Welfare of Pigs in the Farrowing Environment

In the U.S.A., housing for the lactating sow and her piglets can be divided into five main areas. Total confinement, defined as the farrowing crate, houses the highest number of at 83.4 plus or minus 4.0%. Remaining operations house fewer sows with open buildings that have outside access at 12.4 plus or minus 4.1%, open building with no outside access, 2.9 plus or minus 0.5%, lot with hut or no building, 0.6 plus or minus 0.2% and pasture with hut or no building the lowest at 0.7 plus or minus 0.3% (. In the U.K., it is estimated that around 70% of sows farrow in crates, 27% farrow outdoors in farrowing arks and only 3% farrow in loose-housed indoor systems

Observational properties of massive black hole binary progenitors

The first directly detected gravitational waves (GW 150914) were emitted by two coalescing black holes (BHs) with masses of ~36Msun and ~29Msun. Several scenarios have been proposed to put this detection into an astrophysical context. The evolution of an isolated massive binary system is among commonly considered models. Various groups have performed detailed binary-evolution calculations that lead to BH merger events. However, the question remains open as to whether binary systems with the predicted properties really exist. The aim of this paper is to help observers to close this gap by providing spectral characteristics of massive binary BH progenitors during a phase where at least one of the companions is still non-degenerate. Stellar evolution models predict fundamental stellar parameters. Using these as input for our stellar atmosphere code (PoWR), we compute a set of models for selected evolutionary stages of massive merging BH progenitors at different metallicities. The synthetic spectra obtained from our atmosphere calculations reveal that progenitors of massive BH merger events start their lives as O2-3V stars that evolve to early-type blue supergiants before they undergo core-collapse during the Wolf-Rayet phase. When the primary has collapsed, the remaining system will appear as a wind-fed high-mass X-ray binary. We provide feedback parameters, broad band magnitudes, and spectral templates that should help to identify such binaries in the future. Comparisons of empirically determined mass-loss rates with those assumed by evolution calculations reveal significant differences. The consideration of the empirical mass-loss rates in evolution calculations will possibly entail a shift of the maximum in the predicted binary-BH merger rate to higher metallicities, that is, more candidates should be expected in our cosmic neighborhood than previously assumed.Comment: 64 pages, 30 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, v2: typos correcte

Late Holocene wetland transgression and 500 years of vegetation and fire variability in the semi-arid Amboseli landscape, southern Kenya

The semi-arid Amboseli landscape, southern Kenya, is characterised by intermittent groundwater-fed wetlands that form sedimentary geoarchives recording past ecosystem changes. We present a 5000-year environmental history of a radiocarbon dated sediment core from Esambu Swamp adjacent to Amboseli National Park. Although radiocarbon dates suggest an unconformity or sedimentary gap that spans between 3800 and 500 cal year BP, the record provides a unique insight into the long-term ecosystem history and wetland processes, particularly the past 500 years. Climatic shifts, fire activity and recent anthropogenic activity drive changes in ecosystem composition. Prior to 3800 cal year BP the pollen data suggest semi-arid savanna ecosystem persisted near the wetland. The wetland transgressed at some time between 3800 and 500 cal year BP and it is difficult to constrain this timing further, and palustrine peaty sediments have accumulated since 400 cal year BP. Increased abundance of Afromontane forest taxa from adjacent highlands of Kilimanjaro and the Chyulu Hills and local arboreal taxa reflect changes in regional moisture budgets. Particularly transformative changes occurred in the last five centuries, associated with increased local biomass burning coeval with the arrival of Maa-speaking pastoralists and intensification of the ivory trade. Cereal crops occurred consistently from around 300 cal year BP, indicative of further anthropogenic activity. The study provides unique insight in Amboseli ecosystem history and the link between ecosystem drivers of change. Such long-term perspectives are crucial for future climate change and associated livelihood impacts, so that suitable responses to ensure sustainable management practices can be developed in an important conservation landscape

From Theory to Implementation: Adaptations to a Quality Improvement Initiative According to Implementation Context

As countries continue to invest in quality improvement (QI) initiatives in health facilities, it is important to acknowledge the role of context in implementation. We conducted a qualitative study between February 2019 and January 2020 to explore how a QI initiative was adapted to enable implementation in three facility types: primary health centres, public hospitals and private facilities in Lagos State, Nigeria. Despite a common theory of change, implementation of the initiative needed to be adapted to accommodate the local needs, priorities and organisational culture of each facility type. Across facility types, inadequate human and capital resources constrained implementation and necessitated an extension of the initiative’s duration. In public facilities, the local governance structure was adapted to facilitate coordination, but similar adaptations to governance were not possible for private facilities. Our findings highlight the importance of anticipating and planning for the local adaptation of QI initiatives according to implementation environment

Serengeti's futures: Exploring land use and land cover change scenarios to craft pathways for meeting conservation and development goals

