We estimate the effect of household social expenditure on vulnerability to poverty using the four latest cross-sectional waves of Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS) from 1999 to 2017. Using a 3-Stage Least Square and Quantile Regression, our results show a widening consumption ex-post welfare gap between the poorest households and the non-poor households in a per-cedi social expenditure. Also, we estimate the probability of an ex-ante poverty using vulnerability to expected poverty. The results, however, indicate that regardless of poverty status, household vulnerability to poverty increased consistently between 1999 and 2017, and the very poor households showing the severest vulnerability. Hence, it is concluded that social expenditure increases the chances of a poor household falling into chronic poverty a non-poor household into transient poverty in the future.

This paper uses a qualitative case study to investigate the experiences of Korean special education teachers who instruct children with disabilities from multicultural families. Through a purposive sampling method, study participants were chosen from a pool of individuals that the Korean multicultural support center recommended. These individuals are special teachers who are currently teaching children with disabilities from multicultural families. The qualitative case study approach used in this study seeks to elicit the participants’ experiences of teaching their students with special needs. The teachers’ experiences were analyzed and categorized into two main categories: 1) a mother's lack of Korean linguistic ability and 2) governmental and societal support for multicultural special education. Additionally, results also produced four sub-categories and seventeen minor categories. Such analyses lead to a greater understanding of the intricacies of educating children with special needs. Lastly, the implications of this study provide direction for future policy--including social welfare and educational support—that will meet the needs of multicultural families raising children with disabilities.

Abstract The aim of our study is to analyse the perception of the families and concerned social workers. The research was conducted in an underprivileged and disadvantaged microregion in North Hungary. The main focus was the perception on the available health, educational, child welfare and social services and supports. The starting point was to enquire the target group’s knowledge of these services. The study examines the extent to which social work is able to provide support to disadvantaged, marginalized families with children, and the way how the dysfunctional operation of the system contributes to the perpetuation of the clients’ life conditions. Analysing the quality of these services and supports is crucial to understand the social mobility chance of the children living in this microregion. The results show that without capability and talent development for the children and given the lack of welfare services, the mobility chance and opportunities of these families are extremely low in Hungary.

Underpinned by the research works on private returns on education in developing nations that have found a positive correlation between earning and subsequent level of schooling, this paper presents a concept of an investment policy which will help the impoverished children in becoming economically successful through systematic funding of their educational needs with an obligation of interest adjusted returns.

Background: The financial austerity policy imposed to Portugal by Troika - the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund in 2011, led to a tremendously social crisis. Under these dominant trends in Europe, which were felt especially in certain countries, such as Portugal, we feel ourselves forced into an analysis and reflection on the impact of this conjuncture in social workers, especially analyzing the role played by social workers and its critical consciousness relative to this neoliberal model and imposed austerity policies. Methods: This article results from an analysis of empirical data collected after the entry of Troika in Portugal, during 2013. Were conducted 26 in-depth interviews to front line social workers, with the purpose of obtaining a narrative of their daily work practice and with the concern of encouraging reflection on them. Results: Analysis shows the predominance of a maintenance role at the expense of more emancipatory approaches and thus, this results point to the relationship of this maintenance role with the sociological paradigm of social regulation and shows also, how social work is still attached to a conservative agenda. Secondly, one finds a weak critical reflection among social workers, being very afraid to speak out against the system, taking on a submissive attitude and subservient to the policies of social cuts imposed. The analysis then raises the challenge for social workers to develop a critical reflexivity Conclusion: The results highlight several important observations in terms of social woker role and that a critical activity is urgently required to social workers.

As brachycephalic dog breed ownership increases, there is a growing concern for the welfare of these breeds due to extreme brachycephalism. Understanding the motivations and behaviours of those choosing to own these breeds is important if we wish to address these concerns. The aim of this study was to investigate how owners of brachycephalic and non-brachycephalic dog breeds use social media dog breed groups to discuss common health issues. The purpose of Facebook posts in relation to common health issues, owner awareness of health issues, and the role of Facebook facilitated social support were explored between brachycephalic and non-brachycephalic dog owners. Twelve Facebook breed groups were selected (brachycephalic breed groups, n=6, non-brachycephalic breed groups, n=6). Using key word searches we extracted the first twenty posts from each group. Thematic analysis revealed three overarching themes: advice seeking, advice giving and community bonding mechanisms. Whilst the purpose of posting did not differ between groups, non-brachycephalic owners appeared to display greater awareness of breed-specific health issues, whilst social support played a more prominent role in brachycephalic groups. This research highlights that social media groups can act as platforms for knowledge exchange and emotional support. These could be utilised by owners, veterinarians and welfare organisations to more effectively enhance dog health and wellbeing.

Behavioural disorders in dogs are common and have severe welfare consequences for dogs. This study aimed to assess the factors that are significant and predictive of behaviour problems in dogs using the Animal Welfare Assessment Grid (AWAG) to further understand what factors influence their welfare. 177 AWAG assessments were undertaken across 129 dogs that clinicians deemed to have a behavioural disorder. Wilcoxon-rank sum tests were used to assess the difference in scores between dogs with behaviour disorders and a cohort of healthy dogs (n=117). This analysis showed that all physical factors besides body condition, all procedural factors besides procedure pain, and all psychological, and environmental factors were significantly different between healthy dogs and dogs with behaviour disorders. Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient (RS) revealed several significant strong positive correlations including the procedural impact on the dog’s daily routine with aggression towards unfamiliar people and procedure pain, as well as other correlations between the dog’s behaviour during assessment with the frequency at which they encounter fears and anxieties, clinical assessment and procedure pain, and reaction to stressors and social interactions. These findings highlight the interdependent nature of the various influences of welfare. Logistic regression analysis identified that aggression towards the caregiver, fears and anxieties frequency, and choice, control, and predictability were all significant predictors of behaviour disorders. The findings have important implications for veterinary, behaviour, and animal welfare professionals as any changes across these factors may indicate poor welfare linked to emotional disorders in dogs.

As of July 7, 2022, the total number of confirmed cases caused by COVID-19 has reached 544,324 million, and the total number of 6.333 million deaths (WHO). Older people were globally the most vulnerable during the pandemic. This paper examined the mortality and psychological crisis of older people during the pandemic in four cities, namely Wuhan, Milan, London, and Hong Kong. The selection of cities was based on different degrees of social connectedness of older people and chronologically to cover the whole period of the outbreak from January 2020 to August 2022. Older people in Milan and Wuhan tended to rely on the close family relationship during times of crisis. Meanwhile, older people in Hong Kong and London were more dependent on social services. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed to analyze the situations of older people under different government responses and the strengths and weaknesses of respective healthcare systems. Government reports and official statistics were used to illustrate the seriousness of each city's COVID-19 outbreak while stories reported by the press, NGOs, and journal articles were used to reflect the reactions of the older people. Interactions of social culture, health care provisions, and government responses to the pandemic were discussed from the perspective of health welfare regimes. On one hand, results showed that governments have not learned from the experiences of other countries. On the other hand, older people have not successfully coped with the life-threatening stress by breaking institutional boundaries and redefining cultural norms.

The deepening of electricity reform results in increasingly frequent auctions and the surge of generators, it becomes difficult to analyze generators’ behaviors. Since it’s hard to find analytical market equilibriums, approximate equilibriums were obtained instead in previous studies by market simulations, which are strict to initial estimations and simulation results are chaotic in some cases. In this paper, a multi-unit power bidding model is proposed to reveal the bidding mechanism under clearing pricing rule by employing auction approach, for which initial estimations are non-essential. Normalized bidding price is introduced to construct generator's price-related bidding strategy. Nash equilibriums are derived depend on the marginal cost and the winning probability which are computed from bidding quantity, transmission cost and demand distribution. Furthermore, we propose a comparative analysis to explore the impact of uncertain elastic demand on the performance of the electricity market. The result indicates that, there exists market power among generators leading to social welfare decreases even under competitive conditions but elastic demand is an effective way to restrain generators’ market power. The feasibility of the models is verified by a case study. Our work provides decision support for generators and a direction for improving market efficiency.

It is widely recommended to group house male laboratory mice because they are ‘social animals’, but male mice do not naturally share territories and aggression can be a serious welfare problem. Even without aggression, not all animals within a group will be in a state of positive welfare. Rather, many male mice may be negatively affected by the stress of repeated social defeat and subordination, raising concerns about welfare and also research validity. However, individual housing may not be an appropriate solution, given the welfare implications associated with no social contact. An essential question is whether it is in the best welfare interests of male mice to be group- or singly-housed. This review explores the likely impacts, positive and negative, of both housing conditions, presents results of a survey of current practice and awareness of mouse behaviour, and includes recommendations for good practice and future research. We conclude that whether group- or single-housing is better (or less worse) in any situation is highly context-dependent according to several factors including strain, age, social position, life experiences, and housing and husbandry protocols. It is important to recognise this and evaluate what is preferable from animal welfare and ethical perspectives in each case.

Affordable Housing, the basic human necessity has now become a critical problem in global cities with direct impacts on people's well-being. While a well-functioning housing market may augment the economic efficiency and productivity of a city, it may trigger housing affordability issues leading crucial economic and political crises side by side if not handled properly. In global cities e.g. Singapore and Hong Kong where affordable housing for all has become one of the greatest concerns of the Government, this issue can be tackled capably by the provision of public housing. In Singapore, nearly 90% of the total population lives in public housing including public rental and subsidized ownership, whereas the figure tally only about 45% in Hong Kong. Hence this study is an effort to scrutinizing the key drivers of success in affordable public housing through following a qualitative case study based research methodological approach to present successful experience and insight from different socio-economic and geo-political context. As a major intervention, this research has clinched that, housing affordability should be backed up by demand-side policies aiming to help occupants and proprietors to grow financial capacity e.g. subsidized rental and subsidized ownership can be an integral part of the public housing system to improve housing affordability.

Animal-based measures are the measure of choice in animal welfare assessment protocols as they can often be applied completely independently to the housing or production system employed. Although there has been a small body of work on potential animal-based measures for farmed crocodilians [1-3], they have not been studied in the context of an animal welfare assessment protocol. Potential animal-based measures, that could be used to reflect the welfare state of farmed crocodilians, were identified and aligned with the Welfare Quality® principles of good housing, good health, good feeding and appropriate behaviour. A consultation process with a panel of experts was used to evaluate and score the potential measures in terms of validity and feasibility. This resulted in a toolbox of measures being identified for further development and integration into animal welfare assessment on the farm. Animal-based measures related to ‘good feeding’ and ‘good health’ received the highest scores for validity and feasibility by the experts. There was less agreement on the animal-based measures that could be used to reflect ‘appropriate behaviour’. Where no animal-based measures were deemed to reliably reflect a welfare criterion nor be useful as a measure on the farm, additional measures of resources or management were suggested as alternatives. Future work in this area should focus on the reliability of the proposed measures and involve further evaluation of their validity and feasibility as they relate to different species of crocodilian and farming system.

The number of animals bred, raised, and slaughtered each year is on the rise, resulting in increasing impacts to welfare. Farmed animals are also becoming more diverse, ranging from pigs to bees. The diversity and number of species farmed invites questions about how best to allocate currently limited resources towards safeguarding and improving welfare. This is of the utmost concern to animal welfare funders and effective altruism advocates, who are responsible for targeting the areas most likely to cause harm. For example, is tail docking worse for pigs than beak trimming is for chickens in terms of their pain, suffering, and general experience? Or are the welfare impacts equal? Answering these questions requires making an interspecies welfare comparison; a judgment about how good or bad different species fare relative to one another. Here, we outline and discuss an empirically-based methodology that aims to improve our ability to make interspecies welfare comparisons by investigating welfare range, which refers to how good or bad animals can fare. We begin our proposal with a theory of welfare. We operationalize that theory of welfare by identifying metrics that are defensible proxies for measuring welfare, including cognitive, affective, behavioral, and neuro-biological measures. We assign differential weights to those proxies that reflect their evidential value for the determinants of welfare, such as the “Delphi'' structured deliberation method with a panel of experts. Then we review the evidence and score its quality to ascertain whether a particular taxa may possess the proxies in question to construct a taxa-level welfare range profile. Finally, we use a Monte Carlo simulation to generate an overall estimate of comparative welfare range relative to our hypothetical index species - humans. Interspecies welfare comparisons will help facilitate empirically informed decision-making to streamline the allocation of resources and to ultimately better prioritize and improve animal welfare.

