Outcomes of weight management in obese pet dogs: what can we do better?

Obesity is arguably the biggest health and welfare issue affecting pet dogs. Although successful weight loss has health benefits, current strategies are far from ideal. Many obese dogs that start a weight programme fail to lose weight, or subsequently regain the weight they have lost. Given that current weight loss strategies are not perfect, clinicians need to focus carefully on tailoring the programme, perhaps setting a pragmatic target for weight loss, so as to ensure the benefits are maximised. This review will summarise key findings from recent clinical research into pet obesity, and present a framework for improving success, by better tailoring weight management regimens and end points to the individual.</jats:p

Obesity Prevention and Weight Maintenance After Loss

© 2016 Elsevier Inc.Obesity is one of the most prevalent medical diseases in pets. Outcomes are often disappointing; many animals either fail to reach target weight or regain weight. This article discusses managing obesity, focusing on prevention. It gives guidance on establishing monitoring programs that use regular body weight and condition assessments to identify animals at risk of inappropriate weight gain, enabling early intervention. Weight management in obese animals is a lifelong process. Regular weight and body condition monitoring are key to identifying animals that rebound early, while continuing to feed a therapeutic weight loss diet can help prevent it from happening

Características de tiempo-frecuencia para la estimación de la posición de los órganos articuladores en consonantes explosivas

Acoustic-to-Articulatory inversion offers new perspectives and interesting applicationsin the speech processing field; however, it remains an open issue. This paper presents a method to estimate the distribution of the articulatory informationcontained in the stop consonants’ acoustics, whose parametrizationis achieved by using the wavelet packet transform. The main focus is on measuringthe relevant acoustic information, in terms of statistical association, forthe inference of the position of critical articulators involved in stop consonantsproduction. The rank correlation Kendall coefficient is used as the relevance measure. The maps of relevant time–frequency features are calculated for theMOCHA–TIMIT database; from which, stop consonants are extracted andanalysed. The proposed method obtains a set of time–frequency components closely related to articulatory phenemenon, which offers a deeper understanding into the relationship between the articulatory and acoustical phenomena.The relevant maps are tested into an acoustic–to–articulatory mapping systembased on Gaussian mixture models, where it is shown they are suitable for improvingthe performance of such a systems over stop consonants. The method could be extended to other manner of articulation categories, e.g. fricatives,in order to adapt present method to acoustic-to-articulatory mapping systemsover whole speech.La inversión acústica a articulación ofrece nuevas perspectivas y aplicaciones interesantes en el campo del procesamiento del habla; Sin embargo, sigue siendo un tema abierto. Este artículo presenta un método para estimar la distribución de la información articulatoria contenida en la acústica de las consonantes de parada, cuya parametrización se logra utilizando la transformación del paquete wavelet. El enfoque principal está en medir la información acústica relevante, en términos de asociación estadística, para la inferencia de la posición de los articuladores críticos involucrados en la producción de consonantes de parada. El coeficiente de Kendall de correlación de rango se utiliza como medida de relevancia. Los mapas de las características relevantes de tiempo-frecuencia se calculan para la base de datos MOCHA-TIMIT; de donde se extraen las consonantes y se analizan. El método propuesto obtiene un conjunto de componentes de frecuencia de tiempo estrechamente relacionados con el fenómeno de articulación, que ofrece una comprensión más profunda de la relación entre los fenómenos articulatorio y acústico. Los mapas relevantes se prueban en un sistema de mapeo acústico-articulatorio basado en modelos de mezcla gaussiana , donde se muestra que son adecuados para mejorar el rendimiento de tales sistemas sobre las consonantes de parada. El método podría extenderse a otro tipo de categorías de articulación, p. Ej. fricativas, con el fin de adaptar el método actual al sistema de mapeo acústico a articulatorio en todo el discurso

Time-Frequency Relevant Features for Critical Articulators Movement Inference

Publication in the conference proceedings of EUSIPCO, Bucharest, Romania, 201