Search results

Evaluating pain and discomfort in animals is difficult at best. Veterinarians believe however, that they can establish a proxy for estimating levels of pain and discomfort in canines by observing variations in their activity levels. Sufficient research has been conducted to justify this assertion, but little has been conducted to analyze the volumes of activity data collected. We present the first of a series of analyses aimed at ultimately presenting an effective predictive tool for canine pain and discomfort levels. In this chapter, we perform analyses on a dataset of normal (control) dogs, containing almost 3 million records. The forecasting analyses incorporated multiple polynomial regression models with transcendental transformations and ARIMA models to provide effective determination and prediction of baseline normal canine activity levels.

This is the third in a series of papers aimed at providing models effective in predicting the degree of pain and discomfort in canines. The first two papers provided benchmarking and examination of dogs suffering from osteoarthritis (OA). In this chapter, we extend the study to include dogs suffering from OA, sarcoma, and oral mucositis (a side effect of chemotherapy and radiation treatments). The R programming language and SAS JMP are used to clean data, generate ANOVA, LSR regression, decision tree, and nominal logistic regression models to predict changes in activity levels associated with the progression of arthritis. The predictive models provide a diagnostic basis for determining the degree of disease in a dog (based on demographics and activity levels) and provide forecasts that assist in establishing appropriate medication dosages for suffering dogs.

This chapter aims to review evidence of the relationships between dog ownership, dog walking and overall walking and the factors associated with dog walking. It reviews the evidence using a social ecological framework. The chapter finds that dog ownership and dog walking are associated with higher levels of walking. A number of social ecological factors are associated with dog walking. Motivation and social support provided by the dog to walk and a sense of responsibility to walk the dog are associated with higher levels of dog walking. Positive social pressure from family, friends, dog owners and veterinarians is also associated with higher levels of dog walking. Built and policy environmental characteristics influence dog walking, including dog-specific factors such as access to local attractive public open space with dog-supportive features (off-leash, dog waste bags, trash cans, signage), pet-friendly destinations (cafes, transit, workplaces, accommodation) and local laws that support dog walking. Large-scale intervention studies are required to determine the effect of increased dog walking on overall walking levels. Experimental study designs, such as natural and quasi-experiments, are needed to provide stronger evidence for causal associations between the built and policy environments and dog walking. Given the potential of dog walking to increase population-levels of walking, urban, park and recreational planners need to design neighbourhood environments that are supportive of dog walking and other physical activity. Advocacy for dog walking policy-relevant initiatives are needed to support dog walking friendly environments. Health promotion practitioners should make dog walking a key strategy in social marketing campaigns.

This study aims to examine the relationships between handlers and (canine) K9. Understanding the influence of well-being and stress (general, occupational and home) is a first step in understanding the performance of K9 units in law enforcement.

A mixed-methods approach employing semi-structured interviews and quantitative surveys. This approach assessed the relationship between handlers and K9s, while capturing context and the nuanced nature of these partnerships.

Handlers agree that K9 can detect handlers' general stress, which potentially impacts K9 performance. Occupational stress influences handler/K9 abilities, however, handlers did not agree on all individual behaviors contributing to this stress. Finally, handlers stressed the importance of K9 units training together and suggested supervisors do not always appreciate the importance of joint training sessions.

As specialized units, K9s are often overlooked in policing scholarship, but serve a substantial large role in the missions of safety and security. Little is known about the dynamics of handler/K9 relationships.

This chapter is structured for teaching young learners with other health impairments in special education. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004), other health impairments represent chronic or acute health problems such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, and sickle cell anemia and adversely affect a child’s educational performance. The chapter is organized around definitions, prevalence, etiologies, intervention strategies, and teaching considerations for selected disabling conditions in this disability category.

The use of canines in the gathering of evidence is a valuable tool for law enforcement to discover crime and criminals. Narcotics, explosives, cadaver detection, search and rescue, or patrol dogs are prevalently used by most police organizations for combatting crime. Police service dogs decrease the time required and increase success in crime detection. The purpose of this paper is to review the different fields of police service dog training programs, to investigate their implementation abroad and compare them to Turkey.

Various dog training methods are discussed, prior to the fields of police dog service. Research about the official units and legal procedures abroad are reported. The situation in Turkey is specified. As a representative in the field, The Dog Training Center of the Turkish National Police is examined. The overall comparison between Turkey and other countries is made and the paper concludes with an evaluation of future prospects.

For a better and successful fight against crime in Turkey, it is recommended that the standards concerning training and certification of the dog and the handler should be determined; an effective and accurate education should be given to the handlers so that they might better train service dogs for the security needs of private bodies such as companies and firms.

The paper shows that a more scientific approach will lead to the formation of standards in dog training and provide a successful way to fight crime by increasing efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to explore themes eventuating from the user-generated content posted by users on the Facebook page of an emergency management agency.

