The Relationship between Carcass Condemnations and Tail Lesion in Swine Considering Different Production Systems and Tail Lengths

Tail biting has been recognised as an intractable problem in pig production. This study aims to evaluate tail lesion occurrence in slaughtered pigs and explore the relationship between carcass condemnations and tail lesion considering different production systems and tail lengths and to evaluate the importance of creating a detailed tail score classification that includes scarred lesions. Data on a total of 9189 pigs from 73 batches with different tail lengths (undocked; docked mid-length; fully docked) and from distinct production systems (conventional; conventional antibiotic-free and organic) were collected at a Spanish abattoir. Batches with higher tail lesion scores presented a significantly higher chance of total condemnation and total condemnation due to pyaemia, being even more associated with scarring score. The within-batches probability for local condemnations and local condemnation due to abscesses increased significantly with higher scarring scores. Regarding tail length, docked at mid-length and undocked carcasses presented significantly higher odds to be condemned due to abscess. Organic farms showed a higher probability of total condemnations. This research highlights the importance of tail lesions on carcass condemnations that may also be influenced by docking and type of production. Results suggest that scarring score should be included in the tail surveillance program

A vision-based teleoperation system for robotic systems

Despite advances in robotic perception are increasing autonomous capabilities, human intelligence is still considered a necessity in unstructured or unpredictable environments. Hence, also according to the Industry 4.0 paradigm, humans and robots are encouraged to achieve mutual Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). HRI can be physical (pHRI) or not, depending on the assigned task. For example, when the robot is constrained in a dangerous environment or must handle hazardous materials, pHRI is not recommended. In these cases, robot teleoperation may be necessary. A teleoperation system concerns with the exploration and exploitation of spaces where the user presence is not allowed. Therefore, the operator needs to move the robot remotely. Although plenty of human-machine interfaces for teleoperation have been developed considering a mechanical device, vision-based interfaces do not require physical contact with external devices. This grants a more natural and intuitive interaction, which is reflected in task performance. Our proposed system is a novel robot teleoperation system that exploits RGB cameras, which are easy to use and commonly available on the market at a reduced price. A ROS-based framework has been developed to supply hand tracking and hand-gesture recognition features, exploiting the OpenPose software based on the Deep Learning framework Caffe. This, in combination with the ease of availability of an RGB camera, leads the framework to be strongly open-source-oriented and highly replicable on all ROS-based platforms. It is worth noting that the system does not include the Z-axis control in this first version. This is due to the high precision and sensitivity required to robustly control the third axis, a precision that 3D vision systems are not able to provide unless very expensive devices are adopted. Our aim is to further develop the system to include the third axis control in a future release

Isolation of a Vibrio parahaemolyticus pandemic strain from a marine water sample obtained in the northern Adriatic

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A gesture-based robot program building software

With the advent of intelligent systems, industrial workstations and working areas have undergone a revolution. The increased need for automation is satisfied using high-performance industrial robots in fully automated workstations. In the manufacturing industry, sophisticated tasks still require human intervention in completely manual workstations, even if at a slower production rate. To improve the efficiency of manual workstations, Collaborative Robots (Co-Bots) have been designed as part of the Industry 4.0 paradigm. These robots collaborate with humans in safe environments to support the workers in their tasks, thus achieving higher production rates compared to completely manual workstations. The key factor is that their adoption relieves humans from stressful and heavy operations, decreasing job-related health issues. The drawback of Co-Bots stands in their design: to work side-by-side with humans they must guarantee safety; thus, they have very strict limitations on their forces and velocities, which limits their efficiency, especially when performing non-trivial tasks. To overcome these limitations, our idea is to design Meta-Collaborative workstations (MCWs), where the robot can operate behind a safety cage, either physical or virtual, and the operator can interact with the robot, either industrial or Collaborative, by means of the same communication channel. Our proposed system has been developed to easily build robot programs purposely designed for MCWs, based on (i) the recognition of hand gestures (using a vision-based communication channel) and (ii) ROS to carry out communication with the robot

Giant and reversible extrinsic magnetocaloric effects in La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 films due to strain

Large thermal changes driven by a magnetic field have been proposed for environmentally friendly energy efficient refrigeration, but only a few materials which suffer hysteresis show these giant magnetocaloric effects. Here we create giant and reversible extrinsic magnetocaloric effects in epitaxial films of the ferromagnetic manganite La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 using strain mediated feedback from BaTiO3 substrates near a first-order structural phase transition. Our findings should inspire the discovery of giant magnetocaloric effects in a wide range of magnetic materials, and the parallel development of nanostructured bulk samples for practical applications.Comment: 32 pages, 1 Table, 5 figures, supplementary informatio

Towards a Conceptualization of Sociomaterial Entanglement

In knowledge representation, socio-technical systems can be modeled as multiagent systems in which the local knowledge of each individual agent can be seen as a context. In this paper we propose formal ontologies as a means to describe the assumptions driving the construction of contexts as local theories and to enable interoperability among them. In particular, we present two alternative conceptualizations of the notion of sociomateriality (and entanglement), which is central in the recent debates on socio-technical systems in the social sciences, namely critical and agential realism. We thus start by providing a model of entanglement according to the critical realist view, representing it as a property of objects that are essentially dependent on different modules of an already given ontology. We refine then our treatment by proposing a taxonomy of sociomaterial entanglements that distinguishes between ontological and epistemological entanglement. In the final section, we discuss the second perspective, which is more challenging form the point of view of knowledge representation, and we show that the very distinction of information into modules can be at least in principle built out of the assumption of an entangled reality