Tuberculosis in cattle: the results of the four-area project

<p/> <p>The four-area project was undertaken to further assess the impact of badger removal on the control of tuberculosis in cattle herds in Ireland. It was conducted between 1997 and 2002 in matched removal and reference areas in four counties, namely Cork, Donegal, Kilkenny and Monaghan, representing a wide range of Irish farming environments. In the removal areas, a proactive programme of badger removal was conducted, on two or three occasions each year, whereas in the reference areas, badger removal was entirely reactive following severe outbreaks of tuberculosis amongst cattle. A detailed statistical analysis of this study has already been presented by Griffin <it>et al. </it><abbrgrp><abbr bid="B13">13</abbr></abbrgrp>; this paper presents further, mainly descriptive, findings from the study. In total, 2,360 badgers were captured in the removal areas of which 450 (19.5%) were considered positive for tuberculosis and 258 badgers were captured in the reference areas, with 57 (26.1%) positive for tuberculosis. The annual incidence of confirmed herd restrictions was lower in the removal area compared to the reference area in every year of the study period in each of the four counties. These empirical findings were consistent with the hazard ratios found by Griffin <it>et al. </it><abbrgrp><abbr bid="B13">13</abbr></abbrgrp>. Further, the effect of proactive badger removal on cattle tuberculosis in the four-area project and in the earlier east-Offaly project, as measured using the number of reactors per 1,000 cattle tested, were very similar, providing compelling evidence of the role of badgers in the epidemiology of tuberculosis in Irish cattle herds. The validity of the four-area project was discussed in detail. Efforts to minimise badger-to-cattle transmission in Ireland must be undertaken in association with the current comprehensive control programme, which has effectively minimised opportunities for cattle-to-cattle transmission.</p

U.K. Hydrographic Department Experience in the use of Digitisers

Automated cartography was introduced into the U.K. Hydrographic Department about eight years ago when we installed a digitiser table and an automatic draughting system for office use, and automatic data logging and plotting systems on the three largest survey ships. Initially the emphasis within the office was on the mechanisation of the drawing of chart borders and navigation lattices. These are applications which require little data input but considerable computation, and most of the operation is therefore carried out by the machines. The application of automation to the drawing of irregular lines and scattered points involves the handling of very large amounts of data, and under present conditions most of these data are derived from documents. The equipment normally used for data input is the free cursor digitiser. This is a table on which the position of a cursor is sensed electrically and can be recorded onto paper or magnetic tape. The operator places the cursor on a point or traces it along a line, recording co-ordinates as required. Other information can be entered into the record by a keyboard. This manual data input is slow and prone to error, and the benefits of automation in this field are less clear-cut than in the production of computed linework such as borders and lattices