The harmonization of animal protection during transport in the European Union : analysis of the sanctioning systems in Italy, Romania and Spain

In the last sixty years, countries in Europe developed a common legal framework for the protection of so-called "farmed" Animals: on farms, during transport and at the time of their killing. This document describes the most relevant aspects of the sanctioning systems implementing the legislation on the protection of Animals during transport in three countries: Italy, Spain and Romania. These nations were chosen in connection with the author's collaboration with the German non-governmental organization, Animals' Angels. The association has been investigating animal transports at the international level since 1998, with particular attention to these three countries. The article draws on findings collected from the organization's field experience as well as perspectives that have emerged over time during the analysis of the various countries. This document aims to lay out the positive and the negative points of each penalty system, as a basis for a wider analysis, and to formulate proposals for a better and uniform application of a dissuasive sanctioning system in Europe. The fact that penalties are left to the competence of the member states, which are culturally different and have different legal systems, has led to an alarmingly irregular implementation. From another perspective, with protection being put in second place, this leads to competitive distortion in the territory of the European Union. The article examines efforts made by European institutions and member states to improve the harmonisation of the application of Regulation (EC) No. 1/2005. It also offers practical inputs that can be used in future negotiations of the existing laws on animal transport.En los últimos sesenta años, los países europeos desarrollaron un marco legal común para la protección de los animales "de granja": en las granjas, durante el transporte y en el momento de su matanza. Este documento pretende describir los aspectos más relevantes de los sistemas de sanción que aplican la legislación sobre la protección de los animales durante el transporte en tres países: Italia, España y Rumanía. La razón por la que elegí estas naciones reside en mi colaboración con la organización no gubernamental alemana Animals' Angels. Esta asociación lleva investigando los transportes de animales desde 1998, a nivel internacional, con especial atención a estos tres países. Me gustaría utilizar algunos de los hallazgos recogidos de nuestra experiencia directa en el campo y las opiniones consolidadas durante el análisis de los distintos países. El presente documento tiene por objeto extrapolar lo positivo y lo negativo de cada sistema de sanciones, como punto de partida para un análisis más amplio, a fin de formular propuestas para una aplicación mejor y más uniforme de un sistema de sanciones disuasivas en Europa. El hecho de que las sanciones se dejen a la competencia de los Estados miembros, que son culturalmente diferentes y tienen sistemas jurídicos distintos, da lugar a una preocupante falta de homogeneidad en la aplicación en la actualidad. Desde otra perspectiva, en relación a la necesidad de protección, esto lleva a una distorsión de la competencia en el territorio de la Unión Europea. Examinaré los esfuerzos realizados por las instituciones europeas y los Estados Miembros, para mejorar la armonización de la aplicación del Reglamento (CE) Nº 1/2005. Además, tengo la intención de ofrecer algunas aportaciones prácticas que espero sean tomadas en serio en caso de futuras negociaciones de las actuales leyes sobre transporte de animales

Economic evaluations in paediatric dentistry clinical trials

Economic evaluations play an important role in identifying the cost‐effectiveness of alternative healthcare programmes, informing decisions surrounding funding and the allocation of resources. This paper outlines the basic principles of economic evaluation and how it can be conducted alongside a clinical trial. Furthermore, it considers the ways in which evidence from these studies can be used, and the challenges researchers are faced with when conducting economic evaluations in the field of children’s oral health

