Decision Making for Animal Health and Welfare: Integrating Risk‐Benefit Analysis with Prospect Theory

This study integrated risk‐benefit analysis with prospect theory with the overall objective of identifying the type of management behavior represented by farmers’ choices of mastitis control options (MCOs). Two exploratory factor analyses, based on 163 and 175 Swedish farmers, respectively, highlighted attitudes to MCOs related to: (1) grouping cows and applying milking order to prevent spread of existing infection and (2) working in a precautionary way to prevent mastitis occurring. This was interpreted as being based on (1) reactive management behavior on detection of udder‐health problems in individual cows and (2) proactive management behavior to prevent mastitis developing. Farmers’ assessments of these MCOs were found to be based on asymmetrical evaluations of risks and benefits, suggesting that farmers’ management behavior depends on their individual reference point. In particular, attitudes to MCOs related to grouping cows and applying milking order to prevent the spread of mastitis once infected cows were detected were stronger in the risk domain than in the benefit domain, in accordance with loss aversion. In contrast, attitudes to MCOs related to working in a precautionary way to prevent cows from becoming infected in the first place were stronger in the benefit domain than in the risk domain, in accordance with reverse loss aversion. These findings are of practical importance for farmers and agribusiness and in public health protection work to reduce the current extensive use of antibiotics in dairy herds.     

Maternal and Child Anxiety: Do Attachment Beliefs or Children's Perceptions of Maternal Control Mediate Their Association?

This study tested a model of the association between maternal and child anxiety that views mother and child attachment beliefs and children's perceptions of maternal control as mediators of the association. The study was conducted with mothers and their children aged 6 to 17 (N = 88). Maternal anxiety was significantly associated with child anxiety and maternal anxious attachment beliefs, whereas child anxiety was associated with maternal anxious attachment beliefs, child insecure attachment beliefs, and children's perceptions of maternal control. Maternal anxious attachment beliefs mediated the association between maternal and child anxiety; however, child attachment beliefs and children's perceptions of maternal control did not. The influence of age and gender is also addressed. The findings are discussed in terms of elucidating the role of attachment beliefs and children's perceptions of maternal control on the association between maternal and child anxiety.     

Capture-recapture: before and after EURING 2000

Capture-recapture studies and analyses have become an important tool for the study of bird populations. One reason for the rapid advancement in this area has been the EURING conferences where population biologists and statisticians meet to review recent progress, identify areas that require further work, and work collaborately to solve real world problems. In this paper, we forecast the needs for future research in this area and review the recent conference to try and identify what questions are yet unsolved. This EURING conference was dedicated to Dr George Seber who was the author of a number of key papers and whose name is synonymous with 'The estimation of animal abundance and related parameter' (Seber, 1982). He has retired from working in this field.     

Interruptions and nonverbal gender differences

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in selected nonverbal behaviors associated with interruptions. Six graduate student groups involving 18 female and 17 male subjects were videotaped. The data for the study were 140 cross-sex interruption sequences and a matched, randomly selected sample of noninterruption sequences. A category system using self-related activity, gestures, body lean, facial expression and eye gaze was developed and used to code the data. There were no significant findings related to interruptions in the categories of self-related activity or gestures. Women leaned away from the group significantly more often than did men and when leaning away, women were more likely to be interrupted. Women were also more likely to be interrupted when smiling than were men, and women smiled significantly more when taking the speaking turn. Finally, women were interrupted significantly more often than men when they did not look at the turn-taker. The high educational status of the subjects was examined in the discussion of the findings.     

THE MASS MEDIA AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE MISSING CHILDREN PROBLEM

This article traces the role of the mass media in the social construction of the "missing children issue' as a social problem. The social construction explanation of social problems offered by Blumer (1971) and Spector and Kitsuse (1977) has been criticized (cf. Best and Horiuchi 1985) for lacking a conception of extra-media influences that can affect audiences beyond the initial viewing situation. Recent work in mass communication indicates that a media logic is adapted by other institutions to amplify television imagery and themes about crime, danger, and child abuse. A case study of the origins and claims and counterclaims about the nature and extent of missing children is combined with an empirical analysis of the impact of various sources of information about the missing children issue in order to demonstrate the process by which a social problem is constructed. The impact of additional information is analyzed by administering a self-report questionnaire to 96 respondents before and after viewing a two-part documentary on the complexities of the issue. The data suggest that mass-mediated imagery and formats forge an interactive informational context for social problems by sustaining what is viewed in one's living room with imagery in bulk mail, milk cartons, and posters. It is further suggested that mass media depictions of problems such as "missing children' carry over into consonant images such as child abuse. This conceptualization is capable of encompassing other accounts of social problems (e.g., "urban legends") within claims-making activity.     

Estimating the movement among staging areas of the barnacle goose ( Branta leucopsis )

Barnacle geese ( Branta leucopsis ) make annual migrations between breeding colonies in northern Europe and Eurasia to wintering grounds in Holland. During the migration, they sojourn for several weeks in five areas on the northern coast of Germany. Observers traverse these areas during the course of studying the flocks. Previous belief was that there was little exchange of birds among the five areas; however, some banded birds were observed in more than one area indicating that some movement takes place. In this presentation, we estimate the movement rates among the areas using open- and closed-population models.