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The chicken industry, in which broiler chickens are bred, is the largest poultry industry in Taiwan. In a traditional poultry house, breeders must usually observe the health of the broilers in person on the basis of their breeding experience at regular times every day. When a breeder finds unhealthy broilers, they are removed manually from the poultry house to prevent viruses from spreading in the poultry house. Therefore, in this study, we designed and constructed a novel small removal system for dead chickens for Taiwanese poultry houses. In the mechanical design, this system mainly contains walking, removal, and storage parts. It comprises robotic arms with a fixed end and sweep-in devices for sweeping dead chickens, a conveyor belt for transporting chickens, a storage cache for storing chickens, and a tracked vehicle. The designed system has dimensions of approximately 1.038 × 0.36 × 0.5 m3, and two dead chickens can be removed in a single operation. The walking speed of the chicken removal system is 3.3 cm/s. In order to enhance the automation and artificial intelligence in the poultry industry, the identification system was used in a novel small removal system. The conditions of the chickens in a poultry house can be monitored remotely by using a camera, and dead chickens can be identified through deep learning based on the YOLO v4 algorithm. The precision of the designed system reached 95.24% in this study, and dead chickens were successfully moved to the storage cache. Finally, the designed system can reduce the contact between humans and poultry to effectively improve the overall biological safety.

Wild bird repulsion is critical in agriculture because it helps avoid agricultural food losses and mitigates the risk of avian influenza. Wild birds transmit avian influenza in poultry farms and thus cause large economic losses. In this study, we developed an automatic wild bird repellent system that is based on deep-learning-based wild bird detection and integrated with a laser rotation mechanism. When a wild bird appears at a farm, the proposed system detects the bird’s position in an image captured by its detection unit and then uses a laser beam to repel the bird. The wild bird detection model of the proposed system was optimized for detecting small pixel targets, and trained through a deep learning method by using wild bird images captured at different farms. Various wild bird repulsion experiments were conducted using the proposed system at an outdoor duck farm in Yunlin, Taiwan. The statistical test results of our experimental data indicated that the proposed automatic wild bird repellent system effectively reduced the number of wild birds in the farm. The experimental results indicated that the developed system effectively repelled wild birds, with a high repulsion rate of 40.3% each day.

The recognition, control, and monitoring of herbal medicinal materials is a crucial work and challenge in the pharmaceutical industry. Consequently, the development of a rapid and accurate inspection method and model is an important goal and job. The raw materials of a variety of herbal medicines were measured using nondestructive near-infrared spectroscopy with soft independent modeling of class analogy to build up the classification model. The adulterated samples could be eliminated by the analysis of the model, and identification rates were demonstrated in the range of 98–100%. The method could be applied not only to the pharmaceutical industry but also to the food industry. Food materials can be measured with the inspection model for effective identification and determination of adulteration.

The objective of this study was to identify the maturity and position of tomatoes in greenhouse. Three parts have been included in this study: building the model of image capturing and object detection, position identification of mature fruits and prediction of the size of the mature fruits. For the first part, image capturing in different time and object detection will be conducted in the greenhouse for identification of mature fruits. For the second part, the relative 3D position of the mature fruits calculated by the binocular vision was compared with the actual measured position. For the third part, the size of the bounding box from the object detection was compared with the actual size of the mature fruit, and the correlation was calculated in order to pre-adjust the width of the gripper for plucking operation in the future. The precision and the recall of the mature fruits of this study are over 95%. The average error of the 3D position is 0.5 cm. The actual size of the fruits and the R-squared of the size of the bounding box are over 0.9.

