An investigation into 'community expectations' surrounding animal welfare law enforcement in Australia

PUBLISHED 11 November 2022Nature of reform to animal welfare legislation in Australia has commonly been attributed to increasing alignment with the ‘communities’ expectations’, implying that the community has power in driving legislative change. Yet, despite this assertion there has been no publicly available information disclosing the nature of these ‘expectations’, or the methodology used to determine public stance. However, based on previous sociological research, as well as legal reforms that have taken place to increase maximum penalties for animal welfare offences, it is probable that the community expects harsher penalties for offences. Using representative sampling of the Australian public, this study provides an assessment of current community expectations of animal welfare law enforcement. A total of 2152 individuals participated in the survey. There was strong support for sentences for animal cruelty being higher in magnitude (50% support). However, a large proportion (84%) were in favour of alternate penalties such as prohibiting offenders from owning animals in the future. There was also a belief that current prosecution rates were too low with 80% of respondents agreeing to this assertion. Collectively, this suggests a greater support for preventing animal cruelty through a stronger enforcement model rather than punishing animal cruelty offenders through harsher sentences. This potentially indicates a shift in public opinion towards a more proactive approach to animal welfare, rather than a reactive approach to animal cruelty.Rochelle Morton, Michelle L. Hebart, Rachel A. Ankeny and Alexandra L. Whittake

What Difference Does Quantity Make? On the Epistemology of Big Data Biology

publication-status: Acceptedtypes: ArticleIs Big Data science a whole new way of doing research? And what difference does data quantity make to knowledge production strategies and their outputs? I argue that the novelty of Big Data science does not lie in the sheer quantity of data involved, but rather in (1) the prominence and status acquired by data as commodity and recognised output, both within and outside of the scientific community and (2) the methods, infrastructures, technologies, skills and knowledge developed to handle data. These developments generate the impression that data-intensive research is a new mode of doing science, with its own epistemology and norms. To assess this claim, one needs to consider the ways in which data are actually disseminated and used to generate knowledge. Accordingly, this article reviews the development of sophisticated ways to disseminate, integrate and re-use data acquired on model organisms over the last three decades of work in experimental biology. I focus on online databases as prominent infrastructures set up to organise and interpret such data and examine the wealth and diversity of expertise, resources and conceptual scaffolding that such databases draw upon. This illuminates some of the conditions under which Big Data needs to be curated to support processes of discovery across biological subfields, which in turn highlights the difficulties caused by the lack of adequate curation for the vast majority of data in the life sciences. In closing, I reflect on the difference that data quantity is making to contemporary biology, the methodological and epistemic challenges of identifying and analysing data given these developments, and the opportunities and worries associated with Big Data discourse and methods.Economic and Social Research CouncilES/F028180/1Leverhulme TrustRPG-2013-153European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013ERC grant agreement number 335925

What are they thinking? Consumer attitudes to meat production in Australia

Meat production has come under increasing scrutiny from consumers and citizens who feel that certain practices are unethical and negatively affect farm-animal welfare. Animal welfare can be viewed as both a scientific and social concept, and purchasing products with animal welfare claims can be considered an act of ‘ethical consumption’. The present paper reviews research that examines consumer attitudes to animal welfare and highlights tensions between consumer and citizen attitudes and behaviours, and assumptions that are made within these studies. We present our own research into motivations to purchase free-range eggs as an example of research that attempts to unpack these assumptions, in particular, that such purchases are made out of concern for animal welfare. We present a further example of our own research that attempts to identify how attitudes to meat production are socially constructed. We conclude with recommended strategies to engage the broader community in discussions about animal production, so as to improve industry–community communication about farm-animal welfare in meat-production industries.H. J. Bray, E. A. Buddle and R. A. Anken

Pathological Investigation of Congenital Bicuspid Aortic Valve Stenosis, Compared with Atherosclerotic Tricuspid Aortic Valve Stenosis and Congenital Bicuspid Aortic Valve Regurgitation

