Persistent Hymen in a Jersey Crossbred Heifer-A Novel Approach with Borescope

Author(s):  
M. Selvaraju ◽  
V. Varudharajan ◽  
S. Manivannan ◽  
D. Gopikrishnan ◽  
S. Prakash ◽  
...  

Background: Visualizing the internal genital organs in cattle using vaginoscope or endoscope is a costly affair and practically it is not possible to use this instrument in diagnosis of anatomical defects causing infertility under field conditions. An attempt was made to replace the costly instruments with low cost and easily available borescope in the diagnosis of persistent hymen in a Jersey crossbred heifer and the procedure has been reported for the benefit of field veterinarians and theriogenologists.Methods: A Jersey crossbred heifer with normal estrous cycle length and that failed to conceive even after 6 inseminations with fertile semen was presented to the Gynaecological ward. Rectal examination revealed a fluctuating swelling in the vagina. Vaginal examination revealed obstruction in the passage and the vaginal speculum could not be progressed into the vagina. Ultrasonographic examination revealed hypoechoic fluid in the vaginal cavity. A novel approach with borescope revealed a clear view of the membranous obstruction at the level of vagino-vestibular junction. Hence, the case was diagnosed as persistent hymen and hymenotomy was performed. Result: Upon hymenotomy, about two litres of thick, gummy, tenacious reddish brown colored mucus was evacuated from the vagina. The patency was checked and the animal was treated with antibiotics for three days. The animal was inseminated at the subsequent estrus on the 22nd day and pregnancy was confirmed on 45th day. The animal calved normally and delivered a live male calf. Thus, the borescope could be effectively used in the field of animal reproduction as an alternative tool for the diagnosis of developmental defects in the vagina.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
João Gama Monteiro ◽  
Jesús L. Jiménez ◽  
Francesca Gizzi ◽  
Petr Přikryl ◽  
Jonathan S. Lefcheck ◽  
...  

AbstractUnderstanding the complex factors and mechanisms driving the functioning of coastal ecosystems is vital towards assessing how organisms, ecosystems, and ultimately human populations will cope with the ecological consequences of natural and anthropogenic impacts. Towards this goal, coastal monitoring programs and studies must deliver information on a range of variables and factors, from taxonomic/functional diversity and spatial distribution of habitats, to anthropogenic stress indicators such as land use, fisheries use, and pollution. Effective monitoring programs must therefore integrate observations from different sources and spatial scales to provide a comprehensive view to managers. Here we explore integrating aerial surveys from a low-cost Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) with concurrent underwater surveys to deliver a novel approach to coastal monitoring. We: (i) map depth and substrate of shallow rocky habitats, and; (ii) classify the major biotopes associated with these environmental axes; and (iii) combine data from i and ii to assess the likely distribution of common sessile organismal assemblages over the survey area. Finally, we propose a general workflow that can be adapted to different needs and aerial platforms, which can be used as blueprints for further integration of remote-sensing with in situ surveys to produce spatially-explicit biotope maps.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ching-Wei Chuang ◽  
Harry H. Cheng

Abstract In the modern world, building an autonomous multi-robot system is essential to coordinate and control robots to help humans because using several low-cost robots becomes more robust and efficient than using one expensive, powerful robot to execute tasks to achieve the overall goal of a mission. One research area, multi-robot task allocation (MRTA), becomes substantial in a multi-robot system. Assigning suitable tasks to suitable robots is crucial in coordination, which may directly influence the result of a mission. In the past few decades, although numerous researchers have addressed various algorithms or approaches to solve MRTA problems in different multi-robot systems, it is still difficult to overcome certain challenges, such as dynamic environments, changeable task information, miscellaneous robot abilities, the dynamic condition of a robot, or uncertainties from sensors or actuators. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to handle MRTA problems with Bayesian Networks (BNs) under these challenging circumstances. Our experiments exhibit that the proposed approach may effectively solve real problems in a search-and-rescue mission in centralized, decentralized, and distributed multi-robot systems with real, low-cost robots in dynamic environments. In the future, we will demonstrate that our approach is trainable and can be utilized in a large-scale, complicated environment. Researchers might be able to apply our approach to other applications to explore its extensibility.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aparna Das

