Severely depressed pigs exhibit differences in a number of important parameters that may affect gas euthanasia, including decreased respiration rate and tidal volume. Hence, the objectives of this study were to assess the efficacy and animal welfare implications of gas euthanasia of suckling pigs with varied disease severity (severely depressed [DP] vs other [OT]). A 2 × 2 factorial design was utilised with two gas types (carbon dioxide [CO2]; argon [Ar]) and two flow rates (G = gradual, 35% box volume exchange per min [BVE min−1]; P = prefill + 20% BVE min−1). Sixty-two pigs were enrolled and tested as DP/OT pairs in each gas treatment combination. Pigs identified for euthanasia were assigned a subjective depression score (0 = normal to 3 = severely depressed). Pigs scored 3 and ≤ 1 were categorised as DP and OT, respectively. Significantly lower respiration, rectal temperature, pulse and weight were observed for the DP pigs relative to OT. Pigs were assessed for behavioural indicators of efficacy and welfare. No differences were observed between DP and OT when using P-CO2 or G-CO2. However in P-Ar, DP had greater latency to loss of consciousness relative to OT (212 [± 22] vs 77 [± 22] s), decreased latency to last limb movement (511 [± 72] vs 816 [± 72] s), greater duration of open-mouth breathing (151 [± 21] vs 69 [± 21] s), decreased duration ataxia (101 [± 42] vs 188 [± 42] s) and decreased righting response (27 [± 11] vs 63 [± 11] s). The G-Ar treatment was removed due to ethical concerns associated with prolonged induction. In conclusion, depression score did not affect pig responses to euthanasia with CO2 gas, but did affect responses to Ar. Furthermore, Ar was associated with a prolonged euthanasia process, including frequencies and durations of distress behaviours.

Meat quality is not only influenced by breed but also rearing environment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of different housing environments on growth performance, carcase traits, meat quality, physiological response pre-slaughter and fatty acid composition in two pig breeds. A total of 120 growing pigs at 60-70 days of age were arranged in a 2 × 2 factorial design with the breeds (Duroc × Landrace × Large White [D × L × LW] and Duroc × Landrace × Min pig [D × L × M]) and environmental enrichment (barren concrete floor or enriched with straw bedding) as factors. Each treatment was performed in triplicate with ten pigs per replicate. The pigs housed in the enriched environment exhibited a higher average daily gain, average daily feed intake, saturated fatty acid percentage and backfat depth than the pigs reared in the barren environment. Plasma cortisol levels were lower and growth hormone higher in enriched compared to barren pens. The D × L × M pigs showed lower cooking loss compared with the D × L × LW pigs. Moreover, the D × L × M pigs exhibited poor growth performance but had a better water-holding capacity. Only carcase traits and meat quality interaction effects were observed. We concluded that an enriched environment can reduce preslaughter stress and improve the growth performance of pigs and modulate the fatty acid composition of pork products.

The physics behind the transitions of natural Samaras, or the bio-inspired counterparts, to steady autorotation has been unclear. Theoretical and experimental investigations explore the inertial and aerodynamic characteristics required to guarantee stable transitions of an artificial Samara-like decelerator from chaotic tumbling motions to azimuthal autorotation. A non-dimensional inertial criterion is proposed, which is in accord with experiments.

We present the Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY) Pilot Phase I Hi kinematic models. This first data release consists of Hi observations of three fields in the direction of the Hydra and Norma clusters, and the NGC 4636 galaxy group. In this paper, we describe how we generate and publicly release flat-disk tilted-ring kinematic models for 109/592 unique Hi detections in these fields. The modelling method adopted here—which we call the WALLABY Kinematic Analysis Proto-Pipeline (WKAPP) and for which the corresponding scripts are also publicly available—consists of combining results from the homogeneous application of the FAT and 3DBarolo algorithms to the subset of 209 detections with sufficient resolution and $S/N$ in order to generate optimised model parameters and uncertainties. The 109 models presented here tend to be gas rich detections resolved by at least 3–4 synthesised beams across their major axes, but there is no obvious environmental bias in the modelling. The data release described here is the first step towards the derivation of similar products for thousands of spatially resolved WALLABY detections via a dedicated kinematic pipeline. Such a large publicly available and homogeneously analysed dataset will be a powerful legacy product that that will enable a wide range of scientific studies.

We present WALLABY pilot data release 1, the first public release of H i pilot survey data from the Wide-field ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind Survey (WALLABY) on the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. Phase 1 of the WALLABY pilot survey targeted three $60\,\mathrm{deg}^{2}$ regions on the sky in the direction of the Hydra and Norma galaxy clusters and the NGC 4636 galaxy group, covering the redshift range of $z \lesssim 0.08$ . The source catalogue, images and spectra of nearly 600 extragalactic H i detections and kinematic models for 109 spatially resolved galaxies are available. As the pilot survey targeted regions containing nearby group and cluster environments, the median redshift of the sample of $z \approx 0.014$ is relatively low compared to the full WALLABY survey. The median galaxy H i mass is $2.3 \times 10^{9}\,{\rm M}_{{\odot}}$ . The target noise level of $1.6\,\mathrm{mJy}$ per 30′′ beam and $18.5\,\mathrm{kHz}$ channel translates into a $5 \sigma$ H i mass sensitivity for point sources of about $5.2 \times 10^{8} \, (D_{\rm L} / \mathrm{100\,Mpc})^{2} \, {\rm M}_{{\odot}}$ across 50 spectral channels ( ${\approx} 200\,\mathrm{km \, s}^{-1}$ ) and a $5 \sigma$ H i column density sensitivity of about $8.6 \times 10^{19} \, (1 + z)^{4}\,\mathrm{cm}^{-2}$ across 5 channels ( ${\approx} 20\,\mathrm{km \, s}^{-1}$ ) for emission filling the 30′′ beam. As expected for a pilot survey, several technical issues and artefacts are still affecting the data quality. Most notably, there are systematic flux errors of up to several 10% caused by uncertainties about the exact size and shape of each of the primary beams as well as the presence of sidelobes due to the finite deconvolution threshold. In addition, artefacts such as residual continuum emission and bandpass ripples have affected some of the data. The pilot survey has been highly successful in uncovering such technical problems, most of which are expected to be addressed and rectified before the start of the full WALLABY survey.

