Water bathing alters threat perception in starlings.

The majority of bird taxa perform water bathing, but little is known about the adaptive value of this behaviour. If bathing is important for feather maintenance then birds that have not bathed should have poorer feather condition, compromised escape ability and therefore increased responsiveness to cues of predation. We conducted two experiments examining the behaviour of captive starlings responding to conspecific alarm calls. Birds that had no access to bathing water showed a decreased willingness to feed and increased their vigilance behaviour following an alarm call. We argue that birds denied access to bathing water interpreted an ambiguous cue of threat as requiring more caution than birds that had access, consistent with higher levels of anxiety. Our results support the provision of bathing water for captive birds as an important welfare measure

Quantification of abnormal repetitive behaviour in captive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris).

Stereotypies are repetitive, unvarying and goalless behaviour patterns that are often considered indicative of poor welfare in captive animals. Quantifying stereotypies can be difficult, particularly during the early stages of their development when behaviour is still flexible. We compared two methods for objectively quantifying the development of route-tracing stereotypies in caged starlings. We used Markov chains and T-pattern analysis (implemented by the software package, Theme) to identify patterns in the sequence of locations a bird occupied within its cage. Pattern metrics produced by both methods correlated with the frequency of established measures of stereotypic behaviour and abnormal behaviour patterns counted from video recordings, suggesting that both methods could be useful for identifying stereotypic individuals and quantifying stereotypic behaviour. We discuss the relative benefits and disadvantages of the two approaches

Taking Student Artists and Audiences to the West Side: Exploring the value of creative adaptation in an arts context through a case study of “West Side Story”

This project focuses on the practical application and conceptual acceptance of deliberate creative adaptation within the purview of the performing arts and arts education. More specifically, it centers this conversation around stagings of the iconic musical West Side Story, as my role as a choreographer and arts educator is used to further explore, examine, and emphasize these topics through the documentation of my production planning process, choreographic creation, and ultimate execution of performance material for a local high school production of the show. As such, this project builds with greater specificity off of my previous investigations of “adaptation” as an ideological concept and physical practice within a comparative arts - creativity context. An accumulation of anecdotal evidence, performance product, literary review, colleague critique, and personal reflection are presented. Elements of chief importance could best be framed as the relationship between innovation and novelty in conjunction with artistic repertoire and identity; the struggle for balance and boundaries between innovation and tradition when working with iconic performance pieces; innovatively addressing classical demands through alternate means; and finding opportunities for unique and novel interpretations without compromising artistic integrity. Additionally, all this is overlaid with the perspectives and potential opportunities of greater accessibility and engagement in arts education

Stereotyping starlings are more 'pessimistic'.

Negative affect in humans and animals is known to cause individuals to interpret ambiguous stimuli pessimistically, a phenomenon termed 'cognitive bias'. Here, we used captive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) to test the hypothesis that a reduction in environmental conditions, from enriched to non-enriched cages, would engender negative affect, and hence 'pessimistic' biases. We also explored whether individual differences in stereotypic behaviour (repetitive somersaulting) predicted 'pessimism'. Eight birds were trained on a novel conditional discrimination task with differential rewards, in which background shade (light or dark) determined which of two covered dishes contained a food reward. The reward was small when the background was light, but large when the background was dark. We then presented background shades intermediate between those trained to assess the birds' bias to choose the dish associated with the smaller food reward (a 'pessimistic' judgement) when the discriminative stimulus was ambiguous. Contrary to predictions, changes in the level of cage enrichment had no effect on 'pessimism'. However, changes in the latency to choose and probability of expressing a choice suggested that birds learnt rapidly that trials with ambiguous stimuli were unreinforced. Individual differences in performance of stereotypies did predict 'pessimism'. Specifically, birds that somersaulted were more likely to choose the dish associated with the smaller food reward in the presence of the most ambiguous discriminative stimulus. We propose that somersaulting is part of a wider suite of behavioural traits indicative of a stress response to captive conditions that is symptomatic of a negative affective state

Understanding the use, and misuse, of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in trauma-informed policing