This paper mainly focuses on the construction of a household welfare index to examine the welfare impact of international remittances in rural Bangladesh. This paper, in achieving this objective, uses primary data and several methods. This paper constructs a household welfare index newly to measure the level of household welfare. Besides, a linear regression and Chi-square test is used to examine the welfare and poverty impact of international remittances, respectively. Remittance receiving households enjoy the higher level of welfare more than non-recipient households in the study area. Household welfare is augmented by 0.116 if the household is under the shade of international remittances. A significant impact of international remittances on the reduction of household poverty is also found in this study. Therefore, this paper suggests policymakers for utilizing international remittances as a significant tool to enhance household welfare and to reduce household poverty.

Companion animals play a central role in many families and are especially valued by those who are socially isolated. Crisis situations such as acute hospitalizations, homelessness and natural disasters can make it difficult to preserve the human-animal bond and can result in animals being surrendered or euthanized. Social support programs like the RSPCA NSW Emergency Boarding and Homelessness program support people experiencing crisis situations with emergency pet boarding, access veterinary treatment and individualized case management. This study aimed to estimate the social return on investment (SROI) for this program using standard SROI methodology. In-depth interviews were conducted with 13 program stakeholders and questionnaire responses were received from 29 program clients. Outcomes were quantified for four stakeholder groups: program clients, client’s animals, RSPCA Inspectors, animal pounds and shelters. Clients and their animals experienced the bulk of the benefit from the program, estimated to have a combined value of over $5 million AUD for the 2020-21 financial year. The estimated social return on investment was $8.21 for each $1 invested. The study demonstrates that keeping people together with their companion animals, or ensuring they are reunited as soon as possible, can reduce stressors, and improve outcomes for people and animals.

People working in the field of Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) often state that they perceive animal welfare as a matter of paramount importance, nevertheless most of scientific literature focuses on the effectiveness of interventions from the user's perspective. Before focusing on animals’ management and welfare during the interaction with users, it would be important to ensure animal welfare during their “ordinary lives”. This article reports information and considerations about the management of donkeys involved in AAI in Northern Italy. Six facilities with several years of experience in Donkey-Assisted Interventions were visited for the purpose of an initial data collection regarding the management of donkeys involved in AAI. A general lack of knowledge regarding the nutritional needs of the donkey and a heterogeneity of practices in the field of its preventive medicine have been identified; the study also highlighted a need for efforts to create a more stimulating and enriched environment for animals involved in AAI. Some possible areas for improvement in the management of donkeys involved in AAI have been highlighted. Further studies are necessary to provide a more comprehensive picture of the welfare of donkeys involved in this context.

The health status and feed conversion efficiency of farmed fish may vary according to management and production methods. Successful aquaculture requires safeguarding the health of the growing fish and optimizing the feed conversion and therefore achieving better FCE thus reducing the amount of feed required to produce farmed fish, reducing the environmental impact generated by fish feed production and reducing aquaculture wastes generated by feed wasted or poorly digested. The present review presents illustrative examples from freshwater aquaculture that suggests the potential dual benefits of focusing on the link between feed conversion and the environmental impact of fresh water fish farms. Apart from the need to support future research on new diets for farmed fish (which is mainly driven by limits in the supply of fish protein and the results price fluctuation of all ingredients used by the aquaculture, feed industry), major improvements can be expected by optimizing feeding regimes and the application of probiotics. Aside from the economic benefits and increased production of fish farms, improved feeding regimes and probiotics are expected to have a significant impact on the welfare of farmed fish as well as on digestion efficiency and the environmental impact of fresh water fish farms.

In this paper we analyze and propose new method and algorithm of selecting the optimal labor time as a function of skills following our main references Mirrlees (1971), Saez (2001) and Stancheva (2014). The optimal labor time is a situation when the utility function of individual reaches a maximum. One of the main differences with Saez (2001) is our algorithm for creation the skill distribution.

When wildlife and motor vehicles collide, the result for the animals is often death (roadkill). A commercial roadkill Virtual Fence (VF) mitigation device (iPTE Traffic Solutions) was used in a field trial to test its effectiveness along a 4.9-km segment of road on Bruny Island, Tasmania. A total of 585 days of monitoring of roadkill by species was conducted, with six sections alternatively switched on or off, according to a variation of a Crossover and Multiple Before-After-Control-Impact (MBACI) experimental designs that divided monitoring into “off-on” then “on-off” blocks of periods with each “on” period followed by a 16 d “wash-out” period. For the six sections over the four periods that exclude wash-outs, the 24 aggregated values of daily counts of roadkill of Tasmanian pademelons (Thylogale billardierii), that gave a total count of 222, were modelled. Other species were killed in insufficient numbers for analysis to be informative. The statistical analysis exploited the MBACI design to estimate the VF effect using a log-odds ratio parameter (LORP) while accounting for local spatio-temporal effects. Both versions of the analysis, either averaging over the three spatial replicates (paired sections) or two temporal replicates (blocks) gave no statistically significant effect of the VF judged as a LORP estimate not sufficiently below zero. Corresponding percentage reduction estimates of 9% and 16% were derived from the LORP estimates and given parameter uncertainty estimates the power to detect as significant a LORP corresponding to a 50% reduction in rate were 0.5 and 0.6, respectively. This study confirms results from a similar field trial carried out in 2018 also in southern Tasmania and adds to the evidence that this VF is likely to give if anything only a minor reduction in roadkill for a commonly killed species for which researchers have the best chance of detecting any practically useful reduction.

In Australia, traditional methods of cat management by local government (councils) animal management officers (AMO) have been ineffective, with cat-related calls and cat impoundments continuing to increase, resulting in many healthy cats being euthanized. This has detrimental effects on the mental health of AMOs, pound and shelter staff and veterinarians. The City of Banyule, Victoria implemented a free cat sterilization, microchipping and registration (licensing) program in 2013-14. Initially targeted to three low socioeconomic suburbs with the highest cat-related calls and intake, where enforcement action had little effect. An average of 4.1 cats/1000 residents per year were sterilized over eight years. The program was available to all cats in the area, including stray cats being fed by caregivers, provided they took ownership of the cats. There were no limitations on the number of cats enrolled per household and free transport was provided if required. The program was later expanded city-wide. Over eight years, city-wide cat intake decreased by 66%, euthanasia by 82%, with an increase in proportion of cats reclaimed by owners from a baseline of 6% of intake (2012-13) to 16% (2020-21). Cat-related calls decreased in the target area by 51% and city-wide by 36%. The council’s financial outlay was $84,000, which resulted in decreased costs as-sociated with cat-related calls of $266,225.00. Instead of traditional trap-adopt- kill, proactive management of urban cats based on targeted sterilization should be utilized by government and animal welfare agencies in Australia and internationally. These types of programs are effective at reducing intake and euthanasia and are cost-effective.

We aimed to assess whether play behavior can be used as a welfare indicator for farmed spotted pacas (Cuniculus paca) by examining its association with other positive welfare markers including affiliative behavior and low-amplitude vocalizations. We submitted six groups of spotted pacas (one male/two females per group) (N=18) to an ABA experimental design (A1/A2: without ball; B: with three boomer balls). Play behavior occurred only during phase B (mean=35.5s, SE=6.4). Spotted pacas spent more time in affiliative and exploratory behaviors, while they spent less time engaging in agonistic interactions during phase B than in both control phases (A1 and A2) (P<0.05). Moreover, spotted pacas emitted more low-amplitude bark vocalizations during phase B than during either control phase (P<0.05), which have previously been shown to indicate a positive affective state and low arousal level. Because the expression of play was associated with a decrease in aggression, an increase in affiliative behavior, and an increase in low-amplitude barking, indicating thus a positive state, we suggest that play behavior can be used as a non-invasive indicator of positive welfare in this species.

Global positioning systems (GPS) have recently been shown to reliably quantify the spatiotemporal characteristics of Polo, with the physiological demands of Polo play at low and high goal levels also investigated. This study aimed to describe the spatiotemporal demands of Polo across 0 – 24 goal levels. A player worn GPS unit was used to quantify distance, speed and high intensity activities performed. Data was divided into chukkas and five equine-based speed zones, grouped per cumulative player handicap and assessed using standardised mean differences. Average distance and speed per chukka increased in accordance with cumulative player handicap, with the magnitude of differences being Trivial – Large and Trivial – Very Large, respectively. Differences between time spent in speed zones 4 and 5 show a linear increase in magnitude, when comparing 0 goal Polo to all other levels of play (Small – Very Large; 6 – 24 goals, respectively). High intensity activities predominantly shared this trend, displaying Trivial – Large differences between levels. These findings highlight the increasingly demanding cardiovascular, anaerobic and speed-based needs of Polo ponies as playing level increases. Strategies such as high intensity interval training, maximal speed work and aerobic conditioning may be warranted to facilitate this development and improve pony welfare and performance.

Perinatal mortality is a major issue in laboratory mouse breeding. We compared a counting method using daily checks (DAILY_CHECK) with a method combining daily checks with detailed video analyses to detect cannibalisms (VIDEO_TRACK) for estimating the number of C57BL/6 pups born, died and weaned in 193 litters from trios with (TRIO-OVERLAP) or without (TRIO-NO_OVERLAP) the presence of another litter. Linear mixed models were used at litter level. To understand if cannibalism was associated with active killing (infanticide), we analysed VIDEO_TRACK recordings of 109 litters from TRIO-OVERLAP, TRIO-NO_OVERLAP or SOLO (single dams). We used Kaplan-Meier method and logistic regression at pup level. For DAILY_CHECK, the mean litter size was 35% smaller than for VIDEO_TRACK (P&lt;0.0001) and the number of dead pups was twice lower (P&lt;0.0001). The risk of pup loss was higher for TRIO-OVERLAP than TRIO-NO_OVERLAP (P&lt;0.0001). A high number of pup losses occurred between birth and the first cage checking. Analyses of VIDEO_TRACK data indicated that pups were clearly dead at the start of most of the cannibalism events and infanticide was rare. As most pups die and disappear before the first cage check, many breeding facilities are likely to be unaware of their real rates of mouse pup mortality.

Animal hoarding is a complex issue that, when discovered, frequently necessitates opening shelter doors to many animals. This is due to hoarders' inability to provide even the most basic welfare standards for their animals, resulting in poor welfare conditions that frequently border on mis-treatment. These people are frequently unaware of their failure to care for their animals, as well as of the harm that they cause to people around them and the environment. They usually don't care for themselves either. The majority of hoarders have difficult histories, and they all need help get-ting back on track. Meanwhile, when the agencies discover the status quo, the animals are usually seized and taken to shelters, where they face a variety of welfare consequences, beginning with confinement in an unknown environment that is associated with additional risks (e.g., infectious diseases, behavioral deterioration, and distress). Furthermore, the targeted shelters are frequently overcrowded and cannot adequately accommodate the large number of animals found in hoard-ers' environments. The One Welfare approach, which is increasingly being used alongside One Health to work at the intersection of human and animal health and welfare, could be adopted to benefit animals while also addressing the poor states of humans. This concept’s depiction of the interconnections between animal welfare, human wellbeing, and the environment can fit with all the components of the animal hoarding phenomenon, including the peculiarities of the hoarding environment as well as those of shelters where animals are often moved. The purpose of this paper is to offer insights into how the One Welfare concept may be critical in tackling all of the interests concerned in these cases and offering solutions.

Polo is an equestrian team sport, consisting of Open and Women’s only handicapping systems. As cumulative player handicap increases in Open Polo, distance covered, average speeds and high intensity work performed per chukka also increase. These activities may differ in terms of distribution of, and their affect upon, match outcome in Women’s Polo, and thus have implications for equine preparation and management. This study aimed to quantify spatiotemporal differences between Open and Women’s Polo when matched for handicap and assess their affect upon chukka and match outcome using a prospective cohort design. Distance, speed and high intensity activity data were collected via player worn global positioning system (GPS) units during 16-goal Open and Women’s Polo tournaments. Notational analysis quantified chukka duration and chukka and game outcomes. Between group differences were assessed by independent samples t-tests, and two factor mixed effects ANOVA for within group analyses. Between group differences were analysed using an independent samples t-test with alpha defined a priori as p<0.05. Open and Women’s Polo differed by a small to large extent (ES: 0.54 – 1.81) for all spatiotemporal metrics. In Open Polo, players covered moderately more distance (429.0m; 238.9m to 619.0m), with small to large increases in high intensity activities performed in games won. Whereas in Women’s Polo, moderately higher maximum speeds were attained in games won (17.13 km/h; 11.86 km/h to 22.40 km/h) and a small increase in accelerations performed (5.1; 0.2 to 10.0). Open and Women’s Polo, when matched for handicap, present with small to large spatiotemporal differences that are likely of practical significance, and influence game outcome differently between codes. These differences do not necessarily mean that Polo ponies need to be trained differently for each code.

