The identification of natural bioactive compounds which can prevent the post-weaning growth check and enhance gastrointestinal health in the absence of in-feed medications is an urgent priority for the swine industry. The objective of this experiment was to determine the effects of increasing dietary inclusion levels of laminarin in the first 14 d post-weaning on pig growth performance and weaning associated intestinal dysfunction. At weaning, ninety-six pigs (8·4 (sd 1·09) kg) (meatline boars × (large white × landrace sows)) were blocked by live weight, litter and sex and randomly assigned to: (1) basal diet; (2) basal + 100 parts per million (ppm) laminarin; (3) basal + 200 ppm laminarin and (4) basal + 300 ppm laminarin (three pigs/pen). The appropriate quantity of a laminarin-rich extract (65 % laminarin) was added to the basal diet to achieve the above dietary inclusion levels of laminarin. After 14 d of supplementation, eight pigs from the basal group and the best-performing laminarin group were euthanised for sample collection. The 300 ppm laminarin group was selected as this group had higher ADFI compared with all other groups and higher ADG than the basal group (P < 0·05). Laminarin supplementation increased villus height in the duodenum and jejunum (P < 0·05). Laminarin supplementation increased the expression of SLC2A8/GLUT8 in the duodenum, SLC2A2/GLUT2, SLC2A7/GLUT7, SLC15A1/PEPT1 and FABP2 in the jejunum and SLC16A1/MCT1 in the colon. Laminarin supplementation reduced Enterobacteriaceae numbers in the caecum (P < 0·05) and increased lactobacilli numbers (P < 0·05), total volatile fatty acid concentrations and the molar proportions of butyrate (P < 0·01) in the colon. In conclusion, 300 ppm laminarin from a laminarin-rich extract has potential, as a dietary supplement, to improve performance and prevent post-weaning intestinal dysfunction.

Rapid shallow granular flows over inclined planes are often seen in nature in the form of avalanches, landslides and pyroclastic flows. In these situations the flow develops an inversely graded (large at the top) particle-size distribution perpendicular to the plane. As the surface velocity of such flows is larger than the mean velocity, the larger material is transported to the flow front. This causes size segregation in the downstream direction, resulting in a flow front composed of large particles. Since the large particles are often more frictional than the small, the mobility of the flow front is reduced, resulting in a so-called bulbous head. This study focuses on the formation and evolution of this bulbous head, which we show to emerge in both a depth-averaged continuum framework and discrete particle simulations. Furthermore, our numerical solutions of the continuum model converge to a travelling wave solution, which allows for a very efficient computation of the long-time behaviour of the flow. We use small-scale periodic discrete particle simulations to calibrate (close) our continuum framework, and validate the simple one-dimensional (1-D) model with full-scale 3-D discrete particle simulations. The comparison shows that there are conditions under which the model works surprisingly well given the strong approximations made; for example, instantaneous vertical segregation.

It has long been argued that elections amplify partisan predispositions. We take advantage of the timing of the cross-national post-election surveys included in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems to explore the effects that elections have on individuals’ attachments to political parties. Within these surveys, under the assumption that the dates on which respondents are interviewed are assigned independent of factors known to affect partisanship, we are able to identify the causal effects of election salience on partisan attachments. We find strong evidence that election salience increases the probability of one having a party attachment, increases the strength of attachments, and heightens the relationship between partisanship and evaluations of political actors. Empirical explorations of our identifying assumption bolster its validity. Our results substantiate the causal role that elections play in activating partisanship.

In this paper, class operators are used to give a complete listing of distinct base radical and semisimple classes for universal classes of finite associative rings. General relations between operators reveal that the maximum order of the semigroup formed is 46. In this setting, the homomorphically closed semisimple classes are precisely the hereditary radical classes and hence radical–semisimple classes, and the largest homomorphically closed subclass of a semisimple class is a radical–semisimple class.

Debris and pyroclastic flows often have bouldery flow fronts, which act as a natural dam resisting further advance. Counter intuitively, these resistive fronts can lead to enhanced run-out, because they can be shouldered aside to form static levees that self-channelise the flow. At the heart of this behaviour is the inherent process of size segregation, with different sized particles readily separating into distinct vertical layers through a combination of kinetic sieving and squeeze expulsion. The result is an upward coarsening of the size distribution with the largest grains collecting at the top of the flow, where the flow velocity is greatest, allowing them to be preferentially transported to the front. Here, the large grains may be overrun, resegregated towards the surface and recirculated before being shouldered aside into lateral levees. A key element of this recirculation mechanism is the formation of a breaking size-segregation wave, which allows large particles that have been overrun to rise up into the faster moving parts of the flow as small particles are sheared over the top. Observations from experiments and discrete particle simulations in a moving-bed flume indicate that, whilst most large particles recirculate quickly at the front, a few recirculate very slowly through regions of many small particles at the rear. This behaviour is modelled in this paper using asymmetric segregation flux functions. Exact non-diffuse solutions are derived for the steady wave structure using the method of characteristics with a cubic segregation flux. Three different structures emerge, dependent on the degree of asymmetry and the non-convexity of the segregation flux function. In particular, a novel ‘lens-tail’ solution is found for segregation fluxes that have a large amount of non-convexity, with an additional expansion fan and compression wave forming a ‘tail’ upstream of the ‘lens’ region. Analysis of exact solutions for the particle motion shows that the large particle motion through the ‘lens-tail’ is fundamentally different to the classical ‘lens’ solutions. A few large particles starting near the bottom of the breaking wave pass through the ‘tail’, where they travel in a region of many small particles with a very small vertical velocity, and take significantly longer to recirculate.

With the changing distribution of infectious diseases, and an increase in the burden of non-communicable diseases, low- and middle-income countries, including those in Africa, will need to expand their health care capacities to effectively respond to these epidemiological transitions. The interrelated risk factors for chronic infectious and non-communicable diseases and the need for long-term disease management, argue for combined strategies to understand their underlying causes and to design strategies for effective prevention and long-term care. Through multidisciplinary research and implementation partnerships, we advocate an integrated approach for research and healthcare for chronic diseases in Africa.

In the past ten years much work has been undertaken on developing mixture theory continuum models to describe kinetic sieving-driven size segregation. We propose an extension to these models that allows their application to bidisperse flows over inclined channels, with particles varying in density and size. Our model incorporates both a recently proposed explicit formula for how the total pressure is distributed among different species of particles, which is one of the key elements of mixture theory-based kinetic sieving models, and a shear rate-dependent drag. The resulting model is used to predict the range of particle sizes and densities for which the mixture segregates. The prediction of no segregation in the model is benchmarked by using discrete particle simulations, and good agreement is found when a single fitting parameter is used which determines whether the pressure scales with the diameter, surface area or volume of the particle.

Engineered remediation technologies such as denitrifying bioreactors target single contaminants along a nutrient transfer continuum. However, mixed contaminant discharges to a water body are more common from agricultural systems. Indeed, evidence presented herein indicates that pollution swapping within denitrifying bioreactor systems adds to such deleterious discharges. The present paper proposes a more holistic approach to contaminant remediation on farms, moving from the use of ‘denitrifying bioreactors’ to the concept of a ‘permeable reactive interceptor’ (PRI). Besides management changes, a PRI should contain additional remediation cells for specific contaminants in the form of solutes, particles or gases. Balance equations and case studies representing different geographic areas are presented and used to create weighting factors. Results showed that national legislation with respect to water and gaseous emissions will inform the eventual PRI design. As it will be expensive to monitor a system continuously in a holistic manner, it is suggested that developments in the field of molecular microbial ecology are essential to provide further insight in terms of element dynamics and the environmental controls on biotransformation and retention processes within PRIs. In turn, microbial and molecular fingerprinting could be used as an in-situ cost-effective tool to assess nutrient and gas balances during the operational phases of a PRI.

Particle-size segregation can have a significant feedback on the bulk motion of granular avalanches when the larger grains experience greater resistance to motion than the fine grains. When such segregation-mobility feedback effects occur the flow may form digitate lobate fingers or spontaneously self-channelize to form lateral levees that enhance run-out distance. This is particularly important in geophysical mass flows, such as pyroclastic currents, snow avalanches and debris flows, where run-out distance is of crucial importance in hazards assessment. A model for finger formation in a bidisperse granular avalanche is developed by coupling a depth-averaged description of the preferential transport of large particles towards the front with an established avalanche model. The coupling is achieved through a concentration-dependent friction coefficient, which results in a system of non-strictly hyperbolic equations. We compute numerical solutions to the flow of a bidisperse mixture of small mobile particles and larger more resistive grains down an inclined chute. The numerical results demonstrate that our model is able to describe the formation of a front rich in large particles, the instability of this front and the subsequent evolution of elongated fingers bounded by large-rich lateral levees, as observed in small-scale laboratory experiments. However, our numerical results are grid dependent, with the number of fingers increasing as the numerical resolution is increased. We investigate this pathology by examining the linear stability of a steady uniform flow, which shows that arbitrarily small wavelength perturbations grow exponentially quickly. Furthermore, we find that on a curve in parameter space the growth rate is unbounded above as the wavelength of perturbations is decreased and so the system of equations on this curve is ill-posed. This indicates that the model captures the physical mechanisms that drive the instability, but additional dissipation mechanisms, such as those considered in the realm of flow rheology, are required to set the length scale of the fingers that develop.

We investigated an international outbreak of Salmonella Agona with a distinct PFGE pattern associated with an Irish Food company (company X) producing pre-cooked meat products sold in various food outlet chains in Europe. The outbreak was first detected in Ireland. We undertook national and international case-finding, food traceback and microbiological investigation of human, food and environmental samples. We undertook a matched case-control study on Irish cases. In total, 163 cases in seven European countries were laboratory-confirmed. Consumption of food from food outlet chains supplied by company X was significantly associated with being a confirmed case (mOR 18·3, 95% CI 2·2–149·2) in the case-control study. The outbreak strain was isolated from the company's pre-cooked meat products and production premises. Sufficient evidence was gathered to infer the vehicles of infection and sources of the outbreak and to justify the control measures taken, which were plant closure and food recall.

Only a small proportion of animals tested were found to be excreting Fusobacterium necrophorum biovar A, the causative organism of necrobacillosis, in the faeces (3 of 69 wallabies, 1 of 66 deer, 2 of 81 cattle). The two positive cattle belonged to a single group of calves on a farm with a history of necrobacillosis and the litter underfoot also readily yielded biovar A organisms. All attempts to demonstrate biovar A in litter on other farms and in soil from an area populated by wallabies and deer failed. Ruminal contents from young beef cattle proved a fertile source of F. necrophorum biovar A, 15 of 18 animals giving a positive result. It is suggested that disturbance of the gastrointestinal microflora leads to intestinal multiplication and faecal excretion of the organism, which may then give rise to necrobacillosis of the body surface.

Oral pretreatment of mice with either a mixture of kanamycin and erythromycin or metronidazole to modify the gut microflora greatly enhanced the faecal excretion of Fusobacterium necrophorum biovar A given by mouth. This lends support to the suggestion that disturbance of the gastrointestinal microflora in animals such as cattle, which often carry the organism in the rumen, may lead to intestinal multiplication and faecal excretion, thereby providing a source of infection that may lead to necrobacillosis of the body surface.