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The objective of this experiment was to compare the effects of tail docking and teeth clipping on the growth and behavior of pigs. Pigs (n = 126) from 21 litters (6 pigs/litter) were blocked by birth weight, and assigned at 3 d of age within blocks to either teeth clipping and tail docking (processed) or control (sham-processed). Vocalizations of pigs were recorded during the procedures, and behavior was observed during the lactation, nursery, and growing periods. Blood samples were collected on d 21 to measure semm IgG concentrations. Wounds on the body and tail were assessed by inspecting both sides of the body and tail at 70, 110, and 160 d of age, whereas BW were recorded at 10, 21, 70, and 160 d of age. Fat and LM depths were measured ultrasonically on growing pigs at 160 d of age. Clipped and docked pigs vocalized more (1.06 vs. 0.62 s; P < 0.01) during processing, and processed pigs were observed lying alone more often (P = 0.03) during the 3 d after processing and the entire suckling period; however, teeth clipping and docking did not (P ≥ 0.14) alter the frequency that pigs spent suckling, standing, huddling, playing/fighting, or sitting during the first 3 d or between 5 and 15 d after processing. Social behavior during the nursery (P ≥ 0.23) and grower phases (P ≥ 0.18) was unaffected by clipping and docking, but processed pigs rested more (P = 0.03) during the nursery period and were less (P ≤ 0.01) interested in exploratory behaviors during both phases, especially during pen (P ≤ 0.04) and enrichment investigations (P ≤ 0.02). Teeth clipping and tail docking reduced ADG between 10 and 21 d ÇP = 0.01) and 21 to 70 d of age(P = 0.04), resulting in lighter BW at 21 (P = 0.01) and 70 d of age (P = 0.08) compared with sham-processed pigs. However, 160-d BW (P = 0.62), d 70 to 160 ADG (P = 0.23), and G:F (P ≥ 0.15) were not affected by teeth clipping and tail docking. Additionally, there was no difference between sham and processed pigs for fat depth (P ≥ 0.05), LM depth (P = 0.93), or estimated percent muscle (P = 0.27). Even though tail docking and teeth clipping appear to produce short-term pain and distress, results of this experiment indicate that leaving the teeth and tails intact have no detrimental effects on mortality, morbidity, live performance, or carcass merit of growing-finishing pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study entanglement and discord in spin glass. By using the Edwards-Anderson XX model, we consider the Hamiltonian for three and four particles for nearest neighbor and next nearest neighbor interactions and to solve for the entanglement through concurrence. With a fixed mean and changing variances for the coupling J, the concurrence and discord are numerically plotted against the temperature. For J = 1, the critical temperature is found to be 2.106. The entanglement was found to increase beyond the critical temperature as the variance increases. The spin-spin correlation for three particles is plotted as a function of temperature T. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hopf insulators are intriguing three-dimensional topological insulators characterized by an integer topological invariant. They originate from the mathematical theory of Hopf fibration and epitomize the deep connection between knot theory and topological phases of matter, which distinguishes them from other classes of topological insulators. Here, we implement a model Hamiltonian for Hopf insulators in a solid-state quantum simulator and report the first experimental observation of their topological properties, including nontrivial topological links associated with the Hopf fibration and the integer-valued topological invariant obtained from a direct tomographic measurement. Our observation of topological links and Hopf fibration in a quantum simulator opens the door to probe rich topological properties of Hopf insulators in experiments. The quantum simulation and probing methods are also applicable to the study of other intricate three-dimensional topological model Hamiltonians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short communication, based on Renyi entropy measure, a new Renyi information based clustering algorithm A is presented. Algorithm A and the well-known fuzzy clustering algorithm FCM have the same clustering track. This fact builds the very bridge between probabilistic clustering and fuzzy clustering, and fruitful research results on Renyi entropy measure may help us to further understand the essence of fuzzy clustering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]