Is sentience only a nonessential component of animal welfare?

According to Broom (2014), animal welfare is a concept that can be applied to all animals, including single-celled organisms that are obviously not sentient. Such a stance makes it difficult to draw a connection between welfare and sentience, and that is the book’s downfall. Some excellent points are made about sentience and there are very good discussions on animal welfare. However, unless sentience is considered the essential component of welfare, any attempt to link the two phenomena will be unsuccessful — and that, indeed, is the case with this book

Defining and Exploring Animal Sentience

One of the commentaries on the target article notes that animal sentience is difficult to define operationally. This response to the commentaries develops a working, usable definition of animal sentience and examines the relationships between animal emotions and sentience

Characterization of skeletal phenotypes of TRα1(PV) and TRβ(PV) mutant mice: implications for tissue thyroid status and T3 target gene expression

Bone development is extremely sensitive to alterations in thyroid status. Recently, we analyzed the skeletal phenotypes of mice with the dominant negative resistance to thyroid hormone (RTH) mutation PV targeted to either the thyroid hormone receptor (TR) α1 or β gene. This perspective summarizes our findings to date and explores the wider implications for thyroid status and T3 target gene expression in individual tissues

Spring phytoplankton communities of the Labrador Sea (2005–2014): pigment signatures, photophysiology and elemental ratios

The Labrador Sea is an ideal region to study the biogeographical, physiological, and biogeochemical implications of phytoplankton community composition due to sharp transitions between distinct water masses across its shelves and central basin. We have investigated the multi-year (2005–2014) distributions of late spring and early summer (May to June) phytoplankton communities in the various hydrographic settings of the Labrador Sea. Our analysis is based on pigment markers (using CHEMTAX analysis), and photophysiological and biogeochemical characteristics associated with each phytoplankton community. Diatoms were the most abundant group, blooming first in shallow mixed layers of haline-stratified Arctic shelf waters. Along with diatoms, chlorophytes co-dominated at the western end of the section (particularly in the polar waters of the Labrador Current (LC)), whilst Phaeocystis co-dominated in the east (modified polar waters of the West Greenland Current (WGC)). Pre-bloom conditions occurred in deeper mixed layers of the central Labrador Sea in May, where a mixed assemblage of flagellates (dinoflagellates, prasinophytes, prymnesiophytes, particularly coccolithophores, and chrysophytes/pelagophytes) occurred in low-chlorophyll areas, succeeding to blooms of diatoms and dinoflagellates in thermally stratified Atlantic waters in June. Light-saturated photosynthetic rates and saturation irradiance levels were highest at stations where diatoms were the dominant phytoplankton group ( >  70 % of total chlorophyll a), as opposed to stations where flagellates were more abundant (from 40 up to 70 % of total chlorophyll a). Phytoplankton communities from the WGC (Phaeocystis and diatoms) had lower light-limited photosynthetic rates, with little evidence of photoinhibition, indicating greater tolerance to a high light environment. By contrast, communities from the central Labrador Sea (dinoflagellates and diatoms), which bloomed later in the season (June), appeared to be more sensitive to high light levels. Ratios of accessory pigments (AP) to total chlorophyll a (TChl a) varied according to phytoplankton community composition, with polar phytoplankton (cold-water related) having lower AP  :  TChl a. Polar waters (LC and WGC) also had higher and more variable particulate organic carbon (POC) to particulate organic nitrogen (PON) ratios, suggesting the influence of detritus from freshwater input, derived from riverine, glacial, and/or sea ice meltwater. Long-term observational shifts in phytoplankton communities were not assessed in this study due to the short temporal frame (May to June) of the data. Nevertheless, these results add to our current understanding of phytoplankton group distribution, as well as an evaluation of the biogeochemical role (in terms of C  :  N ratios) of spring phytoplankton communities in the Labrador Sea, which will assist our understanding of potential long-term responses of phytoplankton communities in high-latitude oceans to a changing climate

Biogeographical patterns and environmental controls of phytoplankton communities from contrasting hydrographical zones of the Labrador Sea

The Labrador Sea is an important oceanic sink for atmospheric CO2 because of intensive convective mixing during winter and extensive phytoplankton blooms that occur during spring and summer. Therefore, a broad-scale investigation of the responses of phytoplankton community composition to environmental forcing is essential for understanding planktonic food-web organisation and biogeochemical functioning in the Labrador Sea. Here, we investigated the phytoplankton community structure (>4 μm) from near surface blooms (1.2 mg chla m−3) occurred on and near the shelves in May and in offshore waters of the central Labrador Sea in June due to haline- and thermal-stratification, respectively. Sea ice-related (Fragilariopsis cylindrus and F. oceanica) and Arctic diatoms (Fossula arctica, Bacterosira bathyomphala and Thalassiosira hyalina) dominated the relatively cold (<0 °C) and fresh (salinity < 33) waters over the Labrador shelf (e.g., on the southwestern side of the Labrador Sea), where sea-ice melt and Arctic outflow predominates. On the northeastern side of the Labrador Sea, intense blooms of the colonial prymnesiophyte Phaeocystis pouchetii and diatoms, such as Thalassiosira nordenskioeldii, Pseudo-nitzschia granii and Chaetoceros socialis, occurred in the lower nutrient waters (nitrate < 3.6 μM) of the West Greenland Current. The central Labrador Sea bloom occurred later in the season (June) and was dominated by Atlantic diatoms, such as Ephemera planamembranacea and Fragilariopsis atlantica. The data presented here demonstrate that the Labrador Sea spring and early summer blooms are composed of contrasting phytoplankton communities, for which taxonomic segregation appears to be controlled by the physical and biogeochemical characteristics of the dominant water masses