An increased awareness about how trauma impacts upon children and adults is vital for the identification of vulnerability, development of trauma-informed policing and strengthening the case for the prevention. ACEs provide an easily understandable framework which could help to develop trauma-informed practice and responses. However, there are potential misuses of ACEs in policing, for example using ACE scores or specific single ACEs as the basis for decisions or as intervention thresholds. In this article we review the current evidence with a focus on the strengths, current issues and risks in the use of ACEs across policin

FUSE observations of HD 5980: The wind structure of the eruptor

HD 5980 is a unique system containing one massive star (star A) that is apparently entering the luminous blue variable phase, and an eclipsing companion (star B) that may have already evolved beyond this phase to become a Wolf-Rayet star. In this paper we present the results from FUSE observations obtained in 1999, 2000, and 2002 and one far-UV observation obtained by ORFEUS/BEFS in 1993 shortly before the first eruption of HD 5980. The eight phase-resolved spectra obtained by FUSE in 2002 are analyzed in the context of a wind-eclipse model. This analysis shows that the wind of the eruptor obeyed a very fast velocity law in 2002, which is consistent with the line-driving mechanism. Large amplitude line-profile variations on the orbital period are shown to be due to the eclipse of star B by the wind of star A, although the eclipse due to gas flowing in the direction of star B is absent. This can only be explained if the wind of star A is not spherically symmetric, or if the eclipsed line radiation is "filled-in" by emission originating from somewhere else in the system, e.g., in the wind-wind collision region. Except for a slightly lower wind speed, the ORFEUS/BEFS spectrum is very similar to the spectrum obtained by FUSE at the same orbital phase: there is no indication of the impending eruption. However, the trend for decreasing wind velocity suggests the occurrence of the "bi-stability" mechanism, which in turn implies that the restructuring of the circumbinary environment caused by the transition from "fast, rarefied wind" to "slow, dense wind" was observed as the eruptive event. The underlying mechanism responsible for the long-term decrease in wind velocity that precipitated this change remains an open issue.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figure

Twitter and non-elites. Interpreting power dynamics in the life story of the (#)BRCA Twitter stream

In May 2013 and March 2015, actress Angelina Jolie wrote in the New York Times about her choice to undergo preventive surgery. In her two op-eds she explained that - as a carrier of the BRCA1 gene mutation - preventive surgery was the best way to lower her heightened risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. By applying a digital methods approach to BRCA-related tweets from 2013 and 2015, before, during and after the exposure of Jolie’s story, this study maps and interprets Twitter discursive dynamics at two time points of the BRCA Twitter stream. Findings show an evolution in curation and framing dynamics occurring between 2013 and 2015, with individual patient advocates replacing advocacy organisations as top curators of BRCA content and coming to prominence as providers of specialist illness narratives. These results suggest that between 2013 and 2015, Twitter went from functioning primarily as an organisation-centred news reporting mechanism, to working as a crowdsourced specialist awareness system. This paper advances a twofold contribution. First, it points at Twitter’s fluid functionality for an issue public and suggests that by looking at the life story – rather than at a single time point – of an issue-based Twitter stream we can track the evolution of power roles underlying discursive practices and better interpret the emergence of non-elite actors in the public arena. Second, the study provides evidence of the rise of activist cultures that rely on fluid, non-elite, collective and individual social media engagement

Decoding of the light changes in eclipsing Wolf-Rayet binaries I. A non-classical approach to the solution of light curves

We present a technique to determine the orbital and physical parameters of eclipsing eccentric Wolf-Rayet + O-star binaries, where one eclipse is produced by the absorption of the O-star light by the stellar wind of the W-R star. Our method is based on the use of the empirical moments of the light curve that are integral transforms evaluated from the observed light curves. The optical depth along the line of sight and the limb darkening of the W-R star are modelled by simple mathematical functions, and we derive analytical expressions for the moments of the light curve as a function of the orbital parameters and the key parameters of the transparency and limb-darkening functions. These analytical expressions are then inverted in order to derive the values of the orbital inclination, the stellar radii, the fractional luminosities, and the parameters of the wind transparency and limb-darkening laws. The method is applied to the SMC W-R eclipsing binary HD 5980, a remarkable object that underwent an LBV-like event in August 1994. The analysis refers to the pre-outburst observational data. A synthetic light curve based on the elements derived for the system allows a quality assessment of the results obtained.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic