scholarly journals Assessing the Preference of Rabbit Does to Social Contact or Seclusion: Results of Different Investigations

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Dal Bosco ◽  
Alice Cartoni Mancinelli ◽  
Steffen Hoy ◽  
Melania Martino ◽  
Simona Mattioli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Contact ◽  
Aggressive Response ◽  
Good Combination ◽  
The Other ◽  
Housing System ◽  
Similar Amount ◽  
Group Housing ◽  
Nest Boxes ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Recognition Systems

The aim of this study was to verify the motivation of rabbit does to social contact or seclusion. The results of two different research activities assessed in Italy (experiment 1) and Germany (experiment 2) through the use of motivational cages are reported. In experiment 1, only the average time of occupation of the group or seclusion zone was recorded of four nulliparous does, while, in experiment 2, the group-housing system provided space for does with kits and consisted of four single areas (nest boxes with individual electronic nest box recognition systems). Experiment 1 showed that does spent a similar amount of time in seclusion or in group (49.61% vs 50.39%, respectively). On the contrary, in experiment 2, does with kits appeared to prefer spending time alone (71.90%) rather than in groups. The presence of kits probably stimulates a hierarchical and aggressive response of the dominant does, with the low-ranking does staying secluded to avoid violent interactions. In fact, in each reproductive cycle, one doe did stay in the group area whereas the other three does used this area in different percentages of time. Further researches are needed to find a good combination of the cage with the does’ physiological phases.

scholarly journals Alternative and enriched housing systems for breeding does: a review

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZS. Szendrő ◽  
J.I. McNitt ◽  
ZS. Matics ◽  
A. Mikó ◽  
ZS. Gerencsér
Keyword(s):  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Housing System ◽  
Group Housing ◽  
Semi Group ◽  
Alternative Housing ◽  
Housing Systems ◽  
Dutch Housing ◽  
Positive Results

The main results and observations on group and individually housed rabbit does were reviewed by Szendrő and McNitt in 2012, but in recent years several new papers in this field have been published. This provides a new opportunity to summarise the current knowledge on alternative housing systems for breeding does. In Switzerland, rabbit does are generally housed in group systems. The recently legislated Belgian and Dutch housing systems will be converted step by step into group housing systems. Recent research demonstrated that with semi-group housing systems much better performance levels are possible than with the Swiss group housing system. However, solutions to eliminate aggression, stress and injuries which are common among rabbit does in group housing systems have yet to be found. Some authors are of the opinion that individual cages are too small and allow limited possibilities for movement and social contact. Positive results were seen when platforms were inserted into the cages and the possibility for movement increased. The does and their kits could jump up and down using the platforms. Using footrests, the incidence of sore hocks declined. Several environmental enrichments which increase the well-being of rabbit does can also be used. These enriched cages (equipped with platforms, footrests, gnawing sticks, etc.) are fully in line with animal welfare requirements. Increasing the size of cages and enriching them increases the production cost and the meat will be more expensive.

Items’ Cross-Category Associations as a Confounding Factor in the Implicit Association Test

2001 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie C. Steffens ◽  
Inga Plewe
Keyword(s):  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Confounding Factor ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Association Test ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reaction Time Difference ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Degree Of Association

Abstract. The introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998 ) has stimulated numerous research activities. The IAT is supposed to measure the degree of association between concepts. Instances have to be assigned to these concepts by pressing appropriate keys as quickly as possible. The reaction time difference between certain conditions, termed the IAT effect, is used as an indicator of the degree of the concepts’ association. We tested the hypothesis that the degree of association between one concept (or category) and the instances of the other presented concept also influences reaction times. In our experiment, the instances in the target categories, male and female names, were kept constant. The adjectives in the evaluative categories were manipulated: Either the pleasant adjectives were female-associated and the unpleasant adjectives were male-associated, or vice versa. These stereotypic associations were indeed found to exert a substantial influence on the size of the IAT effect. This finding casts doubt on the assumption that the IAT effect may be interpreted as a pure measure of the degree of association between concepts.

scholarly journals Development of Speech Recognition Systems in Emergency Call Centers