: In recent years, photocatalytic technology has shown great potential as a low-cost, environmentally friendly, and sustainable technology. Compared to other light sources in photochemical reaction, LEDs have advantages in terms of efficiency, power, compatibility, and environmentally-friendly nature. This review highlights the most recent advances in LED-induced photochemical reactions. The effect of white and blue LEDs in reactions such as oxidation, reduction, cycloaddition, isomerization, and sensitization is discussed in detail. No other reviews have been published on the importance of white and blue LED sources in the photocatalysis of organic compounds. Considering all the facts, this review is highly significant and timely.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaqi Li ◽  
Lei Wei ◽  
Xianglin Zhang ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Haochen Wang ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTDetecting cancer signals in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) high-throughput sequencing data is emerging as a novel non-invasive cancer detection method. Due to the high cost of sequencing, it is crucial to make robust and precise prediction with low-depth cfDNA sequencing data. Here we propose a novel approach named DISMIR, which can provide ultrasensitive and robust cancer detection by integrating DNA sequence and methylation information in plasma cfDNA whole genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) data. DISMIR introduces a new feature termed as “switching region” to define cancer-specific differentially methylated regions, which can enrich the cancer-related signal at read-resolution. DISMIR applies a deep learning model to predict the source of every single read based on its DNA sequence and methylation state, and then predicts the risk that the plasma donor is suffering from cancer. DISMIR exhibited high accuracy and robustness on hepatocellular carcinoma detection by plasma cfDNA WGBS data even at ultra-low sequencing depths. Analysis showed that DISMIR tends to be insensitive to alterations of single CpG sites’ methylation states, which suggests DISMIR could resist to technical noise of WGBS. All these results showed DISMIR with the potential to be a precise and robust method for low-cost early cancer detection.


Transport ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Wilhelm ◽  
Joshua Siegel ◽  
Simon Mayer ◽  
Leyna Sadamori ◽  
Sohan Dsouza ◽  
...  

We present a novel approach to developing a vehicle communication platform consisting of a low-cost, open-source hardware for moving vehicle data to a secure server, a Web Application Programming Interface (API) for the provision of third-party services, and an intuitive user dashboard for access control and service distribution. The CloudThink infrastructure promotes the commoditization of vehicle telematics data by facilitating easier, flexible, and more secure access. It enables drivers to confidently share their vehicle information across multiple applications to improve the transportation experience for all stakeholders, as well as to potentially monetize their data. The foundations for an application ecosystem have been developed which, taken together with the fair value for driving data and low barriers to entry, will drive adoption of CloudThink as the standard method for projecting physical vehicles into the cloud. The application space initially consists of a few fundamental and important applications (vehicle tethering and remote diagnostics, road-safety monitoring, and fuel economy analysis) but as CloudThink begins to gain widespread adoption, the multiplexing of applications on the same data structure and set will accelerate its adoption.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Changju Kim ◽  
Bin Hu

Purpose Drawing on the resource-based view, this study aims to investigate the conditions under which small- and medium-sized retailers can improve competitive benefits through the lens of brand equity and strategies for competitive advantage in retail buying groups. Design/methodology/approach This study collected 241 samples from small- and medium-sized supermarket retailers who joined retail buying groups in Japan. Findings This study offers two key findings. First, the results indicate that a buying group’s brand equity partially mediates the relationship between member retailers’ strategic integration and their buying group benefits. Second, member retailers with a stronger differentiation orientation strengthen the positive impact of strategic integration on the buying group’s brand equity and buying group benefits. The moderating effects of low-cost orientation were not found to be significant. Practical implications To highlight the sustainable growth of small- and medium-sized retailers in retail buying groups, which are often ignored in the extant literature, this study offers practical guidance on the importance of a buying group’s brand equity. In addition, based on the findings, this paper postulates that member retailers pursuing differentiation orientation, rather than low-cost orientation, are more beneficial to retail buying groups in terms of relational outcomes and performance consequences. Originality/value By conceptualizing brand equity in retail buying groups, this study suggests a novel approach for retail management that investigates how a buying group’s brand equity is linked to strategic integration, strategies for competitive advantage and buying group benefits from the viewpoint of member retailers.


