Performance and hormonal profile in broiler chickens fed with different energy levels during post restriction period

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Sward canopy structure and performance of beef heifers under supplementation in Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu pastures maintained with three grazing intensities in a continuous stocking system

The objective of this study was to assess the sward canopy structure of Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu pastures maintained in three grazing intensities under continuous stocking system during the rainy season, along with the behavior and performance of grazing beef heifers supplemented with mineral salt or an energy/protein supplement. Three levels of forage allowance were assessed: 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 kg of forage/kg of live weight, combined with two supplements (ad libitum mineral salt, and an energy/protein supplement at 0.3% of live weight/day, supplied daily). The experiment was designed as a randomized block study with two replications. The supplements did not influence the variables related to the canopy structure. Canopy height was greater at higher forage allowances during the late summer and early fall. Similarly, the stem mass was greater in pastures with higher forage allowances. Animals fed protein supplement spent less time grazing than animals supplemented with mineral salt. Stocking rate was higher in pastures with lower forage allowance levels, which increased the live weight gain per grazing area. Daily weight gain did not vary according to the forage allowance levels. The use of an energy/protein supplement did not affect the stocking rate; however, it increased individual live weight gain and live weight gain per grazing area compared with mineral salt supplementation. The use of energy/protein supplements is an efficient alternative to enhance animal performance and production under grazing systems during the rainy season

Effect of supplementation of diets for quails with vitamins A, D and E on performance of the birds and quality and enrichment of eggs

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

Performance evaluation on electronic control systemsfor field sprayers using programmable logic controllers

The aim of this study was to develop a laboratory method for time response evaluation on electronically controlled spray equipment using Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). For that purpose, a PLC controlled digital drive inverter was set up to drive an asynchronous electric motor linked to a centrifugal pump on a experimental sprayer equipped with electronic flow control. The PLC was operated via RS232 serial communication from a PC computer. A user program was written to control de motor by adjusting the following system variables, all related to the motor speed: time stopped; ramp up and ramp down times, time running at a given constant speed and ramp down time to stop the motor. This set up was used in conjunction with a data acquisition system to perform laboratory tests with an electronically controlled sprayer. Time response for pressure stabilization was measured while changing the pump speed by +/-20%. The results showed that for a 0.2 s ramp time increasing the motor speed, as an example, an AgLogix Flow Control system (Midwest Technologies Inc.) took 22 s in average to readjust the pressure. When decreasing the motor speed, this time response was down to 8 s. General results also showed that this kind of methodology could make easier the definition of standards for tests on electronically controlled application equipment.

Involvement of median raphe nucleus 5-HT1A receptors in the regulation of generalized anxiety-related defensive behaviours in rats

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

Resistência e performance na arte de João Cota

Researching about the art of tell and the tales told by João Cota is somehow revisiting the oral tradition and social practice in the story-telling art. It takes into consideration the resistance this art still exerts, mainly by using the performance of oral transmission and receptiveness to tales. The study of this practice contributes to the vivacious and dynamcis permanence of this authentic and traditional storyteller of his repertory and of his form to tellin our culture. Story-telling is part of the humankind living heritage communicated by means of popular wisdom. Despite the risk of vanishing into thin air, along with their narrators, the tales still manage to resist the contemporary mass culture model. How long further will stories like the ones narrated by João Cota be able to resist to strong and stronger structures dictated by writing and other communication means? João Cota s practice in story-telling will be studied not only as a proposal to identify the presence of this practice and the oral cultural resistance but also, through the performance prospective, to identify the oral transmission and receptiveness to the tales that are part of this storyteller s repertoire. In other words: what he tells, how he tells it, and why he tells it. The advent of new technologies such as internet, through which people can easily communicate with others in different parts of the world, and the greater and greater expansion in the writing skill concept interfere the maintenance of the oral tradition elements present in João Cota s narratives and inserted in the Brazilian culture. This has become more visible in the latest decades although we still notice the living tradition and permanence of the story-telling practice in several parts of the country through their wise storytellers. Our research target will require - in each of its study stages reference to works by several theoreticians namely Paul Zumthor, Mikhail Bakhtin, Câmara Cascudo, theoreticians from the receptiveness aesthetic, from the written culture history, from oral cultures and reading practices, from tradition and the Brazilian Culture of oral story-telling. In order to get to know and draw a profile of this storyteller, we ve chosen to use the comprehensive interview method by French Sociologist Jean Claude Kaufmann. The originality in the method consists of the qualitative data put together in situ , concentrated on the storyteller s narratives/speeches recorded on tape, which will be the focal point of this study. Our analysis method is based on tireless sessions of listening to interviews out of which we gathered information related to the storyteller, his practice in telling the tales, and his repertoire

