This study aimed to assess the possible association of oxytocin (OXT) gene with reproductive traits in two groups of Awassi ewes that differ in their reproductive potentials. Sheep were genotyped using PCR—single-stranded conformation polymorphism approach. Three genotypes were detected in exon 2, CC, CA, and AA, and a novel SNP was identified with a missense effect on oxytocin (c.188C > A → p.Arg55Leu). A significant (p < 0.01) association of p.Arg55Leu with the twinning rate was found as ewes with AA and CA genotypes exhibited, respectively a lower twinning ratio than those with the wild-type CC genotype. The deleterious impact of p.Arg55Leu was demonstrated by all in silico tools that were utilized to assess the effect of this varian

Theoretical and experimental investigations of free convection through a cubic cavity with sinusoidal heat flux at bottom wall, the top wall is exposed to an outside ambient while the other walls are adiabatic saturated in porous medium had been approved in the present work. The range of Rayleigh number was and Darcy number values were . The theoretical part involved a numerical solution while the experimental part included a set of tests carried out to study the free convection heat transfer in a porous media (glass beads) for sinusoidal heat flux boundary condition. The investigation enclosed values of Rayleigh number (5845.6, 8801, 9456, 15034, 19188 and 22148) and angles of inclinations (0, 15, 30, 45 and 60 degree). The numerical an

An experimental and numerical study was carried out to investigate the heat transfer by natural convection in a three dimensional annulus enclosure filled with porous media (silica sand) between two inclined concentric cylinders with (and without) annular fins attached to the inner cylinder under steady state condition. The experiments were carried out for a range of modified Rayleigh number (0.2 ≤Ra*≤ 11) and extended to Ra*=500 for numerical study and for annulus inclination angle of (δ = 0˚, 30˚, 60˚ and 90˚). The numerical study was to give the governing equation under assumptions that used Darcy law and Boussinesq’s approximation and then it was solved numerically using finite difference approximation. It was found that t

Realizing the full potential of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) highlights many design issues, particularly the trade-offs concerning multiple conflicting improvements such as maximizing the route overlapping for efficient data aggregation and minimizing the total link cost. While the issues of data aggregation routing protocols and link cost function in a WSNs have been comprehensively considered in the literature, a trade-off improvement between these two has not yet been addressed. In this paper, a comprehensive weight for trade-off between different objectives has been employed, the so-called weighted data aggregation routing strategy (WDARS) which aims to maximize the overlap routes for efficient data aggregation and link cost