Hasil untuk "Animal biochemistry"

Omar Al-Mahmood, M. Hassan, Dh Jwher

Foodborne illnesses persist as a substantial global public health threat, with Listeria monocytogenes being especially alarming due to its high fatality rate and ability to survive in food-processing settings. Both conventional (culture-based) and molecular techniques were employed in this study to investigate the incidence of environmental Listeria spp. in butcher shops in Mosul, Iraq. Eighty swab samples were collected from knives, hooks, cutting boards, and refrigerator inner surfaces across 20 butcher shops. Using 3M™ Petrifilm™ plates, 24% of the samples showed signs of presumptive Listeria spp. The API Listeria system showed different biochemical reactions during verification, and PCR amplification of the iap gene confirmed L. monocytogenes in 15% of the total samples. Knives and hooks had the highest contamination rate, with 37% and 26% of positive detections, respectively. Cutting boards had 21%, and refrigerator surfaces had 16%. The results showed how everyday utensils can lead to cross-contamination and highlighted L. monocytogenes as a continuing public health risk in stores that sell meat. The phylogenetic analysis showed that the Mosul isolate (PX204934) clustered closely with the Baghdad isolates (MN960572 and MN960575), indicating a common regional lineage. Improved sanitation, regular monitoring, and proper staff training are important to reduce environmental contamination and prevent L. monocytogenes from entering the food chain.

Vasiliy Kudryavtsev, Kirill Borodin, German Berezin et al.

Automated animal identification is a practical task for reuniting lost pets with their owners, yet current systems often struggle due to limited dataset scale and reliance on unimodal visual cues. This study introduces a multimodal verification framework that enhances visual features with semantic identity priors derived from synthetic textual descriptions. We constructed a massive training corpus of 1.9 million photographs covering 695,091~unique animals to support this investigation. Through systematic ablation studies, we identified SigLIP2-Giant and E5-Small-v2 as the optimal vision and text backbones. We further evaluated fusion strategies ranging from simple concatenation to adaptive gating to determine the best method for integrating these modalities. Our proposed approach utilizes a gated fusion mechanism and achieved a Top-1 accuracy of 84.28\% and an Equal Error Rate of 0.0422 on a comprehensive test protocol. These results represent an 11\% improvement over leading unimodal baselines and demonstrate that integrating synthesized semantic descriptions significantly refines decision boundaries in large-scale pet re-identification.

Xi Pan

Skeletal animations of large-scale characters are widely used in video games. However, with a large number of characters are involved, relying on the CPU to calculate skeletal animations leads to significant performance problems. There are two main types of traditional GPU- based solutions. One is referred to as pre-baked animation texture technology. The problem with this solution is that it can only play animations from the pre-baked animation. It is impossible to perform interpolation, blending and other calculations on the animation, which affects the quality of the animations. The other solution is referred to as dedicated processing with a simple skeleton hierarchy (the number of skeleton levels < 64). This option does not need to simulate and bake animation data in advance. However, performance is dramatically impaired when processing complex skeletons with too many skeleton levels (such as fluttering clothing, soft plants, dragon-like creatures, etc.). In order to solve these issues, we developed a parallel prefix tree update solution to optimize the animation update process of complex skeletons with too many levels, and combined traditional solutions to implement a GPU-based skeletal animation solution. This solution does not need to simulate and bake animation results. In addition, the performance is superior to traditional solutions for complex skeletons with too many levels. Our work can provide a new option for optimizing the performance of large-scale skeletal animation simulations, providing GPU-based skeletal animations a wider range of application scenarios.

Ruiqi Chen, Kaitong Cai, Yijia Fan et al.

Traditional animation production involves complex pipelines and significant manual labor cost. While recent video generation models such as Sora, Kling, and CogVideoX achieve impressive results on natural video synthesis, they exhibit notable limitations when applied to animation generation. Recent efforts, such as AniSora, demonstrate promising performance by fine-tuning image-to-video models for animation styles, yet analogous exploration in the text-to-video setting remains limited. In this work, we present PTTA, a pure text-to-animation framework for high-quality animation creation. We first construct a small-scale but high-quality paired dataset of animation videos and textual descriptions. Building upon the pretrained text-to-video model HunyuanVideo, we perform fine-tuning to adapt it to animation-style generation. Extensive visual evaluations across multiple dimensions show that the proposed approach consistently outperforms comparable baselines in animation video synthesis.