Congenital bicuspid aortic valve (CBAV) is the main cause of aortic stenosis (AS) in young adults. However, the histopathological features of AS in patients with CBAV have not been fully investigated.We examined specimens of aortic valve leaflets obtained from patients who had undergone aortic valve re/placement at our institution for severe AS with CBAV (n = 24, CBAV-AS group), severe AS with tricuspid aortic valve (n = 24, TAV-AS group), and severe aortic regurgitation (AR) with CBAV (n = 24, CBAV-AR group). We compared the histopathological features among the three groups. Pathological features were classified using semi-quantitative methods (graded on a scale 0 to 3) by experienced pathologists without knowledge of the patients' backgrounds. The severity of inflammation, neovascularization, and calcium and cholesterol deposition did not differ between the CBAV-AS and TAV-AS groups, and these four parameters were less marked in the CBAV-AR group than in the CBAV-AS (all p<0.01). Meanwhile, the grade of valvular fibrosis was greater in the CBAV-AS group, compared with the TAV-AS and CBAV-AR groups (both p<0.01). In AS patients, thickness of fibrotic lesions was greater on the aortic side than on the ventricular side (both p<0.01). Meanwhile, thickness of fibrotic lesions was comparable between the aortic and ventricular sides in CBAV-AR patients (p = 0.35).Valvular fibrosis, especially on the aortic side, was greater in patients with CBAV-AS than in those without, suggesting a difference in the pathogenesis of AS between CBAV and TAV

Yeast:One cell, one reference sequence, many genomes?

The genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae – brewer’s or baker’s yeast – was the first eukaryotic genome to be sequenced in 1996. The identity of that yeast genome has been not just a product of sequencing, but also of its use after sequencing and particularly of its mobilization in scientific literature. We ask “what is the yeast genome?” as an empirical question by investigating “the yeast genome” as a discursive entity. Analyzing publications that followed sequencing points to several “yeast genomes” existing side-by-side: genomes as physical molecules, digital texts, and a historic event. Resolving this unified-yet-multiple “genome” helps make sense of contemporary developments in yeast genomics such as the synthetic yeast project, in which apparently “the same” genome occupies multiple roles and locations, and points to the utility of examining specific non-human genomes independent of the Human Genome Project

Tecolote: An Object-Oriented Framework for Hydrodynamics Physics

Tecolote is an object-oriented framework for both developing and accessing a variety of hydrodynamics models. It is written in C++, and is in turn built on another framework - Parallel Object-Oriented Methods and Applications (POOMA). The Tecolote framework is meant to provide modules (or building blocks) to put together hydrodynamics applications that can encompass a wide variety of physics models, numerical solution options, and underlying data storage schemes, although with only those modules activated at runtime that are necessary. Tecolote has been designed to separate physics from computer science, as much as humanly possible. The POOMA framework provides fields in C++ to Tecolote that are analogous to Fortran-9O-like arrays in the way that they are used, but that, in addition, have underlying load balancing, message passing, and a special scheme for compact data storage. The POOMA fields can also have unique meshes associated with them that can allow more options than just the normal regularly-spaced Cartesian mesh. They also permit one-, two, and three-dimensions to be immediately accessible to the code developer and code user

Introduction to "Working Across Species"

Comparison between different animal species is omnipresent in the history of science and medicine but rarely subject to focussed historical analysis. The articles in the ‘‘Working Across Species’’ topical collection address this deficit by looking directly at the practical and epistemic work of cross-species comparison. Drawn from papers presented at a Wellcome-Trust-funded workshop in 2016, these papers investigate various ways that comparison has been made persuasive and successful, in multiple locations, by diverse disciplines, over the course of two centuries. They explore the many different animal features that have been considered to be (or else made) comparable, and the ways that animals have shaped science and medicine through the use of comparison. Authors demonstrate that comparison between species often transcended the range of practices typically employed with experimental animal models, where standardised practises and apparatus were applied to standardised bodies to produce generalizable, objective data; instead, comparison across species has often engaged diverse groups of nonstandard species, made use of subjective inferences about phenomena that cannot be directly observed, and inspired analogies that linked physiological and behavioural characteristics with the apparent affective state of non-human animals. Moreover, such comparative practices have also provided unusually fruitful opportunities for collaborative connections between different research traditions and disciplines

Affective practices, care and bioscience: a study of two laboratories

Scientific knowledge-making is not just a matter of experiments, modelling and fieldwork. It also involves affective, embodied and material practices (Wetherell 2012) which can be understood together as 'matters of care' (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011). In this paper we explore how affect spans and connects material, subjective and organisational practices, focusing in particular on the patterns of care we encountered in an observational study of two bioscience laboratories. We explore the preferred emotional subjectivities of each lab and their relation to material practice. We go on to consider flows and clots in the circulation of affect and their relation to care through an exploration of belonging and humour in the labs. We show how being a successful scientist or group of researchers involves a careful choreography of affect in relation to materials, colleagues and others to produce scientific results, subjects and workplaces. We end by considering how thinking with care troubles dominant constructions of scientific practice, successful scientific selves and collectives