date and randomly allotted within blocks to the experimental treatments. Calves were housed for four days either with their dam (DAM) or individually with warm colostrum feeding (2 L four times a day) from either a teat bucket (TEAT) or an open bucket (BUCKET). DAM calves suckled their dam freely. Calves' sleeping and sucking behaviour was filmed continuously for 48 h at the ages of two and three days. Behavioural sleep (BS) was defined as calves resting at least 30 s with their head still and raised (non-rapid eye movement) or with their head against their body or the ground (rapid eye movement, REM). Latency from the end of colostrum feeding to the start of BS was recorded. We compared behaviour of TEAT calves with that of DAM and BUCKET calves using mixed models. Milk meal duration was significantly longer for TEAT calves than for BUCKET calves (mean +/- S.E.M.; 8.3 +/- 0.6 min vs. 5.2 +/- 0.6 min), but equal to that of DAM calves. We found no effect of feeding method on the duration of daily BS (12 h 59 min I h 38 min) but we found a tendency for the daily amount of NREM sleep; BUCKET calves had less NREM sleep per day than TEAT calves (6 h 18 min vs. 7 h 48 min, S.E.M. = 45 min) and also longer latencies from milk ingestion to BS (21.9 +/- 2.0 min vs. 16.2 +/- 2.0 min). DAM calves slept longer bouts than TEAT calves (10.8 +/- 1.0 min vs. 8.3 +/- 1.0 min) and less often (78 +/- 4 vs. 92 +/- 4). Sucking colostrum from a teat bucket compared with drinking from an open"

Chelmsford College: Full circle – using systems integration to enhance observation, appraisal and CPD

Chelmsford College has created an observation, appraisal and continuing professional development (CPD) cycle by successfully integrating a collection of bespoke web-based systems together within its intranet. Students have benefitted from improved teaching and learning because of the rapid, transparent and thorough cycle of staff being observed, appraised and given appropriate CPD. The College has also saved time and money by being able to use single-source data to schedule observations, appraisals and CPD to individuals' needs.

Guide to the meso-scale production of the copepod Acartia tonsa

This manual is intended as a guide for the daily production of a few million A. tonsa nauplii for feeding to marine vertebrates and invertebrates. This scale of production is greater than most research would require, but smaller than commercial production, hence the term meso-scale production. This manual will briefly describe the biology of Acartia tonsa Dana that is relevant to culture, the culture methodology for meso-scale production of their eggs and nauplii, the system components utilized in production, and how to construct a few simple tools useful for this scale of production. Commercial production of copepods requires much greater feed production than is described, or the development of an efficient artificial feed, and, therefore, is not the focus of this manual. (PDF conatains 29 pages.)

Enteral feeding methods for nutritional management in patients with head and neck cancers being treated with radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy

Background: This is an update of a Cochrane review first published in The Cochrane Library in Issue 3, 2010.
For many patients with head and neck cancer, oral nutrition will not provide adequate nourishment during treatment with radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy due to the acute toxicity of treatment, obstruction caused by the tumour, or both. The optimal method of enteral feeding for this patient group has yet to be established.

Objectives: To compare the effectiveness of different enteral feeding methods used in the nutritional management of patients with head and neck cancer receiving radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy using the clinical outcomes, nutritional status, quality of life and rates of complications.

Search methods: Our extensive search included the Cochrane ENT Group Trials Register, CENTRAL, PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED and ISI Web of Science. The date of the most recent search was 13 February 2012.

Selection criteria:Randomised controlled trials comparing one method of enteral feeding with another, e.g. nasogastric (NG) or percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) feeding, for adult patients with a diagnosis of head and neck cancer receiving radiotherapy and/or chemoradiotherapy.

Data collection and analysis:Two authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data using standardised forms. We contacted study authors for additional information.

