Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief history of the Animal Welfare Act and suggest that librarians and other information professionals can play an active role in helping researchers to comply with the Act.

The author attended workshops directed towards Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) and Biomedical Researchers. As a result of attending these workshops, the author recognized the potential for librarians and information specialists to assist researchers in performing literature searches, a required component of research protocols. The purpose of the literature search is to seek alternatives to the use of animals in experiments and to ensure that the researchers are not unnecessarily duplicating previous experiments. A research guide consisting of proprietary databases, free databases, books, web sites, and tutorials facilitates the literature review mandated by the Act.

While serving on his institution's Animal Care and Use Committee, the author was charged with reviewing research protocols involving the use of live, vertebrate animals. These protocols call for a literature review to determine if there are acceptable alternatives to the use of animals, or to methods that cause pain and distress to the animals. The author found that the majority of the searches that were performed needed improvement, with many failing to meet the minimum requirements of the Animal Welfare Act. Through his participation in relevant workshops, the author also found that many researchers were unaware of the requirements of this search for alternatives, and that they lacked familiarity with the resources available to them.

The author performed a search in Library and Information Science Abstracts and Library/Information Sciences & Technology Abstracts using the keywords “alternatives” and “animals” and received only four relevant results, dated 1990, 2001, 2004, and 2007.

The great difficulties which attach to the fixing of legal standards of composition for food products have now to be grappled with by the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Agriculture to consider and determine what regulations should be made by the Board, under Section 4 of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1899, with respect to the composition of butter. As we predicted in regard to the labours of the Milk and Cream Standards Committee, so we predict now that the Butter Committee will be unable to do more than to recommend standards and limits, which, while they will make for the protection of the public against the sale of grossly adulterated articles, will certainly not in any way insure the sale of butter of really satisfactory, or even of fair, composition. Standards and limits established by law for the purposes of the administration of criminal Acts of Parliament must of necessity be such as to legalise the sale of products of a most inferior character, to which the term “genuine” may still by law be applied as well as to legalise the sale of adulterated and sophisticated products so prepared as to come within the four corners of the law. It is, of course, an obvious necessity that official standards and limits should be established, and the Board of Agriculture are to be congratulated upon the manner in which they are endeavouring to deal with these extremely knotty problems; but it is important that misconception on the part of the public and the trade with respect to the effect of the regulations to be made should be as far as possible prevented. All that can be hoped for is that the conclusions at which the Committee may find themselves compelled to arrive will not be such as to place too high and too obvious a premium upon the sale of those inferior and scientifically‐adulterated products which are placed in such enormous quantities on the food market.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on economics literature on antimicrobial and alternative uses in food animal production on its current state, its drivers, impacts and policy, and provides a general picture of the research for this special agricultural input and future directions for the research and policy.

Reduction of antimicrobial uses in food animal production is relevant to both preventing antimicrobial resistance and ensuring global food security. This study focuses on reviewing antimicrobial impact on global food security, particularly in farm production by documenting the main drivers, functions and alternatives of antimicrobial animal uses, comparing different approaches used in evaluating its production effects and providing recommendations for future research and policy development.

Three main approaches, controlled animal experiments, comparisons between with and without using antimicrobials at the farm level and comparisons before and after antimicrobial ban as growth promoter, have been used in measuring food security effects of antimicrobial uses in food animal production. They are, however, answering different questions with different measuring conditions. The positive production impact of antimicrobial use is often associated to its functions as a growth promoter and in preventing and treating diseases. In this review the author question the technical legitimacy for antimicrobials as a growth promoter and argue that antimicrobials should be treated as a special class of conditional and supportive input in farm production instead of using it as a normal input in its impact evaluation.

An approach of combining damage control function and disease epidemiological model instead of a simplified production function should be used in its impact evaluation including in evaluating those used as antimicrobial growth promoters.

In reducing antimicrobial uses in animal production, apart from more active adoption of the alternatives, we call for a better understanding for the decision makings of antimicrobial use in the production process including government-veterinarian-farm links.