Rapid land use transformations and increased climatic uncertainties challenge potential sustainable development pathways for communities and wildlife in regions with strong economic reliance on natural resources. In response to the complex causes and consequences of land use change, participatory scenario development approaches have emerged as key tools for analyzing drivers of change to help chart the future of socio-ecological systems. We assess stakeholder perspectives of land use and land cover change (LULCC) and integrate co-produced scenarios of future land cover change with spatial modeling to evaluate how future LULCC in the wider Serengeti ecosystem might align or diverge with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union's Agenda 2063. Across the wider Serengeti ecosystem, population growth, infrastructural development, agricultural economy, and political will in support of climate change management strategies were perceived to be the key drivers of future LULCC. Under eight scenarios, declines in forest area as a proportion of total land area ranged from 0.1% to 4% in 2030 and from 0.1% to 6% in 2063, with the preservation of forest cover linked to the level of protection provided. Futures with well-demarcated protected areas, sound land use plans, and stable governance were highly desired. In contrast, futures with severe climate change impacts and encroached and degazetted protected areas were considered undesirable. Insights gained from our study are important for guiding pathways toward achieving sustainability goals while recognizing societies' relationship with nature. The results highlight the usefulness of multi-stakeholder engagement, perspective sharing, and consensus building toward shared socio-ecological goals

Effect of changes in antibiotic prescribing on patient outcomes in a community setting: A natural experiment in Australia

© 2002 by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.This study examined whether a significant change in antibiotic use caused by an Australian government directive targeted at amoxicillin with clavulanic acid (AC) was associated with changes in prescription share, health care costs, and patient outcomes. We used an integrated database of computerized general practice medical records, which included data regarding 34,242 patients and 318,234 recorded patient visits. There were 15,303 antibiotic prescriptions provided to 9921 patients during a 4-year period, with AC prescribed for 1453 (14.6%) of these patients. A total of 5125 patient outcomes were identified. There was a shift away from best-practice antibiotic prescribing, and a significant association was identified between the rate and cost of process-of-care and patient outcomes and the decrease in AC-prescription share. This policy initiative created unintended changes in prescribing behavior, increased costs to the government, and a trend toward poorer patient outcomes. Detailed analyses are required before instigating initiatives aimed at changing clinicians' prescribing behavior.Justin Beilby, John Marley, Don Walker, Nicole Chamberlain, and Michelle Burke for the FIESTA Study Grou

Robust automatic mapping algorithms in a network monitoring scenario

Automatically generating maps of a measured variable of interest can be problematic. In this work we focus on the monitoring network context where observations are collected and reported by a network of sensors, and are then transformed into interpolated maps for use in decision making. Using traditional geostatistical methods, estimating the covariance structure of data collected in an emergency situation can be difficult. Variogram determination, whether by method-of-moment estimators or by maximum likelihood, is very sensitive to extreme values. Even when a monitoring network is in a routine mode of operation, sensors can sporadically malfunction and report extreme values. If this extreme data destabilises the model, causing the covariance structure of the observed data to be incorrectly estimated, the generated maps will be of little value, and the uncertainty estimates in particular will be misleading. Marchant and Lark [2007] propose a REML estimator for the covariance, which is shown to work on small data sets with a manual selection of the damping parameter in the robust likelihood. We show how this can be extended to allow treatment of large data sets together with an automated approach to all parameter estimation. The projected process kriging framework of Ingram et al. [2007] is extended to allow the use of robust likelihood functions, including the two component Gaussian and the Huber function. We show how our algorithm is further refined to reduce the computational complexity while at the same time minimising any loss of information. To show the benefits of this method, we use data collected from radiation monitoring networks across Europe. We compare our results to those obtained from traditional kriging methodologies and include comparisons with Box-Cox transformations of the data. We discuss the issue of whether to treat or ignore extreme values, making the distinction between the robust methods which ignore outliers and transformation methods which treat them as part of the (transformed) process. Using a case study, based on an extreme radiological events over a large area, we show how radiation data collected from monitoring networks can be analysed automatically and then used to generate reliable maps to inform decision making. We show the limitations of the methods and discuss potential extensions to remedy these

Means and covariance functions for geostatistical compositional data: an axiomatic approach

This work focuses on the characterization of the central tendency of a sample of compositional data. It provides new results about theoretical properties of means and covariance functions for compositional data, with an axiomatic perspective. Original results that shed new light on the geostatistical modeling of compositional data are presented. As a first result, it is shown that the weighted arithmetic mean is the only central tendency characteristic satisfying a small set of axioms, namely continuity, reflexivity and marginal stability. Moreover, this set of axioms also implies that the weights must be identical for all parts of the composition. This result has deep consequences on the spatial multivariate covariance modeling of compositional data. In a geostatistical setting, it is shown as a second result that the proportional model of covariance functions (i.e., the product of a covariance matrix and a single correlation function) is the only model that provides identical kriging weights for all components of the compositional data. As a consequence of these two results, the proportional model of covariance function is the only covariance model compatible with reflexivity and marginal stability