#Whats the role robotics could play in future food production? A team of computer scientists from the University of Lincoln UK is co-organising an international workshop on recent advances in agricultural robotics.
Academics from the Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS) will be attending the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-13) from 15th to 19th july 2014.
Recent results confirm that robots machines and systems are rapidly achieving intelligence and autonomy mastering more and more capabilities such as mobility and manipulation sensing and perception reasoning and decision making.
It's like a boxer getting hit by a flurry of punches says lead author William Laurance of James Cook University in Cairns Australia.
Co-author Andrew Krockenberger from James Cook University in Cairns in far northeast Australia says heat wave events can hit koala populations hard.
Ecological history--on both land and water--is no longer the province of the lone wolf no matter how talented and dedicated Williams says.
Stretching from Alaska to Newfoundland the boreal forest--the circumpolar woods that circle the upper Northern hemisphere--provides habitat for up to 3 billion nesting and migratory birds according to the report Boreal Birds Need Half:
Anyone familiar with the huge variety of dog breeds all of which belong to the same subspecies of the gray wolf has some appreciation of the power of selective breeding to alter appearance and behavior.
and dogs were real outliers in the animal domestication process because they were attracted to human settlements for food
and dogs than we thought. Once animals such as donkeys or cattle were caught Marshall said the changes humans sought to make were pretty minimal.
and livestock we know today--dogs chickens horses cows--are probably radically different from the ones our great-great-grandparents knew he added. â#They are subjected to the whim of human fancy
and dogs and Darwin then uses artificial selection as a springboard to introduce the theory of natural selection.
#Wolves at the door: Study finds recent wolf-dog hybridization in Caucasus regiondog owners in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia might want to consider penning up their dogs more often:
hybridization of wolves with shepherd dogs might be more common and more recent than previously thought according to a recently published study in the Journal of Heredity.
Dr. Natia Kopaliani Dr. David Tarkhnishvili and colleagues from the Institute of Ecology at Ilia State university in Georgia and from the Tbilisi Zoo in Georgia used a range of genetic techniques to extract
and examine DNA taken from wolf and dog fur samples as well as wolf scat and blood samples.
They found recent hybrid ancestry in about ten percent of the dogs and wolves sampled. About two to three percent of the sampled wolves
and dogs were identified as first-generation hybrids. This included hybridization between wolves and the shepherd dogs used to guard sheep from wolf attacks.
The study was undertaken as part of Dr. Kopaliani's work exploring human-wolf conflict in Georgia
. Since the 2000s the frequency of wolf depredation on cattle has increased in Georgia and there were several reports of attacks on humans.
Wolves were sighted even in densely populated areas she explained. Reports suggested that unlike wild wolves wolf-dog hybrids might lack fear of humans
so we wanted to examine the ancestry of wolves near human settlements to determine if they could be of hybrid origin with free-ranging dogs such as shepherds she added.
The research team examined maternally-inherited DNA (MITOCHONDRIAL DNA) and microsatellite markers to study hybridization rates.
Microsatellite markers mutate easily as they do not have any discernible purpose in the genome
and are highly variable even within a single population. For these reasons they are used often to study hybridization.
We expected to identify some individuals with hybrid ancestry but it was quite surprising that recent hybrid ancestry was found in every tenth wolf
and every tenth shepherd dog said study co-author Tarkhnishvili. Two dogs out of the 60 or so we studied were inferred to be first generation hybrids he added.
The study also found that about a third of the dogs sampled shared relatively recent maternal ancestry with local wolves not with wolves domesticated in the Far east where most experts believe dogs were domesticated first.
The research team used several alternate methods to confirm their results and came to the same conclusions with each approach.
The shepherd dogs studied are breed a local used to guard livestock. Ironically their sole function is to protect sheep from wolves
or thieves Kopaliani explained. The shepherd dogs are free-ranging largely outside the tight control of their human masters.
They guard the herds from wolves which are common in the areas where they are used
but it appears that they are also consorting with the enemy. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Genetic Association.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Genetically modified tobacco plants as an alternative for producing bioethanoltobacco a high-density crop which is mown several times throughout its cycle can produce as much as 160 tonnes of fresh matter per hectare
and become a source of biomass suitable for producing bioethanol. As Jon Veramendi head of the plant Agrobiotechnology research group explained tobacco plants as a source of biomass for producing bioethanol could be an alternative to traditional tobacco growing
Additional study co-authors include Xingli Wang Yongji Gong Gang Shi Kunttal Keyshar Gonglan Ye Robert Vajtai and Jun Lou all of Rice and Wai Leong Chow
The study was initiated in 2003 at the Trillium Trail Nature Reserve in Fox Chapel Pa. by a team of researchers from the University of Miami and University of Pittsburgh.
#Sometimes less is more for hungry dogshungry dogs would be expected to choose alternatives leading to more food rather than less food.
and Thomas Zentall of the University of Kentucky in the US who tested the principle by feeding baby carrots and string cheese to ten dogs of various breeds.
The research was conducted on dogs that would willingly eat cheese and baby carrots when offered
or the cheese together with a piece of carrot nine of the ten dogs chose the cheese alone.
It appears that the dogs averaged the quality of the cheese plus carrot rather than sum up the quantity of food.
when members of the same species such as a pack of dogs feed together. The one that hesitates may lose food to faster-choosing competitors.
But the fact that one in ten dogs did choose the cheese -and-carrot combination suggests that levels of motivation may play a role in this effect.
