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Considerations for implementing regulation of decapods in science
Get PDFDecapod crustaceans, commonly utilised for pure or applied scientific research and commercial food production, have generally remained outside ethical debate. However, in the last decade many parts of the world have seen an increase in public interest in the welfare of decapod crustaceans and statutory legal protection has been introduced in several countries. Although still limited to a small number of countries and remaining relatively unharmonised, relevant legislation could be increasingly broadened to include decapods in further jurisdictions. Much existing legislation, originally intended for protecting terrestrial vertebrates during scientific study, might be unsuitable for aquatic invertebrates such as decapods. Indeed, precedence with many fish species and cephalopods suggests detail is lacking with respect to fundamental guidance. Therefore, similar inclusion of decapods into such legislation could make welfare or scientific goals more challenging to achieve unless relevant guidance is available, particularly to animal care practitioners. This horizon paper aims to summarise existing decapod legislation, and the considerations required should decapods be included in current conceptual frameworks and scientific legislation
How do representations of the ‘drug problem’ in Greece produce governable subjects? A WPR-inspired approach
No full textThis thesis explores the 'drug problem' in Athens, Greece, in relation to drug policy, cultural impacts of addiction, and historical perspectives on drug use, with a particular focus on its public nature amidst economic and social crises. Conducted from April 2018 to February 2019, this qualitative research involved 3.5 months of ethnographic observations in four open drug scenes and 32 semi-structured interviews. These interviews captured the perspectives of diverse stakeholders, including local community members residing in neighbourhoods with open drug scenes, people who used drugs, parents (not related to the former), drug treatment professionals, and drug policy experts. Set against a backdrop of an economic downturn, a refugee influx, and a recent HIV outbreak among people who inject drugs, this research critically analyses the performative nature of these crises and their impact on Greek drug policy and treatment. By employing the 'What's the Problem Represented to be?' approach, the thesis challenges the notion of a single, linear cause of the 'drug problem', highlighting instead the complex discourses that frame the 'problem', shaping policy and treatment responses, public attitudes, and lived experiences.
The findings assess how societal, professional, and official discourses interact to construct the Greek 'drug problem', using the visibility of drugs in the public spaces of Athens as a basis for exploring community and stakeholder responses to open drug scenes, as well as drug treatment, policy, stigma, self-stigma, and addiction conceptualisations. By examining these problem representations and their effects, the research highlights the problematisations, assumptions, and silences that shape public understandings and policy, advocating for a re-evaluation of the 'drug problem' amid ongoing economic and social upheaval. The findings demonstrate how these problem representations produce governable subjects, consistent with Bacchi's (2009) methodology
Genomic analysis of Nigerian indigenous chickens reveals their genetic diversity and adaptation to heat-stress
Get PDFIndigenous poultry breeds from Africa can survive in harsh tropical environments (such as long arid seasons, excessive rain and humidity, and extreme heat) and are resilient to disease challenges, but they are not productive compared to their commercial counterparts. Their adaptive characteristics are in response to natural selection or to artificial selection for production traits that have left selection signatures in the genome. Identifying these signatures of positive selection can provide insight into the genetic bases of tropical adaptations observed in indigenous poultry and thereby help to develop robust and high-performing breeds for extreme tropical climates. Here, we present the first large-scale whole-genome sequencing analysis of Nigerian indigenous chickens from different agro-climatic conditions, investigating their genetic diversity and adaptation to tropical hot climates (extreme arid and extreme humid conditions). The study shows a large extant genetic diversity but low level of population differentiation. Using different selection signature analyses, several candidate genes for adaptation were detected, especially in relation to thermotolerance and immune response (e.g., cytochrome P450 2B4-like, TSHR, HSF1, CDC37, SFTPB, HIF3A, SLC44A2, and ILF3 genes). These results have important implications for conserving valuable genetic resources and breeding improvement of chickens for thermotolerance
The Collector Hypothesis: Who Benefits More from Art, the Artist or the Collector?
