Dietary variety via sweetening and voluntary feed intake of lactating dairy cows

The effects of choice of diets on feed intake were studied using 12 lactating Holstein cows. A switchback design was used that had three periods and two sequential blocks. Diets were 1) a control total mixed ration (TMR), which consisted of alfalfa haylage, corn silage, and a concentrate mixture based on ground corn and soybean meal (25:25:50 on a dry matter basis) and 2) a sweetened TMR in which a brown sugar food product constituted 1.5% of the dietary dry matter. Treatments consisted of the control TMR fed on both sides of divided feed bunks, the sweetened TMR fed on both sides of divided feed bunks, or both TMR fed on alternating (daily) sides of divided feed bunks in tie stalls. Periods were 2 wk in duration, and cows averaged 67 and 53 d of lactation at the start of blocks 1 and 2, respectively. The dry matter intake, body weight, milk yield, and percentages of milk fat, protein, and solids not fat were similar when either TMR was fed alone. A choice of control TMR or sweetened TMR did not affect any of these variables. The dry matter intake, body weight, milk yield, and milk protein percentage were affected by block; however, these effects were probably caused by differences between the blocks in environment and stage of lactation. The results of this experiment might have been affected by the composition of the control TMR, its similarity to the sweetened TMR, availability of both diets simultaneously when a choice was offered, and use of a TMR instead of separate feeds or simpler mixtures.     

Knowledge Management in Societies of Intelligent Adaptive Agents

A model is developed of the emergence of the knowledge level in asociety of agents where agents model and manage other agents as resources,and manage the learning of other agents to develop such resources. It isargued that any persistent system that actively creates the conditions forits persistence is appropriately modeled in terms of the rationalteleological models that Newell defines as characterizing the knowledgelevel. The need to distribute tasks in agent societies motivates suchmodeling, and it is shown that if there is a rich order relationship ofdifficulty on tasks that is reasonably independent of agents then it isefficient to model agents competencies in terms of their possessingknowledge. It is shown that a simple training strategy of keeping an agent'sperformance constant by allocating tasks of increasing difficulty as anagent adapts optimizes the rate of learning and linearizes the otherwisesigmoidal learning curves. It is suggested that this provides a basis forassigning a granularity to knowledge that enables learning processes to bemanaged simply and efficiently.     

Sexual dimorphism in the social proximity behavior of Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica).

Previous research by the present authors (see record 1986-16367-001) showed that after opportunity for copulation, male Japanese quail spent about 75% of their time throughout daylight hours near a window that provided visual access to a female conspecific. In Exp I of the present study, 8 female Japanese quail typically spent less than 20% of their time near a window that provided visual access to 1 of 8 male conspecifics under comparable conditions. In Exp II, using the same Ss, a small clear plastic cage was placed in a large test arena, and Ss were observed when the cage was either empty or contained a sexual partner. Males tended to remain much closer to the cage when it contained a female conspecific than when it was empty. In contrast, the presence of a male did not significantly attract females to the cage area. These findings demonstrate strong sexual dimorphism in the social proximity behavior of Japanese quail. Results are discussed in terms of implications concerning the social structure of Japanese quail and implications for studies of sexual classical conditioning. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fabrication of planar optical waveguides by K+-ion exchange in BK7 and Pyrex glass

Planar graded index optical waveguides have been formed by K+ ion exchange in BK7 optical glass and Pyrex glass. Measurements of the mode indexes have been made and are well described by the WKB dispersion relation with a complementary error function refractive index profile for both glass types with refractive index changes (Delta n) of 0.0094 and 0.0073 for BK7 and Pyrex, respectively. A linear relation was found between the diffusion depth and the square root of the diffusion time for both materials, and effective diffusion coefficients were calculated. Diffusion times necessary to achieve a desired number of modes and diffusion depths have also been established.     

Purkinje Cell Loss by OX7-Saporin Impairs Excitatory and Inhibitory Eyeblink Conditioning.

Cerebellar cortical contributions to eyeblink conditioned excitation have been examined extensively. In contrast, very little evidence exists concerning the role of the cerebellar cortex in eyeblink conditioned inhibition. In the current study, rats were given intraventricular infusions of the immunotoxin OX7-saporin to selectively destroy Purkinje cells throughout the cerebellar cortex following excitatory conditioning. After a 2-week postinfusion period, the rats were given reacquisition training. After reacquiring excitatory conditioning, the rats were trained in a feature-negative discrimination procedure to establish conditioned inhibition. Rats treated with OX7-saporin showed impaired reacquisition of excitatory conditioning and acquisition of conditioned inhibition. The results suggest that Purkinje cells play important, but different, roles in conditioned excitation and inhibition in rats. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hydrogen embrittlement resistance of GRCop-84

GRCop-84 contains approximately 5.5 wt% Nb. Nb can react with hydrogen and embrittle easily. Previous work had indicated the thermodynamic possibility that Cr₂Nb could react with hydrogen and form niobium hydrides in the presence of high pressure hydrogen. In this study, samples were charged with hydrogen and tested in both high pressure gaseous H₂ and He environments to determine if measurable differences existed which indicate that hydrogen embrittlement occurs in GRCop-84. Tensile, notched tensile, stress rupture and low cycle fatigue properties were surveyed. High pressure H₂ environment stress rupture testing resulted in a lower reduction in area than a high pressure He environment, and the LCF lives at high strain ranges fall below the lower 95% confidence interval for the baseline data, but in general no significant differences were noted either between H₂ and He environment tests or between H charged materials and the baseline, uncharged extruded GRCop-84 data sets. There was also no discernable evidence of the formation of hydrides or changes in fracture morphology indicating hydrogen embrittlement occurred.     

Transaction exchange management systems for successful systems integration

The objective of this paper is to discuss the strategy to be taken by computerized information system managers and developers in the evolving era of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM). Specifically, more concentration should be directed towards a standardized methodology for the management and handling of the transaction data which flows between two or more systems, rathr than upon the hardware and software technology used to “connect” those systems.     

Knowledge formation and learning in the management of projects: A problem solving perspective

In contrast to traditional projects, which are assumed to be fully specified and then executed with little learning anticipated, complex projects cannot be fully specified at the outset and require continuous learning over their life cycles. Nevertheless, the key role of knowledge formation and learning in managing complex projects is under-developed for expanding project capability boundaries to include knowledge uncertainty and indeterminacy.     

Breakthrough paper indicator 2.0: can geographical diversity and interdisciplinarity improve the accuracy of outstanding papers prediction?

We report progress on new developments in the breakthrough paper indicator, which allows early selection of a small group of publications which may become potential breakthrough candidates based on dynamics of publication citations and certain qualitative characteristics of citations. We used a quantitative approach to identify typical citation patterns of highly cited papers. Based on these analyses, we propose two forecasting models to select groups of breakthrough paper candidates that exceed high citation thresholds five years post-publication. Here we study whether interdisciplinarity in the subject categories or geographical diversity serve as possible measures to improve ranking of breakthrough paper candidates. We found that ranked geographical diversities of known breakthrough papers have equal or better ranks than corresponding citations ranks. This allows us to apply additional filtering for better identifications of breakthrough candidates. We studied several interdisciplinarity indices, including richness, Shannon index, Simpson index, and Rao-Stirling-Porter index. We did not find any correlations between citation ranks and ranked interdisciplinarity indices.