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 634
Author(s):  
Alakbar Valizada ◽  
Natavan Akhundova ◽  
Samir Rustamov
Keyword(s):  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Markov Model ◽  
Hidden Markov ◽  
Call Centers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language Models ◽  
Emergency Call ◽  
Acoustic Model ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Recognition Systems

In this paper, various methodologies of acoustic and language models, as well as labeling methods for automatic speech recognition for spoken dialogues in emergency call centers were investigated and comparatively analyzed. Because of the fact that dialogue speech in call centers has specific context and noisy, emotional environments, available speech recognition systems show poor performance. Therefore, in order to accurately recognize dialogue speeches, the main modules of speech recognition systems—language models and acoustic training methodologies—as well as symmetric data labeling approaches have been investigated and analyzed. To find an effective acoustic model for dialogue data, different types of Gaussian Mixture Model/Hidden Markov Model (GMM/HMM) and Deep Neural Network/Hidden Markov Model (DNN/HMM) methodologies were trained and compared. Additionally, effective language models for dialogue systems were defined based on extrinsic and intrinsic methods. Lastly, our suggested data labeling approaches with spelling correction are compared with common labeling methods resulting in outperforming the other methods with a notable percentage. Based on the results of the experiments, we determined that DNN/HMM for an acoustic model, trigram with Kneser–Ney discounting for a language model and using spelling correction before training data for a labeling method are effective configurations for dialogue speech recognition in emergency call centers. It should be noted that this research was conducted with two different types of datasets collected from emergency calls: the Dialogue dataset (27 h), which encapsulates call agents’ speech, and the Summary dataset (53 h), which contains voiced summaries of those dialogues describing emergency cases. Even though the speech taken from the emergency call center is in the Azerbaijani language, which belongs to the Turkic group of languages, our approaches are not tightly connected to specific language features. Hence, it is anticipated that suggested approaches can be applied to the other languages of the same group.

scholarly journals Evaluation of Automatic Speech Recognition Systems

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus Xavier Sampaio ◽  
Regis Pires Magalhães ◽  
Ticiana Linhares Coelho da Silva ◽  
Lívia Almada Cruz ◽  
Davi Romero de Vasconcelos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Automatic Speech Recognition ◽  
Smart Homes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Learning Models ◽  
Recognition Systems ◽  
Microsoft Azure

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is an essential task for many applications like automatic caption generation for videos, voice search, voice commands for smart homes, and chatbots. Due to the increasing popularity of these applications and the advances in deep learning models for transcribing speech into text, this work aims to evaluate the performance of commercial solutions for ASR that use deep learning models, such as Facebook Wit.ai, Microsoft Azure Speech, and Google Cloud Speech-to-Text. The results demonstrate that the evaluated solutions slightly differ. However, Microsoft Azure Speech outperformed the other analyzed APIs.

Cortisol levels and health indicators of sows and their piglets living in a group-housing and a single-housing system

2018 ◽  
Vol 216 ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.G.E. Grimberg-Henrici ◽  
K. Büttner ◽  
R.Y. Ladewig ◽  
O. Burfeind ◽  
J. Krieter
Keyword(s):  
Health Indicators ◽  
Housing System ◽  
Group Housing ◽  
Cortisol Levels

scholarly journals Behaviour and skin injuries of sows kept in a novel group housing system during lactation

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 749-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilith Schrey ◽  
Nicole Kemper ◽  
Michaela Fels
Keyword(s):  
Housing System ◽  
Group Housing ◽  
Skin Injuries

scholarly journals Evolutionarily stable investments in recognition systems explain patterns of discrimination failure and success

2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1802) ◽  
pp. 20190465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Sheehan ◽  
H. Kern Reeve
Keyword(s):  
Signal Detection Theory ◽  
Social Insect ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Theory Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Brood Parasites ◽  
Recognition Systems ◽  
Evolving Models ◽  
Evolutionarily Stable

