a relatively straightforward technological innovation#GPS-equipped free-range cows that can be nudged back within virtual bounds by ear-mounted stimulus-delivery devices#has implications that could profoundly reshape our relationships with domesticated animals,
Our discussion ranged from robotic rats and sheep laterality to the advantages of GPS imprecision and the possibility of high-tech herds bred to suit the topography of particular property.
When it comes to managing animals, every conventional fence that I have built ever has been in the wrong place the next year.
whether it s elephants in Africa or Hereford cows in Las Cruces, New mexico. You will have seen this,
so that animals would move to that location#there are a host of things that we have tried. And they all work under certain conditions.
But, if you have the animals clear over three pastures away, then you ve got to monitor the rainfall-related growth,
and you ve got to get labor to help round those animals up and move them over to this new location.
if part of this landscape s call is to support animals, then you are not optimizing
or exclude animals from areas on the landscape that you want to manage with scalpel-like precision.
And you can move the polygon that the animals are in over in that far corner of the pasture.
amoeba-like to fit in this new area. You basically have real-time management, which is something that is not currently possible in livestock grazing,
what an animal does, so that they can actually predict where the animal is going to move before the animal actually moves.
In my opinion if they ever figure that out, it s going to be way past my lifetime.
If you stimulate an animal with something unknown then, at least initially, it s going to move away from it.
animals will try and avoid the ending event #if they re given the opportunity. This is the principle that has allowed the USDA to receive a patent on this methodology.
there are animals that you could basically look at cross-eyed and they ll move, and then there are animals like me,
where you ve got to get a 2ã and hit them up across the head to get their attention before anything happens.
When these kinds of systems have been built for dog training or dog containment in the past, they simply had a shock,
or the animal s personality. stands up and draws on whiteboard Let s say that this is the polygon that we want the animal to stay in.
These cues were developed to fit the animal that we are trying to manage. Now, if we go back to me as the example,
when the animal wanders into the 200m-wide virtual boundary band. Algorithms then combine that data to determine which side of the animal s to cue,
and Future#)If I m the animal and I m getting closer and closer to the edge of the polygon,
and use to move animals down chutes. I touched the Hotshot output and I could still feel it in my fingertips the next morning,
We don t want to overstress the animal. So we end up, either in distance or time or both, having a point at which,
if this animal decides it really wants what s over here, it s not going to be irritated to the point of going nuts.
if the animal doesn t respond appropriately, we are not going to do anything that would cause negative animal welfare issues.
There s no need to stimulate an animal beyond what it needs. I can tell you that
when a flock of birds flew over than when I applied the sound. Now, there are going to be some animals that you either get your rifle
and then put the product in your freezer, or you go put the animal back into a four-strand barbed wire fenced pasture.
Not every animal on the face of the earth today would be controllable with virtual fencing.
You could gradually increase the number of animals that do adapt well to being managed using virtual fencing in your herd through culling.
But the vast majority of animals will react to these irritations, at some level. They can choose at which point they react, all the way from the whisper to the lawnmower.
Whatever we do to animals, we are teaching them something. It s our choice as to what we want them to learn.
But, of the animals with whom I have worked #and the literature would support what I m going to say#cows are, in fact smarter than human beings in a number of ways.
What our team did initially was cannibalize a kids remote control car to send a signal to the device worn by the animal.
to steer the animals#no pun intended#over the landscape. What s interesting is that
In twenty years from now#somewhere in this century, at least#after the ethical and moral issues have been worked out, instead of stimulating animals with external audio sound or electrical stimulation,
It s been done with rodents. The idea was that these animals could be equipped with a camera
or other sensors and sent into earthquake areas or fires or where there were environmental issues that humans really shouldn t be exposed to.
Do you send rodents into it? You can see the moral and ethical issues that need to be worked out.
