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ABSTRACT: The study investigated the effects of dietary protein level and the inclusion of hydroponic barley sprouts (HB) on lactation performance, blood biochemistry and N use efficiency in mid-lactation dairy cows. Treatments were arranged in a 2 × 2 factorial design with 2 CP levels (16.8% and 15.5% of DM), with HB (4.8% of DM, replacing 4.3% of alfalfa hay and 0.5% of distillers dried grains with solubles [DDGS]) or without HB. Forty-eight multiparous Holstein dairy cows (146 ± 15 DIM, 40 ± 5 kg/d of milk) were randomly allocated to 1 of 4 diets: high-protein diet (16.8% CP, HP), HP diet with HB (HP+HB), low-protein diet (15.5% CP, LP), or LP diet with HB (LP+HB). An interaction between CP × HB on DMI was detected, with DMI being unaffected by HB inclusion in cows fed the high-protein diets, but was lower in cows fed HB when the low-protein diet was fed. A CP × HB interaction was also observed on milk and milk protein yield, which was higher in cows fed HB with HP, but not LP. Inclusion of HB also tended to reduce milk fat content, and feeding HP resulted in a higher milk protein and MUN content, but lower milk lactose content. Feed efficiency was increased by feeding HP or HB diets, whereas N use efficiency was higher for cows fed LP or HB diets. There was an interaction on the apparent total-tract digestibility of DM and CP, which was higher when HB was fed along with HP, but reduced when fed with LP, whereas the digestibility of ADF was increased by feeding low-protein diets. In conclusion, feeding a low-protein diet had no adverse effect on cow performance, while feeding HB improved milk and milk component yield, and N efficiency when fed with a high-CP diet, but compromised cow performance with a low-CP diet.

The occurrence of shallow loess landslides induced by prolonged heavy rainfall is prevalent in loess-dominated regions, often leading to property damage, human casualties, and sediment pollution. Developing an accurate prediction model for shallow landslides in loess areas is crucial for effective landslide mitigation. In 2013, prolonged heavy rains from 19–25 July triggered mass sliding-flow loess landslides in Tianshui, China. Landslide data, along with the characteristics of the sliding-flow loess landslides, were obtained through extensive field investigations and remote sensing interpretations. The sliding-flow loess landslide event demonstrated clustering, high density, small areas, and long travel distance. The depth of the sliding surface is correlated with the saturated layer resulting from rainfall infiltration; it is typically less than 2 m deep and negatively correlated with slope steepness. Based on the common characteristics of shallow loess landslides, the mechanisms involved in the sliding-flow landslide are proposed. The Revised Infinite Slope Model (RISM) was introduced using an equal differential unit method to address deficiencies when the safety factor remains constant or increases with increasing slope greater than 40°, as calculated using the Taylor slope infinite model. The relationship between the critical depth and the slope of the shallow loess landslide was determined. The intensity–duration (I–D) prediction curve of the rainfall-induced shallow loess landslides for different slopes was constructed and combined with the characteristics of rainfall infiltration for use in forecasting regional shallow loess landslides. Additionally, the influence of loess strength on the shallow loess landslide stability was analyzed. The shallow loess landslide stability responds to slope and cohesion but is not sensitive to the internal friction angle.

Across much of Africa, decades of civil war, land reforms, and persecution by humans have decimated wildlife populations. African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) have declined dramatically during the past decades, but have shown recent natural recolonisation of some areas. In Angola, they were rediscovered after almost five decades when no surveys were being conducted, and they have recolonised areas in southern Zimbabwe and northern South Africa. Wild dogs were also reintroduced to Mozambique, where only few individuals remained. Against this backdrop, understanding genetic structure and effective dispersal between fragmented populations is essential to ensure the best conservation approaches for the long-term survival of the species. Our study investigated population genetic diversity, differentiation and gene flow of wild dogs across southern Africa, to include areas where they have recently been rediscovered, reestablished or reintroduced. Our results point to four weakly differentiated genetic clusters, representing the lowveld of Zimbabwe/Limpopo, Kruger NP, Angola/KAZA-TFCA, and the managed metapopulation, counterbalanced by moderate levels of effective dispersal on a southern African scale. Our results suggest that if the human footprint and impact can be significantly minimized, natural dispersal of wild dogs could lead to the demographic recovery of the species in southern Africa.

