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The inclusion of Russell and Burch's Three Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement) in guidelines, codes of practice and law reflects their current position as the guiding principles of ethical assessment of research involving animals. This article explores some activities within the contemporary livestock industry that constitute the experimental use of animals on a local and global scale. The elucidation of correlated responses during trait selection in genetic improvement programs provides one example of experiments occurring within the commercial livestock industry. This experimentation is largely conducted without scrutiny of its conformity to the Three Rs. Experimentation to improve the management of the livestock industry is consistent with the principle of refinement, and experimentation to increase productivity per unit of livestock is consistent with the principle of reduction; however, experimentation to increase total livestock production conflicts with the principle of replacement. Some approaches regarding the appraisal of the ethics of research involving animals, which could avoid arbitrary boundaries associated with the location or purpose of experimentation, are considered together with the relationship between experimentation and other anthropogenic impacts on animals.
Meta-analysis provides a tool to statistically aggregate data from existing randomised controlled animal experiments. The results can then be summarised across a range of conditions and an increased pool of experimental data can be subjected to statistical analysis. New information can be derived, but most frequently the results are a refinement of existing knowledge. By designing experiments and reporting protocols, so that they have the capability of being useful to meta-analyses, maximum benefit can be derived from individual randomised controlled experiments, which may individually have little statistical power, and new avenues for productive research identified. The methodology for meta-analysis is derived from clinical trials in the medical sciences. Now that there is substantial output from animal science experiments, there is an opportunity to apply the technique to these and reduce the need for further experimentation. This paper describes the contribution of meta-analysis to the reduction of animals in research and provides details on data collection, analysis, the models used, and on interpreting and reporting the results. Three applications of meta-analysis to the field of animal science are also briefly described. First, the impact of undernutrition on the production and composition of milk from dairy cows confirmed existing knowledge about partitioning scarce nutrients to milk yield and live weight. Second, increased absorption of cadmium — a widespread toxic element — from organic sources was detected in sheep, which was previously untested. Third, no significant relationships were found between common indicators of undernutrition and weight, and condition score in cattle suggesting that the common indicators used are not suitable as evidence of long term undernutrition. This paper concludes that opportunities exist to increase the information gained from animal experiments by subjecting the results to meta-analysis, particularly if this can be anticipated in advance of study protocols being constructed.
Although Mechanical Turk has recently become popular among social scientists as a source of experimental data, doubts may linger about the quality of data provided by subjects recruited from online labor markets. We address these potential concerns by presenting new demographic data about the Mechanical Turk subject population, reviewing the strengths of Mechanical Turk relative to other online and offline methods of recruiting subjects, and comparing the magnitude of effects obtained using Mechanical Turk and traditional subject pools. We further discuss some additional benefits such as the possibility of longitudinal, cross cultural and prescreening designs, and offer some advice on how to best manage a common subject pool.
We experimentally explore the effects of time limitation on decision making. Under different time allowance conditions, subjects are presented with a queueing situation and asked to join one of the two given queues. The results can be grouped under two main categories. The first one concerns the factors driving decisions in a queueing system. Only some subjects behave consistently with rationality principles and use the relevant information efficiently. The rest of the subjects seem to adopt a simpler strategy that does not incorporate some information into their decision. The second category is related to the effects of time limitation on decision performance. A substantial proportion of the population is not affected by time limitations and shows consistent behavior throughout the treatments. On the other hand, some subjects’ performance is impaired by time limitations. More importantly, this impairment is not due to the stringency of the limitation but rather to being exposed to a time constraint.
The hagiographic myth of Molière as a moralist philosopher and the fable of studies under Gassendi are cognitive obstacles to a philosophical clarification. Crystallised into scholarly core beliefs, such legends have caused the comedies to be interpreted unquestioningly as philosophical statements, while overlooking nondramatic texts that could be considered philosophical writings, including the preface to Tartuffe with its definition of philosophy. Molière composes comedies according to a purely theatrical logic, not to advertise ideologies through philosophising characters and philosophemes. Hence the doctrinal inconsistency of most philosophising characters, including the raisonneurs – regarded as flag-bearers of his supposed philosophy of moderation. Often taken literally, philosophemes require dramaturgical analysis to separate those dramatically motivated from those lacking dramaturgic purpose. Rather than a covert anti-Christian philosophy, the medical satire belongs to a robust comical epistemology correlating antiquated medicine and pseudoscience. Indeed, Molière’s last words on stage are to ridicule pseudoscience, which benefits the scientific revolution. Moreover, crucial experiments in the last comedies reflect the influence on his dramaturgy of the new, fashionable experimental culture promoted by Cartesians. Rejecting an Aristotelian tradition of theatre philosophically text centred, Molière invented total spectacle and accomplished a theatrical revolution concomitant with the paradigm shifts triggered by the Copernican revolution.