Aha#so it s the human animals that will need still a physical fence. Anderson: I think so.
animals have laterality. You probably didn t see the article that I published last year on sheep laterality. laughter Twilley and Manaugh:
but, basically, animals are no different than you and I. There are animals that have a preference to turn right
and others that have a preference to turn left. Now, I didn t do this study to waste government money.
so you can learn about each animal, and modify your stimulus accordingly. There is no reason at all that we cannot design the algorithms and gather data that,
over time, will make the whole process optimized for each animal, as well as for the herd and the landscape.
so if the polygon that contains the animals is programmed to move toward good forage, the cows will follow.
if you were using the virtual fence to move animals toward better forage, you could almost eliminate the virtual fence line behind the animals,
especially if the drinking water was kept near the#oemoving feed bunk.##The other thing is that the consumer-level GPS RECEIVERS
because there is never an exact line where that animal is sure to be cued and hence the animal cannot match a particular stone
or other environmental object with the stimulation event even if the virtual boundary is held static. It s always going to be just in the general area.
and divide it into many small paddocks and move animals through these paddocks, leaving the animals in any one paddock for only a few hours or days.
not to mention moving the animals in and out of different paddocks all the time. With the virtual paddock you can just program the polygon to move spatially and temporally over the landscape.
which to manage free-ranging animals. Here s another thing. Like anybody who gathers free-ranging animals,
I have a song I use. My song is pretty benign and can be sung among mixed audiences. sings#oecome on sweetheart,
Then when we wanted to gather the animals we wirelessly activated the DVFELECTRONICS and my#oesong###oecome on, girls,
Sure, I can get my animals up in the middle of night to move them, but why do that?
when the animals might start drifting in to d h
#A new Pew Internet reporttakes a close look not only at how Americans are using public libraries,
Examples of services discussed in the report Technology#oepetting Zoo#The Kent Free Library in Ohio#oehas hosted Technology Petting Zoos to give patrons
The library frequently hosts technology petting zoos to teach patrons how to use the CCPL tool
#Coordination with schools and literacy efforts Several libraries and schools have programs where children read to dogs,
such as the Fairfax Community Library s#oeread To A Dog#Program and the therapy dogs at the Princeton Public library.
#oelibrary staff present stories of grizzly deaths from Sacramento s past and a horror film is shown for those awaiting their turn on the tour.#(
#and#oecolor Your World#Exploring Stress Relief With Paint#(New Milford Public library, New Milford, CT) Stuffed Animal Sleepover (Darien Library, Darien,
Manatee County Public library, Bradenton, FL) Teen Battle of the Bands-The winning band will receive 10 hours of recording time at Clear Track and $1, 000 cash.
A big indoor#oefair at the library, with giant games, bowling in the stacks, musical entertainment, storytellers, crafts, an ice cream bar, a Tech Petting Zoo, and more.
making contest, Classes on making wreaths, walking sticks, vegetable gardens, butterfly gardens, native plants and hypertufa Madison County Public library::
Wall street journal article Mississippi Annual Worm Race#Kids bring live worm or borrow one from library to race.
We have developed trunks that feature ungulates, bears, owls, creepy-crawlies, water, and tracks. Each of the trunks includes between 15#20 books on the subject,(both fiction and non-fiction;
and wildlife resources, such as grizzly hides, elk antlers, deer hooves, a number of rubber tracks, skulls, and more.
Additionally, MT FWP staff works with libraries across the state to provide programming in libraries on MT animals.#
games and dances including Lion Dance, Gu Zheng Solo, Gong Fu, Chinese Yo-yo, Handkerchief Dance,
and birds you see along the way.#(#Hillsboro Public library, Hillsboro, Oregon) From the Ashland Branch Library of the Jackson County Library Services:
Owl Pellets#A presentation on owls where the kids and adults take apart owl#oepellets#to see what they have eaten and digested.
Frankentoys#the teens took old stuffed animals and sewed new heads and body parts, added decorations, etc.
and even pest and disease resistance. There is potential for these multifunctional techno-greenhouses built around LED grow lights to increase the quality of the food we eat
6. Swarmbots Groups of flying drones that move like flocks of birds, schools of fish,
Animal Communicator With early stage natural language translators already in existence for humans, the next step will be a technology that bridges the communication gap between humans and animals.
and how would this affect our human-animal relationships? 16. Global Elections When will we see the first global election with over 500 million people voting from at least 50 different countries?
nano-netting will provide a fibrous support structure that is visually non-intrusive but capable of keeping out insects, birds,
and other unwanted animals. But this technology will also enable objects to be suspended in air with seemingly invisible support.
