Search

Abstract Automation of the measurement of the physiological and behavioural parameters of livestock has become an important goal for both scientists and farmers. Accurate data and knowledge about farmed animals, especially in cattle breeding, are needed. Proper early diagnosis of a cow's health status in real time allows for preventing the development of infection, oestrus detection and leads to reduced environmental stress. Thus, it contributes to more effective herd management. Among the physiological parameters, body temperature and its fluctuations are key indicators of health and well-being in animals. Currently, along with the development of technical solutions and their implementation, increasingly more attention is being paid to the continuously measurement of body core and peripheral temperature in animals. Recently there has been an increased number of publications devoted to this subject. However, there is a need to systematise this knowledge as these studies have had different purposes, have been performed in various environmental conditions, and the measurements were taken using different methods and equipment. As such, the results obtained by the different authors often may not be comparable. For this reason, this paper has two main purposes: to present the most widely used continuous methods of peripheral and body core temperature measurement, and to show its references values which characterise the individual locations of the cattle body in thermoneutral ambient. An analysis of the professional publications regarding measurements of peripheral and deep body temperature led to the conclusion that these methods have high research and diagnostic potential. However, it is necessary to standardised research to enable better and more comparable results, including among others; different cattle groups, animal age, health and environmental conditions. Highlights • Peripheral and deep body temperature measurements have high research potential. • Ambient conditions are the most important in affecting an animal's thermoregulation. • Individual areas of the body are characterised by different temperatures. • Nowadays technologically advanced devices enable to capture temperature changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The evaporation process of droplet stream was evaluated by the rainbow technique. • The size and equivalent temperature of droplet had been simultaneously extracted. • The impact of inhomogeneous refractive index on the rainbow angle was considered. • The temperature distributions in the liquid phase were predicted with a parabolic assumption. The transient evaporation characteristics of free-falling ethanol droplets under ambient temperatures of 373–473 K are investigated with the rainbow technique. The size and equivalent temperature of droplets have been simultaneously extracted by analyzing the rainbow patterns. It indicates that the rainbow signal shifts to lower scattering angles by enhancing ambient temperature. While larger droplets tend to have more peaks within the same scattering angle range. Besides, the variation trend of diameter and equivalent temperature obtained by the experiment confirms well with the simulation results. However, the temperatures retrieved from rainbow measurements and predicted by the model are not quantitatively identical with each other due to the temperature gradient. Furthermore, to account for the inhomogeneous temperature in the liquid phase, a parabolic profile of the refractive index was adopted and thus the temperature values inside the droplet were proposed from the experimental results. The temperature values from the experiment and model are agreeable with each other for smaller droplets. By contrast, the deviation of the temperatures between experimental measurements and the predictions is visible for larger droplets. This might be attributed to the shape change of larger droplet from spherical to spheroidal one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]