Reporting of suspected dog-fighting to the police, RSPCA and equivalents by veterinary professionals in the UK

Dog fighting became unlawful in the UK in 1835, yet it continues today (as reported by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and Crown Prosecution Service), although with an unknown prevalence. We used an online questionnaire to (1) determine the occurrence of dogs suspected of use in fighting in UK veterinary practices; (2) explore relative reporting of incidents to police, RSPCA or equivalent charity by registered veterinary nurses (RVN) and veterinarians; and (3) determine factors influencing reporting. Emails (n=2493) containing the questionnaire were sent to UK veterinary practices: 423 questionnaires (159 by RVNs, 264 by veterinarians) were completed. One or more cases of dog fighting were suspected by 14.4 per cent of respondents in 2015; 182 cases suspected in total. Proportionately more RVNs suspected dog fighting than veterinarians (P=0.0009). Thirty-two respondents (7.6 per cent, n=422) claimed to have reported suspicions to the police, the RSPCA or equivalent charity previously; 59 respondents (14.2 per cent) had previously chosen not to. Reasons not to report included: uncertainty of illegal activity (81.4 per cent), fear of the client not returning to the practice (35.6 per cent) and concerns regarding client confidentiality (22.0 per cent). Further work is required to address under-reporting of dog fighting by veterinary professionals

Development and initial validation of a sensory threshold examination protocol (STEP) for phenotyping canine pain syndromes

Objective To study feasibility and test-retest repeatability of a sensory threshold examination protocol (STEP) and report quantitative sensory threshold distributions in healthy dogs. Study design Prospective, observational, cohort study. Animals Twenty-five healthy client-owned dogs. Methods Tactile sensitivity (TST) (von Frey filaments), mechanical thresholds (MT with 2, 4 and 8 mm probes), heat thresholds (HT) and responsiveness to cold stimulus (CT at 0 °C) were quantitatively assessed for five body areas (BA: tibias, humeri, neck, thoracolumbar region and abdomen) in a randomized order on three different occasions. Linear Mixed Model and Generalised Linear Mixed models were used to evaluate the effects of body weight category, age, sex, BA, occasion, feasibility score and investigator experience. Test-retest repeatability was evaluated with the Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC). Results The STEP lasted 90 minutes without side effects. The BA affected most tests (p = 0.001). Higher thresholds and longer cold latencies were scored in the neck (p = 0.024) compared to other BAs. Weight category affected all thresholds (p = 0.037). Small dogs had lower MT (~1.4 N mean difference) and HT (1.1 0C mean difference) than other dogs (p = 0.029). Young dogs had higher HT than adults (2.2 0C mean difference) (p = 0.035). Gender also affected TST, MT and HT (p < 0.05) (females versus males: TST OR= 0.5, MT= 1.3 N mean difference, HT= 2.2 0C mean difference). Repeatability was substantial to moderate for all tests, but poor for TST. There was no difference in thresholds between occasions, except for CT. Test-retest repeatability was slightly better with the 2 mm MT probe compared to other diameters and improved with operator experience. Conclusions and clinical relevance The STEP was feasible, well tolerated and showed substantial test-retest repeatability in healthy dogs. Further validation is needed in dogs suffering pain

Prioritisation of companion dog welfare issues using expert consensus

Resources for tackling animal welfare issues are often limited. Obtaining a consensus of expert opinion on the most pressing issues to address is a valuable approach to try to ensure that resources are wisely spent. In this study, seven independent experts in a range of disciplines (including veterinary medicine, animal behaviour and welfare science and ethics) were consulted on the relative prioritisation of welfare issues impacting companion dogs in Great Britain. Experts first anonymously ranked the priority of 37 welfare issues, pre-defined from a literature review and an earlier published survey. In a subsequent two-day panel workshop, experts refined these issues into 25 composite groups and used specific criteria to agree their relative priorities as a Welfare Problem (WP; incorporating numbers of dogs affected, severity, duration and counter-balancing benefits) and a Strategic Priority (SP; a combination of WP and tractability). Other criteria — anthropogenicity, ethical significance and confidence in the issue-relevant evidence — were also discussed by the panel. Issues that scored highly for both WP and SP were: inappropriate husbandry, lack of owner knowledge, undesirable behaviours, inherited disease, inappropriate socialisation and habituation and conformation-related disorders. Other welfare issues, such as obese and overweight dogs, were judged as being important for welfare (WP) but not strategic priorities (SP), due to the expert-perceived difficulties in their management and resolution. This information can inform decisions on where future resources can most cost-effectively be targeted, to bring about the greatest improvement in companion dog welfare in Great Britain

The behaviour of commercial broilers in response to a mobile robot

1. Modern broiler production, in increasingly large sheds holding upwards of 50.000 birds, controls indoor climate based on a handful of fixed location sensors, often well above the bird occupied zone. Significant deviations within a shed from the optimal climate conditions for the birds are common, but installing a higher density grid of fixed sensors is not cost effective. A robotic platform, moving through the flock of birds, collecting detailed spacial information on a wide range of climate parameters at bird level, will enable accurate decisions to optimise the climate in large sheds being made in real time. 2. A preliminary study investigated the feasibility of running a mobile robotic platform among a flock of broiler chickens for an entire 6-week cycle. Bird behaviour in response to the robot was also studied

