Transgenesis in Animal Agriculture: Addressing Animal Health and Welfare Concerns

The US Food and Drug Administration’s final Guidance for Industry on the regulation of transgenesis in animal agriculture has paved the way for the commercialization of genetically engineered (GE) farm animals. The production-related diseases associated with extant breeding technologies are reviewed, as well as the predictable welfare consequences of continued emphasis on prolificacy at the potential expense of physical fitness. Areas in which biotechnology could be used to improve the welfare of animals while maintaining profitability are explored along with regulatory schema to improve agency integration in GE animal oversight

On discriminating people: visual redundancy in categorization

Two experiments investigated deaf individuals' ability to distinguish speakers based on vibrotactile stimulation. Nineteen participants made same/different judgments on pairs of utterances presented to the lower back through voice coils embedded in a conforming chair. Discrimination of stimuli matched for F0, duration, and loudness was above chance for spoken sentences (Experiment 1) and vowel sounds (Experiment 2). Spectral measures of "different" stimulus pairs predicted their discriminability in both experiments. Beyond their application to assistive technology, these findings support the hypothesis that vibrotactile discrimination of spectral information involves cortical integration of filtered output from frequency-tuned skin receptors.1 page(s

Island Visual Artists'82 : An Exhibition Representing the Work of Island Visual Artists

Arsenault points out the diversity of Prince Edward Island artists' work. Includes brief artists' statements and biographical notes