Robotic Earthworms The most valuable land on the planet will soon be the landfills because that is where we have buried our most valuable natural resources.
In the future, robotic earthworms will be used to silently mine the landfills and replace whatever is extracted with high-grade soil. 43.
The creation of entirely new strains of food animals and plants in order to better address biological and physiological needs.
Also known as cultured meat or tubesteak, it is a flesh product that has never been part of a complete, living animal.
watching touristsdoing the horse thing and the market thing. She dreamed of staying here as an adult.
859 164 Costa Mesa, Calif. 110,322 160 Denton, Texas 115,098 160 Killeen, Texas 127,995 160 Lincoln, Neb. 259,218 156 Lubbock
Kansas 125,902 89 Arvada, Colo. 106,965 88 Downey, Calif. 111,807 88 Pembroke Pines, Fla. 155,578 88 Torrance, Calif. 145,443 88
Cape coral, Fla. 155,405 72 Brownsville, Texas 175,210 71 Mckinney, Texas 131,882 71 Coral Springs, Fla. 122
. 101,339 68 Thousand Oaks, Calif. 126,570 68 Elk Grove, Calif. 151,639 67 Frisco, Texas 116,944 61 Naperville, Ill. 142,143 56
and her husband have named an English bulldog Winston, and she s editorial director at Bibliolabs, a small tech start-up that designs easy-to-navigate e-book lending websites for public libraries.
our kite-surfers head to the beach and then get online later. That s just what they do,
but backers of the technology say the data they collect from identifying insect problems, watering issues, assessing crop yields
as long as they get a waiver and fly them within a specific area. We are concerned about any (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) operation that poses a hazard to other aircraft or to people and property on the ground,
and this requires talented people who know how to scale things back in an orderly fashion. 7. Feedback Loopers Those who can devise the best possible feedback loops. 8. Backlashers Ever new technology will have its detractors,
. Impact Minimizers 7. Demand Optimizers 8. Secondary Opportunity Developers 9. Feedback Loopers 10. Construction Teams PRTS have the potential to become the largest infrastructure project the earth has seen ever,
and even build large buildings and luxury homes with custom architectural features that can be changed with only a few clicks of a mouse.
they typically conjure up images of a tractor cresting a hill billowing large plumes of exhaust into the air.
Extinction Revivalists People who revive extinct animals. 146. Robotic Earthworm Drivers The most valuable land on the planet will soon be the landfills
because that is where we have buried our most valuable natural resources. In the future, robotic earthworms will be used to silently mine the landfills
and replace whatever is extracted with high-grade soil. 147. Avatar Designers Next generation avatars will become indistinguishable from humans on a two-dimensional screen.
Brown is among a growing number of farmers who use a suite of techniques to build soil's natural capacity to retain moisture discourage weeds and pests and nurture crops.
and it teems with earthworms beneficial insects and microorganisms. The change is due to several key farming practices including cover cropping and no-till farming
#Cold war Nuclear Radiation Creates Anti-Poaching Tool (ISNS)--Radioactive carbon atoms created during 20th-century nuclear bomb tests could help save elephants
when an animal died to within about one year. We're not the first to try this but
and animals in the food chain absorb the carbon atoms explained study coauthor Thure Cerling a geochemist at the University of Utah.
And then an animal comes along and eats the plant and makes it into hair
In their new study Uno and his team tested the radiocarbon dating technique on the tusks of two elephants that died in 2006 and 2008 as well as elephant and hippo teeth monkey hair and oryx horn.
when an elephant died. Currently the radiocarbon test costs about $500 and takes about one month to complete.
and Uno are also using the radiocarbon dating technique to investigate the growth rate of animals. Now that we can determine growth rates in teeth we can use them as a tape recorder of sorts Uno said.
what the animal was eating by adding data from stable carbon isotopes. Potential uses Samuel Wasser a conservation biologist at the University of Washington who did not participate in the study said the new study is a very important development
and comes at a crucial time for elephants which are being slaughtered at a rate that could drive them to extinction this century.