Main results: One randomised controlled trial met the criteria for inclusion in this review. No further studies were identified when we updated the searches in 2012.
Patients diagnosed with head and neck cancer, being treated with chemoradiotherapy, were randomised to PEG or NG feeding. In total only 33 patients were eligible for analysis as the trial was terminated early due to poor accrual. A high degree of bias was identified in the study.
Weight loss was greater for the NG group at six weeks post-treatment than for the PEG group (P = 0.001). At six months post-treatment, however, there was no significant difference in weight loss between the two groups. Anthropometric measurements recorded six weeks post-treatment demonstrated lower triceps skin fold thickness for the NG group compared to the PEG group (P = 0.03). No statistically significant difference was found between the two different enteral feeding techniques in relation to complication rates or patient satisfaction. The duration of PEG feeding was significantly longer than for the NG group (P = 0.0006). In addition, the study calculated the cost of PEG feeding to be 10 times greater than that of NG, though this was not found to be significant. There was no difference in the treatment received by the two groups. However, four PEG fed patients and two NG fed patients required unscheduled treatment breaks of a median of two and six days respectively.
We identified no studies of enteral feeding involving any form of radiologically inserted gastrostomy (RIG) feeding or comparing prophylactic PEG versus PEG for inclusion in the review.

Authors' conclusions: There is not sufficient evidence to determine the optimal method of enteral feeding for patients with head and neck cancer receiving radiotherapy and/or chemoradiotherapy. Further trials of the two methods of enteral feeding, incorporating larger sample sizes, are required.

Supply Chain Management in Confined Site Construction: Strategies to Reduce Delay in the Delivery of Materials to Site

With the increase in construction in dense urban environments, the delays associated with managing the material supply chain to site is called into question. Purpose: The aim of this investigation is to gain the perspective of construction contractors operating in a dense urban environment and the resulting strategies adopted to reduce delays in the delivery of materials to site. Methodology: This is achieved through incorporating a comprehensive literature review on the subject in conjunction with industry interviews with construction professionals in the identification of various management issues and corresponding strategies in the reduction of delays in the delivery of materials to site. Findings: The key issue which emerges is the lack of space for unloading bays while the corresponding key strategy is to schedule deliveries outside peak congestion times. Practical Implication: With confined site construction evident throughout the industry and the noted importance of an effective supply chain, the findings here in further assist on-site management in the daily task of ensuring the effective delivery and off-loading of materials in a complex and hazardous environment. Originality/Value: This research aids on-site management of confined site environments in the coordination of the material supply chain to site.

A methodology to analyse the impact of offshore wind forecasting error on electricity markets

Currently wind power is dominated by onshore wind farms in the British Isles, but both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland have high renewable energy targets, expected to come mostly from wind power. However, as the demand for wind power grows to ensure security of energy supply, as a potentially cheaper alternative to fossil fuels and to meet greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets offshore wind power will grow rapidly as the availability of suitable onshore sites decrease. However, wind is variable and stochastic by nature and thus difficult to schedule. In order to plan for these uncertainties market operators use wind forecasting tools, reserve plant and ancillary service agreements. Onshore wind power forecasting techniques have improved dramatically and continue to advance, but offshore wind power forecasting is more difficult due to limited datasets and knowledge. So as the amount of offshore wind power increases in the British Isles robust forecasting and planning techniques are even more critical. This paper presents a methodology to investigate the impacts of better offshore wind forecasting on the operation and management of the single wholesale electricity market in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland using PLEXOS for Power Systems. © 2013 IEEE.

FAMOUS, faster: using parallel computing techniques to accelerate the FAMOUS/HadCM3 climate model with a focus on the radiative transfer algorithm

We have optimised the atmospheric radiation algorithm of the FAMOUS climate model on several hardware platforms. The optimisation involved translating the Fortran code to C and restructuring the algorithm around the computation of a single air column. Instead of the existing MPI-based domain decomposition, we used a task queue and a thread pool to schedule the computation of individual columns on the available processors. Finally, four air columns are packed together in a single data structure and computed simultaneously using Single Instruction Multiple Data operations. The modified algorithm runs more than 50 times faster on the CELL’s Synergistic Processing Elements than on its main PowerPC processing element. On Intel-compatible processors, the new radiation code runs 4 times faster. On the tested graphics processor, using OpenCL, we find a speed-up of more than 2.5 times as compared to the original code on the main CPU. Because the radiation code takes more than 60% of the total CPU time, FAMOUS executes more than twice as fast. Our version of the algorithm returns bit-wise identical results, which demonstrates the robustness of our approach. We estimate that this project required around two and a half man-years of work.

