No abstract available

[en] For many, looking back at 2018 might bring back memories of South Korea’s Winter Olympic Games or the British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but for pig farmers in China, the year was marked by a single event: the arrival of African swine fever (ASF). That year, the disease — once endemic to only sub-Saharan Africa — broke out among Chinese piggeries, resulting in the death or culling of over a quarter of the world’s domestic pig population. A year after its appearance, ASF was estimated to have directly cost China over a trillion yuan (US $141 billion) according to the dean of the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and caused the country’s pork prices to spike by 85 per cent.

[en] For many, looking back at 2018 might bring back memories of South Korea’s Winter Olympic Games or the British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but for pig farmers in China, the year was marked by a single event: the arrival of African swine fever (ASF). That year, the disease — once endemic to only sub-Saharan Africa — broke out among Chinese piggeries, resulting in the death or culling of over a quarter of the world’s domestic pig population. A year after its appearance, ASF was estimated to have directly cost China over a trillion yuan (US $141 billion) according to the dean of the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and caused the country’s pork prices to spike by 85 per cent.

[en] For many, looking back at 2018 might bring back memories of South Korea’s Winter Olympic Games or the British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but for pig farmers in China, the year was marked by a single event: the arrival of African swine fever (ASF). That year, the disease — once endemic to only sub-Saharan Africa — broke out among Chinese piggeries, resulting in the death or culling of over a quarter of the world’s domestic pig population. A year after its appearance, ASF was estimated to have directly cost China over a trillion yuan (US $141 billion) according to the dean of the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and caused the country’s pork prices to spike by 85 per cent.

[en] For many, looking back at 2018 might bring back memories of South Korea’s Winter Olympic Games or the British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but for pig farmers in China, the year was marked by a single event: the arrival of African swine fever (ASF). That year, the disease — once endemic to only sub-Saharan Africa — broke out among Chinese piggeries, resulting in the death or culling of over a quarter of the world’s domestic pig population. A year after its appearance, ASF was estimated to have directly cost China over a trillion yuan (US $141 billion) according to the dean of the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and caused the country’s pork prices to spike by 85 per cent.

No abstract available

[en] To determine the in vivo efficiency of monopolar radiofrequency ablation (RFA) using a dual-switching (DS) system and a separable clustered (SC) electrode to create coagulation in swine liver. Thirty-three ablation zones were created in nine pigs using a DS system and an SC electrode in the switching monopolar mode. The pigs were divided into two groups for two experiments: 1) preliminary experiments (n = 3) to identify the optimal inter-electrode distances (IEDs) for dual-switching monopolar (DSM)-RFA, and 2) main experiments (n = 6) to compare the in vivo efficiency of DSM-RFA with that of a single-switching monopolar (SSM)-RFA. RF energy was alternatively applied to one of the three electrodes (SSM-RFA) or concurrently applied to a pair of electrodes (DSM-RFA) for 12 minutes in in vivo porcine livers. The delivered RFA energy and the shapes and dimensions of the coagulation areas were compared between the two groups. No pig died during RFA. The ideal IEDs for creating round or oval coagulation area using the DSM-RFA were 2.0 and 2.5 cm. DSM-RFA allowed more efficient RF energy delivery than SSM-RFA at the given time (23.0 ± 4.0 kcal vs. 16.92 ± 2.0 kcal, respectively; p 0.0005). DSM-RFA created a significantly larger coagulation volume than SSM-RFA (40.4 ± 16.4 cm³ vs. 20.8 ± 10.7 cm³; p < 0.001). Both groups showed similar circularity of the ablation zones (p = 0.29). Dual-switching monopolar-radiofrequency ablation using an SC electrode is feasible and can create larger ablation zones than SSM-RFA as it allows more RF energy delivery at a given time.

[en] For many, looking back at 2018 might bring back memories of South Korea’s Winter Olympic Games or the British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but for pig farmers in China, the year was marked by a single event: the arrival of African swine fever (ASF). That year, the disease — once endemic to only sub-Saharan Africa — broke out among Chinese piggeries, resulting in the death or culling of over a quarter of the world’s domestic pig population. A year after its appearance, ASF was estimated to have directly cost China over a trillion yuan (US $141 billion) according to the dean of the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and caused the country’s pork prices to spike by 85 per cent.

[en] For many, looking back at 2018 might bring back memories of South Korea’s Winter Olympic Games or the British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but for pig farmers in China, the year was marked by a single event: the arrival of African swine fever (ASF). That year, the disease — once endemic to only sub-Saharan Africa — broke out among Chinese piggeries, resulting in the death or culling of over a quarter of the world’s domestic pig population. A year after its appearance, ASF was estimated to have directly cost China over a trillion yuan (US $141 billion) according to the dean of the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and caused the country’s pork prices to spike by 85 per cent.

[en] Numerous research studies have been conducted to access growth and meat characteristic differences between bulls and steers. In general, results have indicated that bulls grow more rapidly (15 to 17%), utilize feed more efficiently (10 to 13%) to an age or weight end point, and produce higher yielding carcasses with less fat and more muscle than steers. Steers have a slowly growth rate, more intramuscular fat, tenderer meat as compared with bulls. For further study on muscle gene expression profiles between bulls and steers, we constructed subtracted cDNA libraries between Longissimus muscles from three Chinese Simmental steers and three Chinese Simmental bulls with same age and same raising condition using suppression subtractive hybridization, genes that were differentially expressed in steer vs. bull Longissimus muscle were identified. More than 300 clones were randomly selected from each subtracted cDNA library. By PCR analysis, 223 positive clones were isolated from the subtracted cDNA libraries, by steers as Tester, bulls as Driver, respectively. By Longissimus muscles from steers and bulls cDNA as probes, high-throughput screening was carried out. We selected 84 differential expressed clones for further analysis, which showed that they represent 10 ESTs, all of them are known in cattle. Three functional genes, which are ACTG2, TPM2 and IGF-1, were chosen to do qRT-PCR to confirm the expression differentiation between steer LD tissue and bull LD tissue. The genes expressed in the former tissue were 1.96, 2.41, 2.89 times higher, respectively, than in the later tissue. These results implied that new candidate genes could be selected form the SSH library constructed in this research, and this could be a way to make the base of steer muscle special trait. (author)