We describe a recently developed approach to quantify welfare loss in animals, the Cumulative Pain metric. It combines the two most relevant dimensions of negative affective experiences: intensity and duration. The metric enables estimating the time individuals spend in negative affective states of a physical or psychological nature (operationally referred to simply as ‘pain’) of different intensities as the result of one or more challenges (e.g., diseases, injuries, deprivations). A new notation protocol (the Pain-Track) is used in which the duration of the experience is represented along the horizontal axis and intensity is represented by four categories in the vertical axis. Pain experiences are partitioned into temporal segments, where hypotheses for the experienced duration and intensity are proposed based on existing welfare indicators (e.g., neurophysiological, behavioral, anatomical, evolutionary). This structure forces transparency about assumptions and uncertainties, highlights knowledge gaps, and enables estimates to be continuously adjusted. Because the Cumulative Pain metric is based on parameters with a broadly common biological meaning, it provides the much needed interoperability among assessments of animal welfare. It enables comparing the impact of practices and living conditions, policies and interventions, and the calculation of welfare footprints of animal-sourced products using a universal measurement unit.

Light enables vision and exerts widespread effects on physiology and behaviour, including regulating circadian rhythms, sleep, hormone synthesis, affective state, and cognitive processes. Appropriate lighting in animal facilities may support welfare and ensure that animals enter experiments in a controlled physiological and behavioural state. Proper consideration of light during experimentation - both when it is explicitly employed as an independent variable and as a general feature of the environment - has the potential to provide more informative experimental designs and more reliable outcomes, contributing to Reduction and Refinement, helping to ensure more ethical animal use, and improving data quality. As such, it is unfortunate that ambient light for animals is typically quantified in units (lux) designed for human observers. We report the consensus views of an expert working group, with expertise spanning mammalian photobiology, neurobiology and animal husbandry and welfare, convened in February 2023 to agree upon metrics for light appropriate for non-human mammals and their application to improve animal welfare and the quality of animal research. We conclude that species-specific versions of the recently standardised a-opic metrology represent the best available approach to quantifying light. We provide methods for measuring these quantities; practical guidance for their implementation in husbandry and experimentation; and quantitative guidance on appropriate light exposure for laboratory mammals.

Children from rural areas face numerous possibilities for neurodevelopmental conditions that may compromise their well-being and optimal development. Neuropsychology and electroencephalography (EEG) have shown strong agreement in detecting correlations between these two variables and suggest an association with specific environmental and social risk factors. The present meta-analysis aims to integrate the qualitative and quantitative EEG findings, their relationship with cognitive impairment in children living in vulnerable or rural environments, and the main risk factors influencing EEG abnormalities. The method for this purpose was based on a systematic string-based review from Ebscohost and Web of Science, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted from the outcomes that complied with the selected criteria. A total of 92 records were identified; however, only 20 were eligible, considering 11 for qualitative and 9 for quantitative analysis. The findings highlight a significant amount of literature on EEG and its relation with cognitive impairment from studies in children with epilepsy and malnutrition. In general, there is evidence about the advantages of implementing EEG diagnosis and research techniques in children living under risk conditions. Further research is needed to better describe and integrate the state of the art regarding EEG features extraction.

Many countries are raising questions on the intentions behind Saudi reforms. The low oil prices in 2008-09 were the awakening call for Saudis, and later in 2014, it became the reason to look for the economy that is less dependent on oil. The article studies the initiated social reforms and social impact of foreign cultural activities. It scrutinizes the Saudi social fabric under the social exchange theory and looks for the positive and negative effects of cultural exchanges. The paper also considers the COVID-19 situation in KSA as it has broken the chain of cultural events planned all over the country to promote tourism and improve the image of KSA.

One key area where animal welfare may relate to productivity is through reproductive performance. Welfare was assessed on 25 extensively managed pastoral New Zealand beef farms and the relationship between welfare and reproductive performance was explored. Relationships between welfare measures and key reproductive performance indicators (pregnancy rate, weaning rate, mating period and bull: cow ratio) were investigated using an exploratory Principal Components Analysis and linear regression model. Seven welfare measures (thinness, poor rumen fill, dirtiness, blindness, mortality, health checks of pregnant cows and yarding frequency/year) showed potential influence on reproductive performance, and lameness was retained individually as a potential measure. Mean pregnancy rates in both 2018 (PD18) and 2017 (PD17) were ~91% and mean weaning rate was 84%. Of the welfare measures, only lameness had a direct association with pregnancy rate, as well as confounding effect on the association between mating period and pregnancy rate. The bull: cow ration (mean 1:31) and reproductive conditions (dystocia, abortion, vaginal prolapse) did not influence pregnancy and weaning rates. In the study population there was no clear association between welfare and reproductive performance, except for the confounding effects of lameness.

Animals living in the wild are exposed to numerous challenges, such as fires, that can lead to animal suffering. The impacts of fire have been studied in different branches of ecology, but studies of its effects on the welfare of individual animals remain scarce. The current review aims to synthesize a sample of relevant aspects regarding fire’s negative effects on wild animals. This review provides a better understanding of how fire compromises animal welfare, providing an example of how to use the knowledge gathered in ecology studies to examine the welfare of wild animals. It can help raise concern for the situation of wild animals as individuals, and to develop the field of welfare biology, by identifying promising future lines of research. The fundamentals of carrying out future work to design protocols for rescuing animals or preventing the harms they can suffer in fires is also explored.

A divergent selection experiment on environmental sensitivity was performed in rabbits. The aim of this study was to estimate the correlated response in kits’ weight and its survival, and weight distance from birth to weaning. Weight distance was calculated as the absolute values of the differences between the individual value and the mean value of its litter. Also, relationship between probability of survival at 4 d of age and weight at birth was studied. Environmental sensitivity was measured as litter size variability. A total of 2484 kits from 127 does of the low line (selected for reducing litter size variability) and 1916 kits of 114 does of the high line (selected for increasing litter size variability) of the 12th generation were weighed. Bayesian methodology was used to estimate the correlated response to selection, and LOGISTIC procedure of SAS was used to estimate the relationship between weight and probability of survival. Both lines showed similar individual weight at birth and at weaning, and similar survival at birth and at 4 d of age. Survival at weaning was higher in the low line than in the high line (0.67 and 0.62; P= 0.93). Weight distance was higher at birth but lower at weaning in the low line (47.8 g and 54.1 g; P=0.98). Kit’s weight at birth affected its survival. In conclusion, selection for environmental sensitivity showed correlated response in kits survival and in homogeneity of litter weight at weaning.

Little is known about public knowledge of meat chicken production and how it influences attitudes to birds’ welfare and consumer behaviour. We interviewed 506 members of the public in SE Queensland, Australia, to investigate this. Knowledge was assessed from 15 questions, and low scores were supported by respondents’ self-assessed report of low knowledge levels and agreement that their knowledge was insufficient to form an opinion about which chicken products to purchase. Older respondents and single people without children were most knowledgeable. There was uncertainty about whether chicken welfare was adequate, particularly in those with little knowledge. There was also evidence that lack of empathy towards chickens related to lack of knowledge, since those that thought it very acceptable that some birds are inadequately stunned at slaughter had low knowledge scores. More knowledgeable respondents ate chicken more frequently and were less likely to buy products with accredited labelling. Approximately half of the respondents thought the welfare of the chicken to be more important than the cost. It is concluded that the public’s knowledge has an important connection to their attitudes and consumption of meat chickens. Respondents with little knowledge demonstrated that they had both lack of empathy and intolerance to religious slaughter practices.

Latin America and the Caribbean offer the most favorable natural and social conditions for the emergence of cattle ranching that regenerate and maintains the ecosystem services on which life on Earth depends, that is energy efficient and that contributes to meeting fundamental human food needs. Unlike other major global producers, cattle farming in Latin America and the Caribbean is fundamentally based on pasture. Therein lies both its strength (due to the regenerative potential of well-managed pastures) and its vulnerability (due to the pervasive link between deforestation and pasture formation, especially in the Amazon, where 40% of the Brazilian herd is concentrated). The diversification of pastures (today marked by impressive monotony, with brachiaria accounting for 85% of the species in Brazil), the introduction of legumes and tree plantations within them, and the proper management of herds, open the way to the possibility of drastically reducing the area currently occupied by the activity (especially in the Amazon) while maintaining the supply of its products. Agricultural research has disseminated forms of moderate intensification of cattle ranching, which represent a low opportunity cost of animal feed and, at the same time, regeneration of ecosystem services that have so far been destroyed by the prevailing methods of farming.

Ethical behaviour tends to lead to welfare consideration of animals, but much less so for invertebrates. Indigenous tradition often valued all animals having an important role in the life on the planet, a practical application of modern ecology. The Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition postulated ‘man’ as having dominion over all the earth, resulting in anthropocentrism and careless practices. In contrast, the Buddhist/Hindu beliefs in rebirth leads to ahisma or doing no harm. In the face of capitalist systems, practice does not necessarily follow these beliefs, especially in the ‘shepherding’ of domestic animals. Only the Jainist beliefs value the lives of all invertebrates. Philosophers are often divorced from the physiological reality of the animals they muse about and science’s traditions of objectivity and the simplest possible explanation of behaviour led to ignorance of invertebrates’ abilities. With the new information about sentience in some of these animals, moral standing and welfare consideration has sometimes been extended to invertebrates, but we have a long distance to go to consider recognition and care of all these 97% of the animals on the planet.

Pasture-based production systems are predominant in major beef-producing countries, however, these systems lack validated protocols to assess animal welfare under commercial conditions. The objective of this study was to validate an animal welfare protocol for fattening Zebu cattle farms in tropical pasture systems. The initial protocol was developed with the participation of producers, professionals, the general public, and the Colombian health authority, through workshops with a participatory approach and collaborative knowledge management. The validation was carried out in 24 pasture-based commercial Zebu cattle farms in the middle Magdalena region of Colombia. Visits were made with an average duration of 2.5 hours, which included the evaluation of 788 fattening cattle. The protocol evaluated animal-based, resource-based, and livestock management indicators through a questionnaire-guided interview to evaluate cattle handling and health, animal-based measurements, and documentation management. A protocol validation process was carried out by selecting indicators that remained unchanged, adjusting those that were feasible to implement, and eliminating inadequate or unnecessary indicators. The application of the protocol demonstrated that there are valid and feasible measures to include in the evaluation protocols of pasture-based fattening systems. Likewise, the active participation of producers is crucial to achieving a greater commitment to the implementation of this protocol.

The aquaculture sector has become increasingly reliant on soybean meal (SBM) and soy-derived proteins, because of their large abundance, low price and favorable amino acid profile. However, for Atlantic salmon, a major aquaculture species, the inclusion of soybean meal, and soy protein concentrate (SPC) in certain combinations has adverse impacts on its gut health and welfare. This study evaluated two enhanced SBM targeting improved gut health for inclusion in freshwater phase salmon diets, enzyme pre-treatment (ETS) and addition of fructose oligosaccharide (USP), respectively in comparison to untreated soybean meal (US) and fish meal (FM). The impact on growth performance, gut microbiome, and behaviors relevant to welfare was investigated. Both enhancements of SBM were found to support comparable growth performance to FM. Both targeted treatments altered the gut microbiome community. Fish fed SBM showed a tendency for more reactive behavior compared to those fed the FM-based control. All fish had a similarly low response to elicited stress, although ETS fed fish responded more actively than those fed the US diet. SBM fed fish also had lower repeatability of behavior, which may have implications for welfare. Both enhancements provide a promising basis to optimize the application of this widely used protein source.

Reptile behaviour and welfare are understudied in comparison with mammals. In this study, behavioural data on three species of tortoises were recorded before and after an environmental change which was anticipated to be positive in nature. The environmental changes differed for each population, but included a substantial increase in enclosure size, the addition of substrate material, and a change in handling procedure. A tortoise-specific ethogram was created to standardise data collection. Focal behaviour sampling was used to collect behavioural data. Changes in the duration of performance of co-occupant interaction and object interaction in the leopard (Stigmochelys pardalis) and Aldabra (Aldabrachelys gigantea) tortoises were observed following the environmental changes. The Shannon-Weiner’s diversity index did not yield a significant increase after the changes but had a numerical increase which was relatively greater for the leopard tortoise group, which had experienced the greatest environmental change. The leopard tortoises also demonstrated changes in a greater number of behaviours compared to the other species, and this was sustained over the study period. However, this included a behaviour indicative of negative affect; aggression. Whilst we are unable to conclude that welfare was improved by the management changes, there are suggestions that behavioural diversity increased, and some promotion of positive social behaviours occurred.