Climate activists across generations and borders demonstrate in the streets, while people also take climate actions via everyday professional efforts at work. In this dispersal of climate actions, the pursuit of personal politics is merging with civic, state and corporate commitment to the point where we are witnessing a rebirth of togetherness and alternative ways of collective organising, from employee activism, activist entrepreneurship, to insider activism, shareholder activism and prosumer activism. By empirically investigating this diffuse configuration of the environmental movement with focus on renewable energy technology, the commercial footing of climate activism is uncovered. The book ethnographically illustrates how activism goes into business, and how business goes into activism, to further trace how an ‘epistemic community’ emerges through co-creation of lay knowledge, not only about renewables, but political action itself. No longer tied to a specific geographical spot, organisation, group or even shared political identity, many politicians and business leaders applaud this affluent climate ‘action’, in their efforts to reach beyond mere climate ‘adaptation’ and speed up the energy transition. Conclusively, climate activism is no longer a civic phenomenon defined by struggles, pursued by the activist as we knew it, but testament of feral proximity and horizontal organising.
This chapter provides a detailed assessment of Walter Bailey’s medical genres in the vernacular and how they reflect changing thought styles from scholasticism to empiricism. The ongoing process is demonstrated by first-hand evidence obtained by analysing both macrolevel structural compositions of genres and various text types within them. Language change is located on the discourse level by identifying stylistic varieties, showing the mechanism of change on the ideological level. Bailey belonged to the learned elite of his time and mastered a large repertoire of different genres and text types. He gives us convincing proof of the early transition period by employing old and creating new ways of writing. He developed the genre script of the scholastic commentary to unprecedented perfection in Peppers (1588), and innovated a new style of reporting on his experiments in Waters a year earlier. The passage anticipates the future way of doing and writing science, showing the author’s curiosity and inquisitiveness, qualities that are typically attributed to seventeenth-century Royal Society scientists. The new mode of knowing surfaces passim in his other texts too, where observation of nature is preferred to book wisdom.
Every era is momentous in its own way, but some eras are more momentous than others. Between 1851 and 1877, the USA underwent a Civil War of epic proportions, resulting in more than 750,000 deaths, the destruction of slavery, and the formation of a multiracial democracy. Yet these events merely hint at the multitude of changes that rocked American society in this period, affecting everything from the definition of citizenship to literacy rates and mourning rituals.1
We replicate a design ideation experiment (Goucher-Lambert et al., 2019) with and without inspirational stimuli and extend data collection sources to eye-tracking and a think aloud protocol to provide new insights into generated ideas. Preliminary results corroborate original findings: inspirational stimuli have an effect on idea output and questionnaire ratings. Near and far inspirational stimuli increased participants’ idea fluency over time and were rated more useful than control. We further enable experiment reproducibility and provide publicly available data.
The haptic propositions derived from the textile prototypes often allow for more than one interpretation. It impacts the decision on design alternatives during the phase of design evaluation and validation. The present study aims to conquer this challenge with a haptic design case study of automotive upholstery fabric. It links experimental psychophysics with design decision-making. The study results show that visual cues influence haptic detection accuracy and constancy to choose a final design option.
Through optimal design of the human machine interfaces, especially the hand-handle contact surface, high usability of hand-operated products can be achieved. The complexity of the user specific hand anthropometry has to be considered in the design of load transfer handles. Use case optimized, personalized, and adaptively morphing handles aim at fulfilling this requirement. To identify design parameters for adaptive handles an experimental design for systematic analysis of user and use case requirements is proposed and evaluated showing the potential of adaptive handles.
Truss structures are a stiff, economical, and efficient lightweight design, the limiting factor of these structures are usually the load transfer elements. This paper presents an analytical design method for optimized adhesive tubular lap joints between CFRP tubes and aluminium inserts. The analytically optimized design agrees very well with the numerical simulations and experimental results. Although the experiments show a highly non-linear behaviour, where a linear elastic correlation is expected, the total load capacity is only reached when the adhesive is fully plasticised.
This paper chronicles and reflects on the processes and the meanings of a project of speculative design that creates a narrative based on the scientific notion of phytomining, the activity of extracting metals from the soil using plants. The paper reflects on the ability of the project of bringing together people from different expertise, as a successful case study of Speculative Design and Research through Practice. Besides the scientific and technical challenges posed by GeoMerce, the authors of this paper reflect on the critical framework that set the basis for such a complex project.
In recent years, the concept of ‘prototype warfare’ has been adopted by Western militaries to accelerate the experimental development, acquisition, and deployment of emerging technologies in warfare. Building on scholarship at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies and International Relations investigating the broader discursive and material infrastructures that underpin contemporary logics of war, and taking a specific interest in the relationship between science, technology, and war, this article points out how prototype warfare captures the emergence of a new regime of warfare, which I term the experimental way of warfare. While warfare has always been defined by experimental activity, what is particular in the current context is how experimentation spans across an increasingly wide range of military practices, operating on the basis of a highly speculative understanding of experimentation that embraces failure as a productive force. Tracing the concept of prototype warfare across Western military discourse and practice, and zooming in on how prototype warfare takes experimentation directly into the battlefield, the article concludes by outlining how prototype warfare reconfigures and normalises military intervention as an opportunity for experimentation, while outsourcing the failures that are a structural condition of the experimental way of warfare to others, ‘over there’.