Structured Abstract: Objective: Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) is one of the most common causes of stillbirths. The objective of this study is to develop a machine learning model that will be able to accurately and consistently predict whether the estimated fetal weight (EFW) will be below the 10th percentile at 34+0–37 + 6 week's gestation stage, by using data collected at 20 + 0 to 23 + 6 weeks gestation. Methods: Recruitment for the prospective Safe Passage Study (SPS) was done over 7.5 years (2007–2015). An essential part of the fetal assessment was the non-invasive transabdominal recording of the maternal and fetal electrocardiograms as well as the performance of an ultrasound examination for Doppler flow velocity waveforms and fetal biometry at 20 + 0 to 23 + 6 and 34 + 0 to 37 + 6 week's gestation. Several predictive models were constructed, using supervised learning techniques, and evaluated using the Stochastic Gradient Descent, k-Nearest Neighbours, Logistic Regression and Random Forest methods. Results: The final model performed exceptionally well across all evaluation metrics, particularly so for the Stochastic Gradient Descent method: achieving a 93% average for Classification Accuracy, Recall, Precision and F1-Score when random sampling is used and 91% for cross-validation (both methods using a 95% confidence interval). Furthermore, the model identifies the Umbilical Artery Pulsality Index to be the strongest identifier for the prediction of IUGR – matching the literature. Three of the four evaluation methods used achieved above 90% for both True Negative and True Positive results. The ROC Analysis showed a very strong True Positive rate (y-axis) for both target attribute outcomes – AUC value of 0.771. Conclusions: The model performs exceptionally well in all evaluation metrics, showing robustness and flexibility as a predictive model for the binary target attribute of IUGR. This accuracy is likely due to the value added by the pre-processed features regarding the fetal gained beats and accelerations, something otherwise absent from previous multi-disciplinary studies. The success of the proposed predictive model allows the pursuit of further birth-related anomalies, providing a foundation for more complex models and lesser-researched subject matter. The data available for this model was a vital part of its success but might also become a limiting factor for further analyses. Further development of similar models could result in better classification performance even with little data available.

The excessively high atmospheric CO2 concentration is associated with rapidly evolving industrial, commercial, and residential uses of fossil fuels, which has caused global warming and climate crisis. Photocatalytic or electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 into value-added hydrocarbon fuels has provided a promising and sustainable solution to addressing these issues simultaneously. Multicarbon products (C2+) with higher energy densities are generally desirable in fueling transportation and other industries. However, the low selectivity and subsequently a higher cost toward these C2+ products have severely limited their larger scale production. Here, we review the strategies of controlling the C2+ product selectivity during the photocatalytic and electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction (CRR) processes with their catalytic reaction mechanisms. This review starts with the fundamentals on photocatalytic and electrocatalytic CRR, which is followed by discussions about how reaction mechanisms and process pathways affect the C2+ product selectivity and the main strategies to improve both photocatalysis and electrocatalysis systems. Finally, some outlook for future work and challenges in improving the C2+ product selectivity is included.

Lath martensite is widely present in advanced high strength steels as the key strengthening phase. Unexpectedly high ductility of lath martensite has been reported in the literature in both single-phase and multi-phase steels, however, without systematic identification of the underlying plasticity mechanisms. In this study, first, well-defined micro-tensile tests are carried out on fully martensitic steel with a clean large substructure and a variety of substructure boundary orientations with respect to the loading direction. Two deformation mechanisms of lath martensite were identified, namely, intra-lath crystallographic slip and apparent substructure boundary sliding, that compete with each other to carry the overall plasticity. The condition under which these two mechanisms are active has been clarified. It is found that boundary sliding is more easily activated than intra-lath crystallographic slip. In addition, for dual phase steel, as an example of multi-phase steels, the probability for sliding of lath martensite boundaries was estimated by boundary orientation characterization and micro-tensile tests. The results suggest that the apparent boundary sliding is also important for lath-martensite-containing multi-phase steels, which would explain prior reports in the literature of unexpectedly high local strains in the martensite regions. Keywords: Lath martensite, Substructure boundaries, Apparent boundary sliding, Micro-tensile testing