The assessment of welfare and disease progression in animal models is critical. Most tools rely on evaluating individual subjects, whereas social behaviors, also sensitive to acute illness, chronic diseases, or mental health, are scarcely monitored because of their complexity, are invasive, and time-consuming. We propose the evaluation of social nesting, a species-typical behavior naturally occurring in standard housing conditions, for such behavioral monitoring. We provide an example of its use to evaluate social deficits and the long-term effects of neonatal sensorial stimulation in male and female adult 3xTg-AD mice for Alzheimer's disease compared to sex- and age-matched NTg counterparts with normal aging. Social nesting was sensitive to genotype (worse in 3xTg-AD mice), sex (worse in males), profile, and treatment (distinct temporal patterns, time to observe the maximum score and incidence of the perfect nest). Since social nesting can be easily included in housing routines, this neuroethological approach can be useful for animal's welfare, monitoring the disease's progress, and evaluating potential risk factors and effects of preventive/therapeutical strategies. Finally, the non-invasive, painless, simple, short time and low-cost features of this home-cage monitoring are advantages that make social nesting feasible to be successfully implemented in most animal department settings.

This research investigated the effects of social isolation on frailty and health outcomes and tested whether these associations varied across different levels of frailty. We performed a multivariate analysis of data from the first wave of the FRéLE study among 1,643 Canadian older adults aged 65 years and over. We assessed social isolation using social participation, social networks, and support from various social ties, namely, friends, children, extended family, and partner. Frailty predicted disability, comorbidity, depression, and cognitive decline. Less social participation was associated with IADLs, depression, and cognitive decline. The absence of friends was associated with depression and cognitive impairment. Less social support from children and partner was related to comorbidity, depression, and cognitive decline. Overall, social isolation is linked to mental health, rather than physical health. The associations of having no siblings, receiving less support from friends, and participating less in social activities with ADL limitations, depression, and cognitive decline were higher among frail than pre-frail and robust older adults. This study corroborates the pivotal role of social connectedness, particularly the quality of relationships, on the mental health of older adults. Public health policies on social relationships are paramount to ameliorate the health status of frail older adults.

This study explores the elements that influence consumer vegetarian diet choices in parts of South Korean provinces. The study examines these explanatory variables: ethical-animal-welfare, health, environment, social issues , mood-emotion, and religious-beliefs with vegetarianism serving as the dependent variable. The Likert scale data from 264 respondents were analyzed using logistic regression analysis. Results show that health, ethical-animal-welfare ideals as well as environmental concerns emerge as significant variables influencing the decision to embrace a vegetarian diet. This shows that consumers (international students) in Korea are becoming more aware of and concerned about health, ethical and sustainable dietary choices. Secondly, health plays a crucial role in the vegetarian diet selection, indicating that health-conscious people are more inclined to choose a vegetarian lifestyle. Religious belief and mood have various degrees of influence on the vegetarian diet decision. The findings of this study have consequences for consumer behavior, marketing managers, and decision-makers. Businesses in the food industry, in particular, can gain from catering to the needs and tastes of consumers that prioritize ethical-animal welfare ideals, as well as those that value health and environmental sustainability. Creating and advertising vegetarian and vegan choices in local restaurants can effectively attract and serve this specific target demographic.

Many farms are replacing the lighting with light emitting diode (LED) bulbs because of the technological modernization. We aimed to investigate the effects of incandescent light (IL) and LED lighting on Cobb500 broiler chickens for six weeks. Production parameters (body weight, feed consumption, feed conversion ratio), calculated slaughter values (yield%, relative breast%, thigh%) and breast meat quality parameters (pH at 45 min and 24 h postmortem, color, drip loss, kitchen equipment losses, shear force, meat composition) were recorded. Non-stop recordings were used to analyze the behavior of the birds in several periods of the rearing. LED group was significantly better in body weigh parameter between week 1-5 and feed conversion ratio between week 2-3. The most significant difference in behavior was observed in the middle of the rearing period. The chickens in the LED group spent more eating time, drinking time, interacting, and resting less. There was no difference in the meat quality parameters, only shear force was significantly lower in the LED group (1781.95±0.33 g/s vs. 2098.82±0.42 g/s). Based on our results, LED lighting can bring positive changes in animal production efficiency, behavior, and important characteristics for meat consumers.

Since alternative methods (AAs), such as in vitro cultures, organs in silico, or mathematical methods, are not fully able to reproduce the complexity of the human organism, particularly neu-ral processes, and brain structures, animal experimentation remains the only way in which re-search can obtain the necessary knowledge to suggest drug therapies or targeted therapeutic in-terventions. Particularly in neuroscience, transgenic animals allow us to model neurological dis-eases, study the relationship between the brain and behavior, and decipher the function of genes involved in pathological conditions. However, it should never be forgotten that animals are "sen-tient beings" capable of feeling pleasure and pain (Art. 13 of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty). For this rea-son, it is crucial to prioritize the welfare of animals involved in testing by considering their phys-ical, psychological, adaptive, and relational well-being. This is where the concept of a Culture of Care comes in, where the responsibility of care extends beyond the veterinary aspects to include everything that can safeguard the welfare of animals before, during, and after experimentation. This chapter explains the advantages of using the animal model while practicing the culture of care in neuroscience, as both animals and research outcomes benefit from this approach.

Mobility is a vital welfare indicator which may influence broilers’ daily activities. Classical broiler mobility assessment methods are laborious and cannot provide timely insights into their conditions. Here, we proposed a semi-supervised Deep Learning (DL) model, YOLOv5, combined with Deep Sort algorithm conjoined with our newly proposed algorithm, Neo-Deep Sort, for individual broiler mobility tracking. Initially, 1,650 labeled images from five days were employed to train the YOLOv5 model. Through semi-supervised learning (SSL), this narrowly trained model was then used for pseudo-labeling 2,160 images, of which 2,153 were successfully labeled. Thereafter, the YOLOv5 model was fine-tuned on the newly labeled images. Lastly, the trained YOLOv5 and the Neo-Deep Sort algorithm were applied to detect and track 28 broilers in two pens and categorized them in terms of hourly and daily traveled distances and speeds. SSL helped in increasing the YOLOv5 model’s mean Average Precision (mAP), in detecting birds, from 81% to 98%. As compared with the manually measured covered distances of broilers, the combined model provided individual broiler's hourly moved distances with a validation accuracy of about 80%. Eventually, individual and flock level mobilities were quantified while overcoming the occlusion, false and miss detection issues.

The study follows the interaction between the individual and the social context regarding the development of adolescents protected in residential houses from the child protection system in Iasi County, Romania. Starting from the evidence that in situations of providing relatively identical material and social resources, the results obtained by these children vary greatly, we examine how the meaning (understood mainly as purpose and mattering) can constitute a developmental resource. Considering theoretical models and previous research, the study aims to describe, through a qualitative approach, how these young people see themselves and the external environment (family and residential care), how they project their future (their purpose and objectives), and how these constructions and perceptions can influence their quality of life and social integration. We conducted three focus groups with 35 adolescents and young people (the ages 13-21) protected in and for different periods in residential houses (period 1-20 years). The results highlighted that a specific meaning is reconfigured as compensatory when affected by a trauma or adverse external event and thus can be a resource for resilience. On the other hand, the research highlighted that only the existence of goals alone is insufficient to generate action, and the unrealistic meanings given to own persons, experiences, and resources can be dangerous.

How a species is represented by marketers of animal-based products both reflects and shapes how consumers think about that animal. By examining the explicit statements, and implicit messages encoded in the imagery on supermarket egg boxes, this paper explores how hens are represented by whole egg retailers. Content analysis reveals two prominent messages purveyed through eggbox graphics, namely those pertaining to hen welfare and human health. The later disenfranchises hens from their products by focusing on the nutritional value of eggs, whereas the former reflects a public concern for the welfare of egg-laying hens. Although claims of improvements in welfare practices are undoubtedly exploited as marketing tools, they serve to raise awareness and drive competitors to adopt similar practices. Welfare claims are a direct response to public concerns about the plight of hens, and may positively influence industry welfare standards. However, idyllic depictions displayed on eggboxes also lull consumers into the belief that those eggs are an ethically sound food choice, regardless of the actual standard of living experienced by the hens.

Poverty alleviation is a hallmark of post-revolution Chinese policymaking. Since 1978, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has implemented successive waves of poverty alleviation policies whose effects have become the focus of an ever-increasing body of academic literature. This paper reviews this diverse but limited literature that evaluates the impact of the CPC’s poverty reduction programs through four major channels, namely fiscal investment programs, social safety nets, rural governance on the village-, county- and provincial level, and the relocation of rural populations from destitute regions. This paper aims to synthesize results and evaluate whether and how the abovementioned poverty alleviation programs have had distinct positive or negative impacts on regional development outcomes. Furthermore, I highlight contradictions in empirical findings to motivate the discussion about contextual importance when designing and implementing future poverty alleviation programs. Finally, I suggest that an exhaustive and critical appraisal of the empirical strategies used in this literature would further the development and application of more accurate and informative methodologies.

The introduction of social commerce ushered in a new era in business-consumer interaction. As a result, more power has passed from the vendor to the buyer, primarily fueling e-commerce acceptance. As a result, understanding consumer behaviour in the context of social commerce adoption has become essential for businesses looking to persuade customers by using the power of social ties and support.Furthermore, such social ties will facilitate trust as the most promising benefit while reducing perceived risk, which has always been a critical problem with online commerce. This study proposes a paradigm for understanding the impact of social commerce on the stages of the consumer decision-making process: need recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase decision, and post-purchase behaviour, with a focus on social support. In this respect, relevant literature in the subject of social commerce either (1) lacks an adequate explanatory model, (2) has a solid theoretical base, or (3) contains practically complex theories with insufficient empirical data. The research model applies the Social Commerce Constructs (SCC): recommendations and referrals, forums and communities, and ratings and reviews to study the respective influence on the consumer decision-making process phases. This paper aims to understand the influence of social commerce on an integrative model that incorporates all customer choice phases while expecting new knowledge. Furthermore, it is advised that this conceptual model be empirically verified to evaluate the practical consequences.

The overpopulation of feral pigeons in Hong Kong has significantly disrupted the urban ecosystem, highlighting the urgent need for effective strategies to control their population. In general, control measures should be implemented and re-evaluated periodically following accurate estimations of feral pigeon population in the concerned regions, which, however, is very difficult in urban envi-ronments due to the concealment and mobility of pigeons within complex building structures. With the advances in deep learning, computer vision can be a promising tool for pigeon monitoring and population estimation but has not been well investigated so far. Therefore, we propose an improved deep learning model based on Mask-RCNN (Swin-Mask R-CNN) for feral pigeon detection using computer vision techniques. Specifically, our model consists of a Swin transformer network (STN) as the backbone, a feature pyramid network (FPN) as the neck, and three decoupled detection heads. The STN is utilized to extract deep feature information of feral pigeons through local and cross-window attention mechanisms. The FPN is employed to fuse multi-scale features and enhance the multi-scale learning ability. Heads in the three branches are responsible for classification, pre-dicting best bounding boxes, and segmentation of feral pigeons, respectively. During the prediction phase, a Slicing Aided Hyper Inference (SAHI) tool is employed to zoom in on the feature infor-mation of small feral pigeon targets, and the segmentation head is frozen to expedite inference of large images. Experiments were conducted on feral pigeon dataset to evaluate model performance. The results reveal that our model is well-suited for detecting small targets in high-resolution images and achieves excellent recognition performance for feral pigeons with a mAP (mean average pre-cision) and an AP50 (average precision at 50% intersection over union) of 0.74 and 0.93, respectively. For small target feral pigeons, AP50 in small scale (AP50s) improved by 10% as compared to the Mask R-CNN (AP50s of 0.75), demonstrating its potential for dynamic pigeon detection and population estimation in the future.