This study examines the main issues in current economic research in antimicrobial food animal production, clarifies ambiguities in antimicrobial production functions and in different approaches used in impact evaluation, provides a roadmap for reduction of antimicrobial uses and a new approach for the policy evaluation.

Animal rights is a growing social justice movement opposed to all forms of animal exploitation and abuse. Animal rights is not animal welfare. It is not pet therapy, wildlife conservation, or the services of the local humane society. Although it shares concerns with other organizations interested in the welfare of animals, the animal rights movement is activist and progressive, rejecting the view that animals are resources to be used for human purposes.

This study aims to represent a novel closed-form solutions method based on the product of the exponential model to solve the inverse kinematics of a robotic manipulator. In addition, this method is applied to master–slave control of the minimally invasive surgical (MIS) robot.

For MIS robotic inverse kinematics, the closed-form solutions based on the product of the exponential model of manipulators are divided into the RRR and RRT subproblems. Geometric and algebraic constraints are used as preconditions to solve two subproblems. In addition, several important coordinate systems are established on the surgical robot and master–slave mapping strategies are illustrated in detail. Finally, the MIS robot can realize master–slave control by combining closed-form solutions and master–slave mapping strategy.

The simulation of the instrument manipulator based on the RRR and RRT subproblems is executed to verify the correctness of the proposed closed-form solutions. The fact that the accuracy of the closed-form solutions is better than that of the compensation method is validated by the contrastive linear trajectory experiment, and the average and the maximum tracking errors are 0.1388 mm and 0.3047 mm, respectively. In the animal experiment, the average and maximum tracking error of the left instrument manipulator are 0.2192 mm and 0.4987 mm, whereas the average and maximum tracking error of the right instrument manipulator are 0.1885 mm and 0.6933 mm. The successful completion of the animal experiment comprehensively demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of the master–slave control strategy based on the novel closed-form solutions.

The proposed closed-form solutions are error-free in theory. The master–slave control strategy is not affected by calculation error when the closed-form solutions are used in the surgical robot. And the accuracy and reliability of the master–slave control strategy are greatly improved.

It is not necessary to trouble you here with the nature or names of the many amino acids which make up the molecule of a protein. Let me mention at random just two among them which, like several more, have been shown to be absolutely essential for the growth of the body and in smaller amount for its maintenance. I will choose cystine, which is an amino‐acid containing sulphur, and tryptophane, which is an indol derivative. Suppose at a particular period of its history the human body in order to grow and function normally demands half a gramme a day of cystine. Now of a protein containing 1 per cent. of that amino acid 50 grammes a day satisfies that particular demand, but of another protein containing less cystine a proportionately greater amount will be required, and it is always possible for a deficiency in cystine to become the factor which limits the flesh‐forming value of a protein. But, again, suppose the body at the same time requires 1 gramme of tryptophane a day. Now the protein of which 50 grammes gave an adequate supply of cystine might contain say 1 per cent. only of tryptophane. The latter amino acid would now become a limiting factor for the value of the protein, and 100 grammes instead of 50 will after all be required. This, however, would supply twice as much cystine as is necessary and probably excess of other amino acids. This excess cannot be used for the growth or maintenance of the tissues, but can only share in the less specific functions of fats and carbohydrates by supplying energy on oxidation. These considerations will perhaps make it clear that the food proteins which can be used with the greatest economy in the body are those which contain all the essential amino acids in such relative proportions as will correspond most nearly with the proportions required by the living tissues of the consumer. These are the proteins of so‐called high biological value; they are the “first‐class proteins” which nowadays, as I have said, receive mention whenever diets are evaluated. That different proteins have different values in this sense has been abundantly proved by controlled experiments on animals and to a less extent by experiments on humans. It will be easily understood that it is animal proteins which in general have the highest value. It was long accepted that a man doing average work required a daily ration of 100 grammes of protein. More recently we have come to believe that this figure is too high. I can testify as a result of experiments in practical classes involving estimations of the daily excretions of nitrogen, that the average consumption of Cambridge undergraduates (those in training doubtless excepted) is not above some 80 grammes. But in this the proportion of first‐class protein is probably higher than the average.

