Rice cultivation generates large amount of crop residues of which only 20% are utilized for industrial and domestic purposes. In most developing countries especially southeast Asia, rice straw is used as part of feeding ingredients for the ruminants. However, due to its low protein content and high level of lignin and silica, there is limitation to its digestibility and nutritional value. To ut...

Traditional methods of genetic improvement have yielded long-term, significant improvement in traits relating to production efficiency and overall carcass quality; traits like growth rate, feed conversion, leanness and loin muscle area. These methods require widespread data collection and analysis for continued success. Traits associated with end product or consumer product quality have not rec...

A feedback-based model predictive control (MPC) approach to product quality improvement that incorporates multivariate statistical techniques has been developed [1]. The objective of the approach is to use existing process measurements to help reduce the variability of product quality when its online measurement is not feasible. The approach is model based and it uses principal component analys...

OBJECTIVE To test the validity, reliability and discriminating capacity of an instrument to assess team climate, the Team Climate Inventory (TCI), in a sample of Dutch hospital teams. The TCI is based on a four-factor theory of team climate for innovation. DESIGN Validation study. SETTING Hospital teams in The Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS 424 healthcare professionals; 355 nurses working in 2...

Whereas most prior research on the learning curve has focused on improvements in efficiency, this paper deals with the impact of learning on product quality. The key data are measures of automobile reliability published in Consumer Reports. Analysis yields three findings: (1) Quality improves over the production life of a car model with the same kind of regularity as an efficiency learning curv...