暑熱暴露ヒツジにおける消化機能，タンパク質およびエネルギー代謝に及ぼすトウモロコシホールクロップサイレージ給与の影響

博士（農学）岩手大

Patterns of language choice and use among undergraduates of different ethnic groups in a malaysian public university

Language choice and use are sociolinguistic phenomena. The choice and use of language refers to selecting languages for different purposes in different contexts. In a bi-/multilingual society, these phenomena are very important issues. Fishman’s (1972) domain analysis is used to investigate the choice of language in a multilingual context in this study. The analysis answers questions directed at ‘who speaks what language to whom, when, where and even why’. In answering these questions, a host of variables come into play. These variables are language planning and policy, language user’s social background, linguistic profile, profession, educational background, and social domains. The objectives of this study were to identify UPM undergraduates’ patterns of language choice and use in the domains of family, friendship, neighborhood, transaction, education, office, religion and media; and to investigate the effect of ethnicity, gender, discipline of study and proficiency on their patterns of language choice and use. Data for the study were collected through a questionnaire survey administered to 300 UPM undergraduates. The analysis of data was done both quantitatively and qualitatively. SPSS was used to get percentage values and frequencies through descriptive statistics and correlations between variables were obtained through Chi-square tests. The strength of relationship was measured using Contingency Coefficient and the relationship was interpreted with reference to Guilford’s rule of thumb. Findings of the study indicate that the informants chose and used different languages in different domains with consideration to the status of the domains. They were found to use ethnic languages in those domains which were more informal and intimate such as family, religion and media. Bahasa Melayu and English were chosen in more formal domains such as education and office. In the patterns of language choice among the informants, the study found the influence of ethnicity and language proficiency in all the domains investigated. The discipline of study was also found to influence language choice partially, while the influence of gender was not found. In short, this study found variation of choice of languages to be constrained and influenced by different factors

Using Vibrational Infrared Biomolecular Spectroscopy to Detect Heat-Induced Changes of Molecular Structure in Relation to Nutrient Availability of Prairie Whole Oat Grains on a Molecular Basis

BACKGROUND: To our knowledge, there is little study on the interaction between nutrient availability and molecular structure changes induced by different processing methods in dairy cattle. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of heat processing methods on interaction between nutrient availability and molecular structure in terms of functional groups that are related to protein and starch inherent structure of oat grains with two continued years and three replication of each year. METHOD: The oat grains were kept as raw (control) or heated in an air-draft oven (dry roasting: DO) at 120 °C for 60 min and under microwave irradiation (MIO) for 6 min. The molecular structure features were revealed by vibrational infrared molecular spectroscopy. RESULTS: The results showed that rumen degradability of dry matter, protein and starch was significantly lower (P <0.05) for MIO compared to control and DO treatments. A higher protein α-helix to β-sheet and a lower amide I to starch area ratio were observed for MIO compared to DO and/or raw treatment. A negative correlation (−0.99, P < 0.01) was observed between α-helix or amide I to starch area ratio and dry matter. A positive correlation (0.99, P < 0.01) was found between protein β-sheet and crude protein. CONCLUSION: The results reveal that oat grains are more sensitive to microwave irradiation than dry heating in terms of protein and starch molecular profile and nutrient availability in ruminants

What determines the choice of language with friends and neighbors? the case of Malaysian university undergraduates.

Bi-/multilingual people exercise choices of language among the languages of their linguistic repertoire for different purposes in different domains. The choice is determined by various factors such as ethnicity, proficiency, attitudes, socio-cultural background, language policy, and in particular, the domain itself.Malaysia being a multilingual country, what languages are chosen with friends and relatives, and what determines the choice constitute the main objectives of this paper.Data for this paper was collected through a questionnaire survey administered to a sample of university undergraduates and analyzed those using SPSS. The findings show that respondents from the major ethnic groups preferred their respective ethnic languages with friends and neighbours of the same ethnic backgrounds but choice of Bahasa Malaysia (BM) among the non-Malays and choice for English among respondents irrespective of ethnicity increase while the interlocutors belong to other ethnic backgrounds. Ethnicity, proficiency and domain of use were found to be contributing factors of language choice with friends and neighbours in Malaysia

