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Ruminant feeding standards in Brazil are generally based on systems developed for temperate regions and there is a serious lack of information on grazed tropical pasture which is the main feedstuff. Signal grass (Brachiaria decumbens) represents half of the total cultivated pastures in Brazil (Miles et al., 1996). This study investigated the intake and digestibility by sheep of signal grass hay cut after re-growths of 28 and 56 days to represent the range used in practice in the Brazilian savanna. Lucerne hay was included as a positive control. The hays were offered at two levels of intake to Santa Ines wether sheep.

In the Central Kenyan Highlands, dairy cattle ownership is a crucial element in poverty alleviation. For example, in Kiambu district just north of Nairobi, out of the population of 744010, 48% of 189709 households stall feed dairy cattle. Farm sizes average 1.1 to 2.0 ha per household. Producing sufficient forage for dairy cattle is difficult and low dry matter intake constrains dairy production and there is a positive correlation between stover intake and milk yield.. Napier grass comprised 40% of the total dry matter fed to cattle and maize forage 24% according to the project’s Rapid Rural Appraisal, maize thinnings and stover being routinely fed to livestock. In another survey, dry maize stover accounted for nearly 65% of dry matter intake of dairy cattle during October.

Speech disfluencies can guide the ways in which listeners interpret spoken language. Here, we examined whether three-year-olds, five-year-olds, and adults use filled pauses to anticipate that a speaker is likely to refer to a novel object. Across three experiments, participants were presented with pairs of novel and familiar objects and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects using a fluent (“Look at the ball/lep!”) or disfluent (“Look at thee uh ball/lep!”) expression. The salience of the speaker's unfamiliarity with the novel referents, and the way in which the speaker referred to the novel referents (i.e., a noun vs. a description) varied across experiments. Three- and five-year-olds successfully identified familiar and novel targets, but only adults’ looking patterns reflected increased looks to novel objects in the presence of a disfluency. Together, these findings demonstrate that adults, but not young children, use filled pauses to anticipate reference to novel objects.

This paper reviews some of the research that has been carried out at the University of Liverpool where the Flight Science and Technology Research Group has developed its Heliflight-R full-motion research simulator to create a simulation environment for the launch and recovery of maritime helicopters to ships. HELIFLIGHT-R has been used to conduct flight trials to produce simulated Ship-Helicopter Operating Limits (SHOLs). This virtual engineering approach has led to a much greater understanding of how the dynamic interface between the ship and the helicopter contributes to the pilot's workload and the aircraft's handling qualities and will inform the conduct of future real-world SHOL trials. The paper also describes how modelling and simulation has been applied to the design of a ship's superstructure to improve the aerodynamic flow field in which the helicopter has to operate. The superstructure aerodynamics also affects the placement of the ship's anemometers and the dispersion of the ship's hot exhaust gases, both of which affect the operational envelope of the helicopter, and both of which can be investigated through simulation.

To achieve their conservation goals individuals, communities and organizations need to acquire a diversity of skills, knowledge and information (i.e. capacity). Despite current efforts to build and maintain appropriate levels of conservation capacity, it has been recognized that there will need to be a significant scaling-up of these activities in sub-Saharan Africa. This is because of the rapid increase in the number and extent of environmental problems in the region. We present a range of socio-economic contexts relevant to four key areas of African conservation capacity building: protected area management, community engagement, effective leadership, and professional e-learning. Under these core themes, 39 specific recommendations are presented. These were derived from multi-stakeholder workshop discussions at an international conference held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2015. At the meeting 185 delegates (practitioners, scientists, community groups and government agencies) represented 105 organizations from 24 African nations and eight non-African nations. The 39 recommendations constituted six broad types of suggested action: (1) the development of new methods, (2) the provision of capacity building resources (e.g. information or data), (3) the communication of ideas or examples of successful initiatives, (4) the implementation of new research or gap analyses, (5) the establishment of new structures within and between organizations, and (6) the development of new partnerships. A number of cross-cutting issues also emerged from the discussions: the need for a greater sense of urgency in developing capacity building activities; the need to develop novel capacity building methodologies; and the need to move away from one-size-fits-all approaches.

