Search

Simple Summary: Layer industries that are still using cage housing systems should encourage the provision of appropriate farm enrichments, especially at an early stage. Farm environmental enrichments such as litter, sand, alfalfa bales, chick papers, pecking stones, pecking strings, perches, slopes, elevated platforms, aviaries and outdoor access reduce feather and skin damage, as well as abdominal fat content. Additionally, they promote the development of the brain and musculoskeletal systems and improve biological function, productivity and product quality with lifelong benefits for hens by continuously exposing them to free access to forage, dust baths and free locomotion. In this review, we summarize several common and effective methods of farm environmental enrichments, including different manipulable materials, structural equipment, and outdoor access, moreover, the competence of the farm staff is a requirement to achieve useful utilization of these farm environmental enrichments that aim to reduce stress and improve the welfare and productivity of layers. Proper farm environmental enrichments benefit the wellbeing of caged birds. Currently, cage housing is regarded as a global mainstream production system for laying hens. However, limited living space and confinement of birds in cages cause welfare and health problems, such as feather pecking, osteoporosis, obesity, and premature aging. Many studies have been conducted to alleviate layer welfare problems by providing farm environmental enrichments such as litter, sand, alfalfa bales, chick papers, pecking stones, pecking strings, perches, slopes, elevated platforms, aviaries and outdoor access with a trend towards complex enrichments. The provision of appropriate enrichments continuously attracts layers towards pecking, foraging, dust bathing, and locomotion, thereby giving lifelong benefits to laying hens. Hence, raising chicks and pullets under such conditions may reduce feather and skin damage, as well as accumulation of abdominal fat, and improve several biological features such as health, productivity, quality products, and docility of laying hens. Therefore, providing enrichment during the first few days of the layer's life without any interruption is crucial. In addition, due to different farm conditions, environmental enrichment should be managed by well-trained farm staff. For example, in preventing feather pecking among the birds, litter materials for foraging are superior to dust bath materials or new items. However, a limited supply of litter creates competition and challenges among birds. Therefore, providing farm environmental enrichment for layers requires proper handling, especially in commercial layer farms. Hence, improving the welfare of chicks and pullets through optimizing on-farm environmental enrichments is essential for production systems practicing cage housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the challenges of philosophy is explanation of the relationship between the soul and the body. As it is difficult to understand this relationship, various allegories have been used in philosophy to express that relationship. Allegory is one of the most influential ways of conveying deep meanings and explaining sensible affairs. Since the transcendental knowledge and trans-sensory notions lie beyond the reach of the human senses, allegory can play an important role in getting such meanings across. They are expressed from different perspectives as follows: 1) God Almighty-world relationship; 2) captain-ship relationship; 3) form-matter relationship; 4) architect-building relationship; 5) rider-ridee relationship; 6) bird-cage relationship; 7) treefruit relationship; 8) fetus-uterus relationship; and 9) light-shadow relationship. Some philosophical allegories are not strong and appropriate to express the soul-body relationship, while some others can express this relationship properly. Each of the above-mentioned allegories has a special feature and they are not the same in terms of power of creation. Some similes express the point of resemblance more accurately. The greater the point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle is, the more powerful the allegory will be and the smaller that point is, the less influential the allegory will be. Differences in principles and viewpoints affect the type of allegory. The analogy of the soul and the body to the tree and fruit rests on the principles of transcendent wisdom. This analogy is at odds with other views. Allegories, such as captain and ship, architect and building, and bird and cage are more compatible with the Masha (peripatetic) perspective toward the soulbody relationship. In each of these analogies, each one of the tenors and vehicles has an independent and separate existence and there is a contingent rather than intrinsic relationship between them. This idea has no place in MullaSadra's approach, according to which the soul’s belonging to the body is intrinsic to the soul and the soul’s existence rests on its connection to the body. A variety of allegories about the soul-body relationship have been mentioned in religious teachings, such as the allegories of word and meaning, soul and wind, gem and coffer, soul and thin cloth, environment and body, knowledge and action, piled up garment, and value and action. Each of the philosophical and religious allegories has common implications including: a) acceptance of