Aaron Martin

The production of broccoli and cauliflower generates large amounts of vegetable by-products that often accumulate in the environment; however, these residues have nutritional value for ruminants. This study evaluated the effects of including industrial broccoli and cauliflower waste in the diet of dairy ewes on feed intake, metabolic health and milk production and composition. Thirty Assaf dairy ewes in mid-lactation were divided into three groups, with 10 animals per group. The control group (CON) received a total mixed ratio (TMR) ad libitum, the broccoli group (BRO) received the same TMR plus 1.5 kg FM/d of fresh chopped broccoli, and the cauliflower (CAU) group received the TMR plus 1.5 kg/d of fresh chopped cauliflower. The trial lasted 42 d, divided into 21 d for adaptation and 21 d of measurements, where feed intake and milk yield were recorded daily. Milk samples were taken once a week. At the end of the experiment, fresh cheese was prepared, using the milk from each feeding group. A sensory analysis was carried out, to detect eventual differences in flavour among treatments. Blood samples were taken to analyse the biochemical profile and acid-base status. The animals of the BRO and the CAU groups ate all the vegetal offered without decreasing the daily intake of TMR or affecting milk production. No differences were observed between groups in the biochemical profile or the blood acid-base status, with the exception of the urea concentration, which was higher in the BRO group compared to the control (55.2, 61.8, 57.2 mg/dL for CON, BRO and CAU; P= 0.022). Regarding milk composition, the most relevant differences were observed in protein content, being higher in the BRO group (P=0.006) than in the CON and CAU groups, and in the fatty acids profile, which showed an increase in the saturated fatty acids content (P=0.012) and a decrease in the monounsaturated fatty acids content (P=0.005) in the groups supplemented with broccoli and cauliflower. In conclusion, supplementation with 1.5 kg of broccoli or cauliflower in lactating sheep did not affect feed intake, milk production or health status of the animals and had little impact on the quality of milk.

In this paper, I discuss St. Thomas’s explanation of how God knows the possibles—things He could create but never does create. Thomas’s full explanationincludes a discussion of the nature of possibility, the reality of the possibles, and whether there are divine ideas of the possibles. In this paper, I critique someof James Ross’s positions as he best represents the self-proclaimed “voluntarist” school. I believe that Ross gives Thomas’s texts an incomplete reading on this issue and I seek to provide what is missing in Ross’s reading by highlighting Thomas’s notion of virtual practical knowledge. The concept of virtual practical knowledge is overlooked even by most “traditional” Thomists, and yet I have found that virtual practical knowledge is Thomas’s richest explanation of how God knows the possibles because it incorporates the principles that Thomas introduces in his general theory of divine knowledge.

© 2016 American Chemical Society.High quality WSe2 films have been grown on bilayer graphene with layer-by-layer control of thickness using molecular beam epitaxy. The combination of angle-resolved photoemission, scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy, and optical absorption measurements reveal the atomic and electronic structures evolution and optical response of WSe2/BLG. We observe that a bilayer of WSe2 is a direct bandgap semiconductor, when integrated in a BLG-based heterostructure, thus shifting the direct-indirect band gap crossover to trilayer WSe2. In the monolayer limit, WSe2 shows a spin-splitting of 475 meV in the valence band at the K point, the largest value observed among all the MX2 materials. The exciton binding energy of monolayer-WSe2/BLG is found to be 0.21 eV, a value that is orders of magnitude larger than that of conventional three-dimensional semiconductors, yet small as compared to other two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogennides semiconductors. Finally, our finding regarding the overall modification of the electronic structure by an alkali metal surface electron doping opens a route to further control the electronic properties of TMDCs.