Response of Bird Populations to Long-term Changes in Local Vegetation and Regional Forest Cover

We analyzed data from a woodland site for a 59-year period to determine whether changes in bird populations are related to changes in the diversity and relative abundance of woody plant species even when vegetation structure, degree of forest fragmentation in the surrounding landscape, and regional changes in bird populations are taken into account. Principal component analyses generated vegetation factors encompassing variables such as total basal area, shrub density, basal area of common tree species, and measures of tree and shrub species diversity. We also calculated a forest edge/ forest area index based on GIS analysis of the landscape within 2 km of the study site. Poisson regression models revealed relationships between these covariates and population changes for 19 bird species and for seven groups of species characterized by similar migration strategies or habitat requirements. All groups of habitat specialists showed a positive relationship with the first vegetation factor, which indicates that they declined as total basal area and dominance of oaks and maples increased and as tree and shrub diversity decreased. This suggests that floristic diversity may be important for determining habitat quality. Bird species associated with the shrub layer and with hemlock stands showed positive relationships with the second vegetation factor, suggesting that the recent decline in eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) because of hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) had an adverse impact on these species. Forest migrants, shrub-layer specialists, long-distance migrants and permanent residents showed negative relationships with the forest edge/forest interior index, indicating that conservation efforts to protect bird communities should take the wider landscape into account. The strongest relationship for most species and species groups was with the first vegetation factor, which suggests that species composition and diversity of trees and shrubs may be especially important in determining abundance of many forest bird species

Animal Rights is a Social Justice Issue

The literature on social justice, and social justice movements themselves, routinely ignore nonhuman animals as legitimate subjects of social justice. Yet, as with other social justice movements, the contemporary animal liberation movement has as its focus the elimination of institutional and systemic domination and oppression. In this paper, I explicate the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the contemporary animal rights movement, and situate it within the framework of social justice. I argue that those committed to social justice – to minimizing violence, exploitation, domination, objectification, and oppression – are equally obligated to consider the interests of all sentient beings, not only those of human beings

Fish sentience and the precautionary principle

Key (2016) argues that fish do not feel pain based on neuroanatomical evidence. I argue that Key makes a number of conceptual, philosophical, and empirical errors that undermine his claim

Science, Sentience, and Animal Welfare

I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on sentience and cognition

The precautionary principle: A cautionary note

The precautionary principle regarding animal sentience is often used in decision-making about human actions that may cause harm to nonhuman animals. Birch (2017) develops an account of the precautionary principle requiring two pragmatic rules for its implementation. I support Birch\u27s proposal but offer a cautionary note about relying on precautionary principles if one\u27s ultimate goal is to emancipate animals from human domination

Fish sentience denial: Muddy moral water

Sneddon et al. (2018) authoritatively summarize the compelling and overwhelming evidence for fish sentience, while methodically dismantling one rather emblematic research paper (Diggles et al. 2017) intended to discount solid evidence of fish sentience (Lopez-Luna et al. 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, & 2017d). I explore the larger practical moral contexts within which these debates take place and argue that denials of animal sentience are really moral canards

An EDI Transaction Set Development Lifecycle (TSDL): A Case Study in the Food Manufacturing Industry

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is widely regarded by organizations worldwide as the business standard for the timely and secure exchange of electronic business transactions in an expanding global marketplace. While numerous research efforts have explored how the adoption, implementation, and integration of this technology can impact an organization\u27s technical, organizational, and competitive environment - few studies have documented the process used by organizations to implement EDI transaction sets with trading partners. This paper advances an innovative lifecycle used by a food manufacturing company to successfully design, implement, and test an EDI transaction set. This paper also describes how this transaction set development lifecycle (TDSL) can be integrated into an organization\u27s standard systems development lifecycle (SDLC) to ensure the timely completion of IT projects. Finally, a discussion of the impact of the TDSL on the organization\u27s business practices is presented

System size dependence of strangeness production at 158 AGeV

Strange particle production in A+A interactions at 158 AGeV is studied by the CERN experiment NA49 as a function of system size and collision geometry. Yields of charged kaons, phi and Lambda are measured and compared to those of pions in central C+C, Si+Si and centrality-selected Pb+Pb reactions. An overall increase of relative strangeness production with the size of the system is observed which does not scale with the number of participants. Arguing that rescattering of secondaries plays a minor role in small systems the observed strangeness enhancement can be related to the space-time density of the primary nucleon-nucleon collisions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Presented at Quark Matter 2002, Nantes, Franc

Economic Well-Being of Farm Households

Farm subsidy programs were introduced in the 1930s largely due to concern for chronically low, and highly variable, incomes of US farm households. Today commodity-based support programs are still prominent, though income and wealth of the average farm household now exceed that of the average nonfarm households - by a large margin. Farm income continues to be highly variable, but the small set of farm households most at risk for income variability - because farm income represents more than one-third of household income - are those operating large farms. And they have substantial net worth, which cushions uncertain farm income.Farm households, household income, household wealth, household net worth, living expenses, joint income-wealth indicator, economic well-being, financial well-being, Off-farm employment, Income variability, ERS, USDA, Consumer/Household Economics,