1,721,642 research outputs found
Comparison of two rearing system on productive performance and welfare parameters in Limousine cattle
No full textThe increasing attention paid both by the legislator and the consumers regarding animal welfare has brought to the development of new building-type cattle's housing.
The present investigation compared some productive parameters and aspects concerning animal welfare in Limousine cattle held in two different housing systems. The experiment lasted four months and was carried out on a farm located in the south of Tuscany. Thirty-six females, homogeneous for weight and age, were divided into two groups and were housed in different structures: “sided housing” (SH) and “open-sided housing” (OSH). Microclimatic data were checked in order to verify differences in environment conditions. Live weight was recorded at the beginning and at the end of the trial as well haematological analysis. Moreover ANI 35L method was applied in order to assess the suitability of farming structure on animal welfare requirements. Animals were slaughtered in a EU licensed commercial abattoir: carcass length, depth of chest, length of leg, maximum width of leg were measured, firmness index and carcass yield were calculated. Data were examined by the variance analysis.
Environment condition significantly differed in all tested parameters: temperature, humidity and wind speed. Haematological parameters were comprised in the interval of physiological values with the exception for glucose but were not influenced by the type of structure. Neutrophils/Lymphocyte ratio resulted out of the range in either group but in different period of sampling suggesting the presence of stressful factor linked with microclimatic conditions. Mean carcass weights and ADG were similar in the groups (266.29 vs 254.90 and 1.06 vs 0.9 respectively in “SH” and “OSH”).
Longitudinal measures of carcass showed significant differences between the groups with higher values in the “SH” group. ANI 35L method highlighted a greater score in the “OSH” structure thanks to the better conditions about ventilation, flooring
GA3C Reinforcement Learning for Surgical Steerable Catheter Path Planning
Full text linkPath planning algorithms for steerable catheters, must guarantee anatomical obstacles avoidance, reduce the insertion length and ensure the compliance with needle kinematics. The majority of the solutions in literature focuses on graph based or sampling based methods, both limited by the impossibility to directly obtain smooth trajectories. In this work we formulate the path planning problem as a reinforcement learning problem and show that the trajectory planning model, generated from the training, can provide the user with optimal trajectories in terms of obstacle clearance and kinematic constraints. We obtain 2D and 3D environments from MRI images processing and we implement a GA3C algorithm to create a path planning model, able to generalize on different patients anatomies. The curvilinear trajectories obtained from the model in 2D and 3D environments are compared to the ones obtained by A∗ and RRT∗ algorithms. Our method achieves state-of-the-art performances in terms of obstacle avoidance, trajectory smoothness and computational time proving this algorithm as valid planning method for complex environments
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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