Management and Investment: Two Pillars of Automatic Milking Systems Efficiency

Fetch cows, dairy cattle that do not voluntarily enter automated milking systems (AMS), increase labor costs, and decrease efficiency. The objective of this study was to describe fetch cows based on fetch lists and herd-management software data. This study was conducted on a commercial dairy farm (n = 510 cows) using 8 AMS from October 1, 2021, to May 10, 2022. Data were collected via PCDART, DairyComp, and a proprietary interface. Two fetch categories by cow, EverFetch (EF) and NeverFetch (NF), and three status groups by cow by day, True Fetch (on fetch list and fetched; TF), False Fetch (on fetch list and not fetched; FF), and No Fetch Required (not on list; NFR), were created. The impact of health events (no event, reproduction, general health, and scheduled events), parity (1, 2, 3, and 4+ lactations) and AMS variables (milk visit outcome, production, and components; feed intake, etc.) on fetch category and status were analyzed using the GLIMMIX procedure of SAS 9.4 (P ≤ 0.05). The sections were evenly divided by fresh or in-training (≤ 25 days in milk (DIM)) and lactation (\u3e 25 DIM). The lactating group was divided into three sections (early, mid, and late lactation) based on total cow-day observation quartiles. The sections were ≤ 25 DIM (fresh), \u3e 25 and ≤ 86 DIM (early lactation), \u3e 86 and \u3c 214 DIM (mid-lactation), and ≥ 214 DIM (late-lactation). Decision support tools have provided end-users with options for decision-making under different scenarios. The objective of this decision tool was for Southeastern USA producers considering an automatic milking system to input their information and determine AMS investment impact. Data were sourced from sixty-two farm observations across Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina through the University of Tennessee Dairy Gauge Program (2021 and 2022). Median data across years included farm incomes and expenses. Investment in AMS was modeled to determine net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and payback period (PP). Across all scenarios, retrofitting was the most profitable construction style. Future research is needed to test the models and find benchmarks for determining fetch cow status and economic

Telecommuting Strategies in the Human Capital Management Industry

Telecommuting became more entrenched in many corporations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rise in the number of telecommuting employees has presented new challenges to traditional employee management; some business leaders lack strategies to manage telecommuting employees while maintaining expected productivity levels. Grounded in the resource-based view conceptual framework, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore strategies business leaders use to maintain productivity in employees who telecommute. The participants were four managers in the human capital management industry with a minimum of 2 years in their managerial role and telecommuting direct reports. Data were collected by conducting semistructured interviews and reviewing public company documents. Use of Yin\u27s five-step data analysis process yielded five themes: (a) resource engagement, (b) effective communication, (c) technology management, (d) people management, and (e) work–life balance. A key recommendation is for business leaders to ensure resource engagement by improving onboarding processes for telecommuting employees. The implications for positive social change include the potential to identify strategies that, if implemented, can potentially improve the work–life balance of employees

Thoracic duct fistula and renal transplantation

Thoracic duct drainage (TDD) was established for 21-115 days in 40 kidney recipients with an average removal per patient day of 4.7 1 lymph and 1.88 billion cells. Cellular and humoral immunity were depressed. TDD and immunosuppressive drugs were started at transplantation in 35 recipients of cross-match negative grafts. Although the results were better than in precedent non-TDD controls, eight patients rejected their grafts before a full TDD effect, and three of the eight developed predominantly anti-B lymphocyte cytotoxic antibodies which were probably responsible for positive cross-matches with their next donors. With continuing TDD, all eight patients had good initial function after early retransplantation. In five more 'nontransplantable' patients with performed cytotoxic antibodies, TDD was started 30-56 days before transplantation. In these five pretreated patients, antibodies persisted with positive antidonor cross-matches. Hyperacute rejection occurred repeatedly in two patients with high anti-T (and anti-B) titers, but was surmounted in three patients with lower titers. From the clinical and immunologic data, we have concluded that TDD should be used for pretreatment of all cases with or without prior antibodies, and have suggested an adjustable management plan that takes into account new developments in antibody monitoring

Safe Reinforcement Learning via Observation Shielding

Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have shown success in scaling up to large problems. However, deploying those algorithms in real-world applications remains challenging due to their vulnerability to adversarial perturbations. Existing RL robustness methods against adversarial attacks are weak to large perturbations - a scenario that cannot be ruled out for RL adversarial threats, as is the case for deep neural networks in classification tasks. This paper proposes a method called observation-shielding RL (OSRL) to increase the robustness of RL against large perturbations using predictive models and threat detection. Instead of changing the RL algorithms with robustness regularization or retrain them with adversarial perturbations, we depart considerably from previous approaches and develop an add-on safety feature for existing RL algorithms during runtime. OSRL builds on the idea of model predictive shielding, where an observation predictive model is used to override the perturbed observations as needed to ensure safety. Extensive experiments on various MuJoCo environments (Ant, Hooper) and the classical pendulum environment demonstrate that our proposed OSRL is safer and more efficient than state-of-the-art robustness methods under large perturbations

Xirp Proteins Mark Injured Skeletal Muscle in Zebrafish

Myocellular regeneration in vertebrates involves the proliferation of activated progenitor or dedifferentiated myogenic cells that have the potential to replenish lost tissue. In comparison little is known about cellular repair mechanisms within myocellular tissue in response to small injuries caused by biomechanical or cellular stress. Using a microarray analysis for genes upregulated upon myocellular injury, we identified zebrafish Xin-actin-binding repeat-containing protein1 (Xirp1) as a marker for wounded skeletal muscle cells. By combining laser-induced micro-injury with proliferation analyses, we found that Xirp1 and Xirp2a localize to nascent myofibrils within wounded skeletal muscle cells and that the repair of injuries does not involve cell proliferation or Pax7+ cells. Through the use of Xirp1 and Xirp2a as markers, myocellular injury can now be detected, even though functional studies indicate that these proteins are not essential in this process. Previous work in chicken has implicated Xirps in cardiac looping morphogenesis. However, we found that zebrafish cardiac morphogenesis is normal in the absence of Xirp expression, and animals deficient for cardiac Xirp expression are adult viable. Although the functional involvement of Xirps in developmental and repair processes currently remains enigmatic, our findings demonstrate that skeletal muscle harbours a rapid, cell-proliferation-independent response to injury which has now become accessible to detailed molecular and cellular characterizations