Efficacy of several Salmonella vaccination programs against experimental challenge with Salmonella gallinarum in commercial brown layer and broiler breeder hens

The protective effect of various Salmonella vaccines regimens against an experimental Salmonella Gallinarum challenge (SGNalr strain at 12 wk of age) was evaluated in two experiments. In Experiment 1 commercial brown layers were vaccinated according to one of the following programs: (i) two doses of a SE bacterin (Layermune SE; group 1); (ii) a first dose of a live SG9R vaccine (Cevac SG9R) followed by a SE bacterin (Layermune SE; group 2); (iii) one dose of each of two different multivalent inactivated vaccines containing SE cells (Corymune 4 & Corymune 7; group 3) or (iv) not vaccinated (group 4). In Experiment 2, broiler breeders were given the same vaccination treatments except for the group vaccinated with the multivalent vaccines. Overall, in both experiments, all vaccination schemes were effective in reducing mortality after challenge with a SG field strain. Primary vaccination with an initial dose of a live SG9R vaccine followed some weeks later by a dose of an inactivated SE bacterin was the most effective (p<0.05) vaccination program against mortality induced by field SG experimental challenge in both experiments. In conclusion, Salmonella vaccination programs containing SE bacterins alone or in combination with a live SG9R vaccine are effective in preventing mortality induced by infection of field SG. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that any vaccination program against any Salmonella serotype will only be effective if it is part of a sound and comprehensive biosecurity program designed for Salmonella control in poultry farms.

Limestone and oyster shell for brown layers in their second egg production cycle

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Monitoring ovarian cycles and pregnancy in brown brocket deer (Mazama gouazoubira) by measurement of fecal progesterone metabolites

In the present study, pregnancy and the estrous cycle were monitored in captive brown brocket deer (Mazama gouazoubira) by measuring fecal progestagens with a commercial enzyme immunoassay (EIA), along with behavioral data. Fecal samples were collected twice a week during pregnancy and daily during the estrous cycle and post-partum period. It was possible to distinguish between inter-luteal and luteal phases of the estrous cycle. Behavioral estrus corresponded with low concentrations of fecal progestagens. Samples from two consecutive cycles were available from five hinds, and the mean estrous cycle (n = 10) was 26.9 +/- 1.7 d (mean +/- S.E.M.). However, when two extreme cycles (34 and 37 d) were deleted, the mean estrous cycle was 24.7 +/- 1.2 d. Three animals became pregnant (gestation ranged from 208 to 215 d). After fertile breeding, progestagen concentration in these hinds remained among luteal phase concentrations throughout pregnancy, with the exception of a few peaks. Within 4 d post-partum, two hinds reached interluteal phase values, while one hind maintained luteal concentrations for at least 1 week. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Comparison of three protocols for superovulation of brown brocket deer (Mazama gouazoubira)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Habitat use and home range of brown-nosed coati, Nasua nasua (Carnivora: Procyonidae) in the Brazilian Cerrado biome

The brown-nosed coati (Nasua nasua) is a carnivorous species found in all the Brazilian biomes, some of which are endangered areas. The aim of this work was to determine the habitat use and selection, home range and core area of N. nasua in the Cerrado biome, central region of Tocantins, Brazil. The study was carried out in an area of approximately 20 000ha from May 2000 to July 2002. A total of seven box traps were placed in the area for 13 months, three of 11 captured animals were followed and monitored by radio-tracking during 13 months. The monitoring was conducted once a day, three times a week using a car and walking through the study area (radio-tracking and visual contact). The results demonstrate that these three males used more frequently the gallery forest formation, followed by cerrado and wetlands. The use of gallery forest by these animals indicated an habitat selection (Proportion test, z=12.98, p< 0.01). Besides, adult males used the gallery forest more frequently (Fisher's exact test, p<0.01) and wetlands less frequently (Fisher's exact test, p<0.01) than juvenile males, without significant differences between animal ages for cerrado percentage of habitat use. Besides, results also showed a gallery forest selection by adult (Proportion test z= 13.62, p<0.01) and juvenile (Proportion test z=2.68, p<0.01) males, and a wetland selection by the juvenile male (Proportion test z=3.90, p<0.01). The home ranges varied from 2.20 to 7.55km2 for the Minimum Convex Polygon 100% (MCP 100%) and from 4.38 to 13.32km2 for the Harmonic Mean 95% (HM 95%). The smallest home range overlap occurred between the adult males (Nm1 and Nm3), and the greatest between the juvenile Njm2 and the adult Nm1. The average of the core area (HM 75%) for the three monitored animals represented 21.29% of the home range calculated with HM 95%. No overlap between core areas was observed for adult males, but, it was an overlap between the core area of the juvenile male and its band with that of the two adult males. The present study provides new data on core area size and frequency habitat use by adult and juvenile males of N. nasua in the Brazilian Cerrado, that may support conservation efforts. Rev. Biol. Trop. 58 (3): 1069-1077. Epub 2010 September 01.