For example if used in combination with other methods that use DNA to determine the geographical origin of an ivory sample the carbon-14 dating technique could help investigators determine how recently hotspots for elephant poaching have been active.
and butterfly wings make use of some unique surface characteristics that promote self-cleaning. The researchers believe that incorporating some of these features into man-made products might be key to tackling problems associated with biofouling.
while a ship gets bogged down by barnacles as it crosses the ocean a shark swimming in the same ocean remains clean as a whistle.
and butterfly wings combine the low drag of shark skin with the superhydrophobicity of the lotus leaf putting these surfaces at the top of the list of nature-made self-cleaners.
and butterfly wings came to the investigators from observing these structures in their natural habitats.
and butterfly wings roll off effortlessly and that each remains clean in their respective environment says Bhushan.
and lotus leaves rice leaves and butterfly wings have special properties that make them particularly resistant to fouling.
Like shark skin rice leaves and butterfly wings exhibited low drag and self-cleaning properties.
Both rice leaves and butterfly wings contain micro -and nano-sized features that repel and direct water in one direction says Bixler.
and butterfly wings combine antifouling properties of some of nature's best self-cleaners Bhushan and Bixler have identified new surfaces that can be used as engineering inspiration for a wide range of industries plagued by biofouling.
and butterfly wing-inspired films for applications requiring low drag self-cleaning and antifouling say Bhushan.
Bushan's study on rice leaves and butterfly wings was titled Bioinspired rice leaf and butterfly wing surface structures combining shark skin
and lotus effects and was published online in the journal Soft Matter on September 11 2012. DOI:
#Harnessing The Power Of Peacocks To Make Colorful Images (ISNS)--The gloriously colored iridescent feathers of the male peacock aren't
because the feathers contain nanometer-scale protein structures that break up incoming light waves recombine and reflect them as rich vibrant colors.
All the different colors can fit into a corner of a pixel in your iphone said Jay Guo professor of engineering
That's because its iridescent feathers reflect different colors or wavelengths of light at different angles.
but also trap the light so that viewers can see the intended colors from all angles. The trick Guo said was to get light to enter grooves much smaller than the wavelengths of light.
#How Bomb Tests Could Date Elephant Ivory Bomb tests generations ago could indirectly help fight illegal poaching of African elephants new research shows.
and then deposited in the bodies of herbivores like African elephants. By looking at the levels of this carbon isotope known as carbon-14 in elephant tusks and ivory researchers can find out how old they are.
In the United states for example ivory taken prior to a 1989 worldwide ban on African elephant tusks may be traded legally
while new ivory is illegal to traffic said Kevin Uno a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New york. I don't necessarily think this will save the elephants
but it's a critical tool to fight poaching of elephants said Uno co-author of a study detailing the technique published today (July 1) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The best way to stop the killing of elephants is to identify the major poaching hotspots
Elephant Images: The Biggest Beasts On land Poaching getting worse Poaching of African elephants is as bad as it's ever been
and getting worse Uno said. There were an estimated 46.5 tons (42200 kilograms) of ivory seized in 2011 with even higher numbers suspected in 2012 Wasser said.
That suggests as many as 50000 elephants were killed to provide the ivory seized in 2011. With a total population of 400000 elephants this is a very serious situation Wasser said.
In other words if the rate of poaching isn't slowed African elephants could be gone mostly within 10 years.
Trafficking is carried out in part by large criminal networks and is a multibillion-dollar industry. It's driven largely by demand in China for ivory and rhino horns
which are valued for the supposed medicinal benefits. The United states also is a destination for illegal ivory according to the study.
Two things must be done to stop poaching said Richard Ruggiero an expert on elephant poaching with the U s. Fish
Secondly we need to be much better at providing security for elephants to assure detection apprehension
But the parallels between the animal-cloning procedure and the new human one have triggered concern.
So far Mitalipov and his colleagues have not been able to grow a cloned monkey fetus to term suggesting that primate reproduction may be even more complex than what is known from Dolly the sheep and other farm animals.
  From the mouse data we know that embryonic cloning is better than ips cells Cibelli said.