Animals in human care are affected by stressors that can ultimately reduce fitness. When reproduction is affected, endangered species’ conservation programmes can be severely compromised. Thus, understanding factors related to stress and reproduction, and measures of related hormones, are important to ensure captive breeding success. Red pandas are endangered and populations in the wild are threatened with extinction. A global captive breeding programme has been launched to conserve the species with the goal of reintroduction. However there is little informaiton on how stressors impact reproductive aspects of the species. This study measured fecal glucocorticoid (fGCM), fecal progestagen (fPM) and fecal androgen (fAM) metabolite concentrations in 12 female and 8 male red pandas (Ailurus fulgens fulgens) at three zoos in northeastern India to determine predictors of adrenal and gonadal steroid activity and the influence of fGCM on reproduction. Results indicated that fGCM concentrations were higher in males than females, and positively correlated with number of visitors, while negatively related to frequency of feedings and enclosure area. Sex, visitor number, frequency of feeding, and enclosure area explained 67% of the variations in fGCM concentrations in the study population. Concentrations of fPM were positively associated with tree density in the enclosure, explaining 47% of the variation among females. For fAM, positive associations were found with frequency of feeding, but concentrations were negatively related to age and number of visitors; these three covariates explained 45% of the variation in fAM concentration among males. Comparison of fGCM with fPM showed a negative trend, indicating increasing adrenal hormones may decrease reproductive function among female red pandas. The study thus suggests that zoo management should consider increasing feeding frequency, providing larger enclosures with more trees, and regulating visitor numbers to reduce stress and increase reproductive fitness among red pandas.

Quantitative measurements of performance parameters has the potential to increase consistency and enhance performance of the surfaces as well as to contribute to the safety of horses and riders. This study investigates how factors known to influence the performance of the surface, incorpo-ration of a drainage package, control of the moisture control, and introduction of a geotextile reinforcement, affect quantitative measurements of arena materials. The measurements are made by using affordable lightweight testing tools which are readily available or easily constructed. Sixteen boxes with arena materials at a consistent depth were tested with the Going Stick (GS), both penetration resistance and shear, the impact test device (ITD), and the rotational peak shear device (RPS). Volumetric moisture content (VMC %) was also tested with time-domain reflectometry (TDR). Results obtained using GS, RPS, ITD, and TDR indicate that the presence of the drainage package, moisture content, and geotextile addition were detected. Alterations due to combinations of treatments could also be detected by GS, ITD, and TDR. While the testing showed some limi-tations of these devices, the potential exists to utilize them for quality control of new installations as well as for the monitoring of maintenance of the surfaces.

A proposed animal welfare assessment protocol for semi-arid rangeland-based cow-calf systems in Namibia combined 40 measures from a protocol developed for beef cattle in New Zealand with additional Namibia-specific measures. Preliminary validation of the protocol had been undertaken with five herds in one semi-commercial village. The aim of the current study was to apply this protocol and compare animal welfare across three cow-calf production systems in Namibia. A total of 2529 beef cows were evaluated during pregnancy testing in the yards of 17 commercial, 20 semi-commercial and 18 communal (total: 55) herds followed by an assessment of farm resources and a questionnaire-guided interview. Non-parametric tests were used to evaluate the difference in the welfare scores between the production systems. The results indicated a discrepancy of animal welfare between the three farm types, with a marked separation of commercial farms from semi-commercial, and communal village farms in the least. The differences in these production systems was mainly driven by economic gains through access to better beef export market for commercial farms and semi-commercial villages, as well as by the differences in the available grazing land, facility designs/quality and traditional customs in the village systems. The results indicate an advantage of commercialisation over communalisation.

Enforcement of animal welfare statutes are the primary protection given for the maintenance of animal welfare and prevention of cruelty. It is speculated that animal law enforcement in Australia has a number of weakness in the enforcement model. These weaknesses create a gap between the goals of animal law enforcement and the reality of the animal law justice system. This gap is defined as the ‘enforcement gap’. This paper identifies and investigates the causes of this gap. The hypothesized causes discussed are (1) the impact the public can have on reporting animal cruelty, (2) the reliance on charitable organizations as enforcement bodies, (3) the inconsistencies in animal welfare legislation, and (4) the role of the sentencing courts. Thus, the causes of the enforcement gap are multifactorial; derived from all stages of the enforcement process. Further research is needed to investigate the concepts raised in this paper. However, it is likely that a combination of structural change to enforcement agencies, legislative reform and public education is required to reduce the enforcement gap.

Social connectedness connection is a core dimension of health and wellness among all populations, yet the experience of moving to, and living in, a new country makes social and community-level influences particularly salient for immigrants. We interviewed 38 Latino immigrants living in a nontraditional migration area to explore the social and community foundations of health and wellness. Illustrated in a model of socioecological connectednesssocial connection, Using hybrid (inductive/deductive) qualitative analysis, we identified seven themesdomains of social connection from the perspective of the interviewed participants: 1) Lens of the individual is a filter for the social world; 2) Immigrant experience colors everything; 3) Interpersonal support enhances quality of life; 4) Community belonging fosters a sense of connectedness; 5) Community capital boosts security; 6) Community navigation promotes integration; and 7) Social acceptance strengthens inclusion. In the healthcare field, we lack conceptual clarity of the distinct connectedness domains that drive positive health outcomes in immigrant populations. Social connection domains generated by participants are consistent with the scientific literature, but this study identifies the specific social factors that immigrants describe as most salient to their own health and wellness. Our community-generated understanding of socioecological connectednesssocial connection can be used by healthcare providers to reduce risks and build on assets that will improve the health of immigrants living in nontraditional migration areas. health. Additionally, our model of socioecological connectednessthese results might serve as a foundation for a quantitative measure that can be used by providers to more accurately and comprehensively assess connectedness social connection of their patients and by researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of community-level interventions for immigrants.

Human language and social cognition are two key disciplines that have traditionally been studied as separate domains. However, emerging research from detailed studies of comparative animal behavior, human social behavior, language acquisition in children, social cognitive neuroscience, and the cognitive neuroscience of language suggest that language and social cognition are two deeply interrelated capacities of the human species. For instance, recent developmental studies on the acquisition of language in infants and young children, draw attention to the important crucial benefits associated with several different aspects of social stimulation for youngsters, including the quantity and quality of linguistic input, dyadic infant/child-to-parent verbal and non-verbal social interactions, and other important social cues integral for facilitating language learning and social bonding. Studies of the adult human brain further suggest a high degree of specialization for sociolinguistic information processing, memory retrieval, and comprehension, suggesting the function of these regions may link language with social cognition and social bonding. In effect, the social brain and social complexity hypotheses may jointly help to explain how neurotypical children and adults learn language, why autistic adults and children exhibit simultaneous deficits in language and social cognition, and why nonhuman primates and other animals with significant computational abilities do not acquire the capacity for language. But perhaps most critically, the following article argues that this and related research will allow scientists to generate a holistic profile and deeper understanding of the healthy adult social brain, while developing more innovative and effective diagnoses, prognoses, and treatments for maladies and deficits also associated with the social brain.

In this study we were interested in the behaviors of individuals who preserve the social and organizational environment by ensuring sustainability. More specifically we are interested in allegiants behaviors. Numerous studies have highlighted the normative character of allegiance. To confer an object the status of social norm means to assign value (in terms of desirability and utility) to that object. Therefore we questioned the value attributed to allegiance. 170 employees were questioned on the desirability and utility they attribute to a future work colleague (future peer or future subordinate) starting from the answers the latter was supposed to have given to a questionnaire on allegiance. It was observed that desirability and utility make reference to two independent dimensions, utility being often more important. It was also noted there is greater severity assigned to endo-group targets (future peers) than to exo-group targets (future subordinates). Finally, it was noted there was not so much a valuation of allegiant targets, but rather a rejection of rebel targets, which raises the question of the bi-dimensionality of the valuation-devaluation process.

This paper examines the Business Model (BM) from a socioeconomic system perspective to discern key factors, and understand its interactions resulting in the Scaling of Social Impact (SSI) in Social Entrepreneurship (SE). Previously, studies have explained the importance of BM in relation to SE. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on how BM’s transitions through participation of various actors result in SSI. This research applies qualitative analysis on a single case study of a Japanese social startup, “mymizu”, the first water refill application platform in Japan. The findings show that collaboration amongst different stakeholders on the initial phase of the BM could increase awareness of responsible consumption, convert into actual users for sustainability, and change their behavior. Secondly, members of the society could take on dual roles, both as users and collaborators in the BM, which results in an exponential scaling effect of the social impact. This paper contributes towards adding a participatory stakeholder (PS) to the ecosystem of SSI and building a “regenerative” BM that is relevant in SE towards sustainability.

A wide variety of substances have been used to anaesthetise invertebrates, but many are not anaesthetics and merely incapacitate animals, rather than preventing pain. Much is now known about the mode of action of modern clinical and veterinary anaesthetics because of their use on human beings and other vertebrates. In essence, the role of an ideal general anaesthetic is to act as a muscle relaxant, an analgesic, an anaesthetic and an amnesic. To achieve all these properties with a single substance is difficult and various adjuvants usually need to be administered, resulting in a cocktail of drugs. In a clinical setting, the vast majority of patients are unaware of surgery being carried out and have no memory of it, so they can claim to have felt no pain, but this is much more difficult to demonstrate in invertebrates. Here we show that 1% MgCl2, a muscle relaxant, is a useful adjuvant for the clinical anaesthetic isoflurane on Octopus vulgaris when applied for 10 minutes before the clinical anaesthetic. After this, full anaesthesia can be achieved in 5 minutes using only 1% isoflurane and from which full recovery takes place rapidly in about 10 to 15 minutes. This reduces stress on the animal and minimises the quantity of anaesthetic used.

Animal welfare assessment protocols are important for identifying welfare problems in conservation programs. This study aimed to develop a baseline welfare protocol for the assessment of welfare in huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus) in conservation centers. This protocol is based on the Welfare Quality® (WQ) framework for cattle, considering the available literature on the behaviours, ecology, conservation plans, captive management of this species, and welfare assessment protocols for other ungulate species. As a result, the protocol was specifically developed for huemuls and included four principles, 12 criteria, and 23 animal- and resource-based indicators. The 12 criteria of the WQ protocol were reduced to nine, and three new criteria were added because they were both feasible and essential for welfare assessment in captive huemuls. This protocol is mainly intended to identify welfare problems in endangered species in the context of conservation centers (reproduction, rescue, rehabilitation, or treatment centers). Thus, aggregation of different measures to obtain a global score has not been proposed. However, a scoring system that assigns a value on a 0-2 scale (0= No welfare concern; 1= welfare concern; 2= urgent welfare concern) is proposed for each category. Although further research is still needed to fully validate the protocol, this is the first development of a completed protocol for huemul welfare assessment.

Lameness on dairy goat farms is a welfare concern and could negatively affect milk production. This study's objective was to evaluate the effects of clinical lameness on the daily milk production of dairy goats. Between July 2019 and June 2020, 11,847 test-day records were collected from 3,145 goats on three farms in New Zealand. Locomotion scoring of goats used a 5-point scoring system (0 to 4). The dataset was split into two groups by lactation type, where goats were classified as being in seasonal lactation (≤305 days in milk) or extended lactation (&gt;305 days in milk). A linear mixed model was used to analyze datasets using milk characteristics as the dependent variables. Clinically lame goats (score 3 or 4) in seasonal and extended lactation produced 2.63% and 4.66% less milk than goats not lame, respectively. Severely lame goats (score 4) in seasonal and extended lactation produced 7.10% and 8.56% less milk than goats not lame, respectively. The estimated average daily milk income lost was between NZD 26 and 104 per goat. This study established the negative impact of lameness on milk production and annual income in dairy goats on three farms.

Early disease detection in livestock allows for target treatment decreasing antibiotics use and allow advancements in precision veterinary medicine. MicroRNA (miRNA) -driven signaling cascades play a crucial role in the context of farm animal disease diagnostics and prediction, and their proper understanding remains a challenge. In livestock farm animals, only a small number of miRNAs have been fully validated with respect to disease conditions and physiological or behavioral traits. Low abundance of miRNAs in blood and bodily fluids, along with a small number of nucleotides, makes detection and discrimination tedious and challenging task in. miRNAs usually are homologous, owing to which detection specificity becomes next to impossible when screening for multiple miRNAs in the same analyte sample. Hence, a concurrent, multiplexing, approach becomes crucial for the development of on-farm point-of-care based detection systems. Comprehensive screening methods demand broad dynamic range and enhanced specificity. For on-farm handheld platform development, the ability to screen for multiple varieties of miRNA is essential. In this review paper, I provide an overview of the recent developments of miRNA sensing and the current bottlenecks in the realization of the sensors for detecting miRNAS as target analyte for various livestock disease detection applications. Due to the nascent stages of this research, the possibilities of exploiting miRNAs as a biomarker opens up ways to move from reactive to predictive possibilities in diseases detection in the modern digital livestock farming.