The Budyko hypothesis (BH) is an effective approach to investigating long-term water balance at large basin scale under steady state. The assumption of steady state prevents applications of the BH to basins, which is unclosed, or with significant variations in root zone water storage, i.e., under unsteady state, such as in extremely arid regions. In this study, we choose the Heihe River basin (HRB) in China, an extremely arid inland basin, as the study area. We firstly use a calibrated and then validated monthly water balance model, i.e., the abcd model, to quantitatively determine annual and monthly variations of water balance for the sub-basins and the whole catchment of the HRB, and find that the roles of root zone water storage change and that of inflow from upper sub-basins in monthly water balance are significant. With the recognition of the inflow water from other regions and the root zone water storage change as additional possible water sources to evapotranspiration in unclosed basins, we further define the equivalent precipitation (Pe) to include local precipitation, inflow water and root zone water storage change as the water supply in the Budyko framework. With the newly defined water supply, the Budyko curve can successfully describe the relationship between the evapotranspiration ratio and the aridity index at both annual and monthly timescales, whilst it fails when only the local precipitation being considered. Adding to that, we develop a new Fu-type Budyko equation with two non-dimensional parameters (ω and λ) based on the deviation of Fu's equation. Over the annual timescale, the new Fu-type Budyko equation developed here has more or less identical performance to Fu's original equation for the sub-basins and the whole catchment. However, over the monthly timescale, due to large seasonality of root zone water storage and inflow water, the new Fu-type Budyko equation generally performs better than Fu's original equation. The new Fu-type Budyko equation (ω and λ) developed here enables one to apply the BH to interpret regional water balance over extremely dry environments under unsteady state (e.g., unclosed basins or sub-annual timescales).

As part of its STEM programming initiatives, Community Boating, Inc., the nation's oldest public sailing organization introduced an "Introduction to Microscopy" course merging principles of scientific investigation with analytical techniques using compound light microscopes. Boston's Charles River provided the environmental setting for five two-day sessions. In all, 49 students between the ages of 10 and 15 took part. Students developed an ability to analyze river water samples they had collected during field expeditions in kayaks. Once in the laboratory, following instruction in the use of the microscope, wet mount slides were prepared for microscopic investigation for cyanobacteria and photosynthetic phytoplankton, diatoms, and dinoflagellates crucial for a healthy aquatic ecosystem. With these new skills students were able to better appreciate the biodiversity of the microbial life within the river, and better understand the importance of environmental stewardship in a world threatened by global climate change and the effects of urban pollution. This program demonstrated the feasibility of developing sophisticated STEM programming founded upon principles of the scientific method for important environmental initiatives in the unique setting of a community sailing program.

Code resource wastage is caused by the reason that many hopping frequency (FH) sequences are unused, which occurs under the condition that the number of the actual subnets needed for the tactical network is far smaller than the networking capacity of code division net¬working. Dual-channel network (DCN), consisting of one single control channel and multiple data channels, can solve the code resource wastage effectively. To improve the anti-jamming capability of the control channel of DCN, code division multiple access (CDMA) technology was introduced, and a carrier sense random packet (CSRP) CDMA protocol based on random packet CDMA (RP-CDMA) was proposed. In CSRP-CDMA, we provide a carrier sensing random packet mechanism and a packet-segment acknowledgement policy. Furthermore, an analytical model was developed to evaluate the performance of CSRP-CDMA networks. In this model, the impacts of multi-access interference from both inter-clusters and intra-clusters were analyzed, and the mathematical expressions of packet transmission success probability, normalized network throughput and signal interference to noise ratio, were also derived. Analytical and simulation results demonstrate that the normalized network throughput of CSRP-CDMA outperforms traditional RP-CDMA by 10%, which can guarantee the resource utilization efficiency of the control channel in DCNs.