Influence of husbandry systems on physiological stress reactions of captive brown brocket (Mazama gouazoubira) and marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus)-noninvasive analysis of fecal cortisol metabolites

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Controle adaptativo robusto para um modelo desacoplado de um robô móvel

This thesis presents a new structure of robust adaptive controller applied to mobile robots (surface mobile robot) with nonholonomic constraints. It acts in the dynamics and kinematics of the robot, and it is split in two distinct parts. The first part controls the robot dynamics, using variable structure model reference adaptive controllers. The second part controls the robot kinematics, using a position controller, whose objective is to make the robot to reach any point in the cartesian plan. The kinematic controller is based only on information about the robot configuration. A decoupling method is adopted to transform the linear model of the mobile robot, a multiple-input multiple-output system, into two decoupled single-input single-output systems, thus reducing the complexity of designing the controller for the mobile robot. After that, a variable structure model reference adaptive controller is applied to each one of the resulting systems. One of such controllers will be responsible for the robot position and the other for the leading angle, using reference signals generated by the position controller. To validate the proposed structure, some simulated and experimental results using differential drive mobile robots of a robot soccer kit are presented. The simulator uses the main characteristics of real physical system as noise and non-linearities such as deadzone and saturation. The experimental results were obtained through an C++ program applied to the robot soccer kit of Microrobot team at the LACI/UFRN. The simulated and experimental results are presented and discussed at the end of the text

Localização e planejamento de caminhos para um robô humanóide e um robô escravo com rodas

This work presents the localization and path planning systems for two robots: a non-instrumented humanoid and a slave wheeled robot. The localization of wheeled robot is made using odometry information and landmark detection. These informations are fused using a Extended Kalman Filter. The relative position of humanoid is acquired fusing (using another Kalman Filter) the wheeled robot pose with the characteristics of the landmark on the back of humanoid. Knowing the wheeled robot position and the humanoid relative position in relation to it, we acquired the absolute position of humanoid. The path planning system was developed to provide the cooperative movement of the two robots,incorporating the visibility restrictions of the robotic system

Uma arquitetura distribuída de hardware e software para controle de um robô móvel autônomo

In this work, we present a hardware-software architecture for controlling the autonomous mobile robot Kapeck. The hardware of the robot is composed of a set of sensors and actuators organized in a CAN bus. Two embedded computers and eigth microcontroller based boards are used in the system. One of the computers hosts the vision system, due to the significant processing needs of this kind of system. The other computer is used to coordinate and access the CAN bus and to accomplish the other activities of the robot. The microcontroller-based boards are used with the sensors and actuators. The robot has this distributed configuration in order to exhibit a good real-time behavior, where the response time and the temporal predictability of the system is important. We adopted the hybrid deliberative-reactive paradigm in the proposed architecture to conciliate the reactive behavior of the sensors-actuators net and the deliberative activities required to accomplish more complex tasks

Navegação cooperativa de um robô humanóide e um robô com rodas usando informação visual

This work presents a cooperative navigation systemof a humanoid robot and a wheeled robot using visual information, aiming to navigate the non-instrumented humanoid robot using information obtained from the instrumented wheeled robot. Despite the humanoid not having sensors to its navigation, it can be remotely controlled by infra-red signals. Thus, the wheeled robot can control the humanoid positioning itself behind him and, through visual information, find it and navigate it. The location of the wheeled robot is obtained merging information from odometers and from landmarks detection, using the Extended Kalman Filter. The marks are visually detected, and their features are extracted by image processing. Parameters obtained by image processing are directly used in the Extended Kalman Filter. Thus, while the wheeled robot locates and navigates the humanoid, it also simultaneously calculates its own location and maps the environment (SLAM). The navigation is done through heuristic algorithms based on errors between the actual and desired pose for each robot. The main contribution of this work was the implementation of a cooperative navigation system for two robots based on visual information, which can be extended to other robotic applications, as the ability to control robots without interfering on its hardware, or attaching communication devices

