Taking ethics into account in farm animal breeding:what can the breeding companies achieve?

Animal welfare and the ethical issues it raises have been discussed intensively for a couple of decades. The emphasis has been on the direct effects of housing and husbandry, but more attention is now being given to problems originating in selective breeding. European attempts to adjust animal welfare legislation to deal with these problems have been largely unsuccessful, but the fact that selective breeding can introduce welfare problems continues to place an ethical responsibility on the animal breeding industry. Since breeding decisions are made centrally and, increasingly, internationally, strategic change is only likely to occur if it is embedded in an international agreement of some kind. The aim of this paper is to describe the key ethical issues facing animal breeding and assess the suggestion that the breeding industry itself can deal with ethical issues by means of an ethical code. Results from recent projects involving commercial breeding enterprises are presented

Contextos e condicionantes para o uso e reutilização de recursos educacionais abertos

Na globalidade do mundo em que vivemos, fala-se de sociedade da informação, de redes sociais e de partilha generalizada. Nas universidades, as solicitações para uso e reutilização de Recursos Educacionais pertencem a um mundo onde se fala cada vez mais de abertura. A abertura deve ser entendida como mais hipóteses para todos acederem a mais oportunidades de aprender e partilhar. Para aproveitar esta potencialidade, precisamos de apreender o contexto e as condicionantes em que se inscrevem os Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REAs), em particular no Ensino Superior Português. A presente investigação procurou estudar as perceções de um grupo de estudantes do Ensino Superior Português sobre os Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REAs) e as suas condicionantes no momento de transformar produções escritas por outros em REAs. A investigação incidiu sobre um grupo de estudantes de uma unidade curricular de um mestrado completamente online mais especificamente na unidade curricular de Psicologia da Comunicação Online do Mestrado em Pedagogia do E-learning da Universidade Aberta de Portugal. A metodologia escolhida para desenvolver o trabalho foi a Design-Based Research (DBR) porque se adequa às fases de design, implementação e análise que integram um processo em construção. Foram consideradas iterações da unidade curricular de enquadramento, o processo de aplicação da DBR contemplou dois grupos de investigadores nos quais cada um desenvolveu a sua pesquisa, situação que representa um desafio aceite e apresentou os seus benefícios. O objeto do nosso estudo situa-se na iteração da unidade curricular onde foram aplicados dois questionários e uma grelha da análise que permitiram recolher dados sobre a perceção dos estudantes ao trabalhar no contexto dos REAs. Os 5 Rs de Wiley foram pautando o ritmo do estudo, ficando convicta a investigadora da necessidade de mais aplicações e de mais estudos que permitam consolidar o objetivo de mais REAs para a educação aberta.Nowadays we speak about society of information, social networks and generalized share all over the world. In the universities, the solicitations for use and reuse of Educational Resources belong to an environment where opening is more and more referred. This opening must be interpreted as more chances for all the people to achieve more opportunities to learn and share. In order to take advantage of this possibility, we need to seize the context and the conditioning where the Opening Educational Resources are to be found especially in the Portuguese Higher Education. This investigation tried to study the perceptions of a group of students on OER and their environment to transfer written works by others in OER. It was taken from a group of students of a master’s course unit completely on line more specifically Psychology of Communication online – Master course in pedagogy of E-learning of the Universidade Aberta de Portugal. The methodology chosen to develop this investigation was the Design-Based Research (DBR) because it is suitable to the phases of design, implementation and analysis that integrate a process under construction. We considered iterations of the course unity of framework, the process of application of the DBR was composed by two groups of investigators each one developing his search which was a challenge accepted and with proved advantages. The object of our study focuses on the iteration where we used two inquiries and an analysis grid which permitted to make a data collection about the perception the students had working, on the OER’s context. The 5 Rs of Wiley were pacing the study. The investigator is certain that more applications and study are absolutely needed which will allow to consolidate the aim of more OER for open education

The costs of beekeeping for pollination services in the UK? An explorative study

Honey bees are a key managed pollination service resource in crop agriculture, providing flexible, highly generalist and resilient pollination service delivery to a broad range of UK crops. Despite their potential economic impacts, there is little information on the actual costs involved in providing pollination services experienced by UK beekeepers. Utilizing an online survey of UK beekeepers, this study examines the full economic costs of providing pollination services to crops in the UK, as well as examining the differences in costs experienced by different beekeepers. The findings indicate that <10% of respondent beekeepers, mainly professionals, actively provide pollination services to crops, and rarely receive payment for this in field crops. In apple orchards, where beekeepers most often receive payments, the benefits to the orchard are estimated at 86–149 times the payments received by beekeepers. Although exploratory, the findings highlight the need for wider collection of information on beekeeping costs and several key knowledge gaps that could influence future development of the UK bee farming industry

Creating spatial synergies around food in cities

This paper focusses on the phenomenon of multifunctional urban food initiatives (MUFIs) and how, using food as a vehicle, they provide integrative solutions for a number of social, environmental and economic problems in European cities. Through an in-depth investigation of three MUFIs in the UK, Latvia and Belgium, the paper aims to increase understanding on how different activities are combined within MUFIs, leading to the creation and strengthening of synergies: both internal, between the different activities performed within MUFIs, and external synergies between the MUFI and the (peri-) urban environment in which it operates. The three cases illustrate that the dense and complex urban environment in which they are situated provides possibilities to create a wide, diverse network around food, leading to a high potential for synergies to occur. In this way, MUFIs can respond to specific urban needs, which are not addressed by the state, and therefore have an important signalling function. For the MUFIs themselves, although being multifunctional increases opportunities, it is also a challenge to find the right balance between the different functions and not to lose sight of the economic side of the business. Local governments can support MUFIs by providing space for them, room to experiment, adapting regulations to get MUFIs out of the “grey zones” of legislation, and by starting to strategically think about food in their city region

Αλλαγές στα επίπεδα μυϊκής μάζας κατά την διάρκεια καταστολής ασθενών που νοσηλεύονται σε Μονάδα Εντατικής Θεραπείας

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Ozonation treatment processes for the remediation of detergent wastewater: A comprehensive review

Laundry detergent wastewater is a potential renewable resource that can be recycled and reused in order to mitigate water scarcity. The treatment of laundry detergent wastewater is very challenging because of its multicomponent composition, large discharge volumes to the environment resulting from increasing usage of detergent as the global population grows, and ineffectiveness of conventional treatment technologies. Ozonation as one of the most effective advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) has shown tremendous potential in the treatment and reclamation of laundry detergent wastewater. Complete mineralization of the water contaminants by molecular ozone is not economical due to the high ozone generation cost and other limitations such as pH dependence, short lifetime of ozone, low ozone solubility in aqueous solution and mass transfer limitations. Strategies such as modification of ozonation processes including combination with hydrogen peroxide (peroxone process) and catalytic ozonation have received much attention. The effectiveness of the ozonation process can be further enhanced by photocatalytic ozonation resulting in higher rate of pollutants mineralization. This paper reviews the recent studies on ozonation treatment of surfactant containing laundry wastewater generated from various sources including domestic, industrial, commercial or public premises. Lastly, important remarks on the ozonation treatment of laundry detergent wastewater and suggestions for future works are presented

Sophisticated falsification and research cycles: Consequences for differential character weighting in phylogenetic systematics

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72703/1/j.1463-6409.1997.tb00424.x.pd

The Scribe

The Scribe student newspaper from April 6, 1961