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An animal scientist with Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands has created an artificial-intelligence-based application that can gauge the emotional state of farm animals based on photographs taken with a smartphone. In his paper uploaded to the bioRxiv preprint server, Suresh Neethirajan describes his app and how well it worked when tested.

Prior research and anecdotal evidence has shown that farm animals are more productive when they are not living under stressful conditions. This has led to changes in farming practices, such as shielding cows’ eyes from the spike that is used to kill them prior to slaughter to prevent stress hormones from entering the meat. More recent research has suggested that it may not be enough to shield farm animals from stressful situations—adapting their environment to promote peacefulness or even playfulness can produce desired results, as well. Happy cows or goats, for example, are likely to produce more milk than those that are bored. But as Neethirajan notes, the emotional state of an animal can be quite subjective, leading to incorrect conclusions. To address this problem, he adapted human face recognition software for use in detecting emotions in cows and pigs.

The system is called WUR Wolf and is based on several pieces of technology: the YOLO Object Detection System, the YOLOv4 that works with a convolution neural network and Faster R-CNN, which also allows for detection of objects, but does so with different feature sets. For training, he used the Nvidia GeForece GTX 1080 Ti GRP running on a CUDA 9.0 computer. The data consisted of thousands of images of cows and pigs taken with a smartphone from six farms located in several countries with associated classification labels indicating which physical features could be associated with which mood—raised ears on a cow, for example, generally indicate the animal is excited.

Toyota finally unveils its first EV, an all electric SUV called bZ4x but it also responded to pressure of some investors to cut out the anti-EV lobbying. InsideEVs and Forbes contributor Tom Moloughney will be here to weigh in, plus other EV news of the week.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdX0BJNon1c6GfOdeS3pyDw.

Continue reading “Toyota Shows Off Its First Electric Car | EV News” »

No word on price yet.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is about to start selling seats on its New Shepard spacecraft, which is designed to people on brief trips to suborbital space.

Electric vehicles by 2030 – Future Timeline. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has today released its Global Electric Vehicle Outlook 2021. The report shows that, despite the pandemic, growth in electric vehicle sales has remained strong and will likely continue to boom in the coming decade.

GPS is a world-changing technology. It’s also incredibly fragile, easily spoofable, and consistently hackable. That’s why the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are looking to the stars for a navigational Plan B.

Innovative, Scientific, And Empathic Solutions For Revitalizing Camden, NJ, USA — Jennifer A. Huse, Mayoral Candidate, 2021

Jennifer Huse is a candidate for Mayor of Camden, New Jersey, USA, running in the upcoming 2021 election, as an independent.

Continue reading “Jennifer Huse — Innovative Scientific Solutions For Revitalizing Camden, NJ, USA — Mayoral Candidate” »

“After hopefully demonstrating efficacy through the pilot study, Conboy says that plans are underway for a 200–300 person, placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial to prove the use of the plasma dilution as a technology that innovatively treats co-morbidities of aging.”

This could be the first bridge.

UC Berkeley’s Irina Conboy talks parabiosis, plasma dilution, and why young blood may not hold the all answers.

It took many months and tens of thousands of volunteers to gather the data showing that the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.

But what if new vaccines are needed to deal with dangerous variants of the coronavirus? Waiting months is not an attractive option.

So researchers are trying to come up with tests that can be performed using a blood sample that will determine not only whether a vaccine will work but also for how long.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=X6o94vNrJ54

The U. S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and American Semiconductor have combined traditional manufacturing techniques with 3D printed circuitry to produce a flexible Silicon-on-polymer chip.

Besides its material qualities, the new chip has a memory more than 7000 times larger than any comparable commercially available devices, making it suitable as a micro-controller to be integrated into other objects.