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...

This study was conducted to determine whether exposure of ram lambs to estrual ewes during their first autumn and again as adults just before serving capacity tests (SCT) affected the outcome of the sexual performance tests. Treatments were either early exposure of Polypay ram lambs (i.e., 7-8-mo-old rams with ewes for 17 d [n=30] or no early exposure [n=30]), and late exposure (i.e., 16-19-mo-...

Brucella ovis is a major cause of epididymitis in sexually mature rams, resulting in subfertility, infertility, and economic losses for the sheep industry worldwide. The aim of this study was to develop an indirect ELISA (iELISA) using recombinant proteins, namely rBoP59 and rBP26, as antigens for serological diagnosis of B. ovis infection. The BoP59 and BP26 recombinant proteins were expressed...

If preconditioned by a period of isolation from rams during the non-breeding season, ewes of many breeds respond to the reintroduction of rams (teasing) by displaying a relatively synchronised oestrus, approximately one oestrous cycle later (Merino: Schinckel 1954a; Awassi: Eyal 1958; Romney: Edgar and Bilkey 1963; Merinos d'Arles: Prud'hon et al. 1966). The oestrous activity of the flock is sp...