I couldn't have made this far without the help of many people. To all of them I would like to thank. First of all, thanks mum and dad for all your love, understanding and unconditional support. Thanks for being there when I needed you the most and for encouraging me to go on when I felt like giving up. Thanks for teaching me that everything can be learned and that, in the end, every effort gets...

There are many studies on the effects of probiotics on performance of broiler chickens, but none of them has evaluated the metabolizable energy (ME) equivalency values of probiotics. The aim of this study was to determine the metabolizable energy equivalency value of Bacillus subtilis spore and its potential for decreasing feed ME content and cost. One hundred seventy-six day-old male broilers ...

described here is my own, unless specifically stated otherwise. To the best of my knowledge it has not, nor has any similar dissertation, been submitted for a degree, diploma or other qualification at this, or any other university. This dissertation does not exceed 60 000 words in length. To Isabel and Ffion ii I am not sure how the universe was formed. But it knew how to do it, and that is the...

Acknowledgements I could not have completed my Ph.D. without the support, guidance, and friendship of many people; it is a pleasure to acknowledge a few of them here. First, I thank my parents for their patient support and encouragement through these many years of schooling. I cannot express my gratitude to them for enabling me to pursue a career based solely on intellectual interest. They have...

iii For my family, Kevin, Dundee and Duke iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank the professors and students in the Master's in Urban and Regional Planning program at the University of New Orleans. Thank you for two great years and for your support and friendship as I went through this program. Thanks specifically to Anna Brand, my advisor on this thesis, for meeting with me and inspiring me...

Acknowledgements It is hard for me to keep these words short. First of all, my biggest thanks go to Ulli, for making me come to KOGS and stay there, introducing countless ideas and approaches to me that I cannot live without anymore, creating the VIGRA library, and finally, customiz-ing my thesis's topic to meet my interests (in fact, it seemed this was just a selection of favorites out of an e...

This paper describes the functionalization of magnetoelastic (ME) materials with Parylene-C coating to improve the surface reactivity to cellular response. Previous study has demonstrated that vibrating ME materials were capable of modulating cellular adhesion when activated by an externally applied AC magnetic field. However, since ME materials are not inherently biocompatible, surface modific...

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of thyroid gland activity modulation (Hyper or hypothyroidism) on energy utilization in broiler chickens. Two hundred and forty one-day-old Cobb broiler chicks were distributed into three dietary metabolizable energy (ME) treatment groups (80 chicks each). The control group (E0) was fed basal diet (3150 kcal/kg diet), the second group (E1) w...