Addressing the barriers we put in the way of our writing. The need to be prepared to experiment: all landmark fiction has tried something that hasn’t been tried before. Understanding that ‘failure’ is part of the learning process. Don’t listen to inhibiting inner voices: there is nothing you’re not allowed to write and you can always edit later. Allow yourself substandard drafts – then you have something to build on.
‘Accept the difficulties, expect things to be initially unsatisfactory, and start writing.’
Deciphering the seasonality of predation is a key question in prehistory to understand spatiotemporal human strategies to overcome fluctuating ecological and environmental pressure. In NW Europe, despite periodic rough environmental conditions, the Belgian Ardennes were regularly occupied by humans in the Late Pleistocene, using numerous natural shelters of the karstic valleys and the ungulate biomass reservoir. However, humans competed with several large predators, in particular cave hyaenas. In this multi-taxon, multi-site cementochronological study, we tested season-at-death of different prey accumulated by either hyaenas or hominins during the second half of MIS 3 in the Belgian Ardennes. In conjunction with a classic seasonal study on ungulate species, this study's specificity is that carnivore (hyaena) dental cementum was tested on 19 teeth from three anthropogenic and hyaena-accumulated assemblages. Despite a low proportion of interpretable data, this attempt shows that cave hyaena can yield seasonal information and can successfully be analyzed to explore top predators' differential spatial strategies.
William Harvey’s demonstration of the circulation of the blood is one of the Scientific Revolution’s most influential and lasting achievements. But in spite of Harvey’s innovation, and paradoxically given the extent to which he came to be represented as a founder of modern science, he tied himself to ancient authorities and sought to insulate natural philosophy and the art of medicine from the new mechanical-corpuscular and chemical philosophies of the period. The reception of Harvey’s work, both in physiology and later in embryology, shows that Harvey’s research program won numerous early converts, who used his program for their own ends, including support for the new philosophies, in the cases of René Descartes and Robert Boyle. Untethered from his preferred Scholastic framework, Harvey’s conceptual foundations, techniques, and conclusions led to new discoveries, and unresolved questions in Harvey’s account about the movement of the heart, nature of the blood, and respiration would motivate intense inquiry. The circulation of the blood and later physiology therefore provide an essential perspective for the examination of early modern disputes about experimentation and its limits, the rhetoric of novelty, the unity of nature, and the very notion of life.
This paper explores an original study of bandpass (BP) negative group delay (NGD) robustness applied to the ring-stub passive circuit. The proof of concept (PoC) circuit is constituted by a ring associated with the open-end stub implemented in microstrip technology. An innovative experimental setup of a temperature room containing the NGD PoC connected to a vector network analyzer is described. Then, the electrothermal data of S-parameters are measured by varying the ambient or room temperature range from 20 to 60°C, i.e. 40°C maximal variation. The empirical results of the group delay (GD), transmission and reflection coefficient mappings versus the couple (temperature, frequency) highlight how the temperature affects the BP NGD responses. An innovative electrothermal calibration technique by taking into account the interconnection cable influence is developed. The electrothermal robustness analysis is carried out by variations of the NGD center frequency, cut-off frequencies and value in function of the temperature.
Cities are responsible for over 70% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use. Building and upgrading city infrastructure in developing countries could release 226 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050, if these cities obtain levels of infrastructure in developed countries today. Urban GHG emissions vary across economies, geography, wealth and urban form. The largest direct and indirect GHG emission sources are buildings, industry and transport. Urban climate change impacts of heat, sea-level rise, extreme weather, and water scarcity will exacerbate extant stressors in developing countries. Mitigation and adaptation measures interact, sometimes with unintended consequences. Systems approaches, integrated planning and strategy that recognises synergies and conflicts, are crucial to optimal outcomes. The city scale is good for innovation, aligned with national governance, for effective climate action. Many cities are committed to 100% renewable energy and net zero emissions by 2030. Key enablers are: a shared city region vision; effective stakeholder engagement; relevant, credible, accessible knowledge for decision-making; and aligned institutional arrangements.
A value reinforcement hypothesis expects that governance structures reinforce the values of the representative governments they serve. If a political system embraces pluralism and collective rationality as process values, its governance structures will enhance those process beliefs. If a government faces strong electoral accountability, its governance structures will emphasize accountability values, making identifiable managers likely to face sanctions for their performance. Correlations such as these would be observed if the hypothesis has potential for guiding a positive research agenda. The value reinforcement hypothesis has both institutional and behavioral mechanisms behind it.