Change of Ruminoreticular Temperature and Body Activity before and after Parturition in Hanwoo (Bos taurus coreanae) Cows.

How do body temperature and activity change before and after parturition in pregnant cows? Changes in body temperature such as ruminal, rectal, and vaginal temperature during the parturition have been reported, but there are no results of the simultaneous observation of body temperature and activity. The aim of this study was to simultaneously confirm changes in the ruminoreticular temperature and body activity before and after parturition using the ruminoreticular bio-capsule sensor every 1 h. The 55 pregnant cows were used for the experiment, the ruminoreticular bio-capsule sensor was inserted and stabilized, and the ruminoreticular temperature and body activity were measured. The ruminoreticular temperature was lower by 0.5° from -24 h to -3 h in parturition compared to 48 h before parturition and then recovered again after parturition. Body activity increased temporarily at the time of parturition and 12 h after parturition. Therefore, the ruminoreticular temperature and body activity before and after parturition was simultaneously confirmed in pregnant cows.

Increased accuracy of estrus prediction using ruminoreticular biocapsule sensors in Hanwoo (Bos taurus coreanae) cows.

Visual estrus observation can only be confirmed at a rate of 50%-60%, which is lower than that obtained using a biosensor. Thus, the use of biosensors provides more opportunities for artificial insemination because it is easier to confirm estrus than by visual observation. This study determines the accuracy of estrus prediction using a ruminoreticular biosensor by analyzing ruminoreticular temperature during the estrus cycle and measuring changes in body activity. One hundred and twenty-five Hanwoo cows (64 with a ruminal biosensor in the test group and 61 without biosensors in the control group) were studied. Ruminoreticular temperatures and body activities were measured every 10 min. The first service of artificial insemination used gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)-based fixed-time artificial insemination protocol in the control and test groups. The test group received artificial insemination based on the estrus prediction made by the biosensor, and the control group received artificial insemination according to visual estrus observation. Before artificial insemination, the ruminoreticular temperature was maintained at an average of 38.95 ± 0.05°C for 13 h (-21 to -9 h), 0.73°C higher than the average temperature observed at -48 h (38.22 ± 0.06°C). The body activity, measured using an indwelling 3-axis accelerometer, averaged 1502.57 ± 27.35 for approximately 21 h from -4 to -24 h before artificial insemination, showing 203 indexes higher body activity than -48 hours (1299 ± 9.72). Therefore, using an information and communication techonology (ICT)-based biosensor is highly effective because it can reduce the reproductive cost of a farm by accurately detecting estrus and increasing the rate of estrus confirmation in cattle.

Body activity grading strategy for cervical rehabilitation training.

A body activity grading strategy is proposed for computer-assisted cervical rehabilitation training, which employs hidden Markov model to partition an exercise into independently assessable phases and a scoring reference to rate respective kinematic features. Samples of 34 cervical rehabilitation exercises are evaluated by both manual and the proposed approaches, where the average phase segmentation difference is 93 ms, the phase scoring difference is 0.045, and the grading difference for overall samples is 5.5% between the approaches. It indicates that the proposed method has similar accuracy as physical therapists and is thus capable of performing online supervision for cervical rehabilitation training.

Increased Ruminoreticular Temperature and Body Activity after Foot-and-Mouth Vaccination in Pregnant Hanwoo (Bos taurus coreanae) Cows.

How does vaccination against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) affect pregnant cows? Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing the spread of FMD, but it is linked to sporadic side effects, such as abortion and premature birth, which result in economic loss. In this study, ruminoreticular temperature and body activity were measured before and after FMD vaccination using a ruminoreticular biocapsule sensor in Hanwoo cows at different stages of pregnancy. Compared to the unvaccinated groups, the ruminoreticular temperature increased 12 h after vaccination in the vaccinated groups. This increase in temperature is significantly correlated to vaccination. Compared to the nonpregnant and early pregnancy groups, the ruminoreticular temperature of the late pregnancy group increased sharply by more than 40 °C. Moreover, in nonpregnant and early pregnancy groups, a rapid increase in body activity was observed after FMD vaccinations. Of the 73 pregnant vaccinated cows in the study, a total of five cases had side effects (four abortions and one premature birth). Therefore, changes in the ruminoreticular temperature and activity in pregnant cows can be used as raw data to further clarify the association of FMD vaccination with the loss of a fetus and possibly predict abortion, miscarriage, and premature birth following FMD vaccination.

Rest-activity rhythms in emerging adults: implications for cardiometabolic health.

