The effect of mixing entire male pigs prior to transport to slaughter on behaviour, welfare and carcass lesions

peer-reviewedData set for article is also provided.Research is needed to validate lesions recorded at meat inspection as indicators of pig welfare on farm. The aims were to determine the influence of mixing pigs on carcass lesions and to establish whether such lesions correlate with pig behaviour and lesions scored on farm. Aggressive and mounting behaviour of pigs in three single sex pens was recorded on Day −5, −2, and −1 relative to slaughter (Day 0). On Day 0 pigs were randomly allocated to 3 treatments (n = 20/group) over 5 replicates: males mixed with females (MF), males mixed with males (MM), and males unmixed (MUM). Aggressive and mounting behaviours were recorded on Day 0 at holding on farm and lairage. Skin/tail lesions were scored according to severity at the farm (Day −1), lairage, and on the carcass (Day 0). Effect of treatment and time on behaviour and lesions were analysed by mixed models. Spearman rank correlations between behaviour and lesion scores and between scores recorded at different stages were determined. In general, MM performed more aggressive behaviour (50.4 ± 10.72) than MUM (20.3 ± 9.55, P < 0.05) and more mounting (30.9 ± 9.99) than MF (11.4 ± 3.76) and MUM (9.8 ± 3.74, P < 0.05). Skin lesion scores increased between farm (Day −1) and lairage (P < 0.001), but this tended to be significant only for MF and MM (P = 0.08). There was no effect of treatment on carcass lesions and no associations were found with fighting/mounting. Mixing entire males prior to slaughter stimulated mounting and aggressive behaviour but did not influence carcass lesion scores. Carcass skin/tail lesions scores were correlated with scores recorded on farm (rskin = 0.21 and rtail = 0.18, P < 0.01) suggesting that information recorded at meat inspection could be used as indicators of pig welfare on farm.This study was part of the PIGWELFIND project funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), Ireland

Determinants of cognitive function in childhood: A cohort study in a middle income context

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that poverty, health and nutrition affect children's cognitive development. This study aimed to examine the relative contributions of both proximal and distal risk factors on child cognitive development, by breaking down the possible causal pathways through which poverty affects cognition. METHODS: This cohort study collected data on family socioeconomic status, household and neighbourhood environmental conditions, child health and nutritional status, psychosocial stimulation and nursery school attendance. The effect of these on Wechsler Pre-School and Primary Scale of Intelligence scores at five years of age was investigated using a multivariable hierarchical analysis, guided by the proposed conceptual framework. RESULTS: Unfavourable socioeconomic conditions, poorly educated mother, absent father, poor sanitary conditions at home and in the neighbourhood and low birth weight were negatively associated with cognitive performance at five years of age, while strong positive associations were found with high levels of domestic stimulation and nursery school attendance. CONCLUSION: Children's cognitive development in urban contexts in developing countries could be substantially increased by interventions promoting early psychosocial stimulation and preschool experience, together with efforts to prevent low birth weight and promote adequate nutritional status

Perceived difficulty and appropriateness of decision making by General Practitioners: a systematic review of scenario studies

Background: Health-care quality in primary care depends largely on the appropriateness of General Practitioners’ (GPs; Primary Care or Family Physicians) decisions, which may be influenced by how difficult they perceive decisions to be. Patient scenarios (clinical or case vignettes) are widely used to investigate GPs’ decision making. This review aimed to identify the extent to which perceived decision difficulty, decision appropriateness, and their relationship have been assessed in scenario studies of GPs’ decision making; identify possible determinants of difficulty and appropriateness; and investigate the relationship between difficulty and appropriateness. Methods: MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, the Cochrane Library and Web of Science were searched for scenario studies of GPs’ decision making. One author completed article screening. Ten percent of titles and abstracts were checked by an independent volunteer, resulting in 91% agreement. Data on decision difficulty and appropriateness were extracted by one author and descriptively synthesised. Chi-squared tests were used to explore associations between decision appropriateness, decision type and decision appropriateness assessment method. Results: Of 152 included studies, 66 assessed decision appropriateness and five assessed perceived difficulty. While no studies assessed the relationship between perceived difficulty and appropriateness, one study objectively varied the difficulty of the scenarios and assessed the relationship between a measure of objective difficulty and appropriateness. Across 38 studies where calculations were possible, 62% of the decisions were appropriate as defined by the appropriateness standard used. Chi-squared tests identified statistically significant associations between decision appropriateness, decision type and decision appropriateness assessment method. Findings suggested a negative relationship between decision difficulty and appropriateness, while interventions may have the potential to reduce perceived difficulty. Conclusions: Scenario-based research into GPs’ decisions rarely considers the relationship between perceived decision difficulty and decision appropriateness. The links between these decisional components require further investigation

Interaction Between Convection and Pulsation

This article reviews our current understanding of modelling convection dynamics in stars. Several semi-analytical time-dependent convection models have been proposed for pulsating one-dimensional stellar structures with different formulations for how the convective turbulent velocity field couples with the global stellar oscillations. In this review we put emphasis on two, widely used, time-dependent convection formulations for estimating pulsation properties in one-dimensional stellar models. Applications to pulsating stars are presented with results for oscillation properties, such as the effects of convection dynamics on the oscillation frequencies, or the stability of pulsation modes, in classical pulsators and in stars supporting solar-type oscillations.Comment: Invited review article for Living Reviews in Solar Physics. 88 pages, 14 figure

The impacts of increased heat stress events on wheat yield under climate change in China

China is the largest wheat producing country in the world. Wheat is one of the two major staple cereals consumed in the country and about 60% of Chinese population eats the grain daily. To safeguard the production of this important crop, about 85% of wheat areas in the country are under irrigation or high rainfall conditions. However, wheat production in the future will be challenged by the increasing occurrence and magnitude of adverse and extreme weather events. In this paper, we present an analysis that combines outputs from a wide range of General Circulation Models (GCMs) with observational data to produce more detailed projections of local climate suitable for assessing the impact of increasing heat stress events on wheat yield. We run the assessment at 36 representative sites in China using the crop growth model CSM-CropSim Wheat of DSSAT 4.5. The simulations based on historical data show that this model is suitable for quantifying yield damages caused by heat stress. In comparison with the observations of baseline 1996-2005, our simulations for the future indicate that by 2100, the projected increases in heat stress would lead to an ensemble-mean yield reduction of –7.1% (with a probability of 80%) and –17.5% (with a probability of 96%) for winter wheat and spring wheat, respectively, under the irrigated condition. Although such losses can be fully compensated by CO2 fertilization effect as parameterized in DSSAT 4.5, a great caution is needed in interpreting this fertilization effect because existing crop dynamic models are unable to incorporate the effect of CO2 acclimation (the growth enhancing effect decreases over time) and other offsetting forces