BACKGROUND The prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) is an emerging animal model for biomedical research because of its rich sociobehavioral repertoire. Recently, lentiviral transgenic technology has been used to introduce the gene encoding the green fluorescent protein (GFP) into the prairie vole germline. However, the efficiency of transgenesis in this species is limited by the inability to rel...

A study was undertaken to test the effect of 2 commercially available probiotics on the production efficiency of broiler chickens hatched from the same breeder flock at 3 different ages (28, 43, and 57 wk). At each of the 3 breeder flock ages, 1,600 broiler chickens were hatched and randomly allocated to 1 of 4 treatments: 1) no probiotics (control), 2) probiotic 1 administered in the drinking ...

Breeder Genetic Algorithms represent a class of random optimisation techniques gleaned from the science of population genetics, which have proved their ability to solve hard optimisation problems with continuous parameters. In this paper we test a parallel version of this technique against a sequential Breeder Genetic Algorithm on a typical inverse design problem in Aerodynamics, the problem of...

Tumors occurring in 450 male and 450 female control rats of the strain Wistar (BOR:WISW (SPF Cpb), breeder: Winkelmann, Borchen) employed in 9 control groups from 7 different 30-month studies were compiled on the basis of histopathology reports. 445 male and 448 female rats were evaluated. The remaining animals were unavailable due to autolysis. A total of 1211 tumors (565 in males, 646 in fema...

Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis (Salmonella Enteritidis) has been associated with morbidity and mortality in broiler chickens worldwide. The present study described purulent arthritis of broilers infected with Salmonella Enteritidis and investigated antibiograms and genetic characteristics of Salmonella Enteritidis isolates from epidemiologically related properties such as a hatchery an...

This trial examined the effect of 2 turkey breeder hen ages (33 or 55 wk of age) on performance, intestinal histology, and inflammatory immune response of female turkey poults grown to market weight. Using a randomized design, female poults were separated by breeder flock age (n = 8 floor pens/breeder flock age; n = 26 poults/pen; 0.195 m(2)/bird), fed identical commercial diets (9 phases), and...

To investigate the effect of canthaxanthin supplied via a maternal route on the production of both breeder hens and chickens, 270 Chinese Three-Yellow breeder hens were randomly divided into 2 groups consisting of 135 birds each (5 replicates of 27) for study. The breeder hens were fed either a basal diet or the basal diet supplemented with 6 mg of canthaxanthin/kg for 24 wk. At the end of the ...

India has long pursued a fast breeder program, motivated in part by the availability of only poor quality uranium resources within the country. But progress so far has been disappointing, with only one test reactor having been constructed and having a chequered operating history. The larger Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor that is being constructed has a design that compromises safety and will pr...