The effect of enclosure design on diurnal activity and stereotypic behaviour was assessed in 17 adult Malayan Sun bears (Helarctos malayanus), kept either in barren indoor enclosures or relatively enriched outdoor enclosures. Locomotion was the most frequent activity observed in the indoor bears, followed by resting. In contrast, conspecifics housed outdoors spent most of the time resting. Elev...

Pigeons (Columba livia) searched for food hidden in the center of a square enclosure. On occasional tests without food, the enclosure was (a) unchanged from training (control tests), (b) moved to different corners of the testing room (corner tests), or (c) doubled in size (expansion tests). The birds showed localized search in the center of the enclosure on control and corner tests. On expansio...

The National Zoological Gardens of South Africa (NZG) is involved in the ex situ conservation of Gyps coprotheres, the Cape Griffon vulture (CGV) and houses 24 birds in a 100-yr-old aviary. Following the death of one vulture with high liver lead concentrations, an investigation was launched to ascertain the source(s) and consequences of lead toxicity in this breeding colony. Whole blood from 24...

Any improvement in agricultural systems that results in higher production should also reduce negative environmental impacts and enhance sustainability. The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of two different production systems, one open-field and the other shade-enclosure with four bocashi doses, in order to find the best environmental option in terms of yield, physiological and...

An experimental and numerical study on the octagonal high-strength steel tubular stub columns under combined compression bending is presented in this paper. Octagonal column specimens with different sizes were prepared. Experiments performed these concentric or eccentric compression, which induced various combinations of structures. In addition, a through finite-element modeling was also conduc...

This report describes a low cost, shielded enclosure that was developed to contain the electromagnetic radiation generated by electronic equipment in order to reduce the potential for radio frequency interference (RFI). The enclosure is made from thin wire mesh screening that is attached to a wooden framework for support. Allowances are made at both ends of the enclosure for large cable bulkhea...

Point sets from range scanners are noisy and do not contain additional data such as normals, which makes it difficult to create a mesh for rendering. We use the moving least-squares (MLS) approximation to get normals and differential information, and approximate the surface near each point by an MLS surface. From this we obtain a splat of a new octagonal shape which approximates the local curva...