Zoos are increasingly putting in place formalized animal welfare assessment programs to allow monitoring of welfare over time, as well as to aid in resource prioritization. These programs tend to rely on assessment tools that incorporate resource-based and observational animal- focused measures since it is rarely feasible to obtain measures of physiology in zoo-housed animals. A range of assessment tools are available which commonly have a basis in the Five Domains framework. A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted to bring together recent studies examining welfare assessment methods in zoo animals. A summary of these methods is provided with advantages and limitations of the approach es presented. We then highlight practical considerations with respect to implementation of these tools into practice, for example scoring schemes, weighting of criteria, and innate animal factors for consideration. It is concluded that would be value in standardizing guidelines for development of welfare assessment tools since zoo accreditation bodies rarely prescribe these. There is also a need to develop taxon or species- specific assessment tools to inform welfare management.

The study aimed to develop standards for a welfare assessment protocol, by validating potential categorisation thresholds for assessment of beef farms in various beef cow-calf production systems in Namibia. Forty measures combined from a New Zealand-based protocol plus Namibia-specific measures, were applied on 55 beef farms (17 commercial farms, 20 semi-commercial and 18 communal village farms) during pregnancy testing, and a questionnaire guided interview. The categorised measures on a 3-point welfare score of 0: good 1: marginal and 2: poor/unacceptable welfare were subsequently compared with derivation of thresholds based upon the poorest 15% and best 50% of herds for each measure. Overall combined thresholds of continuous measures across the 3 farm types, showed 10/22 measures that posed welfare compromise across Namibia, where commercial farms had 4/22 measures and semi-commercial and communal village farms had 12/22 and 11/22 respectively with high thresholds. Most measures-imposed thresholds were retained because of significant importance to welfare of animals and preventiveness of the traits, while leniency was given to adjust good feeding and mortality measures to signify periods of drought. Handling measures (fearful, falling/lying) and abrasions thresholds were adjusted to reflect the temporary stress caused by infrequent cattle handling, and faulty yard designs/design and possible cattle breed influence on handling. Hence, the country needs prioritised investigation of underlying contributing factors and remediation to reduce the high thresholds.

In recent years, change in behaviour towards the environment has gained prominence as a policy tool to influence positive environmental value. Simultaneously, the role played by social identity in promoting pro-environmental action is gaining recognition. Within this work, the intersection between collective group identity and environmental behaviour has received very little attention. Group norms are considered a strong predictor of pro-environmental behaviour, yet the influence of social identity and collective action on environmental action has not been adequately investigated in a multi-ethnic setting. Within this context, this study examines the affective component of social identity influence on pro-environmental action. More succinctly, this study demonstrates how outgroups and in-groups’ relations and broader socio-cultural structures, values, interest, and norms impact environmental and sustainability transitions behaviours. Through interviews with participants across the four dominant social groups in South Africa, this study provides compelling evidence that country wide expressions of social identity and in-group dynamics shapes the individual behaviour regarding environmental and sustainability concerns and further strengthen the individual’s perspective for social environmental transformation. This study advances the need for a social-identity centred approach to foster pro-environmental and sustainability outcomes.

Social Economy institutions seek to provide answers to social problems, given that they naturally have a socially responsible mission. This study aims to answer the research question: how sustainable practices, namely environmental behaviour, have been adopted by Portuguese Private Social Solidarity Institutions (IPSS) with the purpose of contributing to Sustainable Development? To achieve this objective, qualitative research was carried out in 31 IPSS, which was framed within the scope of the TFA project (Theoretical framework for promotion of accountability in the social economy sector: the IPSS case). Semi-structured interviews were conducted, with a script based on the literature review, from May to July 2019, with those responsible for the management of these entities. A content analysis was conducted, using the NVivo12 Version 12.6.0 software, which enables data to be coded and categorised, reducing any researcher bias. The results indicate that most entities carry out activities of an environmental nature, related to the reuse of materials, the recycling of waste, the sale of materials for recycling, and user awareness. Several entities expressed financial limitations to the implementation of Environmental Management Systems and their accomplishment. However, the objections presented are not impossible to overcome, according to studies presented in other countries.

This research mapped significant social networks of victims of childhood sexual abuse, identifying relationships between childhood trauma and social bonds in adult life. Ten adult women, aged between 20 and 40 years, in psychiatric care for the consequences of trauma suffered in childhood participated in the research. For data collection, the map of significant social networks was used and analyzed through the structure, functions and attributes of the bonds. The network is composed of people from the Friendship, Family, Community, Work/Study and Health Teams group. The networks of friendships, family, co-workers or studies play a predominant role of emotional support, while the Health Teams also offer emotional support, but primarily provide clinical support in overcoming trauma and its consequences. The network of relationships has specific functions that maintain psychosocial integrity and help women to overcome the abuse suffered.

Social networks have become an ubiquitous aspect of adolescents' life, providing new ways to connect and communicate with peers. However, little is known about the impact of social net-works on adolescents' emotional intelligence (EI), a crucial skill for social and identity development. The aim of the present study is to explore the time spent and reasons for using social net-works and their relationship with emotional intelligence in adolescents and young adults (15-19 years). After signing informed consent, participants completed a battery of questionnaires offered via secure online form. The results showed that teenagers spend more than 3 h/day on Whatsapp, more than 2 h/day on Instagram and less on Facebook (26m per day); girls prefer to use Whatsapp and Instagram, boys opt for Facebook. Most participants use social media when bored and/or to communicate with friends. Moreover, time spent on social media has a relationship with stress management with some aspects of EI (assertiveness, self-actualization, optimism, etc.). EI and social desirability have a significant relationship, especially in the sphere of adaptability. Based on the results obtained, future perspectives and training are suggested with the aim of adapting to the constant changes in the new technological reality.

In this paper, we analyze data from the 2012 Encuesta de Integración Social y Salud (Social Integration and Health Survey) of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Spanish National Institute of Statistics) to obtain profiles created by combining disability, poverty and social exclusion. We hypothesize that the probability that people will experience social exclusion increases if they have a disability, chronic illness or limitation in conducting everyday activities, and that this probability is greater for women than for men. To conduct our analysis, we constructed a social exclusion model based on a series of social determinants that acts as a dependent variable. In this context, social exclusion is understood to go beyond the concept of financial poverty. We performed bivariate analyses, in which we calculated the Odds Ratios (OR) for certain variables considered to be predictors of social exclusion. We also performed a means comparison test and an ANOVA test to observe differences between individuals with recognized disability and those without. Finally, we conducted logistic regression analysis to determine which vulnerability profiles are most likely to experience a situation of social exclusion. We also discuss the limitations of our study, and suggest areas in, which the relationships between health, social exclusion and disability can be further investigated.

In the wake of rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and sensor technologies, a new horizon of possibilities has emerged across diverse sectors. Livestock farming, a domain often sidelined in conventional AI discussions, stands at the cusp of this transformative wave. This paper delves into the profound potential of AI and sensor innovations in reshaping animal welfare in livestock farming, with a pronounced emphasis on a human-centric paradigm. Central to our discourse is the symbiotic interplay between cutting-edge technology and human expertise. While AI and sensor mechanisms offer real-time, comprehensive, and objective insights into animal welfare, it's the farmer's intrinsic knowledge of their livestock and environment that should steer these technological strides. We champion the notion of technology as an enhancer of farmers' innate capabilities, not a substitute. Our manuscript sheds light on: Objective Animal Welfare Indicators: An exhaustive exploration of health, behavioral, and physiological metrics, underscoring AI's prowess in delivering precise, timely, and objective evaluations. Farmer-Centric Approach: A focus on the pivotal role of farmers in the adept adoption and judicious utilization of AI and sensor technologies, coupled with discussions on crafting intuitive, pragmatic, and cost-effective solutions tailored to farmers' distinct needs. Ethical and Social Implications: A discerning scrutiny of the digital metamorphosis in farming, encompassing facets like animal privacy, data safeguarding, responsible AI deployment, and potential technological access disparities. Future Pathways: Advocacy for principled technology design, unambiguous responsible use guidelines, and fair technology access, all echoing the fundamental principles of human-centric computing and analytics. In essence, our paper furnishes pioneering insights at the crossroads of farming, animal welfare, technology, and ethics. It presents a rejuvenated perspective, bridging the chasm between technological advancements and their human beneficiaries, resonating seamlessly with the ethos of the Human-Centric Intelligent Systems journal. This comprehensive analysis thus marks a significant stride in the burgeoning domain of human-centric intelligent systems, especially within the digital livestock farming landscape, fostering a harmonious coexistence of technology, animals, and humans.

Background: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is among the most common anxiety disorders worldwide with data largely emerging from the Euro-American and Pacific Rim populations. In contrast, there is a dearth of studies among the populations of Arabian Gulf countries including Oman. This study has two interrelated aims: (i) to explore the prevalence of SAD among Omani adults, and (ii) to tease out the links between sociodemographic factors and SAD in Oman. Methods: A cross-sectional study via an online survey was conducted among 1019 adult Omani nationals residing in Oman. The presence of SAD was assessed using the Arabic version of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS). Result: Nearly half the participants (45.9%, n=468) endorsed themselves as having features of SAD as defined by LSAS. In the multivariate logistic analysis, participants below 40 years of age were 1.6 times (OR=1.568, p=0.026) more likely to have SAD than those who were 40 and older. Women were 1.3 times (OR=1.348, p=0.038) more likely to endorse SAD than men. Participants who had secondary or undergraduate education were respectively 1.5 times (OR=1.45, p=0.014) and 2.5 times (OR=2.509, p<.001) to have SAD than who were postgraduates. Conclusion: The present data suggest that 45.9% of the participants reached the cut-off for case-ness in LSAS, which is high compared to reports from other populations. As online survey respondents tend to belong to similar demographics, the current results need not be representative of the Omani adult population, which calls for studies that adopt more inclusive survey methods.

Children's ability to adjust to the social rules and expectations in the educational environment is of major concern to researchers and practitioners alike. Accordingly, the main purpose of the present study was to examine predictors of children's social functioning in kindergarten with a specific focus on (a) maternal factors; and, (b) children's social cognition. Using a multi-method (self-reports and direct assessments), multi-informant (child, mother, teacher) design, we collected data from 306 kindergarten children and their mothers tapping the mother's social cognitions (general and child-related) and parenting style, and children's social cognition (social information processing) and functioning in kindergarten. We found direct associations between the mother and child's social cognitions, between the mother's authoritarian parenting style and her child's less competent social cognition and behavior, and between the child's social cognition and social functioning. Finally, as hypothesized, we found a number of interesting mediated effects. Most notably, we found that the association between the mother's social cognition (her tendency to attribute hostile intent to unknown others) and the child's social cognition (his/her tendency to generate less competent responses) is fully mediated by the mother's higher levels of authoritarian parenting style. The important theoretical and clinical implications of our findings are discussed.

The main purpose of the work is to indicate the effects of the implementation of the concept of sustainable production from the perspective of the well-being of employees. The diagnosis was made among manufacturers operating in the sector of agricultural technical means of transport (production of parts and subassemblies). Achieving the main goal required the formulation and implementation of partial goals, which the authors included: (C1) analysis of the concept of sustainable production from the perspective of employees' well-being (theoretical plane); (C2) compiling a research model in the form of an evaluation sheet being the result of a literature query and an expert study (theoretical and design layer); attention was paid to the articulation of categories relevant to the content and scope of research; (C3) verification of the research model (indication of the effects of the implementation of the concept of sustainable production (the perspective of employee well-being) by the surveyed enterprises).

Dairy calves are susceptible to a great range of welfare and health issues up to the age of weaning. The aim of the current pilot study was to evaluate incidence of the main health disorders affecting dairy calves up to one year of age. The study was carried out at the Experimental Farm of the Research and Development Institute for Bovine Balotesti, Romania, were health data was collected for two consecutive years, between November 2017 and October 2019, from a number of 176 purebred Romanian Black and White calves. Diarrhea had the highest incidence in un-weaned calves (0-3months old), of 29.55±0.34%, significantly higher (p≤0.001) compared to 3-6 months (2.16±1.24) and 6-12 months age groups (5.88±2.17), respectively. Coccidiosis incidence was on average of 39.20±0.36% in un-weaned calves, 1.44±1.01% in the 3-6 months group and of 5.04±2.01% in the 6-12 months group, significantly higher (p≤0.001) in the 0-3 months age group, compared to older calves.

