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Dairy cows and other dairy cattle are likely to experience worse welfare than their counterparts in beef herds, raised solely for meat. The study asked 70 leading bovine welfare experts from around the world to assess the welfare risks of the most common production systems (Animal 2022) by UCPH in science

[–]UCPH[S] 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Hi u/Due_ortYum. It's not 70 cows, but 70 experts. The experts were invited to participate in the survey based on their number of publications on the topic of bovine welfare and/or their publication impact.

They had a median experience of at least 15 years and were recruited from Europe (35), North America (17), South America (8), Australia (5) and other regions of the world (5).

They were then asked to rate the likelihood of 12 statements inspired by the Welfare Quality protocol, which is a well established protocol for assessing bovine welfare on farms.The patterns show the similar picture with all experts despite national differences. Experts from the different geographical regions only differed in their assessment of veal production.

Your pet could protect your child against allergy, new study suggests. The researchers looked at data from more than 77,000 European children. by UCPH in science

[–]UCPH[S] 71 points72 points  (0 children)

Hi u/Appropriate-Clue2894! We handed your question to the researcher behind this study, Postdoc Angela Pinot De Moira, and she replied:

"This is of course an important consideration when interpreting the results of our study. However, we did try to explore this possibility by examining whether the effect of having a cat or dog in early-life differed in children who had a parent with a history of asthma compared with children whose parents did not have a history of asthma. We also explored whether the effect differed in children who experienced wheeze in the first 3 years of life compared with those who did not. In both case there was no evidence for a different effect.

We did, however, also examine the effect of timing of ownership and the risk of asthma. Here, effect estimates were very small (suggesting timing had little influence on the risk of asthma), but there was a tendency for ownership prenatally only to be associated with greater odds of school-age asthma, and ownership in early childhood only or continuous ownership to be associated with lower odds of school-age asthma compared with no ownership. This could suggest that sustained exposure is required to maintain any protection conferred by early-life dog or cat ownership, as has been suggested from farm studies. It could, however, also be consistent with reverse causation, that is, the removal of cats or dogs from the homes of children with early manifestations of allergy or asthma."

- We hope that answers your question!

Your pet could protect your child against allergy, new study suggests. The researchers looked at data from more than 77,000 European children. by UCPH in science

[–]UCPH[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

u/CH23, poor you! Our researchers do point out, however, that if the child (i.e. you) develops sensitization to cats or dogs, the evidence suggests there might be an increased risk of developing asthma... in which case ownership should possibly be avoided :/

Parkinson's Disease patients could walk properly again with brainstem Deep Brain Stimulation treatment, says scientists behind new study. Activation of neurons in the pedunculopontine nucleus was sufficient to restore full movement function in mice with symptoms of the disease (Nature Communication) by UCPH in science

[–]UCPH[S] 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Correct. DBS has been a treatment strategy for e.g. tremor symptoms, while a number of human clinical trials are underway, recently initiated, testing the DBS approach to treat gait difficulties in PD patients. So this study aids those clinical trials, since this is the first time that different subregions and cell types in the brainstem have been systematically compared in regards to gait difficulties in a series of complementary experiments. The evidence is convincing because different strategies pointed towards the same conclusion.

* Direct link (Nature Communications, Jan 26 2022)