Shijun Shi, Jing Xu, Zhihang Li et al.

Recent advances in diffusion models have greatly improved pose-driven character animation. However, existing methods are limited to spatially aligned reference-pose pairs with matched skeletal structures. Handling reference-pose misalignment remains unsolved. To address this, we present One-to-All Animation, a unified framework for high-fidelity character animation and image pose transfer for references with arbitrary layouts. First, to handle spatially misaligned reference, we reformulate training as a self-supervised outpainting task that transforms diverse-layout reference into a unified occluded-input format. Second, to process partially visible reference, we design a reference extractor for comprehensive identity feature extraction. Further, we integrate hybrid reference fusion attention to handle varying resolutions and dynamic sequence lengths. Finally, from the perspective of generation quality, we introduce identity-robust pose control that decouples appearance from skeletal structure to mitigate pose overfitting, and a token replace strategy for coherent long-video generation. Extensive experiments show that our method outperforms existing approaches. The code and model are available at https://github.com/ssj9596/One-to-All-Animation.

Muhammad Wasif Gulzar, Muhammad Kasib Khan, Rimsha Gulzar et al.

The profitability as well as productivity of livestock farming operations are significantly impacted by the reproduction rate of farm animals. Applying several techniques, such as dietary, hormonal, and biological methods together with controlling reproductive diseases, is the foundation of optimal reproductive management. These tactics ought to adhere to ethical and practical standards in addition to providing adequate reproductive results. For instance, a number of biological parameters and an animal's physiological state are primarily related to the effectiveness of biological and hormonally based reproductive tactics. Additional aspects, such as digestion and absorption, may also play a role in the effectiveness of nutritional strategies. Concerns about the overuse of antibiotics or the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria further complicate the management of illnesses connected to reproduction.The use of nanotechnology in fields such as cattle farming systems could offer novel and creative ways to address problems with reproductive control. Nanotechnology can give several pharmaceuticals (including hormones and antibiotics), molecules from biology, and nutrients with new physicochemical qualities. These include enhanced bioavailability, increased cellular absorption, regulated sustained release, and decreased toxicity as compared to conventional versions. In this review, it will be demonstrated how nanotechnology has advanced the most popular reproductive management systems while taking into account the ongoing difficulties associated with each strategy.

Lin Zhang, Shentong Mo, Yijing Zhang et al.

Current visual generation methods can produce high quality videos guided by texts. However, effectively controlling object dynamics remains a challenge. This work explores audio as a cue to generate temporally synchronized image animations. We introduce Audio Synchronized Visual Animation (ASVA), a task animating a static image to demonstrate motion dynamics, temporally guided by audio clips across multiple classes. To this end, we present AVSync15, a dataset curated from VGGSound with videos featuring synchronized audio visual events across 15 categories. We also present a diffusion model, AVSyncD, capable of generating dynamic animations guided by audios. Extensive evaluations validate AVSync15 as a reliable benchmark for synchronized generation and demonstrate our models superior performance. We further explore AVSyncDs potential in a variety of audio synchronized generation tasks, from generating full videos without a base image to controlling object motions with various sounds. We hope our established benchmark can open new avenues for controllable visual generation. More videos on project webpage https://lzhangbj.github.io/projects/asva/asva.html.

