Data on age and body weight at breeding, parity, previous litter size, days open and some descriptive body linear traits from 389 meat-type, prolific Black Bengal goats in Tripura State of India, were collected for 3 and 1/2 years (2007 to 2010) and analyzed using logistic regression model. The objectives of the study were i) to evaluate the effect of age and body weight at breeding, parity, previous litter size and days open on litter size of does; and ii) to investigate if body linear type traits influenced litter size in meat-type, prolific goats. The incidence of 68.39% multiple births with a prolificacy rate of 175.07% was recorded. Higher age (>2.69 year), higher parity order (>2.31), more body weight at breeding (>20.5 kg) and larger previous litter size (>1.65) showed an increase likelihood of multiple litter size when compared to single litter size. There was a strong, positive relationship between litter size and various body linear type traits like neck length (>22.78 cm), body length (>54.86 cm), withers height (>48.85 cm), croup height (>50.67 cm), distance between tuber coxae bones (>11.38 cm) and distance between tuber ischii bones (>4.56 cm) for discriminating the goats bearing multiple fetuses from those bearing a single fetus.

Nowadays, applications of spacer fabric cover wider areas of technical textile. It is used in the automotive textile, personal protective clothing, sports textile, foundation garments, pads for swimwear, buffer clothing, medical textile etc. It does possess good recovery to compression, high bulk with relatively lightweight and very good moisture permeability. Almost in all applications, spacer fabrics are compressed by different parts of human body. Body parts have different shapes and curvatures. In all standard methods, spacer fabric compressibility is measured by a pair of flat circular plate which cannot represent a human body. The contour of body can be assumed as cylindrical with varying radius of curvature. So, it is necessary to understand the mechanism of compression of spacer fabric with cylindrical surface in order to understand the performance of the fabric under real-world dynamics. In this research, an effort is being made to predict the compression behaviour of warp-knitted spacer fabric by flat as well as cylindrical surface. Finite Element Models were designed on Abaqus/CAE platform to meet above requirement with variable circumstances. Experimental setup was also made to analyse cylindrical and flat compression at different circumstances. Results show that flat compression and cylindrical compression are largely deferred in terms of shape of load-deformation curve and compressional energy. Effect of variables on compression behaviour was also analysed. Model results were validated with experimental values. It is found that the proposed model has got a good agreement with the experimental results.

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Smallholder pig farming is an important livelihood resource for the tribal people in Northeast

The present study explains the intraspecific variation in Indian Hill trout (Barilius bendelisis) on the basis of image based truss network system and D‐loop region of mtDNA. A total of 210 samples were collected from three different rivers (Teesta, Kameng and Myntudu River) of North East India in Indo‐Burma Biodiversity Hotspot. By using the software applications (tpsDig version 2.1 and PAST), a total of 25 morphometric measurements were generated from 10 landmarks. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Factor Analysis (FA) and Discriminate Function Analysis (DFA) showed, out of the total variations, factor 1 explained 46.74% while factor 2 and factor 3 explained 27.14% and 11.92%, respectively. Using these variables 83.33% of the cross‐validated specimens were classified into distinct groups. Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA) and pairwise Fst value for D‐loop region of mtDNA also showed high to medium level of genetic variation among the stocks and within the stocks. We conclude that the observed discrete stocks might be the result of changing environmental conditions in different rivers of the hotspot as the rivers are present at different altitudinal labels. It is also believed that the variation might be due to the construction of barrages across the river which hinder the mixing among the stocks.