A performance do suicídio em Ariel, de Sylvia Plath

This dissertation aims at investigating the book Ariel (1965), written by Sylvia Plath, as a kind of performative and ritual poetry that fragments and reconstructs the personal experience, manipulating the memory of the autobiographical body as a way to rehearse and restore subjectivity. We propose that, in Ariel, the hyperbolic, transcendent and parodic transfiguration of real episodes, used as literary substance, corrupts and subverts the specular idea of a confessional truth usually related to the writer s work. Our objective is to examine signs of confluence between Sylvia Plath s poetry and performance art, departing from de idea that the spectacularization of the self, the exhibition of private rituals, the theatricalization of autobiographical circumstances and the undressing of one s craziness and vulnerability are mutual procedures to the poet and the perfomer. Simultaneously unfolding between the inside and the outside of the poem, Sylvia Plath s real suicide and the death and rebirth rituals performed in the literary text appear as symbolic elements that might reveal the performer s liminal space, where reality and representation coexist, and where the performative testimony does not frame only the real subject s body but also his/her infinite possibilities of being restored through art.

High-performance liquid chromatographic determination of amfepramone hydrochloride, mazindol, and diazepam in tablets

Simple and rapid procedures were developed for the quantification of amfepramone hydrochloride and diazepam and mazindol and diazepam in tablets using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with UV detection. These techniques provided conditions for the separation of each active ingredient from the complex matrices of the dosage forms by dilution or extraction in methanol. Isocratic reversed phase chromatography was performed using acetonitrile, methanol, and aqueous 0,1% ammonium carbonate (70:10:20, v/v/v) as a mobile phase, Radial-Pak C-18 column (100 x 8 mm id, 4 mu m), a column temperature of 25+/-1 degrees C and detection at 255 nm. The calibration curves were linear over a wide concentration range (100-1000 mu g.mL(-1) to amfepramone hydrochloride and mazindol and 10-100 mu g.mL(-1) to diazepam) with good correlation factors of 0.9978, 0.9956 and 0.9997 for amfepramone hydrochloride, mazindol, and diazepam, respectively.Mean recoveries obtained from the two kinds of samples ranged from 83.2 to 102.5%, with coefficients of variation ranging from 1.0 to 6.1.These results demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed methods, as well as advantages such as simplicity and short duration of analysis.

Influência de fatores de risco na prevalência de hábitos bucais deletérios em crianças de 0 a 5 anos na cidade do Natal-RN

Literature has demonstrated to the narrow relation between deleterious habits and the occurrence of malocclusion in minors of 5 years. The existence of these habits, however, already considered as risk factors, having also, its determinative ones, which present cultural dimensions and economic social, many of them related to the parents of the child, having in account that such habits if develop in phases in which the child establish a narrow relation of dependence. This study it had an objective to investigate the prevalence of deleterious buccal habits in children and its relation with the economic social and characteristics of the parents. It was developed an epidemiologist study of transversal character with interview, through daily pay-tested form, with 218 parents in the day of the National Campaign of Vaccination. In the cast of the variable that had composed the study, they had been used, as changeable dependents, the use of the baby's bottle, bottle and the digital suction, being considered as outcomes of the research. Amongst the independent variable, the economic social factors (type of occupation, number of children, civil state, sort, schooling and age) and staffs of the parents (self perception in oral health) had entered as the variable to be analyzed in the problems of the infantile odontology. The collected data had been submitted to the analysis descriptive and inferential statistics, being used the test qui-square and the analysis of the possibility reasons. As main results, it was found that breast feeding before the six months if presents as one of the main factors of risk for the use of baby's bottle (p< 0.001, OR= 2.8, I.C= 1.589 4.906), bottle (p< 0.001, OR= 3.7, I.C.= 2.076 6.624) and digital suction (p< 0.014, OR= 3.5, I.C.= 1.225 10.181). From the data found, one concludes that breast-feeding is considered a primordial factor for not the installation of deleterious oral habits and that the economic social and cultural factors can reflect in central way in the performance of this act

The influence of temporal food restriction on the performance of isolated cardiac muscle

In this study we assessed the mechanical function of isolated left ventricular papillary muscles from 60 day-old male Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) subjected to different periods of food restriction (FR). The food-restricted animals (R) were fed 50% of the amount of diet consumed by the ad Libitum-fed rats (C). The cardiac muscles were studied after 30, 60, and 90 days (R-30, R-60 and R-90) of FR. The effect of FR on myocardial collagen concentration was also evaluated. The parameters from the three control groups that were statistically identical were combined and the control pool group (CP) was formed. The left ventricular weight-to-body weight ratio was lower in the R-30 and higher in the R-60 and R-90 in relation to their control groups. Hydroxyproline concentration was higher only in R-90 compared to CP and R-30. Myocardial mechanical function was the same in the C groups. The comparisons between CP and FR groups showed that: the muscles of R-30 presented increased resting tension and maximum rate of tension decline, and decreased velocity of shortening; the muscles of R-60 and R-90 groups showed a prolongation of the time to peak tension (TPT) and the time to peak shortening (TPS); and R-30 had an increased time from peak tension to 50% relaxation (RT1/2). Increases in TPT, TPS, and RT1/2 in groups R-60 and R-90 were significant in relation to R-30. In conclusion, while FR for 30 days produces disparate effects on myocardial performance, FR for 60 and 90 days prolongs the contraction period. The change of relaxation time in R-90 might be related to the increased myocardial collagen content. (C) 2001 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Genetic group x ambient temperature interaction effects on physiological responses and growth performance of rabbits