Robot-assisted system for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has been attracting more and more attentions. Compared with a traditional MIS, the robot-assisted system for MIS is able to overcome or reduce defects, such as poor hand-eye coordination, heavy labour intensity and limited motion of the instrument. The purpose of this paper is to design a novel robotic system for MIS applications.

A robotic system with three separate slave arms for MIS has been designed. In the proposed robot, a new mechanism was designed as the remote centre motion (RCM) mechanism to restrain the movement of instrument or laparoscope around the incision. Moreover, an improved instrument without coupling motion between wrist and grippers was developed to enhance its manipulability. A control system architecture was also developed, and an intuitive control method was applied to realize hand-eye coordination of the operator.

For the RCM mechanism, the workspace was analyzed and the positioning accuracy of the remote centre point was tested. The results show that the RCM mechanism can be applied to MIS. Furthermore, the master-slave trajectory tracking experiments reveal that slave robots are able to follow the movement of the master manipulators well. Finally, the feasibility of the robot-assisted system for MIS is proved by performing animal experiments successfully.

This paper offers a novel robotic system for MIS. It can accomplish the anticipated results.

From an interdisciplinary position, I discuss the historical and epistemological roots of the objectification and commodification of nature, which emerged from the hegemony of instrumental rationality. This rationality—synthetically, a technological, political, social, ethical, and esthetical universe of thought and action—has created both wealth and environmental destruction due to the progressive domination of nature through science and technology. The objectification of nature and nonhuman animals is associated with the legacy of René Descartes based on some excerpts of his famous Discourse on the Method in which the idea of animals as machines established a powerful and pervasive metaphor that remains today. Speciesism, which involves forms of discrimination practiced by humans against other animal species, also dominates Western perspectives. However, studies reveal that nonhuman animal sentience and conscience is a scientific fact. While there is no ethical or scientific ground to support speciesism, the colossal number of animals commodified in a myriad of contexts, especially in animal agriculture, proves that our society is very far from overcoming this issue. A possible path to change is education. Nevertheless, profound transformations are mandatory as formal education—even “environmental education”—carries in its philosophical foundations the Cartesian, instrumental paradigm that favors the objectification and commodification of nature. I present how the concept of instrumental rationality, especially as proposed by Herbert Marcuse, establishes as a unifying and solid ground to address the roots of the objectification and commodification of nature (including nonhuman animals), as well as to confront the epistemological bedrock of our speciesist nonenvironmental, traditional education.

In a recent speech LORD ROSEBERY charged the people of this country with possessing, to an inordinate extent, the fatal gift of complacency, and he observed that the nation which is not progressive is retrogressive. “Rest and be thankful,” said LORD ROSEBERY, is a motto which spells decay, and those who have any experience of the methods of the manufacturers of the country will admit that this seemingly severe impeachment is by no means unfounded or uncalled‐for. Industries, of which at one time the English were masters, are now gradually falling into other hands. The workers of other lands are successfully competing with our own, and yet, in spite of this condition of our mercantile affairs, the spirit of complacency is rampant. The sons are content to continue in the footsteps of the fathers, oblivious of the fact that time and seasons do not stand still and that they may be overwhelmed by the advancing flood of competition. The trade conservatism which was in the past opposed to the introduction of the steam‐engine, the power‐loom, and other mechanical appliances, is still responsible for the extreme slowness with which English firms appreciate the necessity for such innovations in the conduct of their business as would place them in a position to hold their own in the markets of the world. In respect to the protection of pure food production Great Britain and the British manufacturers are still a long way behind. Although the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1875 was one of the first Acts passed in any country to prevent the sale of adulterated food and drink, its machinery is cumbrous, and the subsequent Amendment Acts have not added materially to its efficiency; with the result that the Adulteration Acts do not compare favourably with those of many other countries. The spirit of complacency in regard to food products has affected alike the producer and the distributor, and the result is that in many instances there is no adequate inducement to produce anything but a mediocre article—such an article, in fact, as only escapes condemnation because of the faulty construction of the machinery of the law.