This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary Chinese herb medicine extracted from Dandelion root on growth performance, serum immune markers, faecal bacterial community and their metabolites in weaned pigs. The results showed that dietary Dandelion root extract (CHE) supplementation decreased (P < .05) the diarrhoea frequency, but had no effect on growth performance of weaned pigs. Dietary CHE supplementation increased (P < .05) propionate and butyrate concentrations in faecal samples of pigs. Moreover, dietary CHE supplementation increased (P < .05) IL-6 concentration and decreased (P < .05) IL-4 concentration in serum. Pigs in the CHE group had lower (P < .05) relative abundance of Clostridiaceae_1 on family level and Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1 on genus level in faeces. In conclusion, dietary CHE supplementation increased the concentration of faecal butyrate, improved immune function and altered relative abundance and composition of faecal microflora in weaned pigs.

Robust design (RD) is an important method because it can reduce the variation of products or processes and improve their performances such as static and dynamic quality characteristics at a low cost. In order to obtain an efficient and universal RD solution, a novel analytical RD methodology is proposed based on axiomatic design principles. The covariance matrix of multiple functional requirements (FRs) that can reflect dependency relationship is obtained via the Talyor series expansion. Evaluation mechanism based on information axiom is introduced to select the better design scheme gained with different robust optimization models. The distinct characteristics of the proposed method are the implementation by matrix differential, and the ability that can deal with multiple FR optimization simultaneously. An RD optimization of a five roller coating head is illustrated. The results show that the proposed method can optimize the design parameters which meet the multiple FRs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In order to develop reasonable modular product architecture with physically detachable modules, a new systematic method for product modularization is proposed based on axiomatic design (AD). In the proposed method, the product is decomposed hierarchically in its functional, physical and process domains according to AD. After the transformation from design matrices to design structure matrices, the correlation design structure matrices of design parameters about function, structure and manufacturing process are constructed. Finally, a genetic algorithm combined with the minimal description length is introduced to solve the modularization optimization problem. To illustrate and validate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, an indoor air conditioner unit is presented as a demonstrative example. (Abstract)

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