The effects of dietary sialic acid in dams on the learning abilities of their pups after weaning were investigated using rats deficient in n-3 fatty acids. Nine-week-old female Wistar rats were fed an n-3 fatty acid-deficient diet for 3 wk and were mated at 12 wk of age. During pregnancy and lactation, the female rats were fed the n-3 fatty acid-deficient diet, and were given water or water con...

In previous studies of effects of offspring sex on postnatal maternal effort there has often been unintentional confounding of the sex ratio of the pups that a dam reared with the sex ratio of the litter that she gestated. By controlling the sex ratio of litters that female subjects gestated, we showed that (1) the probability of dams retrieving pups was influenced by the sex ratio of the litte...

Previous research has shown that parity (P) 4 progeny have greater weaning weights and decreased microbial diversity. The objective of this experiment was to evaluate litter performance, passive immunity, and fecal microbiota among P1 (n = 56) and P3 (n = 49) dams and their progeny. Blood samples were collected from P1 and P3 dams on d 90 and 114 of gestation and d 0 of lactation and from their...

The repetition of droughts in France has led to a growing demand for irrigation water and consequently to an increase in requests for the construction of small farm dams. Although such dams are small, their accumulation in a basin affects river flows, because the water collected in these small farm dams is used for irrigation and thus does not contribute to river flow. In order to gain more ins...

A dam may fail when the loading (overtopping flood, flow through or beneath the dam, earthquake or blasting loading, terrorist attacks, deterioration etc.) exceeds the resistance against overtopping, internal erosion, slope instability, sliding/overturning, excessive deformation etc. To properly describe the causes of dam failures, it is necessary to study characteristics of the dams which have...

E nvironmentalists often go to great lengths to block the construction of new dams because dams interfere with fish migration, inundate terrestrial habitats, and interrupt natural flows that are necessary for critical ecosystem processes. However, few environmental issues are so simplistically black and white, and dams are no exception. Dams can be an important source of clean energy and for po...