An information classification framework was used to classify user-generated content posted by users including all of the content posted during a six month period (January to June 2015). The posts were read and analysed thematically to determine the overarching themes evident across the entire collection of user posts.

The results of the analysis demonstrate that the key themes that eventuate from the user-generated content posted are “Self-preparedness”, “Emergency signalling solutions”, “Unsurpassable companion”, “Aftermath of an emergency”, and “Gratitude towards emergency management staff”. Major user-generated content identified among these themes are status-update, criticism, recommendation, and request.

This study contributes to theory on the development of key themes from user-generated content posted by users on a public social networking site. An analysis of user-generated content identified in this study implies that, Facebook is primarily used for information dissemination, coordination and collaboration, and information seeking in the context of emergency management. Users may gain the benefits of identity construction and social provisions, whereas social conflict is a potential detrimental implication. Other user costs include lack of social support by stakeholders, investment in social infrastructure and additional work force required to alleviate the technological, organisational, and social barriers in communication among stakeholders in emergency management. A collective activity system built upon the Activity Theory was used as a lens to describe users’ activity of posting content on the Facebook page of an emergency management agency.

By analysing the findings, administrators and policy makers of emergency management could identify the extent to which the core principles of disaster recovery are accomplished using public social networking sites. These are achieved in relation to: pre-disaster recovery planning; partnership and inclusiveness; public information messaging; unity of effort; and, psychological recovery to maximise the success of recovery in a disaster. Furthermore, a core principle which evoked a mixed response was timeliness and flexibility.

Previous studies have examined the role of social networking sites in disastrous situations, but to date there has been very little research into determining themes found in user-generated content posted on the Facebook page of an emergency management agency. Hence, this study addresses the gap in literature by conducting a thematic analysis of user-generated content posted on the Facebook page of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of police use of conducted energy devices (CEDs) on officer and suspect injuries while controlling for other types of force and resistance and other factors.

Data on 1,645 use‐of‐force incidents occurring between January 1, 2002 and July 2006 were obtained from two different law enforcement agencies. Logistic and generalized ordered logistic regressions are used to model the odds of injury and severity of injury.

The use of CEDs was associated with reduced odds of officer and suspect injury and the severity of suspect injury in one agency. In the other agency CED use was unrelated to the odds of injury; however, the use of pepper spray was associated with reduced odds of suspect injury. Among other findings, in both agencies the use of hands‐on tactics by police was associated with increased odds of officer and suspect injury, while the use of canines was associated with increased odds of suspect injury.

Although this research was carried out in two distinctly different law enforcement agencies with different histories of CED adoption, the fact that CED use was associated with reductions in injuries in one agency but not the other indicates the need for additional research on the impact of CED use in other settings

The analysis suggests that relative to other forms of force, the use of CEDs and pepper spray can reduce the risk of injury to both suspects and law enforcement officers. This information should prove useful to law enforcement agencies considering adopting CEDs and suggests that agencies should consider the use of these less lethal alternatives in place of hands‐on tactics against actively resistant suspects.

At the time of this writing there was no published independent research on the risks of injury associated with CED use in field settings. The findings reported herein will help inform the public debate on the utility of CEDs for law enforcement.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the response of members to a rebranding strategy implemented by a member‐owned organisation. More specifically, the authors examine the impact of rebranding awareness and attitude towards rebranding on the members' perceived value of their memberships, their satisfaction and, subsequently, their commitment to the organisation.

The research employed in‐depth interviews followed by a quantitative survey. Data were collected online from 264 current members of Dogs SA and data analysis employed SEM principles.

Findings demonstrate that the members' awareness of a rebranding attempt can significantly enhance perceived membership value, leading to increased levels of satisfaction. With both perceived value and satisfaction antecedents of membership commitment, the importance of such improvements cannot be underestimated.

Despite a high response rate of 88 per cent, only ten per cent of the membership base was included in the initial sample. Limitations relate to the single context, a canine association, and single rebranding attempt examined in this paper. Only three outcome measures were included, namely membership value, satisfaction and commitment.

While non‐profit member‐owned organisations play an increasingly important role in our economic and social environment, participation rates are dropping in many such organisations. If they are to remain viable, the commitment of existing members must be improved. The study provides managers with important insight into a potentially powerful strategy to increase underpin membership dedication by means of satisfaction and enhanced perceived value.

This paper successfully integrates relationship marketing and rebranding literature domains, producing significant implications for non‐profit membership organisations.

This paper presents an application of the fuzzy gradual rules in an epidemic study of canine rabies in São Paulo city, Brazil. A linguistic epidemiological model was elaborated through fuzzy rules built by the Extension Principle. We used both the inference method of Mamdani and of Dubois et al. The results were compared with real data from São Paulo and with another MISO Model, which is entirely based on expert knowledge presented in a previous work. Questions about application of fuzzy techniques in epidemiology, different inference methods and the Dubois et al. methodology are discussed.