More than a decade of observations of dairy operations in Hawai‘i suggested that there were more black cows in the local dairy herds than white cows. Hence, the objective of the study was to investigate if hair coat color affected productive life of Holstein cows in the sub-tropics. Two large herds within 2,000 meters of each other in the Waianae Coast district were used. Lactating cows were cl...

We extend our results on fictitious domain methods for Poisson’s problem to the case of incompressible elasticity, or Stokes’ problem. The mesh is not fitted to the domain boundary. Instead boundary conditions are imposed using a stabilized Nitsche type approach. Control of the non-physical degrees of freedom, i.e., those outside the physical domain, is obtained thanks to a ghost penalty term f...

Brood parasites can appreciably decrease fecundity of susceptible songbird hosts, which can often cause a decrease in host abundance. Wildlife managers use brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) management to reduce parasitism frequency and benefit the conservation of the endangered black-capped vireo (Vireo atricapilla); however, intensity of management needed to increase vireo abundance is not...

This paper is a re-assessment of the role of women in the Eritrean national liberation struggle. As such, it challenges the existing literature surrounding the topic and interrogates the emphasis placed upon women who fought physically in the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). The bulk of this research attempts to give voice to women who participated predominantly through non-military m...

Cooperative multi-agent policy gradient (MAPG) algorithms have recently attracted wide attention and are regarded as a general scheme for the system. Credit assignment plays an important role in MAPG can induce cooperation among multiple agents. However, most cannot achieve good credit because of game-theoretic pathology known centralized-decentralized mismatch. To address this issue, paper pre...

Exploration under sparse rewards is a key challenge for multi-agent reinforcement learning problems. One possible solution to this issue exploit inherent task structures an acceleration of exploration. In paper, we present novel exploration approach, which encodes special structural prior on the reward function into exploration, sparse-reward tasks. Specifically, entropic objective proposed acc...

In this paper we present a fast approach to range image segmentation. The segmentation results are intended to serve as input to the perception system of a domestic service robot. In the first step “ghost points” at depth discontinuities are identified. This is followed by extracting step and roof edges. Planar patches are detected with a focus on horizontal and vertical planar structures. Fina...

Ten ruminally cannulated heifers (BW = 416 kg; SD = 24) were used to test the effect of the form and frequency of supplemental energy on forage DMI and digestibility. Five treatments were arranged in a replicated, 5 × 4 Latin rectangle (n = 8), and included no supplement (control), dry-rolled corn (DRC) fed daily, DRC fed on alternate days (DRC-A), dried distillers grains plus solubles (DDGS) f...

This research examined the effects of comb age on honey bee colony growth and brood survivorship. Experimental old combs were of an unknown age, but were dark and heavy as typical of combs one or more years old. New combs were produced just prior to the beginning of the experiment and had never had brood previously reared in them. Either old or new combs were installed into each of 21–24 nucleu...

1. Mebendazole is a benzimidazole anthelmintic which is used in both human and veterinary medicine. In veterinary medicine, it is administered orally to horses, at a target dose of 8.8 mg/kg bw and to sheep and goats at a target dose of 15 mg/kg bw. Mebendazole has also been used in game birds, pigs, deer, poultry and cattle, including lactating animals and laying birds, but these uses were not...