The ethical price for dairy

In the 21st century people in modern society within Europe are used to go to a supermarket to buy groceries of daily need. Everything is easily available and affordable and barely anyone is aware of the production of their consumed goods, their origin and unpleasant side effects. Due to the growing world population, the demand for food is steadily increasing. Among many countries, goods such as meat, fish and dairy have become more attractive and accessible due to low prices and decent income. Access to these products is easy through buying a packaged product at a supermarket. Due to ethical considerations, however, more people decide to omit meat, dairy or eggs and live on a vegetarian or vegan diet. Nevertheless, the majority is still including dairy and eggs in their diet. While it seems rational to live on a vegetarian diet to avoid harm to farm animals as well as their killing for meat, there is comparably little awareness among consumers about the issues arising with dairy industry. In European countries, some specialized cattle breeds, performing well for dairy related traits such as milk yield, calving interval, calving ease and longevity are most commonly used. In order to produce milk, cows need to have a calf approximately once a year. While longevity is emphasized and cows can serve for several years, the consequence is a larger number of offspring than needed for replacement in the dairy industry. Additionally, half of them are bull calves, and therefore of no use for dairy industry. Aforementioned causes several issues concerning the handling of these calves. This starts with the early separation of cow and calf with possible effects on health and behaviour, in addition to the important management of colostrum, followed by the transportation of many calves for enormous routes or the immediate killing of new-born calves due to a lack of economic benefit of raising or selling them. Utilitarianism and abolitionism, two of the most important ethical theories, propose a less cruel livestock industry and suggest to abandon animal-based products to the largest extent possible, recommending a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. While such a way of taking action might be viable for part of the population, more extensive and adaptable implementations in order to ensure a morally more acceptable animal industry need to be considered. Making use of sexed semen and crossbreeding with beef cattle breeds potentially provides better management practices for dairy farms as well as more profitable calves to enter veal and beef markets. In addition to that, the government and legislation could provide regulations, as for instance carried out in organic dairy industry (see Table 1, p 32.) for extended welfare in the handling of these calves. With respect to these implementations, awareness among consumers needs to be emphasized to achieve the desired shift in dairy industry. Therefore, in this thesis, I aim to review literature on different aspects of dairy industry and will assess some options from a utilitarian and rights-based approach

Predator-Prey Dynamics Driven by Feedback between Functionally Diverse Trophic Levels

Neglecting the naturally existing functional diversity of communities and the resulting potential to respond to altered conditions may strongly reduce the realism and predictive power of ecological models. We therefore propose and study a predator-prey model that describes mutual feedback via species shifts in both predator and prey, using a dynamic trait approach. Species compositions of the two trophic levels were described by mean functional traits—prey edibility and predator food-selectivity—and functional diversities by the variances. Altered edibility triggered shifts in food-selectivity so that consumers continuously respond to the present prey composition, and vice versa. This trait-mediated feedback mechanism resulted in a complex dynamic behavior with ongoing oscillations in the mean trait values, reflecting continuous reorganization of the trophic levels. The feedback was only possible if sufficient functional diversity was present in both trophic levels. Functional diversity was internally maintained on the prey level as no niche existed in our system, which was ideal under any composition of the predator level due to the trade-offs between edibility, growth and carrying capacity. The predators were only subject to one trade-off between food-selectivity and grazing ability and in the absence of immigration, one predator type became abundant, i.e., functional diversity declined to zero. In the lack of functional diversity the system showed the same dynamics as conventional models of predator-prey interactions ignoring the potential for shifts in species composition. This way, our study identified the crucial role of trade-offs and their shape in physiological and ecological traits for preserving diversity

Das Jahr vor Schulbeginn: Ein Elternratgeber

Der Elternratgeber möchte Sie bei der Begleitung Ihres Kindes unterstützen und auf wichtige Fragen in Vorbereitung auf die Schule Antwort geben. Er soll Ihnen helfen, Ihr Kind zu unterstützen und zu fördern. Dabei sind Sie nicht allein, denn auch im Kindergarten hat das Schulvorbereitungsjahr einen hohen Stellenwert. Nutzen Sie die Möglichkeiten, die sich aus einem vertrauensvollen Miteinander der verschiedenen Partner und deren Angeboten für die Entwicklung Ihres Kindes ergeben. Redaktionsschluss: 28.09.201

Bewährtes neu denken: Qualitätssicherung in der Schuleingangsphase

In die aktualisierte Broschüre „Bewährtes neu denken“ wurden die zum 1. August 2021 geltenden Änderungen der Schulordnung Grundschulen in Form einer Lesefassung aufgenommen. Redaktionsschluss: 27.08.202

El año antes del inicio de la etapa escolar: Guía para padres y madres

La finalidad de esta guía es servirles de apoyo para acompañar a su hijo y dar respuesta a preguntas y dudas relacionadas con la preparación para la escuela. Pretende ayudarles a apoyar y animar a su hijo. Pero no están solos, en el jardín de infancia también se le otorga una gran importancia al año preparatorio. Aproveche las opciones que le ofrece un entorno de confianza con las diferentes partes implicadas y lo que ofrecen para el desarrollo de su hijo. Redaktionsschluss: 28.09.2018Der Elternratgeber möchte Sie bei der Begleitung Ihres Kindes unterstützen und auf wichtige Fragen in Vorbereitung auf die Schule Antwort geben. Er soll Ihnen helfen, Ihr Kind zu unterstützen und zu fördern. Dabei sind Sie nicht allein, denn auch im Kindergarten hat das Schulvorbereitungsjahr einen hohen Stellenwert. Nutzen Sie die Möglichkeiten, die sich aus einem vertrauensvollen Miteinander der verschiedenen Partner und deren Angeboten für die Entwicklung Ihres Kindes ergeben