Many animals are able to perform recognition feats that astound us—such as a rodent recognizing kin it has never met. Yet in other contexts, animals appear clueless as when reed warblers rear cuckoo chicks that bear no resemblance to their own species. Failures of recognition when it would seem adaptive have been especially puzzling. Here, we present a simple tug-of-war game theory model examining how individuals should optimally invest in affecting the accuracy of discrimination between desirable and undesirable recipients. In the game, discriminating individuals (operators) and desirable and undesirable recipients (targets and mimics, respectively) can all invest effort into their own preferred outcome. We demonstrate that stable inaccurate recognition will arise when undesirable recipients have large fitness gains from inaccurate recognition relative to the pay-offs that the other two parties receive from accurate recognition. The probability of accurate recognition is often determined by just the relative pay-offs to the desirable and undesirable recipients, rather than to the discriminator. Our results provide a new lens on long-standing puzzles including a lack of nepotism in social insect colonies, tolerance of brood parasites and male birds caring for extra-pair young in their nests, which our model suggests should often lack accurate discrimination. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Signal detection theory in recognition systems: from evolving models to experimental tests'.

scholarly journals Refractive vs Reflective Correctors

1984 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 549-567
Author(s):  
E.H. Richardson ◽  
C.L. Morbey
Keyword(s):  
Good Combination ◽  
The Other ◽  
Stray Light ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Optical Surfaces ◽  
Other Hand

SummaryImproved designs of refractive correctors produce excellent images with fast telescopes such as those with an F/1.5 prime focus and F/3.5 secondary focus. The fields are flat and there is compensation for the chromatic effect caused by windows. Disadvantages of such correctors are that stray light is produced at the optical surfaces, the elements must be supported at their edges, prerequisite high quality glass is available in only limited sizes, and all wavelengths are not transmitted.Reflective correctors, on the other hand, can produce diffraction limited images at all wavelengths and the mirrors can be supported across their backs as well as at their edges. Disadvantages are that the images are degraded by any substantial window (such as a detector faceplate), there is more central obstruction, and the correctors are sometimes very large and heavy.Except, perhaps, for a specialized telescope, such as one devoted to multi-object slit spectroscopy using fibres, the refractive corrector is preferable at fast foci.A good combination is a Ritchey-Chretien (R-C) telescope with refractive correctors at the fast prime and secondary foci, and a reflective corrector-magnifier for the slow infrared focus.

scholarly journals Prevalence and risk factors of claw lesions and lameness in pregnant sows in two types of group housing

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (No. 3) ◽  
pp. 101-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Pluym ◽  
A. Van Nuffel ◽  
J. Dewulf ◽  
A. Cools ◽  
F. Vangroenweghe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Economic Loss ◽  
Housing System ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Group Housing ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Housing Systems ◽  
Individual Housing ◽  
Claw Lesions ◽  
Locomotor Disorders

Claw lesions and lameness in sows are an important welfare concern as well as a cause of considerable economic loss. These problems are more common in group housing than in individual housing systems. Given that group housing for gestating sows will become mandatory in the EU from 2013 onwards, the aim of the present study was: (1) to determine the prevalence of lameness and claw lesions in sows housed in groups during gestation, and (2) to analyze whether the type of group housing system and sow-related factors were associated with lameness and claw lesions. Eight Belgian pig herds with group housing of gestating sows were selected. Four herds used pens with electronic sow feeders (dynamic groups), the other four herds kept their sows in free access stalls (static groups). All sows were visually examined for lameness at the end of gestation. Claw lesions were scored after parturition. Information about feed, housing conditions and culling (strategy) was collected, as well as information about parity and breed. Of all 421 assessed sows, on average 9.7% (min. 2.4%, max. 23.1%) were lame. Almost 99% of the sows had one or more claw lesion with overgrowth of heel horn (93%) and cracks in the wall (52%) as the most prevalent lesions. Neither for lameness nor claw lesions was significant differences found between the two types of group housing. Lameness decreased while the mean claw lesion score increased with ageing. These results suggest that lameness can be caused by reasons other than claw lesions, especially in older sows. Although no difference was found between the two types of group housing, a huge variation between herds was observed. Moreover, as the prevalence of lameness and claw lesions in group housing is quite high and group housing will become mandatory in 2013, further investigation on risk factors of locomotor disorders in sows is necessary.

The performance of gilts in a new group housing system: endocrinological and immunological functions1

1992 ◽  
Vol 70 (9) ◽  
pp. 2714-2721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eberhard von Borell ◽  
James R. Morris ◽  
J. Frank Hurnik ◽  
Bonnie A. Mallard ◽  
Mary M. Buhr
Keyword(s):  
Housing System ◽  
Group Housing
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document