Adolescents care but don't feel responsible for farm animal welfare

Adolescents are the next generation of consumers with the potential to raise standards of farm animal welfare—to theirsatisfaction—if their preferences and concerns are translated into accurate market drivers and signals. There are no published data about adolescent views of farm animal welfare to allow meaningful design, implementation, and evaluation of educational strategies to improve consideration of—and behavior toward—farm animals. Knowledge of farm animal welfare, as well as beliefs and attitudes about farm animal welfare and behavioral intention relevant to it were determined in a sample of ukadolescents, using a survey incorporating an extended version of the theory of planned behavior and novel assessment tools. Our results indicate that adolescents have only a limited knowledge of welfare problems for farm animals and welfare-relevant product labels. Intentions to identify welfare standards for the animals from whom their food was derived were weak. Although they cared about farm animal welfare and agreed with fundamental principles—for example, the provision of space and the absence of pain and suffering—like adults they held limited belief in the power and responsibility that they possess through their choices as consumers; responsibility was often shifted to others, such as the government and farmers

Pregabalin for the treatment of syringomyelia-associated neuropathic pain in dogs: A randomised, placebo-controlled, double-masked clinical trial

Pregabalin is the first-line treatment for neuropathic pain (NeP) in humans. Dogs with Chiari-like malformation and syringomyelia (CM/SM) associated with NeP could benefit from pregabalin. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of pregabalin for NeP in dogs with CM/SM. Eight dogs with symptomatic CM/SM were included in a double-masked, randomised, crossover placebo–controlled clinical trial. All dogs received anti-inflammatory drugs as base-line treatment during placebo or pregabalin phase of 14 ± 4 days each. Analgesic efficacy was assessed with a daily numerical rating scale (NRS) recorded by dog owners (0–10, 10 = worst pain) and quantitative sensory testing at baseline, placebo and pregabalin phases. Blood samples were collected to report pregabalin exposure and to assess renal function. Daily NRS scores recorded by dog owners in the pregabalin group were lower than in the placebo group (P = 0.006). Mechanical thresholds were higher with pregabalin compared to baseline or placebo (P = 0.037, P < 0.001). Cold latency at 15 °C was prolonged on the neck and humeri with pregabalin compared to baseline (P < 0.001 for both) or placebo (P = 0.02, P = 0.0001). Cold latency at 0 °C was longer on pregabalin compared to baseline and placebo (P = 0.001, P = 0.004). There was no pregabalin accumulation between first and last dose. This study demonstrates the efficacy of pregabalin for the treatment of NeP due to CM/SM on daily pain scores recorded by dog owners. Pregabalin significantly reduced mechanical hyperalgesia, cold hyperalgesia (0 °C) and allodynia (15 °C) compared to placebo. Pregabalin was non-cumulative and well tolerated with occasional mild sedation

Generalized remote state preparation: Trading cbits, qubits and ebits in quantum communication

We consider the problem of communicating quantum states by simultaneously making use of a noiseless classical channel, a noiseless quantum channel and shared entanglement. We specifically study the version of the problem in which the sender is given knowledge of the state to be communicated. In this setting, a trade-off arises between the three resources, some portions of which have been investigated previously in the contexts of the quantum-classical trade-off in data compression, remote state preparation and superdense coding of quantum states, each of which amounts to allowing just two out of these three resources. We present a formula for the triple resource trade-off that reduces its calculation to evaluating the data compression trade-off formula. In the process, we also construct protocols achieving all the optimal points. These turn out to be achievable by trade-off coding and suitable time-sharing between optimal protocols for cases involving two resources out of the three mentioned above.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

The Quantum Reverse Shannon Theorem based on One-Shot Information Theory

The Quantum Reverse Shannon Theorem states that any quantum channel can be simulated by an unlimited amount of shared entanglement and an amount of classical communication equal to the channel's entanglement assisted classical capacity. In this paper, we provide a new proof of this theorem, which has previously been proved by Bennett, Devetak, Harrow, Shor, and Winter. Our proof has a clear structure being based on two recent information-theoretic results: one-shot Quantum State Merging and the Post-Selection Technique for quantum channels.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, published versio

Exponential Decay of Correlations Implies Area Law

We prove that a finite correlation length, i.e. exponential decay of correlations, implies an area law for the entanglement entropy of quantum states defined on a line. The entropy bound is exponential in the correlation length of the state, thus reproducing as a particular case Hastings proof of an area law for groundstates of 1D gapped Hamiltonians. As a consequence, we show that 1D quantum states with exponential decay of correlations have an efficient classical approximate description as a matrix product state of polynomial bond dimension, thus giving an equivalence between injective matrix product states and states with a finite correlation length. The result can be seen as a rigorous justification, in one dimension, of the intuition that states with exponential decay of correlations, usually associated with non-critical phases of matter, are simple to describe. It also has implications for quantum computing: It shows that unless a pure state quantum computation involves states with long-range correlations, decaying at most algebraically with the distance, it can be efficiently simulated classically. The proof relies on several previous tools from quantum information theory - including entanglement distillation protocols achieving the hashing bound, properties of single-shot smooth entropies, and the quantum substate theorem - and also on some newly developed ones. In particular we derive a new bound on correlations established by local random measurements, and we give a generalization to the max-entropy of a result of Hastings concerning the saturation of mutual information in multiparticle systems. The proof can also be interpreted as providing a limitation on the phenomenon of data hiding in quantum states.Comment: 35 pages, 6 figures; v2 minor corrections; v3 published versio