A Multi-Criteria Decision Framework for Animal Welfare Policy

Policy decisions aimed at improving farm animal welfare involve balancing several competing objectives. Not only do such decisions involve tradeoffs between social, ethical, economic and welfare considerations, animal welfare itself is a multi-dimensional concept and some husbandry practices may satisfy some welfare needs but fail to satisfy others. Multi-criteria decision analysis is a decision theoretic tool that has been used to inform decision making in fields such as environmental policy, urban and regional planning, and biosecurity – all of which are characterised by competing goals and multiple stake-holders. This paper presents a preliminary multi-criteria framework for the analysis of animal welfare policies at the national level using indoor housing options for layer hens as an empirical example. Preliminary results are presented, but major emphasis is placed on highlighting the information needed to make such a framework both transparent and tractable.Animal welfare, multi-criteria decision analysis, decision analysis, decision support, Agribusiness, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries,

Human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) in benign and malignant diseases

Background: Human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) is described as a useful new biomarker in ovarian cancer. As HE4 is neither tumor nor organ specific, we intensively investigated the occurrence of this protein in female and male patients with various benign and malignant diseases in order to avoid misinterpretation and to identify potential additional clinical relevance. Methods: We retrospectively investigated HE4 (ARCHITECT (R), Abbott Diagnostics, US) in the sera of 205 healthy individuals, 654 patients with benign disorders and 720 patients with cancer before initial treatment. Results: The lowest concentrations of HE4 were observed in healthy men (median 26.2 pmol/L) followed by healthy women (median 40.4 pmol/L). In benign diseases, highest HE4 concentrations were seen in both women and men with renal failure (women, median 1041 pmol/L; men, median 1368 pmol/L). In women, the highest HE4 levels in malignant diseases were observed in ovarian cancer (median 242 pmol/l), whereas the highest HE4 concentrations in men occurred in lung cancer (median 89.2 pmol/L). The area under the curve (AUC) of HE4 in women was highest in ovarian cancer and borderline tumors as compared to benign gynecological disorders (88.9%), with a sensitivity of 67.4% at 95% specificity. Also, significantly elevated concentrations of HE4 with reference to the respective group of benign diseases were observed in uterus corpus and breast cancer as well as in lung cancer for men and women. Conclusions: HE4 has the highest relevance in ovarian cancer but can be elevated in a variety of benign and malignant diseases

Knitting Ourselves Into Being: the Case of Labour and Hip Domesticity on the Social Network Ravelry.com

Thinking of social media participation in terms of doing work may seem a strange proposition. Yet, social network and handicrafts website Ravelry.com requires a great deal of labour from its members. From painstakingly hand-knitting fuzzy objects to photographing, recording and sharing these objects online, Ravelers must supply evidence of their hard work in order to fully participate in this online community. On Ravelry, “writing oneself into being” (Sundén 2002), or performing one’s self through a textual medium, encompasses much more than simply writing. One must knit oneself into being too. Social capital is then accumulated through extensive cataloguing of handmade items. These ‘finished objects’ of knitting and crochet are imbued with affective meaning as tokens of nurturing and gift-giving, consistent with a historicity in which handicrafts like knitting have been associated with gendered care-work. Yet, much of Ravelry’s activity centres on commodity exchange. Displaying commodity ownership is as important as displaying evidence of labour for the accrual of social capital. Recording and displaying domesticity as both acts of labour and acts of consumption fit within a wider trend of hip domesticity, where demonstrating one’s domesticity has become a facet of popular culture. This project examines Ravelry.com’s emphasis on the placement of a physical object between the self and the social network. The thesis argues that this incorporation of material objects into the structure of a social network challenges notions of disembodiment and immateriality. Ravelry.com demonstrates the need for a discussion of social media participant labour which goes beyond the immaterial and affective

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT: SUPPORTING WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN SUKHBAATAR, MONGOLIA: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of Women in Sukhbaatar Province, Mongolia To Understand The Need for and Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment

Kofi Annan, 7th Secretary General of the United Nations has said, “There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.” There is growing research focused on women’s empowerment in the world representing many different cultures, but that literature does not include Mongolia or much of East Asia. Furthermore, there are many successful women’s empowerment centers around the world, but few collections of those centers’ best practices. This research hopes to change that. This is the first women’s empowerment research focused on Mongolia using both qualitative and quantitative methods, combined with best practices from women’s empowerment centers around the world. This research seeks to understand how women’s empowerment is being done successfully, what needs and desires exist in Sukhbaatar province for women’s empowerment resources and how those resources might be provided through a center. This research builds upon the work that has been done in the field and attempts to fill in some of the gaps in the literature since these studies have never been done in Mongolia. The current study examined through interviews and surveys in the field the understanding, opinions and needs of women in Sukhbaatar, Mongolia. The results showed that the vast majority of women surveyed showed a strong desire to have more programs and resources women’s empowerment in the province and a center following the best practices outlined in the research could be very successful. This has important implications for the future of the women’s empowerment movement and the developing country of Mongolia