otherness and duality of the soul and the body; b) originality of the soul in relation to the body; c) trans-sensory and metaphysical nature of the soul; and d) longitudinal relationship of the soul and the body. This paper explains and analyzes these allegories and distinguishes between the strong and weak ones. Among the main features of religious allegories is attention to the invisible, metaphysical, and trans-sensory nature of the body. This feature has been considered in most religious allegories, such as meaning and word, soul and wind, knowledge and action, piled up garment, and value and action, but it has not been regarded in many philosophical allegories, such as captain and ship, form and matter, architect and building, shadow and under shadow, etc. although it is accepted in philosophy. One of the major shortcomings of philosophical allegories is that they highlight maximum duality between the soul and the body. At this maximum duality, the duality between the soul and the body becomes more pronounced. The soul and the body are transformed from a single interconnected truth into two independent and interconnected entities. There is maximum duality between the tenor and vehicle in allegories, such as captain and ship, form and matter, architect and building, and rider and ridee, while they are not suitable examples to express the relationship between the soul and the body. ….. The trans-sensory aspect of the soul is often evident in religious allegories and the communicative aspect possessed by a trans-sensory being is seen in the similes. Accordingly, they do not have such maximum dualistic allegories as some philosophical allegories do. Among religious similes, all, except the second one, have this feature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a helicon-wave-sustained plasma generated by a novel birdcage antenna with cosine azimuthal current distribution. The resonant birdcage source maintains a stable intense plasma column from low (300 W) to high (10 kW) steady-state RF power in hydrogen or argon, enabling plasma diagnostic measurements over the whole volume. The plasma density, 1018 to 1019 m−3, and uniform static magnetic field, 200–800 G, are typical of high density, low B-field helicon sources where the RF excitation frequency, 13.56 MHz here, is far above the ion cyclotron frequency and much lower than the electron cyclotron and plasma frequencies. Magnetic field measurements of the unbounded plasma column show a helicon wave propagating from the birdcage source to the target 1.5 m away. The axial wavelength, measured for a range of plasma density and magnetic field, is described by the whistler dispersion relation; it is not determined by the antenna length but varies smoothly as a function of electron density irrespective of the gas type, and shows no discontinuous transitions. This wavelength was compared with semi-analytical and purely numerical models, showing a good fit with the m = +1 helicon eigenvalue of shortest axial wavelength. The birdcage resonant antenna is a suitable source for continuous helicon-sustained plasma experiments, from fundamental wave studies up to high power applications in hydrogen or deuterium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular orientation cages have been used for several decades to record the migratory orientation of passerine migrants, and have been central to the investigation of the functional characteristics of the biological compasses used for orientation. The use of these cages offers unique possibilities to study the migratory behaviour of songbirds, but suffers from statistical limitations in evaluating the directions of the activity recorded in the cages. The migratory activity has been reported to vary, including complex multimodal orientation of migratory passerines tested in orientation cages irrespective of species studied. The currently applied circular statistical methods fail to describe orientation responses differing from unimodal and axial distributions. We propose for the first time a modelling procedure enabling the analysis of multimodal distributions at either an individual or a group level. In this paper we compare the results of conventional methods and the recommended modelling approach. Migratory routes may be more complex than a simple migratory direction, and multimodal behaviour in migratory species at the individual and population levels can be advantageous. Individuals may select the expected migratory direction, but may also return to safer sites en route, i.e. sites already known, which provide food and/or shelter in reverse directions. In individual birds, several directions may be expressed in the same test hour. At the species level, multimodal orientation may give an opportunity to expand the range or may refer to differential migration route preferences in different populations of birds. A conflicting experimental situation may also result in a different preferential orientation. In this paper we suggest a statistical solution to deal with these types of variations in orientation preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large scale egg production in cages has been practiced worldwide for many years. However, recently consumer preferences have been shifting towards eggs produced in non-cage environments. In the March 2015 issue of Poultry Science a series of papers were presented from a comparative study of three production systems: conventional cages, enriched cages and aviary systems. Among the many issues reported we paid attention to floor eggs that is of no interest in cages but plays a role in enriched cages and in particular in aviary systems. The researchers called on attention to the cost of collecting floor eggs in the aviary systems and to the fact that floor eggs were more contaminated. In the Scandinavian Selection and Crossbreeding Experiment (SSCE) in 1980, birds were kept both in cages as well as in aviary systems for 5 generations. In this presentation we demonstrate that the frequency of floor eggs over 5 generations was reduced to 55% compared to the control line, and this was statistical significant. Although not being able to estimate the heritability it can be stated that some degree of heritability exists. In the meantime an electronically controlled nest has been developed. This would make it much easier for breeders to monitor individual egg laying behaviour of laying hens kept in aviary/floor management without the laborious work when using trap nests. By doing this, a more exact estimation of the genetic basis of laying floor eggs would be possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caging aims at constraining objects like a bird cage. It does not need force closure and contacts, and therefore is robust to perception noises. This paper considers these merits of caging and proposes an efficient approach to find the optimized finger positions for robust grasping under perception noises by measuring the quality of caging. It initially uses two quality models (the quality model of translational constraint and the quality model of rotational constraint) to combinatorically represent the quality of caging and finds the optimized finger positions (finger positions that have large robustness to perception noises) by maximizing the margins to caging breaking. Meanwhile, it employs Genetic Algorithm (GA) to accelerate the combinatorial optimization of the two quality models. The encoding rules, the initial procedure, and the stopping criterion of the GA are designed carefully towards the quality models to improve its computational efficiency. Experiments with various object shapes show that with the help of multi-model optimization and GA acceleration, the proposed approach is not only robustness to perception noises but also efficient in computation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this experiment was to evaluate effect of level lauric acid (LA) combined with feed fiber (FF) in ration on serum lipid profile of broiler. A total of 360 unsex 1-d old broiler chicks were obtain from broiler breeding company. They were kept in brooding cage with temperature 23-33oC on a light/dark cycle until 7-d. After 7-d adjustment period, all bird randomly assigned to 12 treatments combination. Each group having three replicate cages with 30 birds was fed diet according experimental design. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with a 3 x 4 factorial arrangement. The first factor was level of LA consisted of 3 levels i.e. 1.30%; 1.95%; and 2.60%, while the second was level of FF i.e. 5%, 6%, 7%, and 8% in the diet. Each treatment was given diet from 21 to 35 day of age during the experimental period. Effect of treatment on serum lipid consists of total cholesterol, triglyceride, HDLcholesterol, and LDL-cholesterol was determined at the end of experiment (35-d of age). The conclusion of this study indicated that the used of 1.95% LA and 8% FF level on the diet would have an optimize serum lipid profile of broiler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A new experimental volume radiofrequency coil intended for 1H/19F MR at 4.7 T. • Extreme broad band of tuning while maintaining good homogeneity of B 1 field. • Intended for the mice whole body measurement with one radiofrequency coil. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a 1H/19F volume coil for mouse body magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and spectroscopy using a high magnetic field (4.7 T). By changing the geometry of the coil rungs to include both nuclei for MR experiments, this innovative coil can be tuned over an extremely wide range of frequency. The coil, 45 mm in diameter and 55 mm in length, consists of a 12-rung birdcage-like structure. Using two types of tuning, the coil can generate a sufficiently homogeneous B 1 + electromagnetic field within a working volume optimized for laboratory mouse. The first tuning involves changing the resonance frequency over a large frequency range. The electrical capacitance between the wires can be adjusted to reflect changes in the length of the coil. The second tuning comprises a habitual tuning transformer for precise detection in a narrow band. In contrast to widely used multinuclear coils, the coil presented here features only one resonance peak and can be manipulated according to the Larmor frequencies given for 1H and 19F. The coil was successfully tested using full-wave simulations of magnetic and electric field distributions under in vivo MR conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstracts the paper "Welfare of badgers (Meles meles) subjected to culling; patterns of trap-related injury," by Woodroffe et al. Entrapment of badgers in cages as part of the attempt to limit the spread of tuberculosis; Examination for any injuries due to confinement; Modification to the door of the trap to reduce damage.