Chest Breadths to Predict Individuals' Age - A Case Based View

It is well known that rib cage dimensions depend on the gender and vary with the age of the individual. Under this setting it is therefore possible to assume that a computational approach to the problem may be thought out and, consequently, this work will focus on the development of an Artificial Intelligence grounded decision support system to predict individual’s age, based on such measurements. On the one hand, using some basic image processing techniques it were extracted such descriptions from chest X-rays (i.e., its maximum width and height). On the other hand, the computational framework was built on top of a Logic Programming Case Base approach to knowledge representation and reasoning, which caters for the handling of incomplete, unknown, or even contradictory information. Furthermore, clustering methods based on similarity analysis among cases were used to distinguish and aggregate collections of historical data in order to reduce the search space, therefore enhancing the cases retrieval and the overall computational process. The accuracy of the proposed model is satisfactory, close to 90%.

The Effect of Debeaking and Crude Fibre in Ration On Canibalism and Performance of Muscovy Duck

A research has been conducted from September 3rd until November 2nd 2002 to study cannibalism and performance of Muscovy duck. The method applied was experiment with factorial pattern of Completely Randomized Design (CRD). The first factors were debeaking (P) : p1 = control, p2 = debeaking. The second factors were crude fibre content in ration (R) : r1= 6 %, r2 = 8 % and r3 = 10 %.  Parameters observed were cannibalism mortality, food consumption, growth rate, carcass production, meat and blood cholesterol and meat fat. The duck used were 96 heads at one week old and cage in 24 pens with litter floor.  The results indicated that debeaking had no significant effect on food consumption, growth rate, carcass percentage and blood cholesterol, but it had significant effect on carcass weight and meat fat up to 8 weeks old. Crude fibre had significant effect on blood and meat cholesterol. (Animal Production 6(1): 9-16 (2004) Key Words: Debeaking, Crude fibre, Canibalism, Production Performance