Mining sensor data to discover clinical mastitis

When cows are milked with an automatic milking system (AMS), clinical mastitis (CM) cannot be detected adequately without using electronic sensing devices. This paper describes approaches to improve automated CM detection in AMS using sensor inputs and data mining. Sensor data and observational CM data, both at quarter level, were collected over two years at nine Dutch AMS farms. Decision-tree induction was used for model development using data from cows that were highly likely to be healthy or that were clearly suffering from CM. The model was validated including quarter milkings with a less clear CM status. A decision-tree was developed with sensitivity of 40% and specificity of 99% using a strict time-window

The contribution of breeding to reducing environmental impact of animal production

Animal production is responsible for 14.5% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Approximately half of these emissions originate directly from animal production, whereas the other half comes from feed production. Animal breeding aims at improving animal production and efficient use of resources, which results in a reduction of environmental impacts. The objective of this study was to quantify the contribution of animal breeding to reducing the environmental impact of the four major livestock species in the Netherlands (with their animal product), namely broilers (meat), laying hens (eggs), pigs (meat) and dairy cattle (milk). This study comprised of a literature review and a quantitative assessment of the current environmental impact and the result of recent genetic improvements. For broiler meat, chicken eggs and pig meat the focus was laid on GHG emissions and nitrogen and phosphorus efficiency, whereas for dairy the focus was laid on enteric methane emissions, an important contributor to GHG emissions. Results show that breeding reduces environmental impacts of animal products by about 1% per year. This is achieved without specific selection on environmental traits, but as an indirect response through selection on increased (feed) efficiency

Towards field specific phosphate applications norms with machine learning

Efficient use of animal manure is an important link in the nutrient cycle in agricultural systems. On Dutch dairy farms, most manure is applied on grass and cropland, with maize as main crop. With the aim of balancing P input and output at field level, which is the idea behind the currently used, but rather fixed, ..

Ontwikkeling klimaatlat veehouderij

The ‘Yardstick Sustainable Animal Husbandry’ (in Dutch: Maatlat Duurzame Veehouderij, MDV) already contained a ‘Climate Yardstick’ (in Dutch: Klimaatlat) with some certified measures regarding energy saving and generation of renewable energy. It was desirable to extend this with measures to stimulate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from animal houses and manure storages. Some uncertainties about relations between methane, nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions remained after an earlier performed literature review. These relationships were investigated in 6 subprojects. Based on these results some measures were added to the certification scheme. These added measures, however, are limited to systems with liquid manure, in which quick removal of manure from the animal houses is coupled with low-emission storage or manure processing

An Exploration of Fetish Social Networks and Communities

Online Social Networks (OSNs) provide a venue for virtual interactions and relationships between individuals. In some communities, OSNs also facilitate arranging offline meetings and relationships. FetLife, the world’s largest anonymous social network for the BDSM, fetish and kink communities, provides a unique example of an OSN that serves as an interaction space, community organizing tool, and sexual market. In this paper, we present a first look at the characteristics of European members of Fetlife, comprising 504,416 individual nodes with 1,912,196 connections. We looked at user characteristics in terms of gender, sexual orientation, and preferred role. We further examined the homophilic communities and find that women in particular are far more platonically involved on the site than straight males. Our results suggest there are important differences between the FetLife community and conventional OSNs

Prevalence and Characterization of Motile Salmonella in Commercial Layer Poultry Farms in Bangladesh

Salmonella is a globally widespread food-borne pathogen having major impact on public health. All motile serovars of Salmonella enterica of poultry origin are zoonotic, and contaminated meat and raw eggs are an important source to human infections. Information on the prevalence of Salmonella at farm/holding level, and the zoonotic serovars circulating in layer poultry in the South and South-East Asian countries including Bangladesh, where small-scale commercial farms are predominant, is limited. To investigate the prevalence of Salmonella at layer farm level, and to identify the prevalent serovars we conducted a cross-sectional survey by randomly selecting 500 commercial layer poultry farms in Bangladesh. Faecal samples from the selected farms were collected following standard procedure, and examined for the presence of Salmonella using conventional bacteriological procedures. Thirty isolates were randomly selected, from the ninety obtained from the survey, for serotyping and characterized further by plasmid profiling and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Results of the survey showed that the prevalence of motile Salmonella at layer farm level was 18% (95% confidence interval 15–21%), and Salmonella Kentucky was identified to be the only serovar circulating in the study population. Plasmid analysis of the S. Kentucky and non-serotyped isolates revealed two distinct profiles with a variation of two different sizes (2.7 and 4.8 kb). PFGE of the 30 S. Kentucky and 30 non-serotyped isolates showed that all of them were clonally related because only one genotype and three subtypes were determined based on the variation in two or three bands. This is also the first report on the presence of any specific serovar of Salmonella enterica in poultry in Bangladesh