Hasan Rezaei, Shahryar Kargar

Extended Abstract Introduction and objectives: The lower limit of critical temperature for a newborn calves is between 5 (from 3 weeks and later) to 15°C (up to 3 weeks). As the temperature declines below the calf's lower critical temperature, a calf requires more dietary energy supply to maintain body temperature. Hence, the main goal of this trial was to investigate milk replacer feeding level on nutrient intake, weight gain and skeletal growth in newborn Holstein calves under cold stress. Material and Methods: The number of twenty-four neonatal Holstein calves were randomly assigned to receive either restricted (4 L/d; RPN) or moderated (6 L/d; MPN) milk replacer plane of nutrition. Calves were weaned on d 61 and remained in the study until d 91. Milk replacer intake, starter feed intake, and ambient temperature were measured daily. Body weight was measured immediately before initiation of study and every 10 d thereafter. The average daily gain (g of BW gain/d) was computed as the difference between BW recorded at 10-d intervals divided by 10. Body frame size was measured immediately before initiation of study, at weaning, and at the end of the trial. Results: Nutrient intake originating from milk replacer were greater in MPN fed calves before weaning (P < 0.001); however, nutrient intake originating from starter feed and also total nutrient intake (except for crude fat and ME) were not affected by treatment groups before and after weaning. Average daily gain was greater in MPN fed calves (P = 0.04). Body weight gain before and after weaning and over the study period was greater in MPN (P = 0.01). Withers height (at the end of trial), body barrel (at weaning and at the end of trial), hip height (before weaning and overall period), and hip width (after weaning and overall period) gained more in MPN fed calves (P ≤ 0.05). Conclusion: Changing the feeding level of milk replacer did not affect starter feed intake before and after weaning but calves fed with medium level of milk replacer hand more weight and skeletal growth. In general, feeding a moderated level of milk replacer is recommended in newborn Holstein calves under cold stress conditions.

Barbara Gawronska-Kozak, Marta Kopcewicz, Sylwia Machcinska-Zielinska et al.

Although the impact of age, gender, and obesity on the skin wound healing process has been extensively studied, the data related to gender differences in aspects of skin scarring are limited. The present study performed on abdominal human intact and scar skin focused on determining gender differences in extracellular matrix (ECM) composition, dermal white adipose tissue (dWAT) accumulation, and Foxn1 expression as a part of the skin response to injury. Scar skin of men showed highly increased levels of <i>COLLAGEN 1A1</i>, <i>COLLAGEN 6A3</i>, and <i>ELASTIN</i> mRNA expression, the accumulation of thick collagen I-positive fibers, and the accumulation of α-SMA-positive cells in comparison to the scar skin of women. However, post-injured skin of women displayed an increase (in comparison to post-injured men’s skin) in collagen III accumulation in the scar area. On the contrary, women’s skin samples showed a tendency towards higher levels of adipogenic-related genes (<i>PPARγ</i>, <i>FABP4</i>, <i>LEPTIN</i>) than men, regardless of intact or scar skin. Intact skin of women showed six times higher levels of <i>LEPTIN</i> mRNA expression in comparison to men intact (<i>p</i> < 0.05), men post-injured (<i>p</i> < 0.05), or women post-injured scar (<i>p</i> < 0.05) skin. Higher levels of FOXN1 mRNA and protein were also detected in women than in men’s skin. In conclusion, the present data confirm and extend (dWAT layer) the data related to the presence of differences between men and women in the skin, particularly in scar tissues, which may contribute to the more effective and gender-tailored improvement of skin care interventions.

Michael Wink, Ben-Erik Van Wyk, Ipek Kurtboke et al.

In submitting conference proceedings to <i>Biology and Life Sciences Forum</i>, the volume editors of the proceedings certify to the publisher that all papers published in this volume have been subjected to peer review administered by the volume editors [...]

K. Asha Saigal, O. K. Sindhu, N. Madhavan Unny et al.

Feline hepatic lipidosis (FHL), characterised by an accumulation of triglycerides in the cytoplasm of hepatocytes, is a common and potentially fatal liver disorder in cats. Hepatic lipidosis in cats can develop due to any condition that will impair nutrient uptake and is often presented with non-specific clinical signs. The present study describes the diagnosis of FHL based on clinicobiochemical, ultrasonographic, and cytological changes and evaluates the diagnostic utility of blood beta-hydroxybutyric acid (βHBA) estimation in FHL. Anorexia, weight loss, lethargy, vomiting, dehydration, and jaundice were the common clinical findings in cats with hepatic lipidosis. Serum biochemical evaluation revealed elevations in alkaline phosphatase (ALP), triglycerides, glucose, and total bilirubin. Ultrasonography revealed an enlarged hyperechoic liver. Fine-needle aspiration cytology of the liver revealed mild to severe vacuolation in the cytoplasm of hepatocytes. Blood beta-hydroxybutyric acid levels were found higher in cats with hepatic lipidosis than in healthy cats and cats with other hepatic disorders. Therefore, βHBA estimation, being a quick and non-invasive method, could be considered as a diagnostic marker in the early diagnosis of FHL.

