Animal welfare science: recent publication trends and future research priorities

Animal welfare science is a young and thriving field. Over the last two decades, the output of scientific publications on welfare has increased by c. 10-15% annually (tripling as a proportion of all science papers logged by ISI’s Web of Science), with just under half the c. 8500 total being published in the last 4 years. These papers span an incredible 500+ journals, but around three quarters have been in 80 animal science, veterinary, ethology, conservation and specialized welfare publications, and nearly 25% are published in just two: Animal Welfare and Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Farmed animals – especially mammals – have attracted by far the most research. This broadly reflects the vastness of their populations and the degree of public concern they elicit; poultry, however, are under-studied, and farmed fish ever more so: fish have only recently attracted welfare research, and are by far the least studied of all agricultural species, perhaps because of ongoing doubts about their sentience. We predict this farm animal focus will continue in the future, but embracing more farmed fish, reptiles and invertebrates, and placing its findings within broader international contexts such as environmental and food security concerns. Laboratory animals have been consistently well studied, with a shift in recent years away from primates and towards rodents. Pets, the second largest animal sector after farmed animals, have in contrast been little studied considering their huge populations (cats being especially overlooked): we anticipate research on them increasing in the future. Captive wild animals, especially mammals, have attracted a consistent level of welfare research over the last two decades. Given the many thousands of diverse species kept by zoos, this must, and we predict will, increase. Future challenges and opportunities including refining the use of preference tests, stereotypic behaviour, corticosteroid outputs and putative indicators of positive affect, to enable more valid conclusions about welfare; investigating the evolution and functions of affective states; and last but not least, identifying which taxonomic groups and stages of development are actually sentient and so worthy of welfare concern

Non-linearities and unit roots in G7 macroeconomic variables

We carry out a meta-analysis on the frequency of unit-roots in macroeconomic time series with a dataset covering 249 variables for the G7 countries. We use linear tests and the three popular non-linear tests (TAR, ESTAR and Markov Switching). In general, the evidence in favour of the random walk hypothesis is weaker than in previous studies. This evidence against unit roots is stronger for real and nominal asset prices. Our results show that rejection of the null of a unit root in the macro dataset is substantially higher for non-linear than linear models. Finally, the results from a Monte Carlo experiment show that rejection frequencies are very close to the nominal size of the test when the DGP is a linear unit root process. This leads us to reject the hypothesis that overfitting deterministic components explains the higher rejection frequencies of nonlinear tests

Estimating the Demand for Health Care with Panel Data: A Semiparametric Bayesian Approach

This paper is concerned with the problem of estimating the demand for health care with panel data. A random effects model is specifed in a semiparametric Bayesian fashion using a Dirichlet process prior. This results in a very exible mixture distribution with an in nite number of components for the random effects. Therefore, the model can be seen as a natural extension of prevailing latent class models. A full Bayesian analysis using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)simulation methods is discussed. The methodology is illustrated with an application using data from Germany

Determination of the coronal magnetic field by coronal loop oscillations

We develop a new method for the determination of the absolute value of the magnetic field strength in coronal closed magnetic structures, based on the analysis of flare-generated oscillations of coronal loops. Interpretation of the oscillations observed in terms of global standing kink waves allows to connect the period of the oscillations and the loops length with the magnetic field strength in the loops. For loop oscillations observed with TRACE on 14th July 1998 and 4th July 1999, we estimate the magnetic field strength as 4-30 G. Using TRACE 171 Å and 195 Å images of the loop, taken on 4th July 1999 to determine the plasma density, we estimate the magnetic field in the loop as 13 +- 9 G. Improved diagnostic of the loop length, the oscillation period, and the plasma density in the loop will significantly improve the method's precision

Measuring temperature - dependent propagating disturbances in coronal fan loops using multiple SDO/AIA channels and surfing transform technique

A set of co-aligned high resolution images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is used to investigate propagating disturbances (PDs) in warm fan loops at the periphery of a non-flaring active region NOAA AR 11082. To measure PD speeds at multiple coronal temperatures, a new data analysis methodology is proposed enabling quantitative description of subvisual coronal motions with low signal-to-noise ratios of the order of 0.1 %. The technique operates with a set of one-dimensional "surfing" signals extracted from position-time plots of several AIA channels through a modified version of Radon transform. The signals are used to evaluate a two-dimensional power spectral density distribution in the frequency - velocity space which exhibits a resonance in the presence of quasi-periodic PDs. By applying this analysis to the same fan loop structures observed in several AIA channels, we found that the traveling velocity of PDs increases with the temperature of the coronal plasma following the square root dependence predicted for the slow mode magneto-acoustic wave which seems to be the dominating wave mode in the studied loop structures. This result extends recent observations by Kiddie et al. (Solar Phys., 2012) to a more general class of fan loop systems not associated with sunspots and demonstrating consistent slow mode activity in up to four AIA channels.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Teaching "Symmetry" in the Introductory Physics Curriculum

Modern physics is largely defined by fundamental symmetry principles and Noether's Theorem. Yet these are not taught, or rarely mentioned, to beginning students, thus missing an opportunity to reveal that the subject of physics is as lively and contemporary as molecular biology, and as beautiful as the arts. We prescribe a symmetry module to insert into the curriculum, of a week's length.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

A CLIPS prototype for autonomous power system control

The model of the system assumes a constant power source and loads (experiments) whose power demands exceed the supply. Experiments are described by their name, power consumption, time for a complete run, present status and the state of the load. The power consumption of each load is set at a constant level but can be dynamically modified by the operator. The status specifies if the experiment is running, paused, completed or failed. The state compensates for the lack of actual feedback sensor data, by signifying the stability of the load. Experiments are scheduled to keep as many running as possible with the current system limitations. A graphics oriented user interface is embedded into the rule-based system to enable an operator to easily experiment with the system