1,721,277 research outputs found
Treating animal behaviour problems with sex hormones: an animal welfare issue
No full textIn England and Germany, the methods used to modify unwanted animal behaviour in veterinary practices were investigated by questionnaire. The samples were created by a systematic section. Of the 216 questionnaires posted in each country, 66 replies from Germany (30.5%) and 76 from the UK (35.2%) were obtained and evaluated.The majority of veterinarians in both countries considered hormones effective in treating behaviour problems, but English veterinarians do so significantly more for cats and dogs. However, only a minority use cortisone, androgens and oestrogens. Progesterone is used by about 75% of veterinarians in the UK but by fewer than 50% in Germany.There is evidence that the effectiveness of hormones is restricted to sexually dimorphic behaviours and that, even there, is of limited success (Hopkins et al., 1976; Hart, 1980). Furthermore, the use of hormones has been shown to be accompanied by serious side effects, for example a high risk of pyometra, cancer of the mammary gland, and induction of diabetes mellitus in prediabetic patients.It is common medical practice that methods with serious side-effects that are not very effective are discarded as soon as better treatments are available. In fact, in such cases the further use of such methods is considered a grave medical fault. In scientific research, as well as in human medicine, the principles of behaviour modification have proven to be highly effective (Köhlke and Köhlke, 1994; Martin and Pear, 1996). Some psychoactive medication used for the treatment of humans has been recently approved for use in dogs. Thus, to ensure the welfare of the animals in question, the use of sex hormones in the treatment of animal behaviour should be regarded as inappropriate and obsolete and abandoned in favour of behaviour therapy and modern psychoactive medication
The influence of the owner on the development of aggressive behaviour in dogs
No full textAggressive behaviour in dogs has become a major topic of scientific research in Northern Europe, particularly in England and France, and also in the USA. It ranks amongst the top problems presented to animal behaviour therapists.Research into the influence of owner’s interactions with their dog on the development of the dog’s behaviour in general and problem behaviour, including aggression in particular, has yielded contradictory results. While some authors could not establish significant links between the way dog owners treated their dog and development of behaviour problems, others did. Furthermore, in animal behaviour therapy, the owners’ behaviour has proved to be a major and very influential factor in influencing and changing the animal’s behaviour, including aggressive behaviour.In principle, aggressive behaviour in dogs can be considered normal, species-specific behaviour, essential for survival. Like all behaviours, it is the product of different factors. Learning and genotype both play an important role, as do physical and physiological factors like the dog’s health, its hormonal and reproductive status, and the individual situation and context in which the aggressive behaviour occurs. The degree of adaptability of a species depends to a high degree on the learning capacities of the individual. The variety of situations in which dogs live and the diverse tasks they accomplish for humans show that they, like humans, have a large capacity for learning throughout their lives. Thus, in dogs, aggressive behaviour is, to a large extent, influenced by learning. Because the principles of learning are relatively unknown to the general public and rarely applied deliberately and systematically in everyday dog training, normal human behaviour is bound to reinforce aggressive behaviour in dogs. This will be demonstrated in case studies
Geophysics and the management of a designed historical landscape: a case study at Dunkeld
No full textNo abstract available
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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