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

Carbon-poor solar flare events

Energetic particle flux enhancements over the period October 1973 - December 1977 were surveyed using ULET sensor on the IMP-8 spacecraft. During the four year period the most extreme periods of Fe enrichment compared to oxygen were during solar flare events in February 1974 and May 1974. In these same events, the carbon abundance with respect to oxygen was significantly depleted when compared with a value C:0 is approximately 0.45:1 for typical solar flares. These observations, taken together with previously reported He-3 enrichment in these events, give strong evidence for the importance of a wave-particle interaction in the pre-injection heating of the ambient matter

Cleft Extensions and Quotients of Twisted Quantum Doubles

Given a pair of finite groups $F, G$ and a normalized 3-cocycle $\omega$ of $G$, where $F$ acts on $G$ as automorphisms, we consider quasi-Hopf algebras defined as a cleft extension $\Bbbk^G_\omega\#_c\,\Bbbk F$ where $c$ denotes some suitable cohomological data. When $F\rightarrow \overline{F}:=F/A$ is a quotient of $F$ by a central subgroup $A$ acting trivially on $G$, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a surjection of quasi-Hopf algebras and cleft extensions of the type $\Bbbk^G_\omega\#_c\, \Bbbk F\rightarrow \Bbbk^G_\omega\#_{\overline{c}} \, \Bbbk \overline{F}$. Our construction is particularly natural when $F=G$ acts on $G$ by conjugation, and $\Bbbk^G_\omega\#_c \Bbbk G$ is a twisted quantum double $D^{\omega}(G)$. In this case, we give necessary and sufficient conditions that Rep($\Bbbk^G_\omega\#_{\overline{c}} \, \Bbbk \overline{G}$) is a modular tensor category.Comment: LaTex; 14 page

Constraints of solar flare particle transport models from anisotropy observations at Voyager 1

In general a particle transport model for energetic solar flare particles contains a number of free parameters which are determined by fitting various features of observed particle events. Frequently the parameter values are not uniquely determined. In order to place tighter constraints on the models, the anisotropy of 1 and 25 MeV/nuc protons and helium nuclei were examined during the 22 November 1977 solar particle event using data from the LECP experiment on Voyager 1 at 1.6 AU. These observations were combined with the time intensity profiles at Voyager 1 and at 1 AU from ISEE-1 and IMP-8 to determine the magnitude and radial dependence of the interplanetary diffusion coefficient and the required injection duration at the sun. The first order anisotropy amplitudes for both 1 MeV and 25 MeV protons are observed to decrease from maximum values (approx. 1) during the event onset at Voyager 1 to values consistent with convection in the solar wind at about 3 days into the event decay phase. The intensity and anisotropy profiles at 1.6 AU are consistent with predictions of diffusive transport with a modest mean free path (lambda = approx. 0.1 AU)

A New Look at Neon-C and SEP-Neon

Studies of the isotopic composition of neon in lunar soils, meteorites, and interplanetary dust particles have revealed several distinct components. In addition to implanted solar wind, which has a ^(20)Ne/^(22)Ne-abundance ratio of 13.7, there is an additional component with ^(20)Ne/^(22)Ne≈11.2, originally attributed to higher-energy solar energetic particles. Using data from the Advanced Composition Explorer, we have measured the fluence of solar wind, suprathermal particles, solar energetic particles and cosmic rays from ~0.3 keV/nucleon to ~300 MeV/nucleon over an extended time period. We use these measured spectra to simulate the present-day depth distribution of Ne isotopes implanted in the lunar soil. We find that the suprathermal tail of the solar wind, extending from a few keV/nucleon to several MeV/nucleon with a power law spectrum, can produce ^(20)Ne/^(22)Ne abundance ratios in the lunar soil that are similar to the measured composition, although there remain significant questions about the extent to which the present-day intensity of suprathermal ions is sufficient to explain the lunar observations

Abundances of Suprathermal Heavy Ions in CIRs during the Minimum of Solar Cycle 23

In this paper we examine the elemental composition of the 0.1-1 MeV/nucleon interplanetary heavy ions from H to Fe in corotating interaction regions (CIRs) measured by the SIT (Suprathermal Ion Telescope) instrument. We use observations taken on board the STEREO spacecraft from January 2007 through December 2010, which included the unusually long solar minimum following solar cycle 23. During this period instruments on STEREO observed more than 50 CIR events making it possible to investigate CIR ion abundances during solar minimum conditions with unprecedented high statistics. The observations reveal annual variations of relative ion abundances in the CIRs during the 2007-2008 period as indicated by the He/H, He/O and Fe/O elemental ratios. We discuss possible causes of the variability in terms of the helium focusing cone passage and heliolatitude dependence. The year 2009 was very quiet in CIR event activity. In 2010 the elemental composition in CIRs were influenced by sporadic solar energetic particle (SEP) events. The 2010 He/H and He/O abundance ratios in CIRs show large event to event variations with values resembling the SEP-like composition. This finding points out that the suprathermal SEPs could be the source population for CIR acceleration.Comment: accepted for publication in Solar Physic

Energy spectra of 3He-rich solar energetic particles associated with coronal waves

In addition to their anomalous abundances, 3He-rich solar energetic particles (SEPs) show puzzling energy spectral shapes varying from rounded forms to power laws where the later are characteristics of shock acceleration. Solar sources of these particles have been often associated with jets and narrow CMEs, which are the signatures of magnetic reconnection involving open field. Recent reports on new associations with large-scale EUV waves bring new insights on acceleration and transport of 3He-rich SEPs in the corona. We examined energy spectra for 32 3He-rich SEP events observed by ACE at L1 near solar minimum in 2007-2010 and compared the spectral shapes with solar flare signatures obtained from STEREO EUV images. We found the events with jets or brightenings tend to be associated with rounded spectra and the events with coronal waves with power laws. This suggests that coronal waves may be related to the unknown second stage mechanism commonly used to interpret spectral forms of 3He-rich SEPs.Comment: Presented at 15th Annual International Astrophysics Conference "The Science of Ed Stone". Accepted for publication in Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Glasshouse Trials 1970

Two glasshouse trials were carried out - ( 1) Ef\u27fect of Placement of\u27 Urea and Soil Moisture Level on Germination of Wheat. (2) Effect of Placement of Urea on Germination of Wheat Oats, Barley, Linseed and Rape.

Time of application of solid nitrogen fertilisers.

The current recommendations for time of application of soild nitrogen fertilisers such as urea, ammonium nitrate and sulphate of ammonia are: Zone A: These fertilisers should be applied as close to seeding as possible. Zone B: As for zone A except on very sandy soils which are very prone to leaching, where application can be delayed 2-3 weeks. Zone C: Applications should be delayed about 3 weeks after seeding