On the verge of Umdeutung in Minnesota: Van Vleck and the correspondence principle (Part One)

In October 1924, the Physical Review, a relatively minor journal at the time, published a remarkable two-part paper by John H. Van Vleck, working in virtual isolation at the University of Minnesota. Van Vleck combined advanced techniques of classical mechanics with Bohr's correspondence principle and Einstein's quantum theory of radiation to find quantum analogues of classical expressions for the emission, absorption, and dispersion of radiation. For modern readers Van Vleck's paper is much easier to follow than the famous paper by Kramers and Heisenberg on dispersion theory, which covers similar terrain and is widely credited to have led directly to Heisenberg's "Umdeutung" paper. This makes Van Vleck's paper extremely valuable for the reconstruction of the genesis of matrix mechanics. It also makes it tempting to ask why Van Vleck did not take the next step and develop matrix mechanics himself.Comment: 82 page

A double-blinded randomised controlled trial exploring the effect of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation and uni-lateral robot therapy for the impaired upper limb in sub-acute and chronic stroke

BACKGROUND:Neurorehabilitation technologies such as robot therapy (RT) and transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) can promote upper limb (UL) motor recovery after stroke. OBJECTIVE:To explore the effect of anodal tDCS with uni-lateral and three-dimensional RT for the impaired UL in people with sub-acute and chronic stroke. METHODS:A pilot randomised controlled trial was conducted. Stroke participants had 18 one-hour sessions of RT (Armeo®Spring) over eight weeks during which they received 20 minutes of either real tDCS or sham tDCS during each session. The primary outcome measure was the Fugl-Meyer assessment (FMA) for UL impairments and secondary were: UL function, activities and stroke impact collected at baseline, post-intervention and three-month follow-up. RESULTS:22 participants (12 sub-acute and 10 chronic) completed the trial. No significant difference was found in FMA between the real and sham tDCS groups at post-intervention and follow-up (p = 0.123). A significant ‘time’ x ‘stage of stroke’ was found for FMA (p = 0.016). A higher percentage improvement was noted in UL function, activities and stroke impact in people with sub-acute compared to chronic stroke. CONCLUSIONS:Adding tDCS did not result in an additional effect on UL impairment in stroke. RT may be of more benefit in the sub-acute than chronic phase

Photoionization of ultracold and Bose-Einstein condensed Rb atoms

Photoionization of a cold atomic sample offers intriguing possibilities to observe collective effects at extremely low temperatures. Irradiation of a rubidium condensate and of cold rubidium atoms within a magneto-optical trap with laser pulses ionizing through 1-photon and 2-photon absorption processes has been performed. Losses and modifications in the density profile of the remaining trapped cold cloud or the remaining condensate sample have been examined as function of the ionizing laser parameters. Ionization cross-sections were measured for atoms in a MOT, while in magnetic traps losses larger than those expected for ionization process were measured.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Einstein's quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas: non-statistical arguments for a new statistics

In this article, we analyze the third of three papers, in which Einstein presented his quantum theory of the ideal gas of 1924-1925. Although it failed to attract the attention of Einstein's contemporaries and although also today very few commentators refer to it, we argue for its significance in the context of Einstein's quantum researches. It contains an attempt to extend and exhaust the characterization of the monatomic ideal gas without appealing to combinatorics. Its ambiguities illustrate Einstein's confusion with his initial success in extending Bose's results and in realizing the consequences of what later became to be called Bose-Einstein statistics. We discuss Einstein's motivation for writing a non-combinatorial paper, partly in response to criticism by his friend Ehrenfest, and we paraphrase its content. Its arguments are based on Einstein's belief in the complete analogy between the thermodynamics of light quanta and of material particles and invoke considerations of adiabatic transformations as well as of dimensional analysis. These techniques were well-known to Einstein from earlier work on Wien's displacement law, Planck's radiation theory, and the specific heat of solids. We also investigate the possible role of Ehrenfest in the gestation of the theory.Comment: 57 pp

Discrete kink dynamics in hydrogen-bonded chains I: The one-component model

We study topological solitary waves (kinks and antikinks) in a nonlinear one-dimensional Klein-Gordon chain with the on-site potential of a double-Morse type. This chain is used to describe the collective proton dynamics in quasi-one-dimensional networks of hydrogen bonds, where the on-site potential plays role of the proton potential in the hydrogen bond. The system supports a rich variety of stationary kink solutions with different symmetry properties. We study the stability and bifurcation structure of all these stationary kink states. An exactly solvable model with a piecewise ``parabola-constant'' approximation of the double-Morse potential is suggested and studied analytically. The dependence of the Peierls-Nabarro potential on the system parameters is studied. Discrete travelling-wave solutions of a narrow permanent profile are shown to exist, depending on the anharmonicity of the Morse potential and the cooperativity of the hydrogen bond (the coupling constant of the interaction between nearest-neighbor protons).Comment: 12 pages, 20 figure