ロボットコンバインのダイナミックモデル構築と走行経路生成のための収穫領域最適化に関する研究

Automatic path planning is an important topic nowadays for robotic agricultural vehicles. Especially for a robot combine harvester, path planning is required to choose the crop field of optimum harvesting area; otherwise, crop losses may occur during harvesting of the field. In general, a boundary zone in the field includes some water inlets and outlets, or some objects that are very dangerous for a robot running. In order to make the turning margin safe for the robot combine harvester operation, the surrounding crop near to boundary zone is cut twice or thrice by manual operation; however, this surrounding cutting crop is not exactly straight, sometimes it is curved or meandering. Developing a path planning in a conventional way, in order to take a corner position from the global positioning system by visual observation is a time consuming operation; the curved or meandering crop is not cut during harvesting, and the harvesting area is not optimum. During harvesting, this curved or meandering crop may be left in the field, which indicates the crop losses. In addition, normally, the tracked combine harvester takes turn at high speed and high steering command at the corner of the field during the cutting of outside crop nearby headland. During this turning, the inertial sensor gives the yaw rate gyro measurement bias, which is necessary to compensate for estimating absolute heading to determine the crop periphery. In order to consider the crop losses, operational processing time and compensating yaw rate gyro measurement bias, a tracked dynamic model of tracked combine harvester and optimum harvesting area of convex or concave polygon form in the field are very important. Therefore, this research’s objective is to develop a tracked combine harvester dynamic model based on the sensor measurements for estimating the absolute heading of tracked combine harvester, and an algorithm that the optimum harvesting area for a convex or concave polygon field in determining the corner vertices to calculate the working path of a robot combine harvester. A real time global positioning system and an inertial measurement unit with tracked combine harvester dynamic model are used to calculate the absolute heading in turning maneuverability, which is further used to determine the combine harvester’s header end position that is called the exact outline of the remaining crop or crop periphery. Incremental convex hull method is used to estimate the convex hull from the exact outline crop position, and the optimum harvesting area and corner vertices are estimated by the rotating caliper method. However, this rotating caliper method is only suitable for a rectangular polygon field. Unlike the rotating caliper method, the developed N-polygon algorithm is applicable to all convex polygon fields. Similarly, we developed another algorithm for concave polygon fields, which is called the split of convex hull and cross point method. This method calculates the optimum harvesting area and the corner vertices from the concave polygon (like L-shape) field. The simulation and experimental results showed that our developed algorithm can estimate the optimum harvesting area and corner vertices for a convex or a concave polygon field, which takes all crop portions. Then, a path planning algorithm is used to calculate the working path based on the estimated corner vertices for the robot combine harvester, which cuts whole crop in the field during harvesting. In conclusion, the tracked combine harvester model with sensor fusion method can estimate absolute heading in course of turning condition, and the estimated optimum harvesting area based on our algorithm completely reduces the crop losses, and the working path calculated based on the corner vertices requires less processing time

Heading Estimation of Robot Combine Harvesters during Turning Maneuveres

Absolute heading is an important parameter for a robot combine harvester or a robot tracked combine harvester, especially while it is turning, but due to the rapid turning of robot combine harvesters, its inertial measurement unit gives a gyro measurement bias that causes heading drift. Our research goal is to estimate the absolute heading of robot combine harvesters by compensating this gyro measurement bias during non-linear turning maneuvers. A sensor fusion method like the extended Kalman filter combined with the tracked combine harvester dynamic model and sensor measurements was used to estimate the absolute heading of a robot combine harvester. Circular, sinusoidal and concave shapes were used to evaluate the estimated heading produced by the sensor fusion method. The results indicate that the estimated heading is better than measured heading which was calculated from the integration of yaw rate gyro measurements, and the root mean square errors (RMSEs) for estimated headings are smaller than the measured headings. In practics, the target of this paper is thus the estimation of a heading or absolute heading that is bias compensated, and can be further used to calculate the exact crop periphery for automatic path planning of robot combine harvesters

ロボットコンバインのダイナミックモデル構築と走行経路生成のための収穫領域最適化に関する研究 [論文内容及び審査の要旨]

Automatic path planning is an important topic nowadays for robotic agricultural vehicles. Especially for a robot combine harvester, path planning is required to choose the crop field of optimum harvesting area; otherwise, crop losses may occur during harvesting of the field. In general, a boundary zone in the field includes some water inlets and outlets, or some objects that are very dangerous for a robot running. In order to make the turning margin safe for the robot combine harvester operation, the surrounding crop near to boundary zone is cut twice or thrice by manual operation; however, this surrounding cutting crop is not exactly straight, sometimes it is curved or meandering. Developing a path planning in a conventional way, in order to take a corner position from the global positioning system by visual observation is a time consuming operation; the curved or meandering crop is not cut during harvesting, and the harvesting area is not optimum. During harvesting, this curved or meandering crop may be left in the field, which indicates the crop losses. In addition, normally, the tracked combine harvester takes turn at high speed and high steering command at the corner of the field during the cutting of outside crop nearby headland. During this turning, the inertial sensor gives the yaw rate gyro measurement bias, which is necessary to compensate for estimating absolute heading to determine the crop periphery. In order to consider the crop losses, operational processing time and compensating yaw rate gyro measurement bias, a tracked dynamic model of tracked combine harvester and optimum harvesting area of convex or concave polygon form in the field are very important. Therefore, this research’s objective is to develop a tracked combine harvester dynamic model based on the sensor measurements for estimating the absolute heading of tracked combine harvester, and an algorithm that the optimum harvesting area for a convex or concave polygon field in determining the corner vertices to calculate the working path of a robot combine harvester. A real time global positioning system and an inertial measurement unit with tracked combine harvester dynamic model are used to calculate the absolute heading in turning maneuverability, which is further used to determine the combine harvester’s header end position that is called the exact outline of the remaining crop or crop periphery. Incremental convex hull method is used to estimate the convex hull from the exact outline crop position, and the optimum harvesting area and corner vertices are estimated by the rotating caliper method. However, this rotating caliper method is only suitable for a rectangular polygon field. Unlike the rotating caliper method, the developed N-polygon algorithm is applicable to all convex polygon fields. Similarly, we developed another algorithm for concave polygon fields, which is called the split of convex hull and cross point method. This method calculates the optimum harvesting area and the corner vertices from the concave polygon (like L-shape) field. The simulation and experimental results showed that our developed algorithm can estimate the optimum harvesting area and corner vertices for a convex or a concave polygon field, which takes all crop portions. Then, a path planning algorithm is used to calculate the working path based on the estimated corner vertices for the robot combine harvester, which cuts whole crop in the field during harvesting. In conclusion, the tracked combine harvester model with sensor fusion method can estimate absolute heading in course of turning condition, and the estimated optimum harvesting area based on our algorithm completely reduces the crop losses, and the working path calculated based on the corner vertices requires less processing time

ロボットコンバインのダイナミックモデル構築と走行経路生成のための収穫領域最適化に関する研究 [全文の要約]

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