Год перед школой - God pered školoj: Справочник родителя - Spravočnik roditelja

Справочник родителя призван помочь вам подготовить ребенка к школе. В нем вы найдете ответы на многие важные вопросы в этой области. Кроме того, он содержит рекомендации о том, как поддерживать ребенка и стимулировать его развитие. Эту задачу вам предстоит решать не в одиночку, ведь и для детских садов подготовка детей к школе — одна из приоритетных задач. Доверительное взаимодействие различных организаций-партнеров открывает перед вами широкий спектр возможностей и предложений. Постарайтесь оптимально использовать их для развития вашего ребенка. Redaktionsschluss: 28.09.2018Der Elternratgeber möchte Sie bei der Begleitung Ihres Kindes unterstützen und auf wichtige Fragen in Vorbereitung auf die Schule Antwort geben. Er soll Ihnen helfen, Ihr Kind zu unterstützen und zu fördern. Dabei sind Sie nicht allein, denn auch im Kindergarten hat das Schulvorbereitungsjahr einen hohen Stellenwert. Nutzen Sie die Möglichkeiten, die sich aus einem vertrauensvollen Miteinander der verschiedenen Partner und deren Angeboten für die Entwicklung Ihres Kindes ergeben

Diagnostic value of blood inflammatory markers for detection of acute appendicitis in children

BACKGROUND: Acute appendicitis (AA) is a common surgical problem that is associated with an acute-phase reaction. Previous studies have shown that cytokines and acute-phase proteins are activated and may serve as indicators for the severity of appendicitis. The aim of this study was to compare diagnostic value of different serum inflammatory markers in detection of phlegmonous or perforated appendicitis in children. METHODS: Data were collected prospectively on 211 consecutive children. Laparotomy was performed for suspected AA for 189 patients. Patients were subdivided into groups: nonsurgical abdominal pain, early appendicitis, phlegmonous or gangrenous appendicitis, perforated appendicitis. White blood cell count (WBC), serum C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), acid α(1)-glycoprotein (α(1)GP), endotoxin, and erythrocyte sedimentation reaction (ESR) were estimated ad the time of admission. The diagnostic performance was analyzed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. RESULTS: WBC count, CRP and IL-6 correlated significantly with the severity of appendiceal inflammation. Identification of children with severe appendicitis was supported by IL-6 or CRP but not WBC. Between IL-6 and CRP, there were no significant differences in diagnostic use. CONCLUSION: Laboratory results should be considered to be integrated within the clinical assessment. If used critically, CRP and IL-6 equally provide surgeons with complementary information in discerning the necessity for urgent operation

Transcriptome analysis by GeneTrail revealed regulation of functional categories in response to alterations of iron homeostasis in Arabidopsis thaliana

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>High-throughput technologies have opened new avenues to study biological processes and pathways. The interpretation of the immense amount of data sets generated nowadays needs to be facilitated in order to enable biologists to identify complex gene networks and functional pathways. To cope with this task multiple computer-based programs have been developed. GeneTrail is a freely available online tool that screens comparative transcriptomic data for differentially regulated functional categories and biological pathways extracted from common data bases like KEGG, Gene Ontology (GO), TRANSPATH and TRANSFAC. Additionally, GeneTrail offers a feature that allows screening of individually defined biological categories that are relevant for the respective research topic.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have set up GeneTrail for the use of <it>Arabidopsis thaliana</it>. To test the functionality of this tool for plant analysis, we generated transcriptome data of root and leaf responses to Fe deficiency and the Arabidopsis metal homeostasis mutant <it>nas4x-1</it>. We performed Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) with eight meaningful pairwise comparisons of transcriptome data sets. We were able to uncover several functional pathways including metal homeostasis that were affected in our experimental situations. Representation of the differentially regulated functional categories in Venn diagrams uncovered regulatory networks at the level of whole functional pathways. Over-Representation Analysis (ORA) of differentially regulated genes identified in pairwise comparisons revealed specific functional plant physiological categories as major targets upon Fe deficiency and in <it>nas4x-1</it>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Here, we obtained supporting evidence, that the <it>nas4x-1 </it>mutant was defective in metal homeostasis. It was confirmed that <it>nas4x-1 </it>showed Fe deficiency in roots and signs of Fe deficiency and Fe sufficiency in leaves. Besides metal homeostasis, biotic stress, root carbohydrate, leaf photosystem and specific cell biological categories were discovered as main targets for regulated changes in response to - Fe and <it>nas4x-1</it>. Among 258 differentially expressed genes in response to - Fe and <it>nas4x-1 </it>five functional categories were enriched covering metal homeostasis, redox regulation, cell division and histone acetylation. We proved that GeneTrail offers a flexible and user-adapted way to identify functional categories in large-scale plant transcriptome data sets. The distinguished feature that allowed analysis of individually assembled functional categories facilitated the study of the <it>Arabidopsis thaliana </it>transcriptome.</p