Emerging adulthood (18-25 years) represents a window of opportunity to modify the trajectory of cardiometabolic disease risk into older adulthood. Not known is the extent to which rest-activity rhythms (RAR) may be related to biomarkers of cardiometabolic health in this population. In this cross-sectional, observational study, 52 healthy emerging adults wore wrist accelerometers (14 consecutive days; 24 h/day) for assessment of nonparametric RAR metrics, including interdaily stability (IS; day-to-day RAR consistency), intradaily variability (IV; within-day RAR fragmentation), and relative amplitude (RA; robustness of RAR), as well as autocorrelation (correlation of rest/activity levels at 24-h lag-times). Cardiometabolic biomarkers, including body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage, blood pressure (BP), fasting lipids, glucose, and C-reactive protein (CRP) were assessed. Additional measures including physical activity, sleep duration, and habitual caffeine and alcohol consumption were also evaluated. A series of multivariable regression models of cardiometabolic biomarkers were used to quantify associations with RAR metrics. On average, participants were 20 ± 1 years of age (21 males, 31 females), non-obese, and non-hypertensive. All were nonsmokers and free of major diseases or conditions. In separate models, which adjusted for sex, BMI, moderate-vigorous physical activity, sleep duration, caffeine, and alcohol consumption, IS was inversely associated with total cholesterol (p ≤ 0.01) and non-HDL cholesterol (p < .05), IV was positively associated with CRP (p < .05), and autocorrelation was inversely associated with total cholesterol (p < .05) and CRP (p < .05). Conversely, associations between RA and cardiometabolic biomarkers were nonsignificant after adjustment for BMI, alcohol, and caffeine consumption. In conclusion, RAR metrics, namely, a higher IS, lower IV, and higher autocorrelation, emerged as novel biomarkers associated with more favorable indices of cardiometabolic health in this sample of apparently healthy emerging adults.

Effects of donepezil on sleep disturbances in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies: An open-label study with actigraphy.

We investigated whether donepezil, a cholinesterase inhibitor, can be used to treat sleep disturbances in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Sleep disturbances were evaluated with the sleep disturbances item of the Neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI) and an actigraph in 16 DLB patients and 24 normal elderly control (NC) subjects. The presence/absence of nine kinds of sleep symptoms, such as dream enactment, were also evaluated in the DLB patients. The DLB patients were then given 5mg/day donepezil for 14 weeks and evaluated again. Eight of the 16 DLB patients had some sleep disturbances before taking donepezil. The actigraphy data indicated that average activity count per minute in sleep (AAC), which reflects body activity at night, was significantly higher and total sleep time was significantly longer in DLB patients than in NC subjects. The NPI sleep disturbances score significantly improved and the number of DLB patients who had sleep disturbances decreased after taking donepezil. The actigraphy results indicate that the sum of all wake epochs within the sleep period, which reflects the degree of fragmented sleep, and the AAC decreased in the DLB patients after donepezil treatment. These results indicate that donepezil treatment reduced sleep disturbances in DLB patients.

Improving consumption rate estimates by incorporating wild activity into a bioenergetics model.

Consumption is the basis of metabolic and trophic ecology and is used to assess an animal's trophic impact. The contribution of activity to an animal's energy budget is an important parameter when estimating consumption, yet activity is usually measured in captive animals. Developments in telemetry have allowed the energetic costs of activity to be measured for wild animals; however, wild activity is seldom incorporated into estimates of consumption rates. We calculated the consumption rate of a free-ranging marine predator (yellowtail kingfish, Seriola lalandi) by integrating the energetic cost of free-ranging activity into a bioenergetics model. Accelerometry transmitters were used in conjunction with laboratory respirometry trials to estimate kingfish active metabolic rate in the wild. These field-derived consumption rate estimates were compared with those estimated by two traditional bioenergetics methods. The first method derived routine swimming speed from fish morphology as an index of activity (a "morphometric" method), and the second considered activity as a fixed proportion of standard metabolic rate (a "physiological" method). The mean consumption rate for free-ranging kingfish measured by accelerometry was 152 J·g(-1)·day(-1), which lay between the estimates from the morphometric method (µ = 134 J·g(-1)·day(-1)) and the physiological method (µ = 181 J·g(-1)·day(-1)). Incorporating field-derived activity values resulted in the smallest variance in log-normally distributed consumption rates (σ = 0.31), compared with the morphometric (σ = 0.57) and physiological (σ = 0.78) methods. Incorporating field-derived activity into bioenergetics models probably provided more realistic estimates of consumption rate compared with the traditional methods, which may further our understanding of trophic interactions that underpin ecosystem-based fisheries management. The general methods used to estimate active metabolic rates of free-ranging fish could be extended to examine ecological energetics and trophic interactions across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.