Marcio Antonio Dornelles Gonçalves

Reproductive performance of swine females re-serviced after return to estrus or abortion.

The objective of this study was to analyze reproductive performance in swine females re-serviced after return to estrus or abortion in comparison with females in first service (gilts or weaned females). Records used were obtained from four commercial sow herds in Brazil including 24,194 mating records from PigCHAMP research database. Three mating categories (first service in gilts or weaned sows, re-serviced after return to estrus and re-serviced after abortion) were considered for the analysis. The farrowing rate (FR) was less and return to estrus (RER), abortion rate (ABR) and total born (TB) were greater in the category re-serviced after return to estrus compared to first service category (P<0.05). The category re-serviced after abortion only differed from the first service category by a greater ABR (P<0.05). In gilts and PO2-5 females re-serviced after a return to estrus, the FR was less (72.0% and 83.2%) and RER was greater (22.3% and 12.5%) compared to first service PO2-5 sows (92.7% and 5.3%; P<0.05). A re-service after a return to estrus did not affect TB in PO > or =2 females (P>0.05) but resulted in less TB in gilts and greater TB in primiparous sows (P<0.05). In females re-serviced after a return to estrus the performance was similar (P>0.05) between the two intervals considered as regular return to estrus (18-24 days and 36-48 days). Among the intervals considered as irregular return to estrus, greater FR was observed in intermediate (25-35 days) than in early (11-17 days) or late (>48 days) intervals. The re-service after a return to estrus results in an impaired farrowing rate, with a greater impact on gilts than at older parities. Females re-serviced after abortion are more predisposed to the recurrence of this reproductive failure.

Evaluating the reliability of a GPU pipeline to SEU and the impacts of software-based and hardware-based fault tolerance techniques

Abstract This paper evaluates the reliability of a GPU pipeline upset by SEU faults and the impacts of software-based and hardware-based fault tolerance techniques. The approach entails first assessing the vulnerability of the GPU pipeline to SEU through a fault injection campaign at register transfer level. Second, this assessment applies three low-level software-based fault tolerance techniques to protect the register files intending to indirectly protect the pipeline and evaluates impacts on performance degradation. Thirdly, it evaluates the costs of applying generic hardware-based redundancy fault tolerance techniques and their impacts on area overhead. Experiments are performed using a GPU based on the NVIDIA G80 architecture running four case-study applications. Results show fault detection rates of 60% with performance costs of 78%, and up to 100% with less than 60% area overhead.

Two different feeding levels during late gestation in gilts and sows under commercial conditions: impact on piglet birth weight and female reproductive performance

The increase in the litter size in past decades has caused reduction in the individual piglet birth weight. Therefore, nutritional strategies employed in the last third of gestation in order to improve the piglet birth weight have been studied. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of 2 different feeding levels (1.8 and 2.2 kg/d) in the last third of gestation on the piglet birth weight and the female reproductive performance. A total of 407 females were fed on a diet based on corn-soybean meal (3.25 Mcal ME per kg and 0.65% standardized ileal digestible lysine) from day 90 of gestation until farrowing. The females were weighed on day 90 and day 112 of gestation, and at weaning. Born alive and stillborn piglets were weighed within 12 h of birth. The lactation feed intake and the litter growth rate were measured in a randomly selected subsample of 53 sows from each treatment. The data were analyzed using the generalized linear mixed models, considering the females as the experimental unit. Parity, treatment, and their interaction were analyzed for all responses. The females fed on 2.2 kg/d of diet from day 90 to day 112 exhibited greater body weight gain compared to the females fed on 1.8 kg/d (P < 0.001). No evidence of the effects of feeding levels on the individual piglet birth weight and on the within-litter CV were observed, for both gilts and sows (P ≥ 0.90). Similarly, when the classes of the total born piglets were considered in the analysis (<15 and ≥15 for gilts; <16 and ≥16 for sows), no positive effects of increasing the feeding level were observed on the individual piglet birth weight and the within-litter CV (P ≥ 0.47). Also, no differences in the stillborn rate, mummified-fetus rate, and percentage of piglets weighing less than 1,000 g at birth were observed between the treatments (P ≥ 0.28). The females fed on 1.8 kg/d of diet exhibited greater feed intake during lactation, compared to the females fed on 2.2 kg/d (P < 0.05). Weaning weight, weaning-to-estrus interval, subsequent litter size, and culling rate were not affected by the dietary levels (P ≥ 0.23). In conclusion, increasing the feed intake from day 90 of gestation until farrowing increased the body weight gain in sow, demonstrated no effect on the piglet birth weight, and reduced the lactation feed intake. Furthermore, there was no evidence of the effects of the treatments on the litter growth rate or on the subsequent female reproductive performance.

A low-level software-based fault tolerance approach to detect SEUs in GPUs' register files

Abstract This paper presents an approach based on software-based fault tolerance techniques applied at low abstraction level to detect SEU faults in register files of Graphics Processing Units. SEU faults have a major influence on such architectures, especially affecting register files and cache memory. In order to harden the systems register files, software-based techniques are presented and tuned to detect faults in vector, address, and predicate registers. A fault injection campaign at Register Transfer Level is performed on the register files using a G80 general purpose graphics processing unit running four case-study applications. Results show reduction in errors up to 100% and overhead costs in execution time up to 1.78 times the original values.