The major health hazards from smoke and dust are due to microscopic fine particles present in smoke as well as in dust. These fine particles, which are microscopic in nature, can penetrate into human lungs and give rise to a range of health problems such as irritation in eyes, a runny nose, throat infection, and chronic cardiac and lung diseases. There is a need to device such mechanisms that can monitor smoke in thermal power plants for timely control of smoke that can pollute air and affects adversely the people living nearby the plants. In order to solve the problems of low accuracy of monitoring results and long monitoring time in conventional methods, a real-time smoke and dust monitoring system in thermal power plants is proposed, which makes use of modified genetic algorithm (GA). The collection and calibration of various monitoring parameters are accomplished through sampling control. The smoke and dust emission real-time monitoring subsystems are employed for the monitoring in an accurate manner. A dual-channel TCP/IP protocol is used between remote and local controlling modules for secure and speedy communication of the system. The generic GA is improved on the basis of the problem statement, and the linear programming model is used to avoid the defect of code duplication with genetic operations. The experimental results show that the proposed smoke and dust monitoring system can effectively improve the accuracy of the monitoring results and also reduce the time complexity by providing solutions in a faster manner. The significance of the proposed technique is to provide a reliable basis for the smoke and dust emission control of thermal power plants for safeguarding the human health.

Body weight (BW) is a critical economic trait for meat production in sheep. The current study aimed to perform a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to detect significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are associated with BW in Hu sheep. The comparison and analysis of the G1 and G2 generations of a nucleus meat Hu sheep breeding herd revealed four SNPs identified by GWAS. The subsequent verification of the significant SNP loci in the Hu sheep G3 generation nucleus herd also detected nine SNPs in significant SNP regions. Two SNPs were significantly associated with the BW of Hu sheep (p < 0.05). OARX_76354330.1 and s64890.1 could be identified as functional SNPs for the growth traits of Hu sheep. CAPN6, as a candidate gene, was significantly different in the biceps femoris and longissimus dorsi muscles of weaning (60-day) and 6-month sheep, which facilitated the discovery of causal variants for BW and contributed to the marker-assisted selection breeding of Hu sheep.

Body size is an important indicator of growth and health in sheep. In the present study, we performed Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) to detect significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with Hu sheep’s body size. After genotyping parental (G1) and offspring (G2) generation of the nucleus herd for meat production of Hu sheep and conducting GWAS on the body height, chest circumference, body length, tail length, and tail width of the two groups, 5 SNPs associated with body height and 4 SNPs correlated with chest circumference were identified at the chromosomal significance level. No SNPs were significantly correlated to body length, tail length, and width. Four out of the 9 SNPs were found to be located within the 4 genes. KITLG and CADM2 are considered as candidate functional genes related to body height; MCTP1 and COL4A6 are candidate functional genes related to chest circumference. The 9 SNPs found in GWAS were verified using the G3 generation of the nucleus herd for meat production. Nine products were amplified around the 9 sites, and 29 SNPs were found; 3 mutation sites, G > C mutation at 134 bp downstream of s554331, T > G mutation at 19 bp upstream of s26859.1, and A > G mutation at 81 bp downstream of s26859.1, were significantly correlated to the body height. Dual-luciferase reporter gene experiments showed that the 3 SNPs could significantly impact dual-luciferase and gene transcription activity.

A study was conducted to evaluate effects of alfalfa meal on growth performance and gastrointestinal tract development of growing layer ducks to provide evidence for application of alfalfa meal in the duck industry. Two hundred and fifty-six healthy Shaoxing 7-wk old growing layer ducks were selected and randomly allocated to 1 of 4 dietary treatments based on corn and soybean meal and containing 0, 3, 6, and 9% of alfalfa meal for 8 wks. Each treatment consisted of 4 replicates of 16 ducks each. Briefly, birds were raised in separate compartments, and each compartment consisted of three parts: indoor floor house, adjacent open area and a connecting water area. The results showed: i) Growing ducks fed alfalfa meal diet were not significantly different in average daily gain, feed intake and gain-to-feed ratio from those fed no alfalfa diet (p>0.05). ii) Alfalfa meal increased the ratio crop, gizzard to live weight, caecum to live weight, the caecum index of growing ducks (p<0.05). iii) Villus height in duodenum and jejunum of growing ducks increased significantly with the increase of alfalfa meal levels (p<0.05). Crypt depth in duodenum and jejunum of growing ducks decreased significantly with the increase of alfalfa meal levels (p<0.05). This experiment showed that feeding of alfalfa meal to growing layer ducks could improve gastrointestinal tract growth and small intestinal morphology without effect on performance. This experiment provides evidence that alfalfa meal is a very valuable feedstuff for growing layer ducks.