Remote identification of sheep with flystrike using behavioural observations

Flystrike is a major problem affecting sheep in Australia. Identification of ‘flystruck’ individuals is crucial for treatment; but requires labour-intensive physical examination. As the industry moves toward more low-input systems; there is a need for remote methods to identify flystruck individuals. The aim of this study was to investigate the behaviour of sheep with breech flystrike within a paddock setting. Video footage of sixteen Merino sheep; eight later confirmed with flystrike and eight without; was collected as they moved freely within the paddock with conspecifics. Quantitative behavioural measurements and a qualitative behavioural assessment (QBA) were conducted and compared to their breech conditions (i.e., faecal/urine staining; flystrike severity). Both qualitative and quantitative assessments indicated behavioural differences between flystruck and non-flystruck animals. Flystruck sheep had a behavioural profile characterised by restless behaviour; abnormal postures and reduced grazing time (<i>p</i> < 0.05). Furthermore; flystruck sheep were scored to have a more ‘exhausted/irritated’ demeanour using QBA (<i>p</i> < 0.05). The behavioural responses also corresponded to the flystrike severity scores and condition of the breech area. We conclude that remotely assessed behaviour of flystruck sheep diverges markedly from non-flystruck sheep; and thus could be a low-input method for identifying and treating affected animals

The contribution of qualitative behavioural assessment to appraisal of livestock welfare

Animal welfare is increasingly important for the Australian livestock industries, to maintain social licence to practice as well as ensuring market share overseas. Improvement of animal welfare in the livestock industries requires several important key steps. Paramount among these, objective measures are needed for welfare assessment that will enable comparison and contrast of welfare implications of husbandry procedures or housing options. Such measures need to be versatile (can be applied under a wide range of on- and off-farm situations), relevant (reveal aspects of the animal’s affective or physiological state that is relevant to their welfare), reliable (can be repeated with confidence in the results), relatively economic to apply, and they need to have broad acceptance by all stakeholders. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) is an integrated measure that characterises behaviour as a dynamic, expressive body language. QBA is a versatile tool requiring little specialist equipment suiting application to in situ assessments that enables comparative, hypothesis-driven evaluation of various industry-relevant practices. QBA is being increasingly used as part of animal welfare assessments in Europe, and although most other welfare assessment methods record ‘problems’ (e.g. lameness, injury scores, and so on), QBA can capture positive aspects of animal welfare (e.g. positively engaged with their environment, playfulness). In this viewpoint, we review the outcomes of recent QBA studies and discuss the potential application of QBA, in combination with other methods, as a welfare assessment tool for the Australian livestock industries

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

Two-loop self-dual Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians (II): Imaginary part and Borel analysis

We analyze the structure of the imaginary part of the two-loop Euler-Heisenberg QED effective Lagrangian for a constant self-dual background. The novel feature of the two-loop result, compared to one-loop, is that the prefactor of each exponential (instanton) term in the imaginary part has itself an asymptotic expansion. We also perform a high-precision test of Borel summation techniques applied to the weak-field expansion, and find that the Borel dispersion relations reproduce the full prefactor of the leading imaginary contribution.Comment: 28 pp, 6 eps figure

The quantum dilogarithm and representations quantum cluster varieties

We construct, using the quantum dilogarithm, a series of *-representations of quantized cluster varieties. This includes a construction of infinite dimensional unitary projective representations of their discrete symmetry groups - the cluster modular groups. The examples of the latter include the classical mapping class groups of punctured surfaces. One of applications is quantization of higher Teichmuller spaces. The constructed unitary representations can be viewed as analogs of the Weil representation. In both cases representations are given by integral operators. Their kernels in our case are the quantum dilogarithms. We introduce the symplectic/quantum double of cluster varieties and related them to the representations.Comment: Dedicated to David Kazhdan for his 60th birthday. The final version. To appear in Inventiones Math. The last Section of the previous versions was removed, and will become a separate pape

Coulomb Gauge QCD, Confinement, and the Constituent Representation

Quark confinement and the genesis of the constituent quark model are examined in nonperturbative QCD in Coulomb gauge. We employ a self-consistent method to construct a quasiparticle basis and to determine the quasiparticle interaction. The results agree remarkably well with lattice computations. They also illustrate the mechanism by which confinement and constituent quarks emerge, provide support for the Gribov-Zwanziger confinement scenario, clarify several perplexing issues in the constituent quark model, and permit the construction of an improved model of low energy QCD.Comment: 43 pages, 14 figures, revtex, uses psfig.st

Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the linked cluster expansion

We investigate dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in the Coulomb gauge Hamiltonian QCD. Within the framework of the linked cluster expansion we extend the BCS ansatz for the vacuum and include correlation beyond the quark-antiquark paring. In particular we study the effects of the three-body correlations involving quark-antiquark and transverse gluons. The high momentum behavior of the resulting gap equation is discussed and numerical computation of the chiral symmetry breaking is presented.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

Special relativity constraints on the effective constituent theory of hybrids

We consider a simplified constituent model for relativistic strong-interaction decays of hybrid mesons. The model is constructed using rules of renormalization group procedure for effective particles in light-front quantum field theory, which enables us to introduce low-energy phenomenological parameters. Boost covariance is kinematical and special relativity constraints are reduced to the requirements of rotational symmetry. For a hybrid meson decaying into two mesons through dissociation of a constituent gluon into a quark-anti-quark pair, the simplified constituent model leads to a rotationally symmetric decay amplitude if the hybrid meson state is made of a constituent gluon and a quark-anti-quark pair of size several times smaller than the distance between the gluon and the pair, as if the pair originated from one gluon in a gluonium state in the same effective theory.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Analysis of the radiative decays among the charmonium states

In this article, we study the radiative decays among the charmonium states with the heavy quark effective theory, and make predictions for the ratios among the radiative decay widths of an special multiplet to another multiplet. The predictions can be confronted with the experimental data in the future and put additional constraints in identifying the $X$, $Y$, $Z$ charmonium-like mesons.Comment: 12 pages, revised revisio

Light meson mass dependence of the positive parity heavy-strange mesons

We calculate the masses of the resonances D_{s0}^*(2317) and D_{s1}(2460) as well as their bottom partners as bound states of a kaon and a D^*- and B^*-meson, respectively, in unitarized chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading order. After fixing the parameters in the D_{s0}^*(2317) channel, the calculated mass for the D_{s1}(2460) is found in excellent agreement with experiment. The masses for the analogous states with a bottom quark are predicted to be M_{B^*_{s0}}=(5696\pm 40) MeV and M_{B_{s1}}=(5742\pm 40) MeV in reasonable agreement with previous analyses. In particular, we predict M_{B_{s1}}-M_{B_{s0}^*}=46\pm 1 MeV. We also explore the dependence of the states on the pion and kaon masses. We argue that the kaon mass dependence of a kaonic bound state should be almost linear with slope about unity. Such a dependence is specific to the assumed molecular nature of the states. We suggest to extract the kaon mass dependence of these states from lattice QCD calculations.Comment: 10 page