Experiments have shown that flow in compliant microchannels can become unstable at a much lower Reynolds number than the corresponding flow in a rigid conduit. Therefore, it has been suggested that the wall's elastic compliance can be exploited towards new modalities of microscale mixing. While previous studies mainly focused on the local instability induced by the fluid–structure interactions (FSIs) in the system, we derive a one-dimensional (1-D) model to study the FSI's effect on the global instability. The proposed 1-D FSI model is tailored to long, shallow rectangular microchannels with a deformable top wall, similar to the experiments. Going beyond the usual lubrication flows analysed in these geometries, we include finite fluid inertia and couple the reduced flow equations to a novel reduced 1-D wall deformation equation. Although a quantitative comparison with previous experiments is difficult, the behaviours of the proposed model show, qualitatively, agreement with the experimental observations, and capture several key effects. Specifically, we find the critical conditions under which the inflated base state of the 1-D FSI model is linearly unstable to infinitesimal perturbations. The critical Reynolds numbers predicted are in agreement with experimental observations. The unstable modes are highly oscillatory, with frequencies close to the natural frequency of the wall, suggesting that the observed instabilities are resonance phenomena. Furthermore, during the start-up from an undeformed initial state, self-sustained oscillations can be triggered by FSI. Our modelling framework can be applied to other microfluidic systems with similar geometric scale separation under different operating conditions.

The great demographic pressure brings tremendous volume of beef demand. The key to solve this problem is the growth and development of Chinese cattle. In order to find molecular markers conducive to the growth and development of Chinese cattle, sequencing was used to determine the position of copy number variations (CNVs), bioinformatics analysis was used to predict the function of ZNF146 gene, real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was used for CNV genotyping and one-way analysis of variance was used for association analysis. The results showed that there exists CNV in Chr 18: 47225201-47229600 (5.0.1 version) of ZNF146 gene through the early sequencing results in the laboratory and predicted ZNF146 gene was expressed in liver, skeletal muscle and breast cells, and was amplified or overexpressed in pancreatic cancer, which promoted the development of tumour through bioinformatics. Therefore, it is predicted that ZNF146 gene affects the proliferation of muscle cells, and then affects the growth and development of cattle. Furthermore, CNV genotyping of ZNF146 gene was three types (deletion type, normal type and duplication type) by Real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (qPCR). The association analysis results showed that ZNF146-CNV was significantly correlated with rump length of Qinchuan cattle, hucklebone width of Jiaxian red cattle and heart girth of Yunling cattle. From the above results, ZNF146-CNV had a significant effect on growth traits, which provided an important candidate molecular marker for growth and development of Chinese cattle.

We report the experimental results of the commissioning phase in the 10 PW laser beamline of the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). The peak power reaches 2.4 PW on target without the last amplifying during the experiment. The laser energy of 72 ± 9 J is directed to a focal spot of approximately 6 μm diameter (full width at half maximum) in 30 fs pulse duration, yielding a focused peak intensity around 2.0 × 1021 W/cm2. The first laser-proton acceleration experiment is performed using plain copper and plastic targets. High-energy proton beams with maximum cut-off energy up to 62.5 MeV are achieved using copper foils at the optimum target thickness of 4 μm via target normal sheath acceleration. For plastic targets of tens of nanometers thick, the proton cut-off energy is approximately 20 MeV, showing ring-like or filamented density distributions. These experimental results reflect the capabilities of the SULF-10 PW beamline, for example, both ultrahigh intensity and relatively good beam contrast. Further optimization for these key parameters is underway, where peak laser intensities of 1022–1023 W/cm2 are anticipated to support various experiments on extreme field physics.

This work investigates the role of flexibility and resonant excitation on the deformation mechanism and aerodynamic performance of flapping wings. A hummingbird-inspired wing (HIW) is considered and designed to have a bone-like stiffener made of carbon fibre/epoxy (CF/E) composite attached to a membrane made of carbon nanotubes/polypropylene (CNTs/PP) nanocomposite representing the flexible part of the natural wing. The designed HIW model is analysed through fluid-structure interaction simulations performed at frequencies near and at resonant frequency. It is found that HIW generates desired bending and twisting deformations that are coupled. These deformation mechanisms are studied in detail with the help of time-varying deflections and bending-twisting angles. Further, the simultaneous effect of these parameters on the aerodynamic performance of the wing is also investigated. It is observed that the coupled nature of bending and twisting deformations is critical in enhancing the aerodynamic performance of flapping wings. In addition to that, the resonance generates higher amplitude of desired structural deformations that further enhances thrust as well as lift generation capability of the wing. The underlying mechanism for this is also explained by studying the flow around the deflected surface of the wing. Compared to off-resonant frequencies, vorticity and pressures are substantially higher for the wing at resonance. A physical model of HIW is realised using CNTs/PP and CF/E composites to perform experimental wing motion analysis and to validate the computational results. In conclusion, the present study provides a basis to design efficient biomimetic flapping wings for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) by exploring flexibility and resonant excitation.