Author(s):  
Emran Md Amin ◽  
Nemai Chandra Karmakar

A novel approach for non-invasive radiometric Partial Discharge (PD) detection and localization of faulty power apparatuses in switchyards using Chipless Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based sensor is presented. The sensor integrates temperature sensing together with PD detection to assist on-line automated condition monitoring of high voltage equipment. The sensor is a multi-resonator based passive circuit with two antennas for reception of PD signal from the source and transmission of the captured PD to the base station. The sensor captures PD signal, processes it with designated spectral signatures as identification data bits, incorporates temperature information, and retransmits the data with PD signals to the base station. Analyzing the PD signal in the base station, both the PD levels and temperature of a particular faulty source can be retrieved. The prototype sensor was designed, fabricated, and tested for performance analysis. Results verify that the sensor is capable of identifying different sources at the events of PD. The proposed low cost passive RFID based PD sensor has a major advantage over existing condition monitoring techniques due to its scalability to large substations for mass deployment.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (24) ◽  
pp. 7093
Author(s):  
Jie Cao ◽  
Dong Zhou ◽  
Fanghua Zhang ◽  
Huan Cui ◽  
Yingqiang Zhang ◽  
...  

Computational ghost imaging (CGI), with the advantages of wide spectrum, low cost, and robustness to light scattering, has been widely used in many applications. The key issue is long time correlations for acceptable imaging quality. To overcome the issue, we propose parallel retina-like computational ghost imaging (PRGI) method to improve the performance of CGI. In the PRGI scheme, sampling and reconstruction are carried out by using the patterns which are divided into blocks from designed retina-like patterns. Then, the reconstructed image of each block is stitched into the entire image corresponding to the object. The simulations demonstrate that the proposed PRGI method can obtain a sharper image while greatly reducing the time cost than CGI based on compressive sensing (CSGI), parallel architecture (PGI), and retina-like structure (RGI), thereby improving the performance of CGI. The proposed method with reasonable structure design and variable selection may lead to improve performance for similar imaging methods and provide a novel technique for real-time imaging applications.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 1618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Moussa ◽  
Adel Moussa ◽  
Naser El-Sheimy

Recently, land vehicle navigation, and especially by the use of low-cost sensors, has been the object of a huge level of research interest. Consumer Portable Devices (CPDs) such as tablets and smartphones are being widely used by many consumers all over the world. CPDs contain sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometer, etc.) that can be used for many land vehicle applications such as navigation. This paper presents a novel approach for estimating steering wheel angles using CPD accelerometers by attaching CPDs to the steering wheel. The land vehicle change of heading is then computed from the estimated steering wheel angle. The calculated change of heading is used to update the navigation filter to aid the onboard Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) through the use of an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) in GNSS-denied environments. Four main factors that may affect the steering wheel angle accuracy are considered and modeled during steering angle estimations: static onboard IMU leveling, inclination angle of the steering wheel, vehicle acceleration, and vehicle inclination. In addition, these factors are assessed for their effects on the final result. Therefore, three methods are proposed for steering angle estimation: non-compensated, partially-compensated, and fully-compensated methods. A road experimental test was carried out using a Pixhawk (PX4) navigation system, iPad Air, and the OBD-II interface. The average Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the change of heading estimated by the proposed method was 0.033 rad/s. A navigation solution was estimated while changes of heading and forward velocity updates were used to aid the IMU during different GNSS signal outages. The estimated navigation solution is enhanced when applying the proposed updates to the navigation filter by 91% and 97% for 60 s and 120 s of GNSS signal outage, respectively, compared to the IMU standalone solution.


Proceedings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natiely Hernández-Sebastián ◽  
Francisco Javier Renero-Carrillo ◽  
Daniela Díaz-Alonso ◽  
Wilfrido Calleja-Arriaga

This work presents a novel design of a bidirectional Inductive Power Transfer (IPT) system capable of continuous monitoring of cardiac pressure. The proposed system results from a robust electromagnetic coupling between an external reading coil and an implanted two-level (3D approach) inductor array. In this design, each coupling module follows a 13.56 MHz operating frequency, where both passive RCL networks are near field tuned. Among our main results, we obtained a Power Transfer Efficiency (PTE) of 94.1% across the 3.5 cm-thick composed biological tissue whereas the implanted coil array is about 50% of its conventional size. Since the resulting PTE efficiency is 40% higher, based on the optimized L and Q parameters, this novel approach could be used in other medical applications. This IPT system design is based on a low-cost thin film fabrication technology.


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