Beatriz Meza-Manzaneque, Marta Pérez-Díaz, Elena G. Biosca et al.

Unsustainable agricultural practices eventually have an impact on soil conditions and microbiological diversity. To regain balance, ecologically sound strategies can be an alternative. In this work, a collection of bacteria was isolated from agricultural soil and characterized to evaluate their capacity for phosphorus and iron biofertilization, exoenzyme production, and biocontrol of several phytopathogenic fungi. Bacterial identification pointed out to a majority of <i>Bacillus</i> spp. along with other several minority genera. Isolates globally displayed a high proportion of the biological activities tested, especially concerning production of hydrolytic enzymes. Inhibition on fungal growth was variable among the soil bacterial isolates by production of diffusible compounds and/or VOCs (volatile organic compounds). Evidence from this work provides promise for the application of soil bacteria to improve agricultural soil management and crop production.

Carla Binucci, Henry Förster, Julia Katheder et al.

Partial edge drawings (PED) of graphs avoid edge crossings by subdividing each edge into three parts and representing only its stubs, i.e., the parts incident to the end-nodes. The morphing edge drawing model (MED) extends the PED drawing style by animations that smoothly morph each edge between its representation as stubs and the one as a fully drawn segment while avoiding new crossings. Participants of a previous study on MED (Misue and Akasaka, GD19) reported eye straining caused by the animation. We conducted a user study to evaluate how this effect is influenced by varying animation speed and animation dynamic by considering an easing technique that is commonly used in web design. Our results provide indications that the easing technique may help users in executing topology-based tasks accurately. The participants also expressed appreciation for the easing and a preference for a slow animation speed.

Liwenhan Xie, Xinhuan Shu, Jeon Cheol Su et al.

We propose emordle, a conceptual design that animates wordles (compact word clouds) to deliver their emotional context to the audiences. To inform the design, we first reviewed online examples of animated texts and animated wordles, and summarized strategies for injecting emotion into the animations. We introduced a composite approach that extends an existing animation scheme for one word to multiple words in a wordle with two global factors: the randomness of text animation (entropy) and the animation speed (speed). To create an emordle, general users can choose one predefined animated scheme that matches the intended emotion class and fine-tune the emotion intensity with the two parameters. We designed proof-of-concept emordle examples for four basic emotion classes, namely happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. We conducted two controlled crowdsourcing studies to evaluate our approach. The first study confirmed that people generally agreed on the conveyed emotions from well-crafted animations, and the second one demonstrated that our identified factors helped fine-tune the delivered emotion extent. We also invited general users to create emordles on their own based on our proposed framework. Through this user study, we confirmed the effectiveness of the approach. We concluded with implications for future research opportunities of supporting emotion expression in visualizations.

Yunlong Song, Davide Scaramuzza

Trajectory visualization and animation play critical roles in robotics research. However, existing data visualization and animation tools often lack flexibility, scalability, and versatility, resulting in limited capability to fully explore and analyze flight data. To address this limitation, we introduce Flymation, a new flight trajectory visualization and animation tool. Built on the Unity3D engine, Flymation is an intuitive and interactive tool that allows users to visualize and analyze flight data in real time. Users can import data from various sources, including flight simulators and real-world data, and create customized visualizations with high-quality rendering. With Flymation, users can choose between trajectory snapshot and animation; both provide valuable insights into the behavior of the underlying autonomous system. Flymation represents an exciting step toward visualizing and interacting with large-scale data in robotics research.

Trung-Nghia Le, Tam V. Nguyen, Minh-Quan Le et al.

