An experiment was conducted with commercial broilers to investigate the effects of feeding citric acid, acetic acid and their combination on their performance and to determine the economic competence of using citric acid and acetic acid in broiler rations. A total number of 108 one day old straight run broiler chicks were distributed to four dietary treatments i.e. 0 % citric or acetic acid (A) , 0.5% citric acid (B), 0.5% acetic acid (C) and their combinations 0.5% citric acid and 0.5% acetic acid (D). The birds were reared in cages. Body weight gains, feed conversion ratio (FCR), mortality, dressing yield and carcass characteristics were recorded. The performance showed significant increase in body weight gain (P<0.05) when compared with the control during 0-5 weeks of age on 0.5% citric acid (B). Feed consumption increased (P<0.05) at 2 nd and 3 rd weeks of age on 0.5% citric acid (B). Feed conversion was found higher (P<0.05) during 0-5 weeks of age in treatment B when compared to those of the other treatments. Carcass characteristics were not affected by dietary treatments. The highest mortality was found in treatment A and treatment C due to excessive hot. It may be concluded that use of 0.5% citric acid in the diet of broilers may have better performance in respect of live weight gain and feed conversion.

We have investigated the effect of temperature on magnetic properties of Bi0.9Gd0.1Fe1−xTixO3 (x = 0.00-0.20) multiferroic system. Unexpectedly, the coercive fields (Hc) of this multiferroic system increased with increasing temperature. The coercive fields and remanent magnetization were higher over a wide range of temperatures in sample x = 0.10 i.e. in sample having composition Bi0.9Gd0.1Fe0.9Ti0.1O3 than those of x = 0.00 and 0.20 compositions. Therefore, we have carried out temperature dependent magnetization experiments extensively for sample x = 0.10. The magnetic hysteresis loops at different temperatures exhibit an asymmetric shift towards the magnetic field axes which indicate the presence of exchange bias effect in this material system. The hysteresis loops were also carried out at temperatures 150 K and 250 K by cooling down the sample from 300 K in various cooling magnetic fields (H cool ). The exchange bias field (HEB) values increased with H cool and decreased with temperature. The HEB values were tunable by field cooling at temperatures up to 250 K.

Light scattering has been used for label-free cell detection. The angular light scattering patterns from the cells are unique to them based on the cell size, nucleus size, number of mitochondria, and cell surface roughness. The patterns collected from the cells can then be classified based on different image characteristics. We have also developed a machine learning (ML) method to classify these cell light scattering patterns. As a case study we have used this light scattering technique integrated with the machine learning to analyze staurosporine-treated SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells and compare them to non-treated control cells. Experimental results show that the ML technique can provide a classification accuracy (treated versus non-treated) of over 90%. The predicted percentage of the treated cells in a mixed solution is within 5% of the reference (ground-truth) value and the technique has the potential to be a viable method for real-time detection and diagnosis.

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Two experiments were undertaken to investigate the feeding effect of alcoholic apple pomace silages (APSs) on performance traits, ruminal pH and blood variables in sheep. In experiment 1, four ewes were fed alfalfa hay cube and either APS (ethanol content was 33.4 g /kg DM) or concentrate (control) at a ratio of 30:70 of TDN requirement for maintenance and daily 100g gain in a 2×2 crossover design over two 35-day periods. Total body weight gain was higher in control treatment. No significant treatment effect was observed for TDN intake and ruminal pH. Plasma concentrations of ethanol, lactate and β-hydroxybutyrate (BHBA) were increased after feeding APS. Plasma insulin, glucose, glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT) and glutamate pyruvate transaminase (GPT) were not significantly differ between the treatments. The area upper or under curves (AUCs)of plasma ethanol and BHBA were greater and lactate was tended to greater in APS treatment. In experiment 2, low and high ethanol contained APSs (L-APS, 44.1g and H-APS, 66.9 g of ethanol/kg DM) were compared in the same design (Experiment 1). No significant treatment effect was observed for body weight gain and TDN intake. Prefeeding ruminal pH was lower in L-APS treatment. Insulin concentration was slightly higher in L-APS treatment. However, no significant treatment effect was detected for other variables. According to the consistent increase in plasma ethanol, lactate and BHBA, and the plasma AUCs response of ethanol, lactate and BHBA after feeding of alcoholic-fermented APSs, it would be concluded that APS ethanol consumption affect the post prandial blood metabolism as well as influenced the plasma lactate and BHBA concentrations in the blood.

Development of a microfluidic device is generally based on fabrication-design-fabrication loop, as, unlike the microelectronics design, there is no rigorous simulation-based verification of the chip before fabrication. This usually results in extremely long, and hence expensive, product development cycle if micro/nano fabrication facilities are used from the beginning of the cycle. Here, we illustrate a novel approach of device prototyping that is fast, cheap, reliable, and most importantly, this technique can be adopted even if no state-of-the-art microfabrication facility is available. A water-jet machine is used to cut the desired microfluidic channels into a thin steel plate which is then used as a template to cut the channels into a thin sheet of a transparent and cheap polymer material named Surlyn