ACCERT: Auckland's cancer cachexia evaluating resistance training study

Background: Cancer Cachexia (CC) is a common problem seen in many advanced malignancies including Non- Small-Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC). In CC there is a significant loss of adipose tissue and skeletal muscle mass. Muscle wasting is the main cause of impaired function, leading to respiratory complications and fatigue. The optimal treatment for CC is the complete removal of the tumour; unfortunately with advanced NSCLC this is unachievable. The next best options are to increase nutritional intake to counteract weight loss, address the anorexia, inflammation, and metabolic alterations i.e. loss of body fat and the skeletal muscle wasting. This requires the need to utilise a multi-targeted approach to decrease the inflammation and to stimulate the skeletal anabolic pathways with the use of progressive resistance training (PRT). PRT has shown acceptability and benefits in other cancer populations. This study aims to identify a novel multi-targeted treatment regimen that will alleviate and/or stabilise CC weight loss. Methods: This is a randomised, open-label study to investigate whether 2 sessions each week of PRT followed by essential amino acids (EAA's) high in leucine, when administered in addition to Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA) and a Cox-2 inhibitor is acceptable to NSCLC cachectic patients for a period of 20 weeks (primary endpoint). Secondary endpoints include Lean Body Mass, MRI thigh skeletal muscle values, QoL and Fatigue questionnaires, serum pro-inflammatory cytokine profiles, and hand and leg strength. Safety data will also be collected. Outcome measures to power a future study will be determined from the trend in difference between the two groups. 21 patients are planned to be randomised in a 1:2 ratio Arm A EPA and Cox-2 inhibitor vs. Arm B EPA, Cox-2 inhibitor, PRT followed by EAA's. All patients are offered to continue with the study medications and/or PRT sessions on compassionate use. Main inclusion criteria include: histological proven NSCLC patients who have at least 5% weight loss and fulfil the following cachectic definition (Evans Clin Nut 2008 27). A guest patient was enrolled in May 2012, followed by study participants in June 201

Wilson Lines off the Light-cone in TMD PDFs

Transverse Momentum Dependent (TMD) parton distribution functions (PDFs) also take into account the transverse momentum ($p_T$) of the partons. The $p_T$-integrated analogues can be linked directly to quark and gluon matrix elements using the operator product expansion in QCD, involving operators of definite twist. TMDs also involve operators of higher twist, which are not suppressed by powers of the hard scale, however. Taking into account gauge links that no longer are along the light-cone, one finds that new distribution functions arise. They appear at leading order in the description of azimuthal asymmetries in high-energy scattering processes. In analogy to the collinear operator expansion, we define a universal set of TMDs of definite rank and point out the importance for phenomenology.Comment: 12 pages, presented by the first author at the Light-Cone Conference 2013, May 20-24, 2013, Skiathos, Greece. To be published in Few Body System

ASTEC -- the Aarhus STellar Evolution Code

The Aarhus code is the result of a long development, starting in 1974, and still ongoing. A novel feature is the integration of the computation of adiabatic oscillations for specified models as part of the code. It offers substantial flexibility in terms of microphysics and has been carefully tested for the computation of solar models. However, considerable development is still required in the treatment of nuclear reactions, diffusion and convective mixing.Comment: Astrophys. Space Sci, in the pres

A framework for digital sunken relief generation based on 3D geometric models

Sunken relief is a special art form of sculpture whereby the depicted shapes are sunk into a given surface. This is traditionally created by laboriously carving materials such as stone. Sunken reliefs often utilize the engraved lines or strokes to strengthen the impressions of a 3D presence and to highlight the features which otherwise are unrevealed. In other types of reliefs, smooth surfaces and their shadows convey such information in a coherent manner. Existing methods for relief generation are focused on forming a smooth surface with a shallow depth which provides the presence of 3D figures. Such methods unfortunately do not help the art form of sunken reliefs as they omit the presence of feature lines. We propose a framework to produce sunken reliefs from a known 3D geometry, which transforms the 3D objects into three layers of input to incorporate the contour lines seamlessly with the smooth surfaces. The three input layers take the advantages of the geometric information and the visual cues to assist the relief generation. This framework alters existing techniques in line drawings and relief generation, and then combines them organically for this particular purpose

The molecular epidemiology of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 in six cities in Britain and Ireland

The authors sequenced the p17 coding regions of the gag gene from 211 patients infected either through injecting drug use (IDU) or by sexual intercourse between men from six cities in Scotland, N. England, N. Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. All sequences were of subtype 5. Phylogenetic analysis revealed substantial heterogeneity in the sequences from homosexual men. In contrast, sequence from over 80% of IDUs formed a relatively tight cluster, distinct both from those of published isolates and of the gay men. There was no large-scale clustering of sequences by city in either risk group, although a number of close associations between pairs of individuals were observed. From the known date of the HIV-1 epidemic among IDUs in Edinburgh, the rate of sequence divergence at synonymous sites is estimated to be about 0.8%. On this basis it has been estimated that the date of divergence of the sequences among homosexual men to be about 1975, which may correspond to the origin of the B subtype epidemic

