The fast increasing size of datasets in scientific computing, mechanical engineering, or virtual medicine is quickly exceeding the graphics capabilities of modern computers. Toolkits for the large model visualization address this problem by combining efficient geometric techniques, such as occlusion and visibility culling, mesh reduction, and efficient rendering. OpenSG PLUS is such a toolkit w...

Occlusion culling is a genre of algorithms for rapidly eliminating portions of three-dimensional geometry hidden behind other, visible objects prior to passing them to the rendering pipeline. In this paper, an extension to the popular shadow frustum culling algorithm is presented, which takes into account the fact that many planar occluders can be grouped into compound convex solids, which in t...

Cows are the main economic production units of Ireland's cattle industry. Therefore, demographic information, including overall numbers and survival rates, are relevant to the Irish agricultural industry. However, few data are available on the demographics of cows within a national population, either in Ireland or elsewhere, despite the recent development of comprehensive national cattle databa...

A competing risks approach was used to evaluate the influence of several pre-farrowing factors on risk of culling due to different causes in Duroc swine, these having low fertility, low productivity, lameness and mortality. Culling due to low fertility increased for average daily gains during the growth test lower than 585 g/day, whereas culling due to low productivity and mortality increased w...

The main logistical problems of the foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak that occurred in the Netherlands in 2001 were a lack of culling and rendering capacity. Suppressive vaccination formed the basis for the solution to both problems and was primarily used to halt the possible spread of the virus. This allowed culls to take place on vaccinated farms when sufficient culling capacity eventuall...

The average lifetime of sows as observed in production herds is primarily influenced by management decisions. Usually the farmer decides to cull a sow, either because he expects that a gilt's average productivity is higher than the marginal productivity of the sow, or because the current number of sows exceeds the production capacity, e.g. in the farrowing department. Several studies have shown...

Image space occlusion culling is an useful approach to reduce the rendering load of large polygonal models. Like most large model techniques, it trades overhead costs with the rendering costs of the possibly occluded geometry. Meanwhile, modern graphics hardware supports occlusion culling. Unfortunately these hardware extensions consume fillrate and latency costs. In this paper, we propose a ne...

This work presents a comparative study of various combinations of visibility algorithms (view-frustum culling, backface culling, and a simple yet fast algorithm called conservative backface culling) and different settings of standard spatial data structures (non-uniform Grids, BSP-Trees, Octrees, and PortalOctrees) for enabling efficient graphics rendering of both indoor and urban 3D environmen...

Overabundant white-tailed deer are one of the most serious threats to woodland plant communities in the Chicago area. Moreover, the abundant deer in a highly populated area causes economic harm and poses hazards to human safety through collisions with vehicles. The artificial conditions causing the overabundance and resulting consequences qualify the white-tailed deer in the Chicago area to be ...

Although fetomaternal disproportion is the major cause of dystocia in heifers, pelvis area (PA) is not recommended as a culling tool due to its relatively low importance and genetic correlation with calf birth weight (BWT), the most important factor associated with dystocia. The objective of this observational study of 484 limited bred yearling beef heifers was to compare the effects of differe...