Low birth weight is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) hearts have fewer CMs in early postnatal life, which may impair postnatal cardiovascular function and hence, explain increased disease risk, but whether the cardiomyocyte deficit persists to adult life is unknown. We therefore studied the effects of experimentally induced placental restriction (PR) on cardiac outcomes in young adult sheep. Heart size, cardiomyocyte number, nuclearity and size were measured in control (n=5) and PR (n=5) male sheep at 1 year of age. PR lambs were 36% lighter at birth (P=0.007), had 38% faster neonatal relative growth rates (P=0.001) and had 21% lighter heart weights relative to body weight as adults (P=0.024) than control lambs. Cardiomyocyte number, nuclearity and size in the left ventricle did not differ between control and PR adults; hearts of both groups contained cardiomyocytes (CM) with between one and four nuclei. Overall, cardiomyocyte number in the adult left ventricle correlated positively with birth weight but not with adult weight. This study is the first to demonstrate that intrauterine growth directly influences the complement of CM in the adult heart. Cardiomyocyte size was not correlated with cardiomyocyte number or birth weight. Our results suggest that body weight at birth affects lifelong cardiac functional reserve. We hypothesise that decreased cardiomyocyte number of low birth weight individuals may impair their capacity to adapt to additional challenges such as obesity and ageing.

In recent years a number of very steep spectrum, compact radio sources have been discovered (e.g. Cotton 1983, Cotton and Owen 1985, Ulvestad 1985) which have no optical counterpart to the limit of the Palomar Sky Survey. VLBI observations of a number of these have confirmed the very compact (<10 mas) nature of several of these sources. Analysis of the available data in terms of the standard synchrotron modal suggest that they contain very weak magnetic fields, large particle densities and may emit detectable infrared and optical emission by inverse Campton scattering in the compact radio source (Cotton 1983). This paper will report on an analysis including new VLBI observations, infrared and optical imaging at KPNO and low frequency radio observations at CLRO of a number of these objects.

The SUSI control system is a distributed real-time system currently consisting of 17 processors. A custom real-time operating system and network protocols ensure synchronous operation of servo loops across multiple processors.

Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and subsequent neonatal catch-up growth are implicated in the programming of increased appetite, adiposity and cardiometabolic diseases. Guinea pigs provide an alternate small animal model to rodents to investigate mechanisms underlying prenatal programming, being relatively precocial at birth, with smaller litter sizes and undergoing neonatal catch-up growth after IUGR. The current study, therefore, investigated postnatal consequences of spontaneous IUGR due to varying litter size in this species. Size at birth, neonatal, juvenile (post-weaning, 30–60 days) and adolescent (60–90 days) growth, juvenile and adolescent food intake, and body composition of young adults (120 days) were measured in 158 male and female guinea pigs from litter sizes of one to five pups. Compared with singleton pups, birth weight of pups from litters of five was reduced by 38%. Other birth size measures were reduced to lesser degrees with head dimensions being relatively conserved. Pups from larger litters had faster fractional neonatal growth and faster absolute and fractional juvenile growth rates (P<0.005 for all). Relationships of post-weaning growth, feed intakes and adult body composition with size at birth and neonatal growth rate were sex specific, with neonatal growth rates strongly and positively correlated with adiposity in males only. In conclusion, spontaneous IUGR due to large litter sizes in the guinea pig causes many of the programmed sequelae of IUGR reported in other species, including human. This may therefore be a useful model to investigate the mechanisms underpinning perinatal programming of hyperphagia, obesity and longer-term metabolic consequences.

Since the last General Assembly in Patras, Greece, we have held three meetings of the Working Group. The 10th Meeting was held in Mzkheta, the ancient capital of Georgia, USSR, hosted by their Academy of Sciences on April 3-7, 1984. All members except one, who was represented by a member of his Task Group, were present at the very productive meeting.