OBIHIRO, HOKKAIDO – Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, NTT Docomo Inc. and others plan to develop a system to monitor dairy cows using fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless networks, aiming for commercialization in 2022. The system will use vast amounts of photographic data to detect early signs of illness and estrus in dairy cows. The aim is to ease the heavy burdens on dairy farmers blamed in part for the difficulties they face finding successors. Also on the development team is Tsuchiya Manufacturing Co., a dairy farming equipment maker based in Sapporo. The system will feed photographic data from cameras in cattle sheds to artificial intelligence for learning and analysis, informing farmers promptly via smartphone if there are signs of illness or estrus in cows.

When she started in vitro fertilization, Katie Shepard, a medical device consultant from outside St. Paul, Minnesota, knew it could take more than one round to get pregnant. So, after the grueling regimen of hormone injections, ultrasound exams, egg retrieval and transfer of embryos back into her womb, she stayed optimistic -- until her second cycle. Of the 25 eggs harvested over the course of those two IVF treatments, only three developed into embryos. "It felt like someone took me out at the knees with a baseball bat," Shepard says. Worse, the embryos didn't take, nor did any from her third cycle.