scholarly journals Use of lactation models to develop a cow performance monitoring tool in smallholder dairy farms

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 427-437
Author(s):  
B. S. Kawonga ◽  
M. G. G. Chagunda ◽  
T. N. Gondwe ◽  
S. R. Gondwe ◽  
J. W. Banda

Abstract. Animal performance monitoring is of enormous value for management decision-making at the individual farmer level as well as for the industry and country as a whole. The aim of the study was to develop a performance monitoring tool for existing smallholder dairy production system based on lactation curves. For this purpose three equations of Wood (1967), critical exponential and double exponential were compared to evaluate their fitting and prediction ability. The full data set comprised of 11481 daily milk records for Holstein-Friesian in various stages of lactation. Data of 84 Holstein-Friesian cows was used to develop lactation curves. Within each lactation, only milk yield from calving until 330 days post-calving were used. The three models were evaluated using three criteria which were the amount of variation accounted for by the model (coefficient of determination), b-value and distribution of residuals. Based on these criteria, the double exponential equation was selected for developing the cow performance monitoring (CPM) curve. The CPM curve was developed based on the mean lactation curve with its confidence interval generating the upper and lower limits. The CPM curve had high prediction rates (sensitivity=93% and specificity=93%) hence efficient enough to guide routine management of dairy animals in smallholder farms.

2015 ◽  
Vol 08 (02) ◽  
pp. 1550014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kittisak Phetpan ◽  
Panmanas Sirisomboon

The purpose of this study was to develop a calibration model to evaluate the moisture content of tapioca starch using the near-infrared (NIR) spectral data in conjunction with partial least square (PLS) regression. The prediction ability was assessed using a separate prediction data set. Three groups of tapioca starch samples were used in this study: tapioca starch cake, dried tapioca starch and combined tapioca starch. The optimum model obtained from the baseline-offset spectra of dried tapioca starch samples at the outlet of the factory drying process provided a coefficient of determination (R2), standard error of prediction (SEP), bias and residual prediction deviation (RPD) of 0.974, 0.16%, -0.092% and 7.4, respectively. The NIR spectroscopy protocol developed in this study could be a rapid method for evaluation of the moisture content of the tapioca starch in factory laboratories. It indicated the possibility of real-time online monitoring and control of the tapioca starch cake feeder in the drying process. In addition, it was determined that there was a stronger influence of the NIR absorption of both water and starch on the prediction of moisture content of the model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruolan Zeng ◽  
Jiyong Deng ◽  
Limin Dang ◽  
Xinliang Yu

AbstractA three-descriptor quantitative structure–activity/toxicity relationship (QSAR/QSTR) model was developed for the skin permeability of a sufficiently large data set consisting of 274 compounds, by applying support vector machine (SVM) together with genetic algorithm. The optimal SVM model possesses the coefficient of determination R2 of 0.946 and root mean square (rms) error of 0.253 for the training set of 139 compounds; and a R2 of 0.872 and rms of 0.302 for the test set of 135 compounds. Compared with other models reported in the literature, our SVM model shows better statistical performance in a model that deals with more samples in the test set. Therefore, applying a SVM algorithm to develop a nonlinear QSAR model for skin permeability was achieved.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1225
Author(s):  
Woohyong Lee ◽  
Jiyoung Lee ◽  
Bo Kyung Park ◽  
R. Young Chul Kim

Geekbench is one of the most referenced cross-platform benchmarks in the mobile world. Most of its workloads are synthetic but some of them aim to simulate real-world behavior. In the mobile world, its microarchitectural behavior has been reported rarely since the hardware profiling features are limited to the public. As a popular mobile performance workload, it is hard to find Geekbench’s microarchitecture characteristics in mobile devices. In this paper, a thorough experimental study of Geekbench performance characterization is reported with detailed performance metrics. This study also identifies mobile system on chip (SoC) microarchitecture impacts, such as the cache subsystem, instruction-level parallelism, and branch performance. After the study, we could understand the bottleneck of workloads, especially in the cache sub-system. This means that the change of data set size directly impacts performance score significantly in some systems and will ruin the fairness of the CPU benchmark. In the experiment, Samsung’s Exynos9820-based platform was used as the tested device with Android Native Development Kit (NDK) built binaries. The Exynos9820 is a superscalar processor capable of dual issuing some instructions. To help performance analysis, we enable the capability to collect performance events with performance monitoring unit (PMU) registers. The PMU is a set of hardware performance counters which are built into microprocessors to store the counts of hardware-related activities. Throughout the experiment, functional and microarchitectural performance profiles were fully studied. This paper describes the details of the mobile performance studies above. In our experiment, the ARM DS5 tool was used for collecting runtime PMU profiles including OS-level performance data. After the comparative study is completed, users will understand more about the mobile architecture behavior, and this will help to evaluate which benchmark is preferable for fair performance comparison.


Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Jennifer Salau ◽  
Jan Henning Haas ◽  
Wolfgang Junge ◽  
Georg Thaller

Machine learning methods have become increasingly important in animal science, and the success of an automated application using machine learning often depends on the right choice of method for the respective problem and data set. The recognition of objects in 3D data is still a widely studied topic and especially challenging when it comes to the partition of objects into predefined segments. In this study, two machine learning approaches were utilized for the recognition of body parts of dairy cows from 3D point clouds, i.e., sets of data points in space. The low cost off-the-shelf depth sensor Microsoft Kinect V1 has been used in various studies related to dairy cows. The 3D data were gathered from a multi-Kinect recording unit which was designed to record Holstein Friesian cows from both sides in free walking from three different camera positions. For the determination of the body parts head, rump, back, legs and udder, five properties of the pixels in the depth maps (row index, column index, depth value, variance, mean curvature) were used as features in the training data set. For each camera positions, a k nearest neighbour classifier and a neural network were trained and compared afterwards. Both methods showed small Hamming losses (between 0.007 and 0.027 for k nearest neighbour (kNN) classification and between 0.045 and 0.079 for neural networks) and could be considered successful regarding the classification of pixel to body parts. However, the kNN classifier was superior, reaching overall accuracies 0.888 to 0.976 varying with the camera position. Precision and recall values associated with individual body parts ranged from 0.84 to 1 and from 0.83 to 1, respectively. Once trained, kNN classification is at runtime prone to higher costs in terms of computational time and memory compared to the neural networks. The cost vs. accuracy ratio for each methodology needs to be taken into account in the decision of which method should be implemented in the application.


Genetics ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 149 (3) ◽  
pp. 1547-1555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter Coppieters ◽  
Alexandre Kvasz ◽  
Frédéric Farnir ◽  
Juan-Jose Arranz ◽  
Bernard Grisart ◽  
...  

Abstract We describe the development of a multipoint nonparametric quantitative trait loci mapping method based on the Wilcoxon rank-sum test applicable to outbred half-sib pedigrees. The method has been evaluated on a simulated dataset and its efficiency compared with interval mapping by using regression. It was shown that the rank-based approach is slightly inferior to regression when the residual variance is homoscedastic normal; however, in three out of four other scenarios envisaged, i.e., residual variance heteroscedastic normal, homoscedastic skewed, and homoscedastic positively kurtosed, the latter outperforms the former one. Both methods were applied to a real data set analyzing the effect of bovine chromosome 6 on milk yield and composition by using a 125-cM map comprising 15 microsatellites and a granddaughter design counting 1158 Holstein-Friesian sires.


Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 708
Author(s):  
Moran Gershoni ◽  
Joel Ira Weller ◽  
Ephraim Ezra