This study analyzes the effect of economic growth and income distribution on health inequality using data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). A panel analysis was conducted by combining 21 years of data (from 2000 to 2020) from 38 OECD countries. Life expectancy and avoidable mortality were set as the dependent variables; gross domestic product and poverty gap were set as the independent variables; body mass index, consumption, smoking rate, healthcare personnel, number of beds in health service facilities, national medical expenses, and unemployment were set as control variables. First, economic growth and poverty gap significantly affect life expectancy and avoidable mortality. It has been confirmed that to resolve health inequality, growth during growth and distribution must be prioritized. Second, it has been confirmed that as the poverty gap increases, life expectancy increases and the avoidable mortality rate decreases. A mechanism different from the existence of a medical security system targeting the lowest class or an increase in the welfare of society worked. In conclusion, as a policy proposal to alleviate health inequality, this study suggests that policy intervention is necessary to block or alleviate the negative impact of income inequality in health care policies.

Emotions or affective states recognition in farm animals is an underexplored research domain. Despite significant advances in the animal welfare research, the animal affective computing through the development and application of devices and platforms that can not only recognize but interpret and process the emotions, are in nascent stage. By capitalizing on the immense potential of biometric sensors, the artificial intelligence enabled big data methods substantially offers advancement of animal welfare standards and meet the urgent need of caretakers to respond effectively to maintain the wellbeing of their animals. Farm animals, numbering over 70 billion worldwide, are increasingly managed in large-scale, intensive farms. With both public awareness and scientific evidence growing that farm animals experience suffering, as well as affective states such as fear, frustration and distress, there is an urgent need to develop efficient and accurate methods for monitoring their welfare. At present, there are no scientifically validated ‘benchmarks’ for quantifying transient emotional (affective) states in farm animals, and no established measures of good welfare, only indicators of poor welfare, such as injury, pain and fear. Conventional approaches to monitoring livestock welfare are time consuming, interrupt farming processes and involve subjective judgments. Biometric sensors data enabled by Artificial Intelligence are an emerging smart solution to unobtrusively monitoring livestock, but their potential for quantifying affective states and groundbreaking solutions in their application are yet to be realized. This review provides innovative methods for collecting big data on farm animal emotions, which can be used to train artificial intelligence models to classify, quantify and predict affective states in individual pigs and cows. Extending this to the group level, social network analysis can be applied to model emotional dynamics and contagion among animals. Finally, ‘digital twins’ of animals capable of simulating and predicting their affective states and be-havior in real time are a near-term possibility.

Animal welfare is not only an ethically important consideration in good animal husbandry, but can also have a significant effect on an animal’s productivity. The aim of this paper is to show that a reduction in animal welfare, in the form of increased stress, can be identified in pigs from frontal images of the animals. We train a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) using a leave-one-out design and show that it is able to discriminate between stressed and unstressed pigs with an accuracy of >90% in unseen animals. Grad-CAM is used to identify the animal regions used, and these support those used in manual assessments such as the Pig Grimace Scale. This innovative work paves the way for further work examining both positive and negative welfare states with a view to the development of an automated system that can be used in precision livestock farming to improve animal welfare.

Health and social needs exist along a dynamic continuum. Recognizing that health status is inextricably impacted by social determinants of health, community paramedicine has opportunities and a responsibility to reduce inequities. The objective of this scoping review was to investigate peer-reviewed and grey literature to explore how community paramedicine supports community needs along a health and social continuum. We conducted a scoping review of English language literature using the JBI Scoping Review methodology. We searched CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Google Scholar, and organisational websites. 30 peer-reviewed and 13 grey literature articles met inclusion criteria. The findings describe the ways community paramedicine models evolved from minimising system pressures on emergency health services to addressing health and social needs. A key recommendation across the literature was the need to meaningfully engage communities early in program development to understand how best to implement and co-design integrated service models addressing specific community needs, though there was a lack of evidence to guide this approach. There is a notable lack of evidence pertaining to optimising technologies in program design and implementation. Results highlight opportunities to determine best practices for conducting holistic community needs assessments that include equitable stakeholder engagement and enhancing education to prepare paramedics for expanded roles. Community paramedicine provides opportunities to better meet the needs of structurally marginalised communities. There is a social responsibility and opportunity to engage communities to co-design service delivery, advance paramedic education, and enhance interprofessional collaboration to better support community needs and generate upstream solutions for individuals and communities.

The present study focuses on the investigation of fatigue, social support and quality of life that characterizes social workers. Furthermore, the study aims to highlight the effect of demographic and occupational characteristics on the above factors. A total of 400 social workers with an average age of 39.05 years took part in the research. Most were women, single, residents of cities of more than 100,000, and health care workers. Participants were asked to answer online questionnaires (FAS for fatigue, MSPSS for social support and GHQ-28 for quality of life). From the analysis of the data, it was found that the level of fatigue of the social workers is at low levels. At the same time, the level of occurrence of negative symptoms is also low, with physical symptoms appearing more often than the rest. Participants receive a high level of support from their environment, and more so from the "significant other" in their life. Finally, it was found that the fatigue, social support and quality of life of social workers is affected by the age of the social workers, the total years of service, gender, marital status, place of residence, employer and position of responsibility.

The development of mobile internet technology has enabled companies to use social media for E-commerce. Some companies use personified images and languages to communicate with consumers in this context. How does personified communication affect consumer behavior in social commerce? Are consumers willing to accept this new form of communication under social commerce? To answer these questions, this paper explores consumers' willingness to take per-sonified communication in the context of social commerce. It investigates the role of cognitive needs in regulating the internal mechanism and proposes some suggestions for enterprises to improve social media communication. Specifically, this paper presents an improved model based on the TAM model. In our model, perceived interaction is introduced as a new independent variable, and cognitive need is added as a regulatory variable, which is more suitable for social commerce. We conduct a questionnaire survey on the Internet and analyze data using AMOS and SPSS. The results show that perceived usefulness and perceived interaction positively im-pact attitude, which influences consumers' willingness to purchase. Furthermore, the cognitive need as the regulatory variable significantly affects the influencing path from perceived use-fulness to attitude and purchase intention.

Customers make purchases through a multi-stage, omnichannel process, which now extends to social media. A loyalty loop can be achieved when an existing customer bypasses the initial stages –consider and evaluate– to make a direct purchase. However, to build that loyalty loop, a retailer must embrace techniques and software across social media marketing, social CRM, and omnichannel CRM. Reviewing literature from academic researchers and industry practitioners, this paper identifies emerging industry trends and discusses an illustrative case study of a UK digital retailer. The importance of social media for omnichannel retailing and building loyalty is highlighted and discussed.

We introduce a new, and quite general variational model for opinion dynamics based on pairwise interaction potentials and a range of opinion evolution protocols ranging from random interactions to global synchronous flows in the opinion state space. The model supports the concept of topic “coupling”, allowing opinions held by individuals to be changed via indirect interaction with others on different subjects. Interaction topology is governed by a graph that determines interactions. Our model, which is really a family of variational models, has, as special cases, many of the previously established models for the opinion dynamics. After introducing the model, we study the dynamics of the special case in which the potential is either a tent function or a constructed bell-like curve. We find that even in these relatively simple potential function examples there emerges interesting behavior. We also present results of preliminary numerical explorations of the behavior of the model to motivate questions that can be explored analytically

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly important for companies in recent years. On the one hand, regulatory frameworks require the disclosure of measures for sustainable management. On the other hand, for long-term corporate success, stakeholders must be strategically engaged in the dialog on sustainability aspects. Social media, and Twitter in particular, offer the potential to foster a meaningful stakeholder dialogue on CSR topics. Due to Elon Musk's acquisition in the fall of 2022, this strategic disruption provides an opportunity to systematically capture the platform's past activities and strategies to synthesize practical information that can guide Twitter usage decision making and be used for research to serve as the basis for future comparative longitudinal studies of changes in usage. We conducted a literature review including 42 papers to contribute to the body of evidence on CSR communication strategies on Twitter across industries and countries by deriving interdisciplinary suggestions for strategic CSR-related stakeholder management. Results cover relevant CSR topics, prioritized stakeholder groups for CSR communication on Twitter and successful communication strategies for companies to obtain beneficial results, such as generating social media capital. The results contribute to the strategic planning and implementation of CSR stakeholder management on Twitter and offer starting points for future studies on social media mining and CSR communication strategies.

The concept of a Social License to Operate (SLO) has become increasingly important in the sustainability literature in recent years. Having its origins in the business discourse of the mining industry with respect to limiting opposition to mining projects, the notion of a social contract above and beyond legal requirements has since become applied across a number of different industries. Despite the concepts adoption confusion exists over the practices and outcomes of SLO, and particularly the nature of engagement. Given this situation it is surprising that not more attention to the role of marketing, and social marketing in particular, in operationalizing the concept. The paper discusses the potential of social marketing to contribute to SLO. Economic, political and social relations are complex in SLO and exchange is intricate in such relational environments. A community-based social marketing orientation is proposed as a means to improve exchange relations and enhance engagement. Seven models of SLO related social marketing models are discussed with community-based social marketing and adaptive co-marketing models being regarded as the most positive for the achievement of an SLO. Potential barriers to adoption of these approaches are noted.

The role of Social Media Marketing (SMM) in marketing strategies is rapidly growing. Because the use of social media is growing, the industry of SMM will grow bigger in the coming years; the pace of this growth is faster than ever. To survive in the modern competitive world, effective use of SMM for a firm is a must; for that, every SMM channel needs to be used to its full potential. For a marketing campaign to be effective, there is a need for some metrics to measure the success of the SMM campaign. These metrics measure if the campaign is successfully implemented or not. This would help firms understand the market, gain a competitive advantage, and ultimately get a positive impact on the overall business. This study categorizes SMM strategy into 4 dimensions and associates 10 broad categories of SMM metrics to these dimensions. The proposed model of this study suggests the application of Social Media Analytics (SMA) ineffective use of metrics to measure SMM campaigns. There are so many SMA Tools available for free and time-efficient data analysis that can lead to faster and better results than manual analysis. Following this model, the importance of SMA tools in devising an effective SMM strategy is highlighted. The implication of this research is towards a better understanding of the application of SMA for any firm to have a solid SMM Strategy, especially small and medium-sized enterprises that have limited resources.

Knowledge of the motivations of managers to practice Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a critical issue for those who promote its adoption. The understanding of these reasons is complicated by the fact that there are different ways of defining this responsibility, raising the question of whether there is any relationship between reasons for adopting it and how to define it. To address this issue, a classification of these reasons was constructed and related to a classification of the different ways of defining CSR. A self-administered questionnaire was applied to a non-probability sample of Social Responsibility managers, which included indicators for both classifications. It was found that these managers present all types of motives, with proactive outweighing reactive motives and that there is a significant degree of correlation between the ways of defining CSR and the reasons for doing so. This suggests that managers present coherence in their objectives (motives) and means (practices of Social Responsibility.

In this research, we are attempting to review the relationship between users' models of using internet and bonding social capitals in Iran. The theoretical framework of the research are based on theoretical approaches of Dearnly and Feder, Velleman, Katz in the field of internet and models of using it and views of Putnam, Woolcock regarding social capital. The method used in this research is a qualitative – quantitative mixed method and the sampling method which has been used in the qualitative method is the purposive sampling method (theoretical sampling) and in the quantitative method, a combination of clustering, systematic and stratified sampling method in proportion with age and gender has been used. The statistical population of all persons who are 15 years old and more in Kerman city has been estimated to be 515114 persons in 2019 and the research sample has been estimated to be about 400 persons. Research results indicate that the rate of citizens' usage of internet in Kerman city is very low (less than 5 hours per week). Other results of the research indicate that regarding the model based on information associated with news, mostly filtered and unpermitted news sites such as VOA, BBC and other networks have been used. Research data regarding social identity is indicative of formation of identity evolutions in the contemporary society of Iran. The results of the path model test of the research indicate that news and economic information based models have about (0.11) direct and positive impact and ethnic identity has a direct and positive impact (0.189) and group identity has about (-0.131) impact and entertainment based model has about (0.130) impact on social capital. The results of variables' indirect impacts have also been expressed in the research

The present high-tech landscape has allowed institutes to undergo digital transformation in addition to the storing of exceptional bulks of information from several resources, such as mobile phones, debit cards, GPS, transactions, online logs, and e-records. With the growth of technology, big data has grown to be a huge resource for several corporations that helped in encouraging enhanced strategies and innovative enterprise prospects. This advancement has also offered the expansion of linkable data resources. One of the famous data sources is social media platforms. Ideas and different types of content are being posted by thousands of people via social networking sites. These sites have provided a modern method for operating companies efficiently. However, some studies showed that social media platforms can be a source for misinformation at which some users tend to misuse social media data. In this work, the ethical concerns and conduct in online communities has been reviewed in order to see how social media data from different platforms has been misused, and to highlight some of the ways to avoid the misuse of social media data.