Get PDFHuman fascination with art has deep evolutionary roots, yet its role remains a puzzle for evolutionary theory. Although its widespread presence across cultures suggests a potential adaptive function, determining its evolutionary origins requires more comprehensive evidence beyond mere universality or assumed survival benefits. This paper introduces and tests the Collector Hypothesis, which suggests that artworks serve as indicators of collectors’ surplus wealth and social status, offering greater benefits to collectors than to artists in mating and reproductive contexts. Our study among Indigenous Papuan communities provides preliminary support for the Collector Hypothesis, indicating that, compared to artists, collectors are perceived as having higher social status and greater attractiveness to women. These findings provide unique insights into Papuan communities and contribute to the ongoing discussion about art’s adaptive significance of art by suggesting that artistic capacities may benefit not only creators but also those who accumulate and display art. Further research in diverse cultural contexts is needed for a comprehensive understanding of this interplay
How does research about literacy education move to, among and around teachers? Briefing for Policy Makers
Get PDFBirds and people: from conflict to coexistence
Get PDFNegative interactions between humans and animals are becoming increasingly frequent, as wild habitats shrink and human presence and activities expand throughout the world. Conflicts between people over conservation are one of the outcomes of this increased interaction, with severe consequences for both wildlife and people. Globally, conflicts can arise across diverse ecosystems, species and circumstances. Even if most attention in wildlife-related conflicts has been on mammals, birds are also often at the centre of such conflicts, but conflict research is still not explicitly present in ornithological literature. Examples of such conflicts include those related to birds and agriculture, forestry, hunting, fishing and public health interests. Conflicts are often more complex than initial assessments might suggest, involving ecological, economic, cultural, social and political elements. Reflecting the complexity of these issues and their increasing relevance to bird conservation, a British Ornithologists' Union conference was organized in November 2021 that aimed to highlight examples of conflicts that exist between people over birds and their conservation. Building on this conference, we provide here a review of key themes relating to the understanding of conflicts, including the importance of conflict perceptions, the collaboration between multiple disciplines and the different types of knowledge needed to better understand conflicts. We then consider the management of bird conservation conflicts, including the key issues of dealing with uncertainty, the role of technical solutions and the importance of collaboration and building trust, illustrating each theme with real-world examples. Finally, we outline potential future conflicts around bird conservation and how best to address them proactively
The 'five-inch course'
No full textWill McConn-Palfreyman, Head of Psychology for Scottish Golf, on the psychology within and beyond the mental gam
Combined Depth and Semantic Segmentation from Synthetic Data and a W-Net Architecture
Get PDFMonocular pixel level depth estimation requires an algorithm to label every pixel in an image with its estimated distance from the camera. The task is more challenging than binocular depth estimation, where two cameras fixed a small distance apart are used. Algorithms that combine depth estimation with pixel level semantic segmentation show improved performance but present the practical challenge of requiring a dataset that is annotated at pixel level with both class labels and depth values. This paper presents a new convolutional neural network architecture capable of simultaneous monocular depth estimation and semantic segmentation and shows how synthetic data generated using computer games technology can be used to train such models. The algorithm performs at over 98% accuracy on the segmentation task and 88% on the depth estimation task
Machine Learning–Based Approach for Identifying Research Gaps: COVID-19 as a Case Study
Get PDFBackground: Research gaps refer to unanswered questions in the existing body of knowledge, either due to a lack of studies or inconclusive results. Research gaps are essential starting points and motivation in scientific research. Traditional methods for identifying research gaps, such as literature reviews and expert opinions, can be time consuming, labor intensive, and prone to bias. They may also fall short when dealing with rapidly evolving or time-sensitive subjects. Thus, innovative scalable approaches are needed to identify research gaps, systematically assess the literature, and prioritize areas for further study in the topic of interest. Objective: In this paper, we propose a machine learning–based approach for identifying research gaps through the analysis of scientific literature. We used the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study. Methods: We conducted an analysis to identify research gaps in COVID-19 literature using the COVID-19 Open Research (CORD-19) data set, which comprises 1,121,433 papers related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our approach is based on the BERTopic topic modeling technique, which leverages transformers and class-based term frequency-inverse document frequency to create dense clusters allowing for easily interpretable topics. Our BERTopic-based approach involves 3 stages: embedding documents, clustering documents (dimension reduction and clustering), and representing topics (generating candidates and maximizing candidate relevance). Results: After applying the study selection criteria, we included 33,206 abstracts in the analysis of this study. The final list of research gaps identified 21 different areas, which were grouped into 6 principal topics. These topics were: “virus of COVID-19,” “risk factors of COVID-19,” “prevention of COVID-19,” “treatment of COVID-19,” “health care delivery during COVID-19,” “and impact of COVID-19.” The most prominent topic, observed in over half of the analyzed studies, was “the impact of COVID-19.” Conclusions: The proposed machine learning–based approach has the potential to identify research gaps in scientific literature. This study is not intended to replace individual literature research within a selected topic. Instead, it can serve as a guide to formulate precise literature search queries in specific areas associated with research questions that previous publications have earmarked for future exploration. Future research should leverage an up-to-date list of studies that are retrieved from the most common databases in the target area. When feasible, full texts or, at minimum, discussion sections should be analyzed rather than limiting their analysis to abstracts. Furthermore, future studies could evaluate more efficient modeling algorithms, especially those combining topic modeling with statistical uncertainty quantification, such as conformal prediction
Genetics, Epigenetics, and Genotype-Environment Interaction in RAS-Reared Atlantic Salmon, Salmo salar
No full textWhile use of freshwater net-pens is widespread in Scotland, employment of recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) for Atlantic salmon aquaculture is increasing. These husbandry environments differ which, due to environmental influences on salmons’ life cycle, may impact their commercial production. This study aimed to understand the environmental, genetic and epigenetic factors influencing salmon performance under varied culture systems by: (1) estimating phenotypic and genetic parameters, as well as genotype-environment interactions (GxE) of a population reared in RAS or ambient loch system, (2) studying if manipulation of environmental parameters impacted DNA methylation and gene expression, and (3) assessing whether the freshwater environment impacted salmon performance in saltwater.
Results indicated that RAS-reared smolts were smaller, had lower trait variance, and greater heritability estimates compared to loch counterparts. Moderate GxE were identified for weight, as well as differing genomic associations with phenotypic expression depending on rearing environment. However, environmental manipulation was not observed to impact DNA methylation in a meaningful way, despite clear gene expression changes. In saltwater, despite their smaller size on transfer, RAS-reared post-smolts appeared to grow at a faster rate than loch-reared counterparts while maintaining greater trait heterogeneity. This difference was reflected in low-to-moderate estimates of GxE for growth rate. Temporal patterns in trait heritability also differed with freshwater-rearing environment.
This suggested that although differences in phenotypic performance were observed at the end of freshwater-rearing, these did not negatively impact the RAS population after saltwater transfer. Such conclusions could benefit from further investigation into the genetic regulation of environment-specific traits, economic viability of potential management decisions, and further GxE studies, for example. Furthermore, although differences were observed in phenotypic performance at both freshwater and saltwater phases, this did not appear to result from methylation changes despite gene expression differences, suggesting a possible role of alternative epigenetic mechanisms
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