Poultry welfare and management: WPSA Working Group Nine

The introduction of the UK Protection of Animals Act 1911 demonstrates that animal welfare has been of concern for at least a century. The matter came to the fore about 50 years ago, when the welfare of hens in battery cages became an issue. Since then poultry welfare research and the development of superior management and housing systems for poultry have been stimulated by the lobbying of animal welfare organisations along with subsequent policy decisions and legislation. WPSA WG9 was formed in 1972 to encourage scientific studies to inform the poultry welfare debate; its members have positively influenced research and development of welfare-friendly housing systems and husbandry throughout Europe. They have also been active in EU projects aimed at improving the wellbeing of poultry e.g. LayWel, EFSA Opinions and Welfare Quality®. Information derived from such projects has influenced EU Directives and national legislation on the protection and welfare of laying hens and broilers, in particular

Ice core evidence for a 20th century increase in surface mass balance in coastal Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica

Ice cores provide temporal records of surface mass balance (SMB). Coastal areas of Antarctica have relatively high and variable SMB, but are under-represented in records spanning more than 100 years. Here we present SMB reconstruction from a 120 m-long ice core drilled in 2012 on the Derwael Ice Rise, coastal Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica. Water stable isotope (δ18O and δD) stratigraphy is supplemented by discontinuous major ion profiles and continuous electrical conductivity measurements. The base of the ice core is dated to AD 1759 ± 16, providing a climate proxy for the past  ∼ 250 years. The core's annual layer thickness history is combined with its gravimetric density profile to reconstruct the site's SMB history, corrected for the influence of ice deformation. The mean SMB for the core's entire history is 0.47 ± 0.02 m water equivalent (w.e.) a−1. The time series of reconstructed annual SMB shows high variability, but a general increase beginning in the 20th century. This increase is particularly marked during the last 50 years (1962–2011), which yields mean SMB of 0.61 ± 0.01 m w.e. a−1. This trend is compared with other reported SMB data in Antarctica, generally showing a high spatial variability. Output of the fully coupled Community Earth System Model (CESM) suggests that, although atmospheric circulation is the main factor influencing SMB, variability in sea surface temperatures and sea ice cover in the precipitation source region also explain part of the variability in SMB. Local snow redistribution can also influence interannual variability but is unlikely to influence long-term trends significantly. This is the first record from a coastal ice core in East Antarctica to show an increase in SMB beginning in the early 20th century and particularly marked during the last 50 years

Poultry welfare and management: WPSA Working Group Nine

The introduction of the UK Protection of Animals Act 1911 demonstrates that animal welfare has been of concern for at least a century. The matter came to the fore about 50 years ago, when the welfare of hens in battery cages became an issue. Since then poultry welfare research and the development of superior management and housing systems for poultry have been stimulated by the lobbying of animal welfare organisations along with subsequent policy decisions and legislation. WPSA WG9 was formed in 1972 to encourage scientific studies to inform the poultry welfare debate; its members have positively influenced research and development of welfare-friendly housing systems and husbandry throughout Europe. They have also been active in EU projects aimed at improving the wellbeing of poultry e.g. LayWel, EFSA Opinions and Welfare Quality®. Information derived from such projects has influenced EU Directives and national legislation on the protection and welfare of laying hens and broilers, in particular

An Agent-Based Extensible Climate Control System for Sustainable Greenhouse Production

International audienceno abstrac

The history of Holocene atmospheric iodine over the North Atlantic

EGU General Assembly 2020 in the online format, 4-8 May 2020Atmospheric iodine chemistry has a large influ-ence on the oxidizing capacity and associated radiative im-pacts in the troposphere. However, information on the evo-lution of past atmospheric iodine levels is restricted to theindustrial period while its long-term natural variability re-mains unknown. The current levels of iodine in the atmo-sphere are controlled by anthropogenic ozone deposition tothe ocean surface. Here, using high-resolution geochemicalmeasurements from coastal eastern Greenland ReCAP (REn-land ice CAP project) ice core, we report the first record ofatmospheric iodine variability in the North Atlantic duringthe Holocene (i.e., the last 11 700 years). Surprisingly, ourresults reveal that the highest iodine concentrations in therecord were found during the Holocene Thermal Maximum(HTM;~11 500¿5500 years before-present). These high io-dine levels could be driven by marine primary productivityresulting in an Early Holocene ¿biological iodine explosion¿.The high and stable iodine levels during this past warm pe-riod are a useful observational constraint on projections offuture changes in Arctic atmospheric composition and cli-mate resulting from global warming.This work was supported by CSIC. The RECAP ice coring effort was financed by the Danish Research Council through a Sapere Aude grant, the NSF through the Division of Polar Programs, the Alfred Wegener Institute, and the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), and an ERC grant agreement 610055 through the Ice2Ice project and the Early Human Impact project (267696). This study has received funding from the European Research Council Executive Agency under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program (Project ERC-2016-COG 726349 CLIMAHAL

Analysis of over 10,000 cases finds no association between previously reported candidate polymorphisms and ovarian cancer outcome

Background: Ovarian cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death among women. In an effort to understand contributors to disease outcome,weevaluated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) previously associated with ovarian cancer recurrence or survival, specifically in angiogenesis, inflammation, mitosis, and drug disposition genes. Methods: Twenty-seven SNPs in VHL, HGF, IL18, PRKACB, ABCB1, CYP2C8, ERCC2, and ERCC1 previously associated with ovarian cancer outcome were genotyped in 10,084 invasive cases from 28 studies from the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium with over 37,000-observed person-years and 4,478 deaths. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the association between candidate SNPs and ovarian cancer recurrence or survival with and without adjustment for key covariates. Results: We observed no association between genotype and ovarian cancer recurrence or survival for any of the SNPs examined. Conclusions: These results refute prior associations between these SNPs and ovarian cancer outcome and underscore the importance of maximally powered genetic association studies. Impact: These variants should not be used in prognostic models. Alternate approaches to uncovering inherited prognostic factors, if they exist, are needed. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 22(5); 987-92