An overweight/obesity survey among dogs and cats attended at a veterinary teaching hospital during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic

Anecdotal reports suggest that the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (COVID-19) has increased overweight and obesity prevalence in dogs and cats. The present report aimed to perform a retrospective overweight/obesity survey on 1,001 consecutive cases attended in the Veterinary Clinics Hospital from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul during its reopening to the public after months closed due to the pandemic. The overall overweight or obesity observed prevalence was 36.63%;being the frequency in cats slightly greater (38.37%) than compared to dogs (35.76%). No local increase in these frequencies was detected. Neutering (dogs and cats), age greater than 10 years (dogs), and male gender (cats) were factors associated with overweight/obesity. Bodyweight was not registered in about 30% of the medical records, while the body condition score was not registered in about 50% of the cases. These flaws were more often observed in feline medical records and efforts to improve these data records are warranted. Copyright © 2022,Arquivo Brasileiro de Medicina Veterinaria e Zootecnia. All Rights Reserved.

A Mobile Based Garbage Collection System

Garbage disposal and collection is an ongoing global crisis amplified by the increasing world population, lack of funds and public awareness, and recently because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Information Technology can be utilized as a solution for the existing garbage collection methods that are old-fashioned, time-consuming, and energy-consuming due to the lack of a unified and consistent system that incorporates all the parties involved in garbage production and collection. A mobile-based garbage collection system is proposed to overcome the issues aforementioned through route and schedule optimization, AI chatbot, and optimized GPS tracking. The route and schedule optimization is achieved through vehicle routing problem with time windows(VRPTW) with synchronization and precedence that was optimized using LNS;the total travel cost went from 172 minutes to 144 minutes. The AI chatbot feature facilitates reporting garbage collection issues and complaints and enquiring about waste management tips (reduce, recycle, and reuse tips) to be used at home. The most prominent role of developing this AI chatbot is replacing the manual process of reporting garbage collection issues in Sri Lanka with an efficient and interactive way. The chatbot has waste management tips Q and A. In Optimized GPS Tracking, the user can use the map to find the nearest garbage disposal place based on the type of rubbish they generate. The truck driver can find the optimal path to the closest current garbage disposal centres and public trash bins and view the location of Homeowners on the map. The optimized path between two points is displayed based on distance, time, and fuel consumption. The main goal of the component is to show the location of garbage disposal bins and the optimal paths for truck drivers using Linear regression and the Node2vec algorithm. © 2022 IEEE.