596 research outputs found
Animal welfare indicators for sheep during sea transport: The effect of voyage day and time of day
Ensuring the well-being of animals during transport is becoming an increasingly important societal concern. The Australian livestock export industry recognises the need for comprehensive monitoring and reporting on animal welfare during sea transport. It is predicted that pen-side assessments of sheep can be used to monitor environmental conditions, resource access, and animal health and behavioural outcomes throughout a sea voyage. Pen-side assessments by observation are non-invasive and practical to apply in an industry setting. This study monitored sheep using a pilot list of welfare indicators during two sea voyages from Australia to the Middle East, in contrasting seasons. Sheep behaviour, environment and resources were recorded three times daily via pen-side observations of six pens of Merino wethers (castrated males), repeated over three decks for each voyage. Behavioural outcomes were examined for the effect of sampling frequency on group assessments. The number of behavioural measures were reduced via Principal Component (PC) analysis. The primary three PC factors were tested against the time of sampling and pen location after accounting for the effect of environmental- and resource-based predictor variables. PC 1 (24.0 % of the total variance) described activity levels, with sheep on Voyage B being more active in the morning and resting or recumbent in the middle of the afternoon and evening. PC 2 (14.7 %) reflected heat responses with the majority of the variation in these data accounted for by changes in Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) and manure pad moisture. The heat responses described by PC 2 also varied by voyage day (p < 0.001) and time point (p < 0.001). PC 3 scores (9.5 %) reflected flight distances and feeding behaviour and strongly correlated to WBGT and pellet consumption per head per day. Feeding behaviour generally became more competitive, and flight distances reduced as both voyages progressed. Results indicate that a comprehensive welfare monitoring protocol requires repeated daily sampling throughout a voyage. The findings of this study are pertinent for developing a sampling strategy to assess sheep welfare during sea transport
Review of livestock welfare indicators relevant for the Australian live export industry
Animal welfare is an important issue for the live export industry (LEI), in terms of economic returns, community attitudes and international socio-political relations. Mortality has traditionally been the main welfare measure recorded within the LEI; however, high mortality incidents are usually acted upon after adverse events occur, reducing the scope for proactive welfare enhancement. We reviewed 71 potential animal welfare measures, identifying those measures that would be appropriate for use throughout the LEI for feeder and slaughter livestock species, and categorised these as animal-, environment- and resource-based. We divided the live export supply chain into three sectors: (1) Australian facilities, (2) vessel and (3) destination country facilities. After reviewing the relevant regulations for each sector of the industry, we identified 38 (sector 1), 35 (sector 2) and 26 (sector 3) measures already being collected under current practice. These could be used to form a ‘welfare information dashboard’: a LEI-specific online interface for collecting data that could contribute towards standardised industry reporting. We identified another 20, 25 and 28 measures that are relevant to each LEI sector (sectors 1, 2, 3, respectively), and that could be developed and integrated into a benchmarking system in the future
Surface Roughness and Effective Stick-Slip Motion
The effect of random surface roughness on hydrodynamics of viscous
incompressible liquid is discussed. Roughness-driven contributions to
hydrodynamic flows, energy dissipation, and friction force are calculated in a
wide range of parameters. When the hydrodynamic decay length (the viscous wave
penetration depth) is larger than the size of random surface inhomogeneities,
it is possible to replace a random rough surface by effective stick-slip
boundary conditions on a flat surface with two constants: the stick-slip length
and the renormalization of viscosity near the boundary. The stick-slip length
and the renormalization coefficient are expressed explicitly via the
correlation function of random surface inhomogeneities. The effective
stick-slip length is always negative signifying the effective slow-down of the
hydrodynamic flows by the rough surface (stick rather than slip motion). A
simple hydrodynamic model is presented as an illustration of these general
hydrodynamic results. The effective boundary parameters are analyzed
numerically for Gaussian, power-law and exponentially decaying correlators with
various indices. The maximum on the frequency dependence of the dissipation
allows one to extract the correlation radius (characteristic size) of the
surface inhomogeneities directly from, for example, experiments with torsional
quartz oscillators.Comment: RevTeX4, 14 pages, 3 figure
Galileo dust data from the jovian system: 2000 to 2003
The Galileo spacecraft was orbiting Jupiter between Dec 1995 and Sep 2003.
The Galileo dust detector monitored the jovian dust environment between about 2
and 370 R_J (jovian radius R_J = 71492 km). We present data from the Galileo
dust instrument for the period January 2000 to September 2003. We report on the
data of 5389 particles measured between 2000 and the end of the mission in
2003. The majority of the 21250 particles for which the full set of measured
impact parameters (impact time, impact direction, charge rise times, charge
amplitudes, etc.) was transmitted to Earth were tiny grains (about 10 nm in
radius), most of them originating from Jupiter's innermost Galilean moon Io.