Biocompatible and biodegradable carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) has been modified with 4-hydroxybenzylamine (CMC-Ph) in order to prepare CMC-based microgels through the horseradish peroxidise/hydrogen peroxide enzymatic reaction. CMC-Ph was identified as a blend, and the amount of the grafted 4-hydroxybenzylamine per 100 units of CMC was between 17 and 23 according to the molecular weight of CMC. Through a special designed co-flowing microfluidic device, CMC-Ph microgels were prepared with the radius from 100 to 500 μm via adjusting the flow rates of the disperse phase and the continuous phase, respectively. The chondrocytic cell line ATDC5 was encapsulated in the CMC-Ph microgels. The cell-laden microgels were cultured for up to 40 days, illustrating the biocompatibility of CMC-Ph and the microfluidic approach through the enzymatic crosslinking reaction primarily. CMC-Ph showed a great promise to encapsulate the cells for further fabrication of the injectable scaffolds.

Based on four cruises covering a seasonal cycle in 2009–2011, we examined the impact of the Kuroshio intrusion, featured by extremely oligotrophic waters, on the nutrient inventory in the central northern South China Sea (NSCS). The nutrient inventory in the upper 100 m of the water column in the study area ranged from ∼200 to ∼290 mmol m−2 for N + N (nitrate plus nitrite), from ∼13 to ∼24 mmol m−2 for soluble reactive phosphate and from ∼210 to ∼430 mmol m−2 for silicic acid. The nutrient inventory showed a clear seasonal pattern with the highest value appearing in summer, while the N + N inventory in spring and winter had a reduction of ∼13 and ∼30%, respectively, relative to that in summer. To quantify the extent of the Kuroshio intrusion, an isopycnal mixing model was adopted to derive the proportional contribution of water masses from the SCS proper and the Kuroshio along individual isopycnal surfaces. The derived mixing ratio along the isopycnal plane was then employed to predict the genuine gradients of nutrients under the assumption of no biogeochemical alteration. These predicted nutrient concentrations, denoted as Nm, are solely determined by water mass mixing. Results showed that the nutrient inventory in the upper 100 m of the NSCS was overall negatively correlated to the Kuroshio water fraction, suggesting that the Kuroshio intrusion significantly influenced the nutrient distribution in the SCS and its seasonal variation. The difference between the observed nutrient concentrations and their corresponding Nm allowed us to further quantify the nutrient removal/addition associated with the biogeochemical processes on top of the water mass mixing. We revealed that the nutrients in the upper 100 m of the water column had a net consumption in both winter and spring but a net addition in fall.

Food businesses have become widespread in recent times in response to the changing lifestyle and food consumption patterns of people. They offer convenience and ease of access to food to busy individuals, who are unable to prepare their own meals regularly at home. In large scale cooking, food passes through many hands, thereby increasing the chances of food contamination due to improper handling. Food vendors have a prime role to play in food businesses and that is to guarantee that meals served are hygienic for consumption. Conscious contamination of such food places consumers at risk of suffering from food borne illnesses. The main aim of the study was to explore and document business practices of selected food vendors at Kwa-Dlangezwa with a view of business practices. The study targeted food vendors (N=8) on and off campus (University of Zululand), who prepared and sold food on site. This data is analysed using the Excel for Microsoft office to find out the statistic responses of respondents from the data collected and the same Excel was used to formulate graphs and table from the responses of participants. The results indicated that there was only one food vendor who have been in the food vending business for long period of time and they all faced a common challenges. Out of the eight food vendors two were responsible for also cashing up daily and the owner/managers were responsible for cashing up for the other six but record keeping and ordering was done by the owners/manager for all the food vendors. Only two out of the eight vendors received proper training on business practices.

The work of Arthur Peacocke may be considered to be a good example of the effort to link the findings and theories of new cosmology to the world of theology and religious thinking in a consistent and credible way. Highlights of Peacocke's theology pertaining to this venture are discussed. Some of the issues that are dealt with include his anti-reductionist approach, his critical realist stand, and his use of metaphor. Attention is also given to God's interaction with the world, the interaction of law and chance, God's self-limited omnipotence and omniscience, God and time, the suffering of creation and kenosis. The article concludes with some critical questions posed to Peacocke.