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster Lightweight Recovery System

The cancellation of the Advanced Solid Rocket Booster Project and the earth-to-orbit payload requirements for the Space Station dictated that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) look at performance enhancements from all Space Transportation System (STS) elements (Orbiter Project, Space Shuttle Main Engine Project, External Tank Project, Solid Rocket Motor Project, & Solid Rocket Booster Project). The manifest for launching of Space Station components indicated that an additional 12-13000 pound lift capability was required on 10 missions and 15-20,000 pound additional lift capability is required on two missions. Trade studies conducted by all STS elements indicate that by deleting the parachute Recovery System (and associated hardware) from the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBS) and going to a lightweight External Tank (ET) the 20,000 pound additional lift capability can be realized for the two missions. The deletion of the parachute Recovery System means the loss of four SRBs and this option is two expensive (loss of reusable hardware) to be used on the other 10 Space Station missions. Accordingly, each STS element looked at potential methods of weight savings, increased performance, etc. As the SRB and ET projects are non-propulsive (i.e. does not have launch thrust elements) their only contribution to overall payload enhancement can be achieved by the saving of weight while maintaining adequate safety factors and margins. The enhancement factor for the SRB project is 1:10. That is for each 10 pounds saved on the two SRBS; approximately 1 additional pound of payload in the orbiter bay can be placed into orbit. The SRB project decided early that the SRB recovery system was a prime candidate for weight reduction as it was designed in the early 1970s and weight optimization had never been a primary criteria

A VALUE PLATFORM ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE ON CUSTOMER ACCESS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Customer access information technologies (CAITs) provide a link between a firm and its customers. Firms invest in CAITs to reduce costs, increase revenues and market share, lock in existing customers and capture new ones. These benefits, however, are notoriously difficult to measure. This paper proposes an evaluative method for CAlT deployment called value platform analysis, that is based on a conceptual model drawn from the theory of retail outlet deployment in marketing science. The model focuses on the impact of CAIT features and environmental features on transactions generated by the CAIT. Specific econometric models are developed for deployment. Hypotheses regarding the likely impact of automated teller machine (ATM) location design choices and environmental features on ATM transactions are evaluated. The results indicate that there are a number of key features influencing ATM performance. Two distinct ATM deployment scenarios emerge: one for servicing a bank's own customers, and another for providing transaction services for customers for a fee.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Low-mass pre--main-sequence stars in the Magellanic Clouds

[Abridged] The stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) suggests that sub-solar stars form in very large numbers. Most attractive places for catching low-mass star formation in the act are young stellar clusters and associations, still (half-)embedded in star-forming regions. The low-mass stars in such regions are still in their pre--main-sequence (PMS) evolutionary phase. The peculiar nature of these objects and the contamination of their samples by the evolved populations of the Galactic disk impose demanding observational techniques for the detection of complete numbers of PMS stars in the Milky Way. The Magellanic Clouds, the companion galaxies to our own, demonstrate an exceptional star formation activity. The low extinction and stellar field contamination in star-forming regions of these galaxies imply a more efficient detection of low-mass PMS stars than in the Milky Way, but their distance from us make the application of special detection techniques unfeasible. Nonetheless, imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope yield the discovery of solar and sub-solar PMS stars in the Magellanic Clouds from photometry alone. Unprecedented numbers of such objects are identified as the low-mass stellar content of their star-forming regions, changing completely our picture of young stellar systems outside the Milky Way, and extending the extragalactic stellar IMF below the persisting threshold of a few solar masses. This review presents the recent developments in the investigation of PMS stars in the Magellanic Clouds, with special focus on the limitations by single-epoch photometry that can only be circumvented by the detailed study of the observable behavior of these stars in the color-magnitude diagram. The achieved characterization of the low-mass PMS stars in the Magellanic Clouds allowed thus a more comprehensive understanding of the star formation process in our neighboring galaxies.Comment: Review paper, 26 pages (in LaTeX style for Springer journals), 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Space Science Review