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Wild horse crossing events are a major concern for highway safety in rural and suburban areas in many states of the United States. This paper provides a practical and real-time approach to detecting wild horses crossing highways using 3D light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology. The developed LiDAR data processing procedure includes background filtering, object clustering, object tracking, and object classification. Considering that the background information collected by LiDAR may change over time, an automatic background filtering method that updates the background in real-time has been developed to subtract the background effectively over time. After a standard object clustering and a fast object tracking method, eight features were extracted from the clustering group, including a feature developed to specifically identify wild horses, and a vertical point distribution was used to describe the objects. The classification results of the four classifiers were compared, and the experiments showed that the support vector machine (SVM) had more reliable results. The field test results showed that the developed method could accurately detect a wild horse within the detection range of LiDAR. The wild horse crossing information can warn drivers about the risks of wild horse–vehicle collisions in real-time. Full article

Botulism is a rare but severe neurological disease in man and animals that is caused by botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) produced by Clostridium botulinum and atypical strains from other Clostridium and non-Clostridium species. BoNTs are divided into more than seven toxinotypes based on neutralization with specific corresponding antisera, and each toxinotype is subdivided into subtypes according to amino acid sequence variations. Animal species show variable sensitivity to the different BoNT toxinotypes. Thereby, naturally acquired animal botulism is mainly due to BoNT/C, D and the mosaic variants CD and DC, BoNT/CD being more prevalent in birds and BoNT/DC in cattle, whereas human botulism is more frequently in the types A, B and E, and to a lower extent, F. Botulism is not a contagious disease, since there is no direct transmission from diseased animals or man to a healthy subject. Botulism occurs via the environment, notably from food contaminated with C. botulinum spores and preserved in conditions favorable for C. botulinum growth and toxin production. The high prevalence of botulism types C, D and variants DC and CD in farmed and wild birds, and to a lower extent in cattle, raises the risk of transmission to human beings. However, human botulism is much rarer than animal botulism, and botulism types C and D are exceptional in humans. Only 15 cases or suspected cases of botulism type C and one outbreak of botulism type D have been reported in humans to date. In contrast, animal healthy carriers of C. botulinum group II, such as C. botulinum type E in fish of the northern hemisphere, and C. botulinum B4 in pigs, represent a more prevalent risk of botulism transmission to human subjects. Less common botulism types in animals but at risk of transmission to humans, can sporadically be observed, such as botulism type E in farmed chickens in France (1998–2002), botulism type B in cattle in The Netherlands (1977–1979), botulism types A and B in horses, or botulism type A in dairy cows (Egypt, 1976). In most cases, human and animal botulisms have distinct origins, and cross transmissions between animals and human beings are rather rare, accidental events. But, due to the severity of this disease, human and animal botulism requires a careful surveillance. Full article