The cloning of a monkey or other nonhuman primate would likely be a strong signal that it's time to set some rules around human cloning Cibelli said.
Thirteen states currently have laws on the books prohibiting reproductive cloning. A worst-case scenario would be a clone showing up on the scene before the legalities are hammered out Knoepfler said.
How to Bring Extinct Animals Back to Life Editor's Note: In this weekly series Livescience explores how technology drives scientific exploration and discovery.
The passenger pigeon the dodo and the woolly mammoth are just a few of the species wiped off the Earth by changing environments and human activities.
Now advances in biotechnology could enable scientists to bring extinct animals back from the grave.
but the experiment proved de-extinction was possible. 6 Extinct Animals That Could Be brought Back to Life We can use some of these techniques to actually help endangered species improve their long-term viability said ecologist Stanley Temple of the University
Reviving the passenger pigeon The passenger pigeon filled the skies of North america in flocks of millions during the 19th century.
But hunting and habitat destruction steered the birds to extinction. The world's last passenger pigeon Martha died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio.
But what if scientists could bring them back? Writer and environmentalist Stewart Brand founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and his wife Ryan Phelan founder of the genetics company DNA Direct wondered
Working with Harvard biologist George Church they figured out a possible way to revive passenger pigeons.
You can't simply clone a passenger pigeon museum specimen because they no longer have fully intact genomes.
Using fragments of the passenger pigeon DNA scientists could synthesize the genes for certain traits and splice the genes together into the genome of a rock pigeon.
The cells containing the passenger pigeon DNA could be transformed into cells that produce eggs and sperm
which could be injected into rock pigeon eggs. The pigeons that hatched would be rock pigeons but their offspring would resemble passenger pigeons.
Scientists could then breed these birds and select for specific traits as a dog breeder might.
Eventually the resulting offspring would appear very much like the passenger pigeon. But that's not the only extinct animal scientists have their sights on reviving.
Woolly mammoths next? Other scientists dream of bringing back a beast that roamed the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago:
the woolly mammoth. Well-preserved mammoths have been dug out of the Siberian tundra containing bone marrow skin hair and fat.
If a living mammoth cell were found it could be grown in a lab and coaxed to form an embryo.
The embryo could be implanted into the closest living relative of mammoths an elephant which would give birth to a baby mammoth.
Images: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts Finding a living mammoth cell is very unlikely. But South korean biomedical engineer Insung Hwang hopes to find just a cell nucleus and produce a clone from it like Dolly the sheep.
The nucleus would be implanted into an elephant egg whose nucleus had been removed. But this is no easy feat no one has harvested yet successfully an elephant egg.
The challenges aren't trifling. Even if researchers succeed in creating a mammoth passenger pigeon or other extinct creature it has to survive in the wild.
This means having the right food and habitat and evading predators especially humans. Conservation controversy Critics of de-extinction say reviving extinct animals would do more harm to conservation efforts than good.
I don't think it has any merit at all said conservation ecologist Stuart Pimm of Duke university N c. It totally ignores the very practical realities of what conservation is about.
The prospect of bringing species back from extinction would lead Congress to support the destruction of natural habitats
because animals that go extinct could be revived in a lab Pimm told Livescience. Most species are going extinct in tropical forests Pimm said.
Saving a species through de-extinction when humans are burning forests and destroying native communities is a joke he said.
Biologist David Ehrenfeld of Rutgers The State university of New jersey agrees de-extinction would impede conservation.
It's very negative very expensive and not going to achieve any conservation goal as far as
For example the passenger pigeon was a very social bird known to form flocks of millions. When their numbers dwindled to a few thousand the birds stopped breeding Ehrenfeld told Livescience.
De-extinction methods would produce just a handful of birds so who's to say they would reproduce?
he said. What's more the pigeons that raised them would be a different species with differing mothering techniques.
The environment is different in every respect Ehrenfeld said. Temple took a more moderate view.
Resurrecting a creature like the passenger pigeon or woolly mammoth has a strong appeal to the public's imagination Temple said.
But the species that are hyped often don't meet those criteria at all he said. Editor's Note:
when woolly mammoths existed. Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+.+Â Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011