The outlier dog for instance had a history of living in shelters and fending for himself.
and other primates but can occur in other mammalian species at least those that are organized socially such as carnivores like wolves dogs
and jackals says Pattison. She believes that further research is needed to find out if the less is more effect also occurs in less socially organized species such as rats or non-mammalian species such as birds.
James Cook University Cairns Australia; U s. Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry Puerto rico; EMBRAPA Satellite Monitoring Center Campinas Brazil;
Dr. Devi Stuart-Fox and Jennifer Goode both of the Zoology Department at the University of Melbourne Australia attempted to determine what was more important in driving courtship:
New work from Carnegie's Cheng-Hsun Ho and Wolf Frommer developed tools that could help scientists observe the nitrogen-uptake process in real time
and canids like foxes jaguars and ocelots and now more and more feral dogs hunting in these forests Pauli says.
A sloth on the ground is such an easy meal for them. So this risky behavior must confer some sort of advantage.
and dog for discovering more genetic characteristics of water buffalo and providing guidance for its breeding and industrial transformation.
Continuously recording cameras trained on nests showed that coyotes were the primary predators of the ground-level nests--another surprise.
Several decades ago we didn't have coyotes here; we had lost completely those predator species that bring some ecological balance.
#Wolf predation of cattle affects calf weight in Montanaa recent study by University of Montana faculty
and graduate students found that wolf predation of cattle contributes to lower weight gain in calves on western Montana ranches.
This leads to an economic loss at sale several times higher than the direct reimbursement ranchers receive for a cow killed by wolves.
The study found that wolves living on the landscape with cattle have no effect on herd weight
but once a ranch has confirmed a wolf kill average calf weight decreases relative to if that ranch had experienced not a wolf depredation.
Ranchers have been saying for years that wolves cause weight loss in cattle but nobody ever had done any research on the topic said Derek Kellenberg a co-author on the study and UM associate professor and chair of the Department of economics.
Kellenberg worked with UM Associate professor Mark Hebblewhite from the Wildlife Biology Program and graduate students Joseph Ramler and Carolyn Sime.
The study quantifies the economic impact of weight loss after a confirmed wolf kill for an average ranch consisting of 264 head of calves.
while the economic impact of lower herd weights caused by wolf depredation is not insignificant to ranchers other ranch-specific husbandry practices
and climatological and environmental variables such as annual precipitation average temperature and snowfall explain a much larger proportion of variance in calf weight over the years than do wolf affects.
and ranchers as they work on issues related to wolf management. This study helps quantify some of the indirect costs that have not previously been accounted for he said.
They used a protocol similar to the one in Pavlov's dog experiments (where a dog is conditioned to associate a bell with being fed) using vanilla (the locusts'favourite) and lemon odours.
and other animals killed by lions or hyenas. You can imagine how difficult it is to protect a species that uses not just multiple parks
and stop trafficking using sniffer dogs apps for customs officials and training for enforcement staff.
The public green space will include a playfield, off-leash dog park, two-way cycle track on 7th avenue and a weather-protected walkway between the buildings.
The sheep that texted wolfsheepdogs have warned always herders of wolf attacks. But now the alert system just got a technological boost.
Jean-Marc Landry and colleagues from the research group Kora developed the system as a way to better control the increasing number of wolf attacks on sheep in Switzerland and France.
A prototype of the collar was tested on twelve sheep that were placed in an enclosure with two muzzled wolf dogs.
As the dogs poised to attack, the sheep s heart rate shot from a resting 60 to 80 beats per minute to 225,
which includes a collar outfitted with wolf repellent, will take place in fall 2012. The wolf repellent will use
either sounds or chemicals to drive the animals away without harming them. According to The Scientist, The final version is due to be tested in France and Switzerland in 2013,
and Norway, another country with wolf problems, has shown already interest in the device. Via The Scientist Photo via tonynetone
Barns, Pocantico Hills, USA Sean Brock Mccrady's, Husk, Charleston, South carolina Jeremy Charles Raymonds, St john's, Newfoundland, Canada Andrã Â Chiang Restaurant
which can nose out bed bugs with 98%accuracy--sniffs the air much the way dogs do.
Ambient sounds in the Algonquin National park in Ontario, Canada, are replaced quickly by the howls of gray wolves:
TV spots starring Roscoe the bed bug sniffing dog, mattress encasement ads on the subway, commercials with people freezing bugs,
(which include foxes and porcupines) to pass through the community, and a rooftop pool. And again, the designers propose a mix of live-work spaces.
Joseph Wolf (1898), via Wikimedia) But returning to the merits of Mulligan's proposal, remember that resurrecting dead
says Patty Lovera, assistant director of the consumer watchdog group Food and Water Watch, just one of the 300 groups that oppose the fish.
says Tim Fox, IME's head of energy and environment. This is food that could be used to feed the world's growing population-as well as those in hunger today.
Fox says. Consider IME's report as food for thought the next time you reject a crooked carrot or a lumpy apple.
Chan says, a source of enjoyment for the three guard dogs. Electrified wires one foot off the ground ward off the countryside s main intruders at night.
or cardigan ensemble, doff the bold rings adorning her expressive fingers, toss back her signature blonde blowout and commune with the plants.
a dog is a pig is a bear is a boy. Meat today is the new asbestos, more murderous than tobacco,
Animals, especially dogs and cats, are part of the family. The relationship toward the wild is important in American culture:
oebig Dog Robot, The Stanley self-driving car (originally covered in THE FUTURIST in May-June 2006.
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