Posicionamento e movimentação de um robô humanóide utilizando imagens de uma câmera móvel externa

This work proposes a method to localize a simple humanoid robot, without embedded sensors, using images taken from an extern camera and image processing techniques. Once the robot is localized relative to the camera, supposing we know the position of the camera relative to the world, we can compute the position of the robot relative to the world. To make the camera move in the work space, we will use another mobile robot with wheels, which has a precise locating system, and will place the camera on it. Once the humanoid is localized in the work space, we can take the necessary actions to move it. Simultaneously, we will move the camera robot, so it will take good images of the humanoid. The mainly contributions of this work are: the idea of using another mobile robot to aid the navigation of a humanoid robot without and advanced embedded electronics; chosing of the intrinsic and extrinsic calibration methods appropriated to the task, especially in the real time part; and the collaborative algorithm of simultaneous navigation of the robots

Identificação em tempo real de modelo dinâmico de robô móvel com acionamento diferencial e zona morta

Several mobile robots show non-linear behavior, mainly due friction phenomena between the mechanical parts of the robot or between the robot and the ground. Linear models are efficient in some cases, but it is necessary take the robot non-linearity in consideration when precise displacement and positioning are desired. In this work a parametric model identification procedure for a mobile robot with differential drive that considers the dead-zone in the robot actuators is proposed. The method consists in dividing the system into Hammerstein systems and then uses the key-term separation principle to present the input-output relations which shows the parameters from both linear and non-linear blocks. The parameters are then simultaneously estimated through a recursive least squares algorithm. The results shows that is possible to identify the dead-zone thresholds together with the linear parameters

Desenvolvimento de esquema de controle com realimentação visual para um robô manipulador

This work proposes a kinematic control scheme, using visual feedback for a robot arm with five degrees of freedom. Using computational vision techniques, a method was developed to determine the cartesian 3d position and orientation of the robot arm (pose) using a robot image obtained through a camera. A colored triangular label is disposed on the robot manipulator tool and efficient heuristic rules are used to obtain the vertexes of that label in the image. The tool pose is obtained from those vertexes through numerical methods. A color calibration scheme based in the K-means algorithm was implemented to guarantee the robustness of the vision system in the presence of light variations. The extrinsic camera parameters are computed from the image of four coplanar points whose cartesian 3d coordinates, related to a fixed frame, are known. Two distinct poses of the tool, initial and final, obtained from image, are interpolated to generate a desired trajectory in cartesian space. The error signal in the proposed control scheme consists in the difference between the desired tool pose and the actual tool pose. Gains are applied at the error signal and the signal resulting is mapped in joint incrementals using the pseudoinverse of the manipulator jacobian matrix. These incrementals are applied to the manipulator joints moving the tool to the desired pose

Localização de um robô móvel usando odometria e marcos naturais

Several methods of mobile robot navigation request the mensuration of robot position and orientation in its workspace. In the wheeled mobile robot case, techniques based on odometry allow to determine the robot localization by the integration of incremental displacements of its wheels. However, this technique is subject to errors that accumulate with the distance traveled by the robot, making unfeasible its exclusive use. Other methods are based on the detection of natural or artificial landmarks present in the environment and whose location is known. This technique doesnt generate cumulative errors, but it can request a larger processing time than the methods based on odometry. Thus, many methods make use of both techniques, in such a way that the odometry errors are periodically corrected through mensurations obtained from landmarks. Accordding to this approach, this work proposes a hybrid localization system for wheeled mobile robots in indoor environments based on odometry and natural landmarks. The landmarks are straight lines de.ned by the junctions in environments floor, forming a bi-dimensional grid. The landmark detection from digital images is perfomed through the Hough transform. Heuristics are associated with that transform to allow its application in real time. To reduce the search time of landmarks, we propose to map odometry errors in an area of the captured image that possesses high probability of containing the sought mark

Modelagem linear e identificação do modelo dinâmico de um robô móvel com acionamento diferencial

This work presents a modelling and identification method for a wheeled mobile robot, including the actuator dynamics. Instead of the classic modelling approach, where the robot position coordinates (x,y) are utilized as state variables (resulting in a non linear model), the proposed discrete model is based on the travelled distance increment Delta_l. Thus, the resulting model is linear and time invariant and it can be identified through classical methods such as Recursive Least Mean Squares. This approach has a problem: Delta_l can not be directly measured. In this paper, this problem is solved using an estimate of Delta_l based on a second order polynomial approximation. Experimental data were colected and the proposed method was used to identify the model of a real robot