Adoption of Veterinary Technologies Amongst Sheep and Goat Farmers in Qwawqa, South Africa

Technological breakthroughs in agriculture after the Second World War mainly concentrated on crop production (wheat, rice, and later maize). In the livestock production sector, besides the substantial improvements in the poultry and dairy production systems, the development of the other livestock technologies was neglected, due to lower returns when compared to those on crop technology. Nevertheless, the usage of livestock veterinary technologies such as veterinary services and medicines remains important for livestock production as animal diseases are a major cause of poor productivity and high mortality rates, which are major constraints to improve food security. The reasons for poor adoption of livestock veterinary technologies amongst livestock farmers all over the world are not fully understood. There is a generally accepted perception amongst veterinary practitioners that these farmers "react on what they see" when it comes to the adoption of these technologies and prefer a therapeutic approach rather than a preventative one. This hypothesis was never before scientifically tested. This study proved this hypothesis for the first time. The results suggest that medication technologies are mainly adopted once the problem becomes visible. Sheep and goat farmers (small ruminant farmers) in the former homelands only treat their animals for external parasites (ticks and mites) when they can see them on the animal's skin and wool. No farmer in this area adopts a prophylactic approach in preventing external parasites. This attitude explains a much higher adoption of external parasite remedies than internal parasite remedies, as well as a higher adoption of antibiotics (therapeutic medicine) than vaccines (preventative medicine). "Small ruminant farmers react on what they see when it comes to disease control."Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries,

The undersea habitat as a space station analog: Evaluation of research and training potential

An evaluation is given of the utility of undersea habitats for both research and training on behavioral issues relative to the space station. The feasibility of a particular habitat, La Chalupa, is discussed

Human performance in aerospace environments: The search for psychological determinants

A program of research into the psychological determinants of individual and crew performance in aerospace environments is described. Constellations of personality factors influencing behavior in demanding environments are discussed. Relationships between attitudes and performance and attitudes and personality are also reported. The efficacy of training in interpersonal relations as a means of changing attitudes and behavior is explored along with the influence of personality on attitude change processes. Finally, approaches to measuring group behavior in aerospace settings are described

Counteracting systems of diabaticities using DRAG controls: The status after 10 years

The task of controlling a quantum system under time and bandwidth limitations is made difficult by unwanted excitations of spectrally neighboring energy levels. In this article we review the Derivative Removal by Adiabatic Gate (DRAG) framework. DRAG is a multi-transition variant of counterdiabatic driving, where multiple low-lying gapped states in an adiabatic evolution can be avoided simultaneously, greatly reducing operation times compared to the adiabatic limit. In its essence, the method corresponds to a convergent version of the superadiabatic expansion where multiple counterdiabaticity conditions can be met simultaneously. When transitions are strongly crowded, the system of equations can instead be favorably solved by an average Hamiltonian (Magnus) expansion, suggesting the use of additional sideband control. We give some examples of common systems where DRAG and variants thereof can be applied to improve performance.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure