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Vision and mission statements are mostly studied with a focus on organizations. This study moves away from the traditional approach by integrating the knowledge of vision/mission/value statements and ads on the same designated object. The organizations involved in the discourse of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC discourse) use an emergent hybrid strategy of utilizing vision/mission/value statements and ads under the umbrella of economic incentives to project the Chinese language as a power-tool in the context of CPEC. Based on the criteria/drivers for strategic communication in Zerfass et al. (2018), CPEC discourse fulfills 6/7 criteria/drivers mentioned: it is resource-driven, competition-driven, environment-driven, innovation-driven, engagement-driven, and operationally-driven. Power theory has been applied, linking the statements and ads to power discourse to find out how different themes carry an underlying power structure exercised by the stakeholders. Using thematic analysis supported by word-clouds as an analytical tool, this study finds out that the intended signaling-effect of the Chinese language in CPEC projects is received willingly by the consumers and stakeholders who, in turn, learn and promote this language as a skill/resource for employability and exertion of power. The findings show that these communicative sources can be utilized strategically in a competition-driven environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) becomes more popular and has increased applicability. SER concentrates on the automatic identification of the emotional state of a human being using speech signals. It mainly depends upon the in-depth analysis of the speech signal, extracts features containing emotional details from the speech signal, and utilises pattern recognition techniques for emotional state identification. The major problem in automatic SER is to extract discriminate, powerful, and emotional salient features from the acoustical content of speech signals. The proposed model aims to detect and classify three emotional states of speech such as happy, neutral, and sad. The presented model makes use of Convolution neural network – Gated Recurrent unit (CNN-GRU) based feature extraction technique which derives a set of feature vectors. A comprehensive simulation takes place using the Berlin German Database and SJTU Chinese Database which comprises numerous audio files under a collection of different emotion labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this review is to summarize the effect of commonly used mushrooms (particularly Pleurotus ostreatus or oyster mushroom, Agaricus bisporus or Button mushroom, Lentimula edodes or shiitake mushroom, and Ganoderma lucidum or reishi mushroom) in poultry diets on performance of broilers and layers. It can be concluded from different studies that mushrooms and their polysaccharides can play important roles in poultry production: (1) Polysaccharides in mushrooms may act as immune enhancers or immunomodulators and show antibacterial, antiviral, antiparasitic bioactivities; (2) phenolic compounds of mushrooms may act as antioxidants; (3) mushrooms in broiler's diet may be used as growth promoters as an alternative to antibiotics; (4) mushrooms in the diet may improve egg production and quality; (5) mushrooms may be used as a safe and effective alternative for inducing molt, enhancing immunity, reducing Salmonella growth, and returning to egg production. Further studies are needed to investigate the effects of mushrooms to improve productive performance in chickens and to illuminate the possible modes of action related to the gut ecosystem and the immune response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 2000 Hubbard Classic females and 180 males (male to female ratio 1:11) close to standard body weights were selected and managed separately in the same shed. The objective of this experiment was to study the effects of egg size (small, medium and large) at mid (45 weeks) production cycle and flock age (30, 45 and 60 weeks old) on hatching egg weight loss, fertility, hatchability traits, chick weight and chick yield in a commercial Hubbard Classic broiler breeder flock. The results showed that minimum egg weight loss (P≤ 0.05) was recorded in large egg size group at different incubation periods and egg weight losses decreased with advancing the age of breeder hens. Maximum fertility and hatchability (P≤ 0.05) was noticed in small egg size group, followed by medium and large egg size groups. However, maximum embryonic mortality (P≤ 0.05) during incubation and higher percentage of infertile eggs was recorded in large size egg group, followed by medium and small egg size groups. Low fertility, hatchability was recorded (P≤ 0.05) in older hen at the age of 60 weeks. The chick weight and chick length were amplified (P≤ 0.05) with increasing the egg size. However, egg size was not influenced (P≥ 0.05) on chick yield. The chick weight, chick yield and chick length were improved (P≤ 0.05) with advancing age of broiler breeder. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of organic acids as substitutes for antibiotic growth promoters because of the fear of antibiotic resistance and the implications for human health. Organic acids and their salts have been used in poultry diets and drinking water for decades and seem to elicit a positive response in growth performance. An important objective of dietary acidification is the inhibition of intestinal bacteria competing with the host for available nutrients, and a reduction of possible toxic bacterial metabolites resulting in the improvement of nutrient digestibility, thereby ameliorating the performance of birds and enhancing the specific and non-specific immunity in poultry. Literature shows that short-chain fatty acids, medium-chain fatty acids and other organic acids have more or less pronounced antimicrobial activity, depending on both the concentration of the acid and the bacterial species that is exposed to the acid. The possible mechanisms contributing to these effects and the factors thought to explain the variability in these responses are discussed. This paper provides a review of the use of organic acids in the prevention of enteric disease in poultry, the effect on the gastrointestinal tract, nutrient digestibility, immunity and performance of broiler and laying hens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]