A qualitative study of the infant feeding beliefs and behaviours of mothers with low educational attainment

BACKGROUND: Infancy is an important period for the promotion of healthy eating, diet and weight. However little is known about how best to engage caregivers of infants in healthy eating programs. This is particularly true for caregivers, infants and children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds who experience greater rates of overweight and obesity yet are more challenging to reach in health programs. Behaviour change interventions targeting parent-infant feeding interactions are more likely to be effective if assumptions about what needs to change for the target behaviours to occur are identified. As such we explored the precursors of key obesity promoting infant feeding practices in mothers with low educational attainment.

METHODS: One-on-one semi-structured telephone interviews were developed around the Capability Opportunity Motivation Behaviour (COM-B) framework and applied to parental feeding practices associated with infant excess or healthy weight gain. The target behaviours and their competing alternatives were (a) initiating breastfeeding/formula feeding, (b) prolonging breastfeeding/replacing breast milk with formula, (c) best practice formula preparation/sub-optimal formula preparation, (d) delaying the introduction of solid foods until around six months of age/introducing solids earlier than four months of age, and (e) introducing healthy first foods/introducing unhealthy first foods, and (f) feeding to appetite/use of non-nutritive (i.e., feeding for reasons other than hunger) feeding. The participants' education level was used as the indicator of socioeconomic disadvantage. Two researchers independently undertook thematic analysis.

RESULTS: Participants were 29 mothers of infants aged 2-11 months. The COM-B elements of Social and Environmental Opportunity, Psychological Capability, and Reflective Motivation were the key elements identified as determinants of a mother's likelihood to adopt the healthy target behaviours although the relative importance of each of the COM-B factors varied with each of the target feeding behaviours.

CONCLUSIONS: Interventions targeting healthy infant feeding practices should be tailored to the unique factors that may influence mothers' various feeding practices, taking into account motivational and social influences.

Feeding strategy with alternate fasting and refeeding: effects on farmed pacu production

P>A 36-day trial was conducted to determine the effects of repetitive periods of food restriction and refeeding on growth and energy metabolism in pacu (Piaractus mesopotamicus). A total 264 juvenile fish (36.9 +/- 2.8 g) were fed with the experimental diet for 36 days using three regimes: (i) feeding daily to satiation (FD); (ii) no feed for 3 days, then feeding the same amount offered to the control groups for the next 3 days (NF/R controlled); and (iii) no feed for 3 days, then feeding to apparent satiation for the next 3 days (NF/R at satiation). The treatments were distributed into four tanks each. WG and SGR were higher in FD group. Fish refed showed hyperphagia just up to the second day of refeeding. The worst feed conversion rate and the lowest protein efficiency ratio were found in fish NF/R controlled. The lowest values of visceral fat somatic index were found in both fasted fish groups, particularly in NF/R at satiation. The LL and glycogen concentrations, and the hepatosomatic index were all elevated in both feed restricted fish. Muscle lipid showed a tendency to decrease after the cycle of fasting and refeeding. Plasma free fatty acids and glucose levels were elevated in fish subjected to feeding restrictions while serum triglycerides levels were reduced. Triiodothyronine levels were significantly depressed in fish from the NF/R-controlled group and remained at the same levels as the control fish in fish NF/R at satiation. Results indicated that fish subjected to cyclic periods of 3-day satiation or controlled feeding after 3-days of fasting were unable to achieve the final body weight of fish fed to satiation after 36 days.

Metabolic changes in Brycon cephalus (Teleostei, Characidae) during post-feeding and fasting

Metabolic changes during the transition from post-feeding to fasting were studied in Brycon cephalus, an omnivorous teleost from the Amazon Basin in Brazil. Body weight and somatic indices (liver and digestive tract), glycogen and glucose content in liver and muscle, as well as plasma glucose, free fatty acids (FFA), insulin and glucagon levels of B. cephalus, were measured at 0, 12, 24, 48, 72, 120, 168 and 336 h after the last feeding. At time 0 h (the moment of food administration, 09.00 h) plasma levels of insulin and glucagon were already high, and relatively high values were maintained until 24 h post-feeding. Glycemia was 6.42 +/- 0.82 mM immediately after food ingestion and 7.53 +/- 1.12 MM at 12 h. Simultaneously, a postprandial replenishment of liver and muscle glycogen reserves was observed. Subsequently, a sharp decrease of plasma insulin occurred, from 7.19 +/- 0.83 ng/ml at 24 h of fasting to 5.27 +/- 0.58 ng/ml at 48 h. This decrease coincided with the drop in liver glucose and liver glycogen, which reached the lowest value at 72 h of fasting (328.56 +/- 192.13 and 70.33 +/- 14.13 mumol/g, respectively). Liver glucose increased after 120 h and reached a peak 168 h post-feeding, which suggests that hepatic gluconeogenesis is occurring. Plasma FFA levels were low after 120 and 168 h and increased again at 336 h of fasting. During the transition from post-feeding to fast condition in B. cephalus, the balance between circulating insulin and glucagon quickly adjust its metabolism to the ingestion or deprivation of food. (C) 2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Passion fruit seed meal at growing and finishing pig (30-90 kg) feeding

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Using Threads to Overcome Synchronization Delays in Parallel Multiple Progressive Alignment Algorithms

Sao Paulo State Research Foundation-FAPESP

From eventual to atomic and locally atomic CC programs: A concurrent semantics

We present a concurrent semantics (i.e. a semantics where concurrency is explicitely represented) for CC programs with atomic tells. This allows to derive concurrency, dependency, and nondeterminism information for such languages. The ability to treat failure information puts CLP programs also in the range of applicability of our semantics: although such programs are not concurrent, the concurrency information derived in the semantics may be interpreted as possible parallelism, thus allowing to safely parallelize those computation steps which appear to be concurrent in the net. Dually, the dependency information may also be interpreted as necessary sequentialization, thus possibly exploiting it to schedule CC programs. The fact that the semantical structure contains dependency information suggests a new tell operation, which checks for consistency only the constraints it depends on, achieving a reasonable trade-off between efficiency and atomicity.

Improving photovoltaics grid integration through short time forecasting and self-consumption

The uncertainty associated to the forecast of photovoltaic generation is a major drawback for the widespread introduction of this technology into electricity grids. This uncertainty is a challenge in the design and operation of electrical systems that include photovoltaic generation. Demand-Side Management (DSM) techniques are widely used to modify energy consumption. If local photovoltaic generation is available, DSM techniques can use generation forecast to schedule the local consumption. On the other hand, local storage systems can be used to separate electricity availability from instantaneous generation; therefore, the effects of forecast error in the electrical system are reduced. The effects of uncertainty associated to the forecast of photovoltaic generation in a residential electrical system equipped with DSM techniques and a local storage system are analyzed in this paper. The study has been performed in a solar house that is able to displace a residential user?s load pattern, manage local storage and estimate forecasts of electricity generation. A series of real experiments and simulations have carried out on the house. The results of this experiments show that the use of Demand Side Management (DSM) and local storage reduces to 2% the uncertainty on the energy exchanged with the grid. In the case that the photovoltaic system would operate as a pure electricity generator feeding all generated electricity into grid, the uncertainty would raise to around 40%.

Milk feeding, solid feeding, and obesity risk:a review of the relationships between early life feeding practices and later adiposity

Childhood obesity is a major health issue with associated ill-health consequences during childhood and into later adolescence and adulthood. Given that eating behaviors are formed during early childhood, it is important to evaluate the relationships between early life feeding practices and later child adiposity. This review describes and evaluates recent literature exploring associations between child weight and the mode of milk feeding, the age of introducing solid foods and caregivers’ solid feeding practices. There are many inconsistencies in the literature linking early life feeding to later obesity risk and discrepancies may be related to inconsistent definitions, or a lack of control for confounding variables. This review summarizes the literature in this area and identifies the need for large scale longitudinal studies to effectively explore how early life feeding experiences may interact with each other and with nutritional provision during later childhood to predict obesity risk.