Their impact rates frequently exceeded 10 min^-1. Surprisingly large impact
rates up to 100 min^-1 occurred in Aug/Sep 2000 when Galileo was at about 280
R_J from Jupiter. This peak in dust emission appears to coincide with strong
changes in the release of neutral gas from the Io torus. Strong variability in
the Io dust flux was measured on timescales of days to weeks, indicating large
variations in the dust release from Io or the Io torus or both on such short
timescales. Galileo has detected a large number of bigger micron-sized
particles mostly in the region between the Galilean moons. A surprisingly large
number of such bigger grains was measured in March 2003 within a 4-day interval
when Galileo was outside Jupiter's magnetosphere at approximately 350 R_J
jovicentric distance. Two passages of Jupiter's gossamer rings in 2002 and 2003
provided the first actual comparison of in-situ dust data from a planetary ring
with the results inferred from inverting optical images.Comment: 59 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables, submitted to Planetary and Space
Scienc
Occupational Communication as Boundary Mechanism
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69000/2/10.1177_073088847400100404.pd
Making Sense Through Participation
In this chapter we discuss the issue of social differences in relation to learning. In theories on co-operative learning or
collaborative learning social differences are treated as characteristics of individual learners. The focus on learning as
a social process is primarily elaborated in terms of interaction between pupils and the combined construction of knowledge. Sociocultural
theory (Vygotsky, Lave & Wenger), however, understands ‘social’ not only in terms of knowledge/meaning being constructed in
interaction with others, but also in terms of the cultural practices/activities informing these interaction processes. Learning
can be understood as increasing participating in communities of practice. As social differences are an intrinsic part of the
culture in which students are learning to participate, these are also an inherent aspect of learning processes in schools.
Students learn to participate in practices in different ways, depending on their social position, and thus develop distinguished
cultural identities. In this chapter we elaborate on this tenet, using examples from various empirical research projects on
learning in secondary education. We not only show how social differences in the cultural practices that underpin learning
influence what is learned by whom, but also explore the consequences of this perspective for the pedagogical space of the
school
Chronic hepatitis C virus infection and subsequent HIV viral load among women with HIV initiating antiretroviral therapy
Objectives: One in four persons living with HIV is coinfected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Biological and behavioral mechanisms may increase HIV viral load among coinfected persons. Therefore, we estimated the longitudinal effect of chronic HCV on HIV suppression after ART initiation among women with HIV (WWH). Design: HIV RNA was measured every 6 months among 441 WWH in the Women's Interagency HIV Study who initiated ART from 2000 to 2015. Methods: Log-binomial regression models were used to compare the proportion of study visits with detectable HIV RNA between women with and without chronic HCV. Robust sandwich variance estimators accounted for within-person correlation induced by repeated HIV RNA measurements during follow-up. We controlled for confounding and selection bias (because of loss to follow-up and death) using inverse probability-of-exposure-and-censoring weights. Results: One hundred and fourteen women (25%) had chronic HCV before ART initiation. Overall, the proportion of visits with detectable HIV RNA was similar among women with and without chronic HCV [relative risk (RR) 1.19 (95% CI 0.72, 1.95)]. Six months after ART initiation, the proportion of visits with detectable HIV RNA among women with chronic HCV was 1.88 (95% CI 1.41–2.51) times that among women without HCV, at 2 years, the ratio was 1.60 (95% CI 1.17–2.19), and by 6 years there was no difference (1.03; 95% CI 0.60–1.79). Conclusion: Chronic HCV may negatively impact early HIV viral response to ART. These findings reaffirm the need to test persons with HIV for HCV infection, and increase engagement in HIV care and access to HCV treatment among persons with HIV/HCV coinfection
Formation of dense partonic matter in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC: Experimental evaluation by the PHENIX collaboration
Extensive experimental data from high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions were
recorded using the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
(RHIC). The comprehensive set of measurements from the first three years of
RHIC operation includes charged particle multiplicities, transverse energy,
yield ratios and spectra of identified hadrons in a wide range of transverse
momenta (p_T), elliptic flow, two-particle correlations, non-statistical
fluctuations, and suppression of particle production at high p_T. The results
are examined with an emphasis on implications for the formation of a new state
of dense matter. We find that the state of matter created at RHIC cannot be
described in terms of ordinary color neutral hadrons.Comment: 510 authors, 127 pages text, 56 figures, 1 tables, LaTeX. Submitted
to Nuclear Physics A as a regular article; v3 has minor changes in response
to referee comments. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures
for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available
at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm
Applicability of precision medicine approaches to managing hypertension in rural populations
As part of the Heart Healthy Lenoir Project, we developed a practice level intervention to improve blood pressure control. The goal of this study was: (i) to determine if single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that associate with blood pressure variation, identified in large studies, are applicable to blood pressure control in subjects from a rural population; (ii) to measure the association of these SNPs with subjects’ responsiveness to the hypertension intervention; and (iii) to identify other SNPs that may help understand patient-specific responses to an intervention. We used a combination of candidate SNPs and genome-wide analyses to test associations with either baseline systolic blood pressure (SBP) or change in systolic blood pressure one year after the intervention in two genetically defined ancestral groups: African Americans (AA) and Caucasian Americans (CAU). Of the 48 candidate SNPs, 13 SNPs associated with baseline SBP in our study; however, one candidate SNP, rs592582, also associated with a change in SBP after one year. Using our study data, we identified 4 and 15 additional loci that associated with a change in SBP in the AA and CAU groups, respectively. Our analysis of gene-age interactions identified genotypes associated with SBP improvement within different age groups of our populations. Moreover, our integrative analysis identified AQP4-AS1 and PADI2 as genes whose expression levels may contribute to the pleiotropy of complex traits involved in cardiovascular health and blood pressure regulation in response to an intervention targeting hypertension. In conclusion, the identification of SNPs associated with the success of a hypertension treatment intervention suggests that genetic factors in combination with age may contribute to an individual’s success in lowering SBP. If these findings prove to be applicable to other populations, the use of this genetic variation in making patient-specific interventions may help providers with making decisions to improve patient outcomes. Further investigation is required to determine the role of this genetic variance with respect to the management of hypertension such that more precise treatment recommendations may be made in the future as part of personalized medicine
Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
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