Leading Happiness: Leadership and Happiness at Work in Certified B Corporations, A Qualitative Study of Leaders and Employees To Understand The Influence of Shared Leadership on Worker Happiness within Certified Benefit Corporations

The Certified B Corps movement is setting a new standard for businesses, committing to a multiple stakeholder orientation focused on community, environment and the workplace in addition to financial profit. More than 1,000 companies, including well-known companies like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, King Arthur Flour, and Etsy, have joined the ranks of Certified B Corps in over 30 countries. The B Corps certification is understood to promote a set of organizational practices, which envision improved employee performance and well-being. An important element of that well-being is employee happiness. Previous research has shown that improved business leadership practices can have significant impact on happiness in the workplace, which in turn can show measurable gains in productivity, sales, and overall workplace performance. However, no studies have been done on unique practices present within Certified B Corporations and the unique workplaces B Corps leaders are creating. This research focuses on how two successful startup Certified B Corps are influencing happiness in their workplaces through unique leadership strategies, from the perspectives of both the leaders and the employees within those companies. The current study examined leadership practices and their impact on employee performance and happiness in two B Certified organizations. The results showed that shared leadership practices are not only pervasive at all levels in both companies; they are creating positive workplace environments that are unprecedented in the lives of those involved. This has important implications for the future of the B Corps movement and the changing world of business and merits further research. Keywords: Benefit Corporations, Happiness at Work, Startups, Shared Leadership, Management, Leadership Studies, Organizational Developmen

Eschatological Thought and Religiosity Among Christians: Patterns And Relationships

In contrast to research on fundamentalism and death anxiety, there has been very little empirical research on the relationship between a person\u27s eschatology, religious thought and behavior. This study attempts to identify associations between eschatology, religiosity, locus of control, death anxiety, and an individual\u27s concept of God. Respondents were 226 college students who completed a questionnaire designed to assess how religious, psychological, and demographic variables predict eschatological beliefs and attitudes. Most respondents were Christian, Caucasian, and female. Eschatological beliefs were directly associated with religious involvement, hope, a deistic and wrathful image of God, and death anxiety. These beliefs, along with eschatological repulsion, were also inversely associated with religious involvement. Consequently, eschatological beliefs appeared to be associated with an individual\u27s religiosity

WILLS-PROBATE OF LOST WILL-MEANING OF LOST IN STATUTES OF LIMITATIONS

More than twenty years had elapsed between testatrix\u27 death and the date of filing of petition for probate of her will. Testatrix\u27 son, a sole beneficiary, had searched for the will without success and it could not be found by the register of probate on his initial search. However, the register eventually discovered the will in his inactive files. Two other brothers had seen the will in the probate office but had said nothing. Held, the will was \u27\u27lost within the meaning of a statute which provided that the twenty year statute of limitations should not run during the time a will was lost. In re Smith, (Maine 1949) 67 A. (2d) 529

Vascular Reactivity in Newly-Formed and Mature Arterialized Collateral Capillaries

Peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD) is a globally-prevalent cardiovascular disease in which atherosclerotic plaques narrow arterial lumen diameters and restrict blood flow to downstream tissues. The impact of these occlusions can be mitigated by collateral vessels that connect parallel arterial branches and act as natural bypasses to maintain perfusion. In animal models that lack collateral arterioles, capillaries that connect terminal arteriolar segments can arterialize and form functional collaterals following an ischemic event; however, in the early stages of development, vasodilation is impaired. We explored the mechanism of impaired vasodilation in arterialized collateral capillaries (ACCs) and pre-existing collaterals (PECs) by evaluating endothelial-dependent vasodilation and endothelial-independent reactivity at day seven following the ischemic event. We also evaluated functional vasodilation in mature ACCs and PECs at day 21 by applying vasodilation inhibitors during the electrical stimulation of muscle contraction. Arterial occlusion was performed by ligating the cranial-lateral spinotrapezius feed artery in Balb/C mice, a strain that either lacks native arteriolar collaterals or contains a single collateral arteriole (~50% of mice), as opposed to the C57Bl/6 strain, which each contain 10 or more collateral arterioles. At seven days post-surgery, both vasodilation and vasoconstriction were impaired in ACCs when compared to terminal arterioles of similar size in unoperated limbs, but still exhibited significant changes when compared to baseline. The comparable reactivity in both endothelial-dependent and independent vasodilation at day-seven in ACCs indicates that vascular smooth muscle cells are likely responsible for the impairment, as they may still be developing, rearranging, or both, and are not yet fully capable of regulating diameter in immature ACCs. However, by 21 days post-ligation, ACCs regained the capacity to dilate in response to muscle contraction, and utilized similar vasodilation pathways as control vessels. At seven days post-ligation, PECs had impaired endothelialindependent dilation, but successful endothelial-dependent dilation, indicating the use of alternative pathways to dilate. Unlike ACCs, the PECs never completely restored vasodilation capabilities by day 21, which may be due to a variation in smooth muscle phenotype, sensitivity to vasoactive agents, and/or limited growth factor expression. For future work, evaluating collateral formation and vasodilation in a diseased model and investigating molecular variations in the smooth muscle may yield additional knowledge that can improve therapies for patients during ischemic events