Quantitative microscopic structure of testis in adult Arabian rams, raised under closed grazing system in Khuzestan province of Iran, was studied in four seasons over a one year period. For this purpose, thirty adult rams were randomly selected and the live weight and scrotal circumference of rams were recorded. At the beginning of each season, among the study group, four rams were randomly sel...

The present experiment was designed to investigate the subsequent influences of supplementing different levels of intact green seaweed Ulva lactuca (0%, 3%, and 5% DM) to growing sexually immature lambs during the growth period (74 d) on the seminal and testicular characteristics of sexually mature rams. Ulva lactuca was manually collected, adequately prepared, and then incorporated into lambs'...

There is strong evidence that the gonads modulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. To investigate these sex differences at the adrenal glands of sheep we compared the cortisol response to ACTH (experiment 1) and measured the relative expression of oestrogen receptor alpha (ERS1), androgen receptor (AR), melanocortin 2 receptor (MC2R) and steroid acute regulatory protein (STAR) mRNA in a...

Studies over 3 years showed that testicular volume falls during summer and autumn when forage quality and availability decline and when rams are mating. Loss in testicular size may also occur in summer in the absence of mating activity and at a greater rate than loss in live weight. The results suggest that mating and nutrition may override the influence of photoperiod on testicular size and th...

In recent years awareness of the importance fatty acid composition ruminants meat and milk products has increased, with a particular emphasis on n-3 polyunsaturated acids, for example, eicosapentaenoic (EPA; C20:5 n-3) docosahexaenoic (DHA; C22:6 n-3), as these can have beneficial effects animal performance reduce risk coronary heart disease in humans. The aim this study was to investigate feed...

Reliability, availability, maintenance and safety (RAMS) analysis is essential in the evaluation of safety critical systems like nuclear power plants and the railway infrastructure. A widely used methodology within RAMS analysis are fault trees, representing failure propagations throughout a system. We present DFTCalc, a tool-set to conduct quantitative analysis on dynamic fault trees including...

We present a Built-In Self-Test (BIST) approach for programmable embedded memories in Xilinx Virtex-4 Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The target resources are the block random access memories (RAMs) in all of their modes of operation including singleand dual-port RAM, first-in first-out (FIFO), error correcting code (ECC), and cascade modes of operation. The BIST architecture and config...

Total of 73 crossbred rams was used to determine spermatogenic and steroidogenic changes in the testis of the growing animal. Testicular weight increased slowly until 80 days of age, then increased tenfold during the following 3 months. Spermatogenesis began in rams at 60 to 70 days of age and was qualitatively complete by 120 days. Although testicular levels of the enzyme carnitine acetyltrans...

This paper presents an FPGA implementation of a 3-layer perceptron using the FDFM (Few DSP blocks and Few block RAMs) approach implemented in the Xilinx Virtex-6 family FPGA. In the FDFM approach, multiple processor cores with few DSP slices and few block RAMs are used. We have implemented 150 processor cores for perceptrons in a Xilinx Virtex-6 family FPGA XC6VLX240T-FF1156. The implementation...

T HE development of the Targhee breed of sheep began in i9=6 when the Bureau of Animal Industry at the U. S. Sheep Experiment Station, Dubois, Idaho mated select Rambouillet rams with select ewes of Corriedale XLincoln-Rambouillet and Lincoln XRambouillet combinations. Descendants of these crosses have been interbred and carefully selected to produce Targhee sheep. Spencer and Stoehr (x94L) hav...