Yearling weight gain in male and female Israeli Holstein calves, defined as 365 × ((weight − 35)/age at weight) + 35, was analyzed from 814,729 records on 368,255 animals from 740 herds recorded between 1994 and 2021. The variance components were calculated based on valid records from 2008 through 2017 for each sex separately and both sexes jointly by a single-trait individual animal model analysis, which accounted for repeat records on animals. The analysis model also included the square root, linear, and quadratic effects of age at weight. Heritability and repeatability were 0.35 and 0.71 in the analysis of both sexes and similar in the single sex analyses. The regression of yearling weight gain on birth date in the complete data set was −0.96 kg/year. The complete data set was also analyzed by the same model as the variance component analysis, including both sexes and accounting for differing variance components for each sex. The genetic trend for yearling weight gain, including both sexes, was 1.02 kg/year. Genetic evaluations for yearling weight gain was positively correlated with genetic evaluations for milk, fat, protein production, and cow survival but negatively correlated with female fertility. Yearling weight gain was also correlated with the direct effect on dystocia, and increased yearling weight gain resulted in greater frequency of dystocia. Of the 1749 Israeli Holstein bulls genotyped with reliabilities >50%, 1445 had genetic evaluations. As genotyping of these bulls was performed using several single nucleotide polymorhphism (SNP) chip platforms, we included only those markers that were genotyped in >90% of the tested cohort. A total of 40,498 SNPs were retained. More than 400 markers had significant effects after permutation and correction for multiple testing (pnominal < 1 × 10−8). Considering all SNPs simultaneously, 0.69 of variance among the sires’ transmitting ability was explained. There were 24 markers with coefficients of determination for yearling weight gain >0.04. One marker, BTA-75458-no-rs on chromosome 5, explained ≈6% of the variance among the estimated breeding values for yearling weight gain. ARS-BFGL-NGS-39379 had the fifth largest coefficient of determination in the current study and was also found to have a significant effect on weight at an age of 13–14 months in a previous study on Holsteins. Significant genomic effects on yearling weight gain were mainly associated with milk production quantitative trait loci, specifically with kappa casein metabolism.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 1099-1117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boyd A. Nicholds ◽  
John P.T. Mo

Purpose The research indicates there is a positive link between the improvement capability of an organisation and the intensity of effort applied to a business process improvement (BPI) project or initiative. While a degree of stochastic variation in applied effort to any particular improvement project may be expected there is a clear need to quantify the causal relationship, to assist management decision, and to enhance the chance of achieving and sustaining the expected improvement targets. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a method to obtain the function that estimates the range of applicable effort an organisation can expect to be able to apply based on their current improvement capability. The method used analysed published data as well as regression analysis of new data points obtained from completed process improvement projects. Findings The level of effort available to be applied to a process improvement project can be expressed as a regression function expressing the possible range of achievable BPI performance within 90 per cent confidence limits. Research limitations/implications The data set applied by this research is limited due to constraints during the research project. A more accurate function can be obtained with more industry data. Practical implications When the described function is combined with a separate non-linear function of performance gain vs effort a model of performance gain for a process improvement project as a function of organisational improvement capability is obtained. The probability of success in achieving performance targets may be estimated for a process improvement project. Originality/value The method developed in this research is novel and unique and has the potential to be applied to assessing an organisation’s capability to manage change.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 2477-2484 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Kathilankal ◽  
T. L. O'Halloran ◽  
A. Schmidt ◽  
C. V. Hanson ◽  
B. E. Law

Abstract. A semi-parametric PAR diffuse radiation model was developed using commonly measured climatic variables from 108 site-years of data from 17 AmeriFlux sites. The model has a logistic form and improves upon previous efforts using a larger data set and physically viable climate variables as predictors, including relative humidity, clearness index, surface albedo and solar elevation angle. Model performance was evaluated by comparison with a simple cubic polynomial model developed for the PAR spectral range. The logistic model outperformed the polynomial model with an improved coefficient of determination and slope relative to measured data (logistic: R2 = 0.76; slope = 0.76; cubic: R2 = 0.73; slope = 0.72), making this the most robust PAR-partitioning model for the United States currently available.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (11) ◽  
pp. 3015-3028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin E Alexander ◽  
Miguel G Cruz

We evaluated the predictive capacity of a rate of spread model for active crown fires (M.G. Cruz, M.E. Alexander, and R.H. Wakimoto. 2005. Can. J. For. Res. 35: 1626–1639) using a relatively large (n = 57) independent data set originating from wildfire observations undertaken in Canada and the United States. The assembled wildfire data were characterized by more severe burning conditions and fire behavior in terms of rate of spread and the degree of crowning activity than the data set used to parameterize the crown fire rate of spread model. The statistics used to evaluate model adequacy showed good fit and a level of uncertainty considered acceptable for a wide variety of fire management and fire research applications. The crown fire rate of spread model predicted 42% of the data with an error lower then ±25%. Mean absolute percent errors of 51% and 60% were obtained for Canadian and American wildfires, respectively. The characteristics of the data set did not allow us to determine where model performance was weaker and consequently identify its shortcomings and areas of future improvement. The level of uncertainty observed suggests that the model can be readily utilized in support of operational fire management decision making and for simulations in fire research studies.


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