1,721,041 research outputs found
HEALTH AND WELFARE IN ORGANIC DAIRY GOAT FARMS
Full text linkEuropean and Italian dairy goat farming has increasingly turned towards organic method. This production system aims at ensuring high levels of animal health and welfare, by reducing the use of allophatic medicine and creating well-balanced agro-ecosystems. Despite the growing importance of organic farming, researches on this field are still relatively limited, in particular with respect to the evaluation of animal welfare in organic goats. New research would contribute to improve organic goat husbandry as well as to fulfil consumers’ demand.
This thesis investigates two fundamental health and welfare issues related to the use of pasture in organic dairy goat farming: 1) gastrointestinal nematodes (GIN) and their control strategies (Chapters 1 and 2), and 2) positive emotional state and its assessment in goats (Chapter 3). It relies on a series of experimental studies performed in a commercial organic dairy goat farm in Lombardy between 2012 and 2014.
Following a literature review on sustainable strategies to control GIN, the first study evaluates the efficacy of a commercial herbal product in controlling GIN compared to conventional allopathic anthelmintic.
The results show significant differences between treatments (conventional 90%), while the phytotherapic product did not reach the threshold values during the whole study period. Furthermore the herbal anthelmintic showed great differences in individual responses within the group.
The second study aims at evaluating the efficacy of pumpkin seeds used as anthelmintics in traditional veterinary medicine, to reduce fecal egg count. No significant differences in EPG were found in the pumpkin seed-treated group compared to a negative control throughout the study period. In both these trials, the goats showed a great tolerance to GIN, suggesting the goats’ ability to cope with infections, and that preventive strategies, including grazing management, are paramount for GIN control.
The third study tests the validity and repeatability of Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA), as a tool to assess positive emotional state and thus the “overall” welfare of dairy goats. Principal Component Analysis on QBA scores point out that goats’ demeanour on intensive and organic farms is different, showing that access to pasture has a positive effect on goats’ emotional state. Moreover, the results show a good inter-observer reliability across three dimensions of goat demeanour (PC1: r = 0.75, P = 0.001; PC2: r = 0.67, P = 0.006; PC3: r = 0.69, P = 0.004). These results highlight the promising role of QBA as part of welfare assessment protocols for goats, especially in organic farming.
As a broader conclusion, this thesis raises further questions on the extent to which GIN actually represent a serious problem for organic goats’ health and welfare. Answering this question would have practical implications for determining the most adequate treatment strategy for goats, both with phytotherapy as well as with traditional methods. In light of these results, further controlled studies are encouraged to assess the health and welfare of organic grazing goats from a multidimensional perspective and to develop standardized methods for their evaluation
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Dall'intrapsichico all'interpersonale e viceversa : fenomenologia dinamica delle condotte suicidarie e parasuicidarie
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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