Small type gasoline engine has the advantage of lightweight and low energy, but its emissions of carbon dioxide will lead to global greenhouse gas growing. This study aims to test the performance of the cultivator between different soil and tools. Comparative test electric and gasoline engine type cultivator contains the following items: energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions in the job and the operator heart rate change. The results show that the width of 60 cm and depth of 3 cm operating conditions weeding, electric cultivators and gasoline engine cultivator average turn time was 2.9 seconds and 3.3 seconds, with an average forward speed were 0.535 and 0.515 m/s. Comparison of the time and forward speed cornering, the electric cultivator superior gasoline engine cultivator, and can successfully achieve high torque output characteristics weeding needed. Energy consumption and carbon emissions test data show that the loam fields, the average power consumption cost of NT $ 21.2/ha; carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 26 kg/ha. This result shows that energy consumption in the consideration of the performance of carbon dioxide emissions, electric cultivators have lower costs. The test results are displayed in the field; the electric cultivator operator heart rate is lower than the gasoline engine cultivator and has significant difference statistically. Therefore, in the field of long-term operating conditions, the electric cultivator helps reduce physical exertion and operator fatigue.

Abstract Background The impact of sidedness on survival of later-line treatment in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) is undetermined. This study aimed to investigate the association between sidedness and survival among chemotherapy refractory patients with mCRC treated with trifluridine/tipiracil (TAS-102) or regorafenib or both. Patients and Methods Patients with mCRC treated with TAS-102 or regorafenib between 2015 and 2020 was retrospectively collected. Patients were stratified into TAS-102 first and regorafenib first, then subdivided into TAS-102 followed by regorafenib (T-R) and regorafenib followed by TAS-102 (R-T) groups. The oncologic outcomes were presented with time-to-treatment failure (TTF) and overall survival (OS). Results After matching, 376 TAS-102 patients and 376 regorafenib patients were included for outcomes comparison. TTF had insignificant differences while OS was significantly different between TAS-102 and regorafenib groups. Median TTF and OS were 1.9 months versus 2.0 months (P = .701) and 9.1 months versus 7.0 months (P = .008) in TAS-102 and regorafenib, respectively. The OS benefits were consistent regardless primary tumor location. Subgroup analysis with 174 T-R patients and 174 R-T patients was investigated for treatment sequences. TTF and OS had significant differences in both groups. Median TTF and OS were 8.5 months versus 6.3 months (P = .001) and 14.4 months versus 12.6 months (P = .035) in T-R and R-T groups, respectively. The TTF and OS benefits were persisted regardless primary tumor location. Conclusion TAS-102 first provided a better survival benefit in chemotherapy refractory patients with mCRC across all sidedness. Further prospective studies are warranted to validate our conclusions. This study investigated the association between sidedness and survival among patients with chemotherapy refractory metastatic colorectal cancer treated with trifluridine/tipiracil (TAS-102) or regorafenib or both.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second and sixth leading cause of cancer death in men and woman in 185 countries statistics, respectively. n-Butylidenephthalide (BP) has shown anti-HCC activity, but it also has an unstable structure that decreases its potential antitumor activity. The aim of this study was to investigate the cell uptake, activity protection, and antitumor mechanism of BP encapsulated in the novel liposome LPPC in HCC cells. BP/LPPC exhibited higher cell uptake and cytotoxicity than BP alone, and combined with clinical drug etoposide (VP-16), BP/LPPC showed a synergistic effect against HCC cells. Additionally, BP/LPPC increased cell cycle regulators (p53, p-p53, and p21) and decreased cell cycle-related proteins (Rb, p-Rb, CDK4, and cyclin D1), leading to cell cycle arrest at the G0/G1 phase in HCC cells. BP/LPPC induced cell apoptosis through activation of both the extrinsic (Fas-L and Caspase-8) and intrinsic (Bax and Caspase-9) apoptosis pathways and activated the caspase cascade to trigger HCC cell death. In conclusion, the LPPC complex improved the antitumor activity of BP in terms of cytotoxicity, cell cycle regulation and cell apoptosis, and BP/LPPC synergistically inhibited cell growth during combination treatment with VP-16 in HCC cells. Therefore, BP/LPPC is potentially a good candidate for clinical drug development or for use as an adjuvant for clinical drugs as a combination therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma.

Many epigenetic regulators are involved in pain-associated spinal plasticity. Coactivator-associated arginine methyltransferase 1 (CARM1), an epigenetic regulator of histone arginine methylation, is a highly interesting target in neuroplasticity. However, its potential contribution to spinal plasticity–associated neuropathic pain development remains poorly explored. Here, we report that nerve injury decreased the expression of spinal CARM1 and induced allodynia. Moreover, decreasing spinal CARM1 expression by Fbxo3-mediated CARM1 ubiquitination promoted H3R17me2 decrement at the K+ channel promoter, thereby causing K+ channel epigenetic silencing and the development of neuropathic pain. Remarkably, in naïve rats, decreasing spinal CARM1 using CARM1 siRNA or a CARM1 inhibitor resulted in similar epigenetic signaling and allodynia. Furthermore, intrathecal administration of BC-1215 (a novel Fbxo3 inhibitor) prevented CARM1 ubiquitination to block K+ channel gene silencing and ameliorate allodynia after nerve injury. Collectively, the results reveal that this newly identified spinal Fbxo3-CARM1-K+ channel gene functional axis promotes neuropathic pain. These findings provide essential insights that will aid in the development of more efficient and specific therapies against neuropathic pain.

Background Dectin-2, which is a C-type lectin, interacts with the house dust mite (HDM) Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus allergen. This study aimed to investigate whether Dectin-2 blockade by antagonistic monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) attenuates HDM-induced allergic responses. Methods Two anti-Dectin-2 MoAbs were generated and validated for specific binding to Dectin-2 Fc fusion protein (Dectin-2.Fc) and inhibition of Dectin-2.Fc/HDM interaction. Patients with asthma exhibiting high titers of anti- D. pteronyssinus IgE were enrolled. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells with depleted CD14 + monocytes were obtained from these patients and co-cultured with autologous monocyte-derived conventional dendritic cells in the presence of D. pteronyssinus or its group 2 allergens (Der p 2). Interleukin (IL)-5 and IL-13 levels in the culture supernatants were determined using ELISA in the presence or absence of anti-Dectin-2 MoAbs. Results Two MoAbs, 6A4G7 and 17A1D10, showed specific binding to recombinant Dectin-2.Fc and inhibited HDM binding to Dectin-2.Fc. Both anti-Dectin-2 MoAbs inhibited IL-5 and IL-13 production in co-cultures with Der p 2 stimulation in a dose-dependent manner. 6A4G7 and 17A1D10 (3 μg/mL) significantly inhibited Der p 2-induced (3 μg/mL) IL-5 production by 69.7 and 86.4% and IL-13 production by 84.0 and 81.4%, respectively. Moreover, this inhibitory effect of the two MoAbs remained significant in the presence of D. pteronyssinus . Conclusions Anti-Dectin-2 MoAbs significantly inhibited HDM-induced allergic responses in vitro and therefore have the potential to become therapeutic agents in mite-induced allergic diseases.

Movie recommendation systems are important tools that suggest films with respect to users’ choices through item-based collaborative filter algorithms, and have shown positive effect on the provider’s revenue. Given that mobile Apps are rapidly growing, the recommender is implemented to support web services in frontend Apps. Among those films recommended, users can give ratings and feedback, collecting film information from linked data concurrently. In order to solve cold-start problems, Cluster-based Matrix Factorization is adopted to model user implicit ratings related to Apps usage. Knowing that user rating data processing is a large-scale problem in producing high quality recommendations, MapReduce and NoSQL environments are employed in performing efficient similarity measurement algorithms whilst maintaining rating and film datasets. In this investigation, the system analyzes user feedbacks to evaluate the recommendation accuracy through metrics of precision, recall and F-score rates, while cold-start users make use the system with two MovieLens datasets as main rating reference in the recommendation system.