The retrieval of 3D objects has gained significant importance in recent years due to its broad range of applications in computer vision, computer graphics, virtual reality, and augmented reality. However, the retrieval of 3D objects presents significant challenges due to the intricate nature of 3D models, which can vary in shape, size, and texture, and have numerous polygons and vertices. To this end, we introduce a novel SHREC challenge track that focuses on retrieving relevant 3D animal models from a dataset using sketch queries and expedites accessing 3D models through available sketches. Furthermore, a new dataset named ANIMAR was constructed in this study, comprising a collection of 711 unique 3D animal models and 140 corresponding sketch queries. Our contest requires participants to retrieve 3D models based on complex and detailed sketches. We receive satisfactory results from eight teams and 204 runs. Although further improvement is necessary, the proposed task has the potential to incentivize additional research in the domain of 3D object retrieval, potentially yielding benefits for a wide range of applications. We also provide insights into potential areas of future research, such as improving techniques for feature extraction and matching and creating more diverse datasets to evaluate retrieval performance. https://aichallenge.hcmus.edu.vn/sketchanimar

Shaokai Ye, Jessy Lauer, Mu Zhou et al.

The process of quantifying and analyzing animal behavior involves translating the naturally occurring descriptive language of their actions into machine-readable code. Yet, codifying behavior analysis is often challenging without deep understanding of animal behavior and technical machine learning knowledge. To limit this gap, we introduce AmadeusGPT: a natural language interface that turns natural language descriptions of behaviors into machine-executable code. Large-language models (LLMs) such as GPT3.5 and GPT4 allow for interactive language-based queries that are potentially well suited for making interactive behavior analysis. However, the comprehension capability of these LLMs is limited by the context window size, which prevents it from remembering distant conversations. To overcome the context window limitation, we implement a novel dual-memory mechanism to allow communication between short-term and long-term memory using symbols as context pointers for retrieval and saving. Concretely, users directly use language-based definitions of behavior and our augmented GPT develops code based on the core AmadeusGPT API, which contains machine learning, computer vision, spatio-temporal reasoning, and visualization modules. Users then can interactively refine results, and seamlessly add new behavioral modules as needed. We benchmark AmadeusGPT and show we can produce state-of-the-art performance on the MABE 2022 behavior challenge tasks. Note, an end-user would not need to write any code to achieve this. Thus, collectively AmadeusGPT presents a novel way to merge deep biological knowledge, large-language models, and core computer vision modules into a more naturally intelligent system. Code and demos can be found at: https://github.com/AdaptiveMotorControlLab/AmadeusGPT.

Kushal Grakh, Dinesh Mittal, Tarun Kumar et al.

The indiscriminate usage and overuse of antimicrobials in pets or companion animals are underlying causes of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Despite the multi-faceted global challenge presented by antimicrobial resistance, very few studies have appraised pet practitioners’ factors, such as written policy on antimicrobials, dose rate prescribed, use of critically important antimicrobials, and antimicrobial prescription in clean surgical procedures, which can contribute to AMR. In the present study, an online cross-sectional survey among randomly selected pet practitioners (<i>n</i> = 104) of various Indian provinces and union territories was conducted using a questionnaire comprising 33 closed-ended questions on different parameters, viz., the dosage regimen and level of compliance towards guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO), other relevant veterinary associations, and their opinion while prescribing antimicrobials. Almost every practitioner of the 104 respondents had revealed the difficulties with owner compliance; i.e., incomplete course of the antibiotics, inappropriate follow-ups, and improper care of the sick animals. The majority of practitioners (95%) reported self-prescription of antimicrobials by the owner before presenting the pet(s) to the veterinary clinic, whereas more than half of the respondents (64%) revealed unavailability of antibiogram facilities. Furthermore, a large number (76%) of practitioners stated empirical treatment based on their experience as the main criteria for antimicrobial choice in the absence of timely results from the laboratory. Although non-necessitated use of antimicrobials in clean surgical procedures has been claimed, surprisingly, the majority of pet practitioners (97%) reported their use to reduce the post-operative complications. The use of the highest priority, critically important antimicrobials (HPCIA) listed by the WHO for humans, particularly quinolones and third-generation cephalosporin, also has been reported for different infections. The treatment durations were nearly as per the recommended guidelines issued by the Danish Small Animal Veterinary Association (DSAVA) for different ailments. Analysis using chi-square tests exhibited a significant correlation between less experienced veterinarians (less than 5 years) and prescription of antimicrobials restricted for critically important infections in human medicine. However, there seems to be no association between the experience of the practitioner and the further studied parameters, namely, antimicrobial regimen prescription, weighing the animals before prescription, dose rate calculation, and antimicrobial selection and use after clean surgical operations. The findings suggest periodic awareness campaigns among practitioners regarding the implementation of the official guidelines, the need for systematic surveillance of AMR, awareness among pet owners about antimicrobial resistance, and the importance of rational use of antimicrobials on their pets.