Social capital creates a synergy that brings many benefits to members of a community. Thus, the main objective of this article was to examine whether social capital can improve a society's food security. If yes, how? To answer these questions, a systematic literature review was conducted using the Prisma approach. The output of this method led to finding 39 related articles. Precise studying these articles illustrated that social capital improves food security through two mechanisms of knowledge sharing and product sharing (i.e., sharing food products). It revealed that social capital through improving the food security pillars (i.e., food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, and food system stability) affects food security. In other words, the interaction among the members of the community results in sharing food products and information among community members, and this facilitates food availability and access to food. There are many shreds of evidence in the literature that sharing food and food product among the community member decreases household food security and provides the healthy nutrition to the vulnerable families and improve the food utilization pillar of food security. In addition, it is disclosed that belonging to the social networks increases the resilience of the community members and decreases the vulnerability of the community that subsequently strengthens the stability of a food system. This study contributes to the common literature on food security and social capital by providing a conceptual model based on the literature. In addition to researchers, policymakers can use the finding of this study to provide solutions to address food insecurity problems.

(1) To analyse the potential association between school social support CECSCE and school social climate CASSS and experiences of dating violence among adolescents in Europe; (2) Cross-sectional design. We recruited 1,555 participants age 13-16 from secondary schools in Spain, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Poland and UK. The analysis in this text concerns student with dating experience (n=993) (57.2% of girls and 66.5% of boys). The association of the exposure to physical and/ or sexual dating violence, control dating violence and fear was measured by calculating the prevalence ratios (PR) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI), estimated by Poisson regression models with robust variance. All the models were adjusted by country and by sociodemografic variables; (3) The results show that the average values of all types of social support are significantly lower in young people who have suffered any type of dating violence or were scared of their partner. The likelihood of suffering physical and/or sexual dating violence decreased when CECSCE increased [PR (CI95%): 0.96 (0.92; 0.99)]. In the same way, the likelihood of fear decreased when CASSS classmates increased [PR (CI95%): 0.98 (0.96; 0.99)]; (4) There is an association between school social support and school social climate and experiences of dating violence among adolescents in Europe. Our results suggest that in the prevention of dating violence, building a supportive climate at schools and building / using the support of peers and teachers should be important.

The aim of the present research to identify the differences between the social acceptance, attention, and emotional and social loneliness feeling in women suffering from Alzheimer's and normal. The sample was analyzed in this study included 39 women age 51 to 69 years with the scope of that 19 of them with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 18 people had normal cognitive function and healthy in the city of Gorgan in the winter 1395 in the study. Identification of Alzheimer's sufferers and healthy based on the diagnosis of the physician and cognitive status questionnaire (SPMSQ) and they were asked to answer the social acceptance of the scale questionnaire Marlow and Craven, affective and social adults alone feel scale (SELSA-S), Spotlight questionnaire (FAQ). The data using analysis of variance, multivariate factor test method (MANOVA) were studied. The results of this test indicate that it is totally focused attention between petty scale, the Spotlight focused on the notion of social acceptance of social interaction and social-emotional feeling lonely scale in women suffering from Alzheimer's and normal according to the analysis of the one-way variance of a significant difference in the context of manova level (P < 0.001). But in the other scale retail spotlight focused on his research, a significant difference was not observed. According to the results of the research in general can be found stating that to provide family-centered care and the implementation of the health-welfare interventions by relevant organs with different educational, supportive, emotional and consultation approaches, can be effective on health promotion of public health and the actual need in the community.

Horses’ ability to adapt to new environments and to acquire new information plays an important role in handling and training. Social learning in particular would be very adaptive for horses as it enables them to flexibly adapt to new environments. In the context of horse handling, social learning from humans has been rarely investigated but could help to facilitate management practices. We assessed the impact of human demonstration on spatial problem-solving abilities in horses using a detour task. In this task, a bucket with a food reward was placed behind a double-detour barrier and horses (n = 16) received a human demonstration or no demonstration. Horses were allocated to two test groups of 8 horses each, which experienced the two treatments in a counterbalanced order. We found that horses did not solve the detour task faster with human demonstration. However, both test groups improved rapidly over trials. Our results suggest that horses prefer to use individual rather than social information when being confronted with a spatial problem-solving task.

The social criteria of sustainable development have remained underexplored. Moreover, a large number of green building assessment tool and social sustainability documentations have been developed which, has had a direct impact on social criteria issues, but there seems to be a substantial gap in the study of social criteria in green building assessment tools. In examining the problem facing social sustainability, taking into consideration social sustainability in sustainable development reviews and green building assessment tool towards social aspects. This paper through analysis identified a centripetal conceptual framework composed of seven key components equity, education, participation & control, social cohesion, health & safety, accessibility & satisfaction, and cultural values. The interpretation of the social sustainability in green building assessment tool would impact building practitioners towards implementing social criteria in GBAT. The aim was to identify social categories as well as consider a starting point for the development of an effective social criteria assessment tool for green building.

Regular weight measurement is important in fattening geese to assess their health status. Failure to gain weight may indicate a potential illness. Standard weight gain analysis involves direct contact with the animal, which can cause stress to the animal, resulting in overall negative impacts on animal welfare. The focus of this study was to design a smart solution for monitoring weight changes in the breeding of farm animals. The proposed IoT system with a weighing device equipped with RFID technology for animal registration aimed to minimise the negative aspects associated with measuring in contact with humans. The designed system aims to incorporate modern approaches in animal husbandry and utilise the acquired data for the potential development of breeding approaches for various animal breeds. The system consisted of three main components: a data acquisition system, a weighing system with RFID, and an environmental monitoring system. In this study, the RFID system accuracy for detecting geese in the weighing system environment was assessed. The entire system evaluation yielded a sensitivity of 93.87%, specificity of 99.94%, accuracy of 99.85%, and precision of 95.09%. Regression analysis revealed a good correlation between observed feeding and RFID registrations with a determination coefficient of R2 = 0.9813.

This paper explores the ethical considerations surrounding the research on echinoderms, a group of invertebrates that has recently garnered attention in the scientific community. We emphasize the importance of responsible animal handling and the need for an ethical framework that encompasses echinoderms. The 3R's principle, advocating for the replacement of conscious living vertebrates with non-sentient material in research, is discussed as a guiding tool in current animal research practices. As invertebrates are generally classified as non-sentient animals, the Replacement dimension tends to favor them as prevalent models in experimental research. While we currently lack the means to assess the mental states of invertebrates, there is undeniable evidence of social behavior in many species, suggesting that a lack of interactions with these organisms could potentially adversely affect their well-being. In the last few years, considerable progress has been made in developing an ethical framework that takes invertebrates into account, particularly cephalopods, crustaceans, and echinoderms. In this context, we discuss the development of a broader conceptual framework of 5R’s that includes Responsibility and Respect, which may guide practices ensuring welfare in echinoderms, even in the absence of any particular normative.

This study was conducted to investigate bit use in equestrian sports, focusing on welfare and performance as bit use has been subject of debate. The multi-faceted study combines a literature review, survey, and video analyses. Research on physiological and behavioral effects of bit use, discussing concerns and benefits, was evaluated. The survey involved 250 equestrians, gathering data on experiences, opinions, and practices regarding bit usage. Results demonstrate that different bits are used during competitions and that riders prioritize factors like horse satisfaction, consistent connection, and chewing behavior when riding at home, while show use focusses on factors like control. Video analyses showed high conformity between veterinary expert and show jumper, indicating reliability and validity. Pelham and loose ring bits were most used, while 3-ring and full cheek bits were associated with the most aversive movements, particularly opening of the mouth. Other defense movements included putting ears back, tail swishing, and head tilting. The study highlighted the need for understanding bit preferences in various settings and cautioned against generalizing bit usage based solely on show observations. It also emphasized the potential for developing new designs that prioritize horse comfort and responsiveness, to enhance communication and partnership between horses and riders.

Due to the incomplete of China's current social security system, health shocks are one of the main risks faced by rural families. Using data from the 2019 China Household Finance Survey, we examined the impact of borrowing on household welfare when rural households face health shocks. We found that household income and food expenditure both declined significantly when rural households faced health shocks; rural household borrowing was mainly used for the treatment of the diseases, and it had a crowding out effect on tourism and general health care expenditures, but not on education expenditures. We also found that the impact of borrowing on the western region was higher than that on the central and eastern regions from Looking at the impact of borrowing in different regions. Finally, we put forward some suggestions for promoting sustainable rural development from the perspective of medical security, such as accelerating the promotion of new rural medical insurance, helping rural low-income families improve health benefits, establishing diversified financing channels, improving rural financial platforms, and solving the financing difficulties of households to improve the ability of rural households to resist health shocks.

The demand for animal products is expected to continue to rise, which requires the development of efficient livestock farming systems. Environmental, societal and economic concerns regarding this industry are however accumulating, addressing the large resource demand, pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions and health concerns that the livestock industry is responsible for. Precision livestock farming systems allow the continuous automatic monitoring of various physiological, behavioural and phenotypic parameters of animals in order to increase productivity and animal welfare while controlling and minimizing the environmental impact. There is a high potential for digital farming to be the solution for responsibly and ethically feeding the growing and urbanizing population. However, many problems and concerns are still present in this developing industry and remain relatively unaddressed, starting with the ethical aspects in regard to the animal, including its objectification, human-animal relationships and welfare and ending with the societal implications of this digitalization. Concrete frameworks, inter-disciplinary studies and global legislation need to be put in place in order to ensure the safety and protection of the animals, farmer and society. Here, implications of digital farming for the animals, farmers, society and the planet are critically reviewed with the future outlook of digital farms.

Social media platforms have been entirely an undeniable part of the lifestyle for the past decade. Analyzing the information being shared is a crucial step to understanding human behavior. Social media analysis aims to guarantee a better experience for the user and risen user satisfaction. For deriving any further conclusion, first, it is necessary to know how to compare users. In this paper, a hybrid model has been proposed to measure Twitter profiles’ similarity and quantifies the likeness degree of profiles by calculating features considering users’ behavioral habits. For this, first, the timeline of each profile has been extracted using the official TwitterAPI. Then, in parallel, three aspects of a profile are deliberated. Behavioral ratios are time-series-related information showing the consistency and habits of the user. Dynamic time warping has been utilized to compare the behavioral ratios of two profiles. Next, the audience network is extracted for each user, and for estimating the similarity of two sets, Jaccard similarity is used. Finally, for the Content similarity measurement, the tweets are preprocessed respecting the feature extraction method; TF-IDF and DistilBERT for feature extraction are employed and then compared using the cosine similarity method. Results have shown that TF-IDF has slightly better performance; therefore, the more straightforward solution is selected for the model. Similarity level of different profiles. As in the case study, a Random Forest classification model was trained on almost 20000 users revealed a 97.24% accuracy. This comparison enables us to find duplicate profiles with nearly the same behavior and content.

Delay-tolerant networks (DTN) is an approach to deal with scarce network connectivity found in sparse mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) which makes the problem of routing messages a challenging task. DTNs have find their usefulness in many challenging environments such as tactical networks, underwater sensor networks, wildlife monitoring, disaster recovery etc. Pocket Switched Networks (PSNs) have emerged as a new application of the delay tolerant networks where network nodes are computing devices carried by humans. Hence, the study of how humans interact in their day-to-day life, the places they visit frequently, the people they meet frequently, the social groups in which they participate on regular basis etc. can help improve routing process in PSNs. This type of routing inspired from the way humans interact with each other is referred to as social based routing and had been a recent topic of research in the field of DTNs. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the various social-based algorithms that have been designed for Delay Tolerant Networks.

This article presents the development of a Faith-Informed Advocacy Model that integrates faith-based principles and values into advocacy efforts within Christian social work. Drawing from the intersection of Christian ethics and social work principles, this model provides a framework for Christian social workers to engage in advocacy work that is grounded in their faith and guided by ethical principles. The article includes case studies that illustrate the application of the model in real-world scenarios.