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However, reception of his theories in the West remains limited, due in part to linguistic barriers. Mukařovský proposed to understand the literary work as a complex form. He distinguished four basic functions of language: the representative, expressive, appellative and the "aesthetic" function (Mukařovský 1938).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mukařovský
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Karl Bühler had introduced the first three functions in the "Theory of Language" (Bühler 1934) and Mukařovský added the fourth. Emphasis on the aesthetic is also reflected in his fundamental essays on the question: What is art? In "Art as Semiotic Fact," Mukařovský emphasized two characteristics of the artwork: The autonomic function and the communicative function. Prior to World War II, Mukařovský, along with Jakobson, was close to members of the Czech avant-garde, interesting himself particularly in the Devětsil group and the Prague surrealist group.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mukařovský
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Dějiny české literatury (1959–1961), history of Czech literature, chief editor, three volumes Studien zur strukturalistischen Ästhetik und Poetik (1974) On Poetic Language (1976), translated by John Burbank and Peter Steiner The Word and Verbal Art: Selected Essays (1977), translated and edited by John Burbank and Peter Steiner Kapitel aus der Ästhetik (1978) Structure Sign and Function: Selected Essays (1978), translated and edited by John Burbank and Peter Steiner Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts (1970), Mark E. Suino translator
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mukařovský
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Mathematical Reviews is a journal published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) that contains brief synopses, and in some cases evaluations, of many articles in mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science. The AMS also publishes an associated online bibliographic database called MathSciNet which contains an electronic version of Mathematical Reviews and additionally contains citation information for over 3.5 million items as of 2018.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Citation_Quotient
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Mathematical Reviews was founded by Otto E. Neugebauer in 1940 as an alternative to the German journal Zentralblatt für Mathematik, which Neugebauer had also founded a decade earlier, but which under the Nazis had begun censoring reviews by and of Jewish mathematicians. The goal of the new journal was to give reviews of every mathematical research publication. As of November 2007, the Mathematical Reviews database contained information on over 2.2 million articles.
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The authors of reviews are volunteers, usually chosen by the editors because of some expertise in the area of the article. It and Zentralblatt für Mathematik are the only comprehensive resources of this type. (The Mathematics section of Referativny Zhurnal is available only in Russian and is smaller in scale and difficult to access.)
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Often reviews give detailed summaries of the contents of the paper, sometimes with critical comments by the reviewer and references to related work. However, reviewers are not encouraged to criticize the paper, because the author does not have an opportunity to respond. The author's summary may be quoted when it is not possible to give an independent review, or when the summary is deemed adequate by the reviewer or the editors.
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Only bibliographic information may be given when a work is in an unusual language, when it is a brief paper in a conference volume, or when it is outside the primary scope of the Reviews. Originally the reviews were written in several languages, but later an "English only" policy was introduced. Selected reviews (called "featured reviews") were also published as a book by the AMS, but this program has been discontinued.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Citation_Quotient
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In 1980, all the contents of Mathematical Reviews since 1940 were integrated into an electronic searchable database. Eventually the contents became part of MathSciNet, which was officially launched in 1996. MathSciNet also has extensive citation information.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Citation_Quotient
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Mathematical Reviews computes a mathematical citation quotient (MCQ) for each journal. Like the impact factor and other similar citation rates, this is a numerical statistic that measures the frequency of citations to a journal. The MCQ is calculated by counting the total number of citations into the journal that have been indexed by Mathematical Reviews over a five-year period, and dividing this total by the total number of papers published by the journal during that five-year period. For the period 2012 – 2014, the top five journals in Mathematical Reviews by MCQ were: Acta Numerica — MCQ 8.14 Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS — MCQ 5.06 Journal of the American Mathematical Society — MCQ 4.79 Annals of Mathematics — MCQ 4.60 Forum of Mathematics, Pi — MCQ 4.54The "All Journal MCQ" is computed by considering all the journals indexed by Mathematical Reviews as a single meta-journal, which makes it possible to determine if a particular journal has a higher or lower MCQ than average. The 2018 All Journal MCQ is 0.41.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Citation_Quotient