Allert I. Bijleveld, Frank van Maarseveen, Bas Denissen et al.

Abstract Tracking animal movement is important for understanding how animals interact with their (changing) environment, and crucial for predicting and explaining how animals are affected by anthropogenic activities. The Wadden Sea is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a region of global importance for millions of shorebirds. Due to climate change and anthropogenic activity, understanding and predicting movement and space-use in areas like the Wadden Sea is increasingly important. Monitoring and predicting animal movement, however, requires high-resolution tracking of many individuals. While high-resolution tracking has been made possible through GPS, trade-offs between tag weight and battery life limit its use to larger species. Here, we introduce WATLAS (the Wadden Sea deployment of the ATLAS tracking system) capable of monitoring the movements of hundreds of (small) birds simultaneously in the Dutch Wadden Sea. WATLAS employs an array of receiver stations that can detect and localize small, low-cost tags at fine spatial (metres) and temporal resolution (seconds). From 2017 to 2021, we tracked red knots, sanderlings, bar-tailed godwits, and common terns. We use parts of these data to give four use-cases revealing its performance and demonstrating how WATLAS can be used to study numerous aspects of animal behaviour, such as, space-use (both intra- and inter-specific), among-individual variation, and social networks across levels of organization: from individuals, to species, to populations, and even communities. After describing the WATLAS system, we first illustrate space-use of red knots across the study area and how the tidal environment affects their movement. Secondly, we show large among-individual differences in distances travelled per day, and thirdly illustrate how high-throughput WATLAS data allows calculating a proximity-based social network. Finally, we demonstrate that using WATLAS to monitor multiple species can reveal differential space use. For example, despite sanderlings and red knots roosting together, they foraged in different areas of the mudflats. The high-resolution tracking data collected by WATLAS offers many possibilities for research into the drivers of bird movement in the Wadden Sea. WATLAS could provide a tool for impact assessment, and thus aid nature conservation and management of the globally important Wadden Sea ecosystem.

Abbas Husain, Jeremiah Ryser, Julia Pakela et al.

Introduction: We developed and evaluated a method for dose calibration and monitoring under conventional and ultra-high dose rates for small animal experiments with small-field proton beams using a Faraday cup. Methods: We determined a relationship between dose and optical density (OD) of EBT-XD Gafchromic film using scanned 10x10 cm2 proton pencil beams delivered at clinical dose rates; the dose was measured with an Advanced Markus chamber. On a small animal proton irradiation platform, double-scattered pencil beams with 5 or 8 mm diameter brass collimation at conventional and ultra-high dose rates were delivered to the EBT-XD films. The proton fluence charges were collected by a Faraday cup placed downstream from the film. The average of the irradiated film ODs was related to the Faraday cup charges. A conversion from the Faraday cup charge to the average dose of the small-field proton beam was then obtained. Results: The relationship between the small-field average profile dose and Faraday cup charge was established for 10 and 15 Gy mice FLASH experiments. The film OD was found to be independent of dose rate. At small-animal treatments, the Faraday cup readings were conveniently used to QA and monitor the delivered dose and dose rates to the mice under conventional and ultra-high dose rates. Conclusion: The dose calibration and monitoring method with Faraday cup for small animal proton FLASH experiments is time-efficient and cost-effective and can be used for irradiations of various small field sizes. The same approach can also be adopted for clinical proton dosimetry for small-field irradiations.