“Dreams Don’t Come True in Eritrea”: Anomie and Family Disintegration due to the Structural Militarization of Society

This article analyzes contemporary Eritrea’s acute crisis within the framework of the theory of anomie. It is based on the hypothesis that militarization, forced labor, mass exodus, and family disintegration can be interpreted as the consequences of two incompatible norm and value systems: the collectivist, nationalistic, and militaristic worldview of the former liberation front and ruling party People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), and the traditional cultural system of Eritrea’s society. In 2002 the regime introduced an unlimited “development campaign,” thereby forcing large parts of the society to live as conscripts and perform unpaid labor. This has caused a mass exodus of young people and a rapid process of family disintegration. The article is based on empirical fieldwork and evaluates the ongoing developments, which have led to rapid economic decline and the destabilization of the entire fabric of society.Eritrea, militarization, forced labor, family disintegration, mass exodus, anomie

Ethological investigation on moulting laying hens in organic farming

Introduction Organic egg farmers mainly rely on the same hybrids, breeding techniques and production schemes as conventional egg producers. This includes annual replacement of the laying hens. However, from an ethical point of view a longer life for laying hens is desired, not only because the hens can be used for a longer period but also less male chicks would have to be killed at one day of age. Birds have to moult their plumage from time to time. During this time they hardly take in any food and stop laying. This laying interval presents a recuperation period for the egg producing organs of the hen. After moulting, egg production is again higher and the egg quality is improved. In large flocks of laying hens moulting has to be induced to prevent social instability in the flock otherwise moulting could result in feather-pecking or even cannibalism. Certain organic label organisations believe that the induction of a moult with food and light restriction might be too stressful for the hens. Therefore, the Swiss organic regulations forbid the induction of moulting. The following experiments were performed to provide information about the influence of moulting on the behaviour of hens

How should a hen run be structured so that it is used evenly by laying hens ?

The aim of this study was to obtain an even use of the hen run with structures as an uneven use leads to a nutrient and heavy metal overload on the frequently used areas. In particular, we looked at the preference of hens for a certain kind and amount of structuring elements

Applied research as interplay between farm and group level: What attracts laying hens to the hen run?

On farm research is well established in organic farming. The holistic approach considers the complexity of a farm and the findings will be implemented immediately. As the experiments are often performed on single farms the results are difficult to transfer to others. Controlled experiments on group level with representative samples investigate single factors and lead to reliable and well-founded results. However, they are often far away from implementation. Applied research requires interplay of on farm research and controlled experiments. A series of ethological research work should show how this interplay may take place

Optimising the use of hen runs by structures

One of the main problems in free range husbandry of laying hens is the uneven use of the hen run. This leads to an overuse of pasture near the hen house. In a series of behavioural experiments we tried to determine management and structuring factors which may result in more hens in the run and a more even distribution of the animals

How to motivate laying hens to use the hen run?

In organic agriculture, hens are kept in free range systems. A free range is an enrichment for the hens and brings several advantages for them. Laying hens may show behavioural elements that are not possible in a poultry house. For instance, sunbathing behaviour is only shown in direct sunlight and not in artificial light (Huber, 1987). Hens spend 35.3-47.5% of their time with food searching (Fölsch and Vestergaard, 1981) and, in natural habitats, invertebrate food appears to be an importnat addition to the diet (Savory et al. 1978). Free range systems may also have an influence on animal health and product quality. Lopez-Bote et al. (1998) suggested that some constituents of grass might be of interest for the production of eggs rich in (n-3) fatty acids. In flocks of free range hens, generally only a small proportion of the flock is outside at any one time, and most hens stay near the poultry house. In an account of the uneven distribution of the hens in the free range area, Menzi et al. (1997) found a nutrient and heavy metal overload on the frequently used parts of the run. For a better distribution, they, as well as several label programmes, recommend to structure the outdoor area with trees and installations providing shade and protection for the hens. We attempted to determine management and structural factors that would result in more hens in the run and a more even distribution of the animals in several experiments, with a special emphasis on the idea that the hen run should be easily manageable for the farmer

Laying hen husbandry: group size and use of hen-runs

With regard to welfare reasons, various label productions limit the number of laying hens allowed per flock. The question arose whether the group size has an influence on the use of laying hen runs

Optimising the use of hen runs by structures and management

One of the main problems in free range husbandry of laying hens is the uneven use of the hen run. This leads to an overuse of pasture near the hen house. In a series of behavioural experiments we tried to determine management and structuring factors which may result in more hens in the run and a more even distribution of the animals

Copula-like Variational Inference

This paper considers a new family of variational distributions motivated by Sklar's theorem. This family is based on new copula-like densities on the hypercube with non-uniform marginals which can be sampled efficiently, i.e. with a complexity linear in the dimension of state space. Then, the proposed variational densities that we suggest can be seen as arising from these copula-like densities used as base distributions on the hypercube with Gaussian quantile functions and sparse rotation matrices as normalizing flows. The latter correspond to a rotation of the marginals with complexity $\mathcal{O}(d \log d)$. We provide some empirical evidence that such a variational family can also approximate non-Gaussian posteriors and can be beneficial compared to Gaussian approximations. Our method performs largely comparably to state-of-the-art variational approximations on standard regression and classification benchmarks for Bayesian Neural Networks.Comment: 33rd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2019), Vancouver, Canad