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

Performance, incidence of metabolic disturbances and endocrine variables of food-restricted male broiler chickens

1. This experiment was carried out to evaluate the productive and physiological consequences of a slight but long term food restriction of male broiler chickens from 2 commercial strains.2. Cobb-500 and Ross chickens were submitted to a 20% food restriction from 8 to 21 d of age. Strain, food programme and their interactive effects were analysed in terms of consequences upon performance, mortality, incidence of sudden death syndrome (SDS) and ascites syndrome (AS), index of right cardiac hypertrophy and plasma concentrations of hormones related to metabolism and growth (T-3, T-4, T-3:T-4 ratio, IGF-I and GH).3. Although some catch-up growth was observed by refeeding previously restricted birds after 22 d of rearing, food restriction decreased (P less than or equal to 0.05) body weight at market age (42 d) irrespective of the strain, but improved (P less than or equal to 0.05) food conversion.4. The incidence of mortality was not high in non-restricted birds but SDS and AS caused more than 50% of deaths. Hypertrophic cardiac index was observed in chickens of both strains after 4 weeks of age and was higher in ad libitum fed birds.5. During the period of food restriction, plasma T-3 and IGF-I concentrations decreased whereas plasma T-4 and GH concentrations increased compared to those of the age-matched ad libitum fed counterparts. During the subsequent ad libitum feeding period, few differences in circulating hormone concentrations were observed, except for the higher mean CH litres in previously food-restricted chickens at 35 d of age.6. These results indicate that even a non-severe food restriction negatively affects body weight of 42-d-old male broilers but these are benefits with improved food efficiency and diminished mortality from metabolic disturbances. The hormone results suggest that the degree of food restriction applied was not severe because there was a very fast adaptive response with small and transient alterations in T-3, T-4 and GH plasma concentrations during the period of compensatory growth.

Myocardial dysfunction induced by food restriction is related to morphological damage in normotensive middle-aged rats

Previous works from our laboratory have revealed that food restriction (FR) promotes discrete myocardial dysfunction in young rats. We examined the effects of FR on cardiac function, in vivo and in vitro, and ultrastructural changes in the heart of middle-aged rats. Twelve-month-old Wistar- Kyoto rats were fed a control (C) or restricted diet (daily intake reduced to 50% of the control group) for 90 days. Cardiac performance was studied by echocardiogram and in isolated left ventricular (LV) papillary muscle by isometric contraction in basal condition, after calcium chloride (5.2 mM) and beta- adrenergic stimulation with isoproterenol (10(-6) M). FR did not change left ventricular function, but increased time to peak tension, and decreased maximum rate of papillary muscle tension development. Inotropic maneuvers promoted similar effects in both groups. Ultrastructural alterations were seen in most FR rat muscle fibers and included, absence and/or disorganization of myofilaments and Z line, hyper-contracted myofibrils, polymorphic and swollen mitochondria with disorganized cristae, and a great quantity of collagen fibrils. In conclusion, cardiac muscle sensitivity to isoproterenol and elevation of extracellular calcium concentration is preserved in middle-aged FR rats. The intrinsic muscle performance depression might be related to morphological damage.

Myocardial dysfunction induced by food restriction is related to calcium cycling and beta-adrenergic system changes

Food restriction (FR) has been shown to promote myocardial dysfunction in rats. The aim of this study was to verify the participation of calcium and beta-adrenergic system on myocardial mechanical alteration in rats submitted to FR. Myocardial performance was studied in isolated left ventricular papillar muscle from young Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) submitted to FR or to control diet. The groups subjected to FR were fed 50% less food than the control group for 90 days. Mechanical function was studied in isometric contraction at post-rest contraction of 30 seconds (PRC), calcium chloride concentration 5.20 mM, and beta-adrenergic stimulation with isoproterenol 10(-6) M. FR decreased the body weight, and left and right ventricular weight. In basal condition (1.25 MM of calcium) time to peak tension (TPT) and time from peak tension to 50% relaxation (RT50) were greater in the FR group. Muscle function was. The same in both PRC groups. TPT decrease in both high calcium groups, more in FR rats; RT50 dropped only in FR animals. TPT decreased in both Isoproterenol groups, more intensely in the FR group. This result suggests that food restriction impairs myocardial performance and these changes may be attributed to alterations in the intracellular calcium cycling and beta-adrenergic system. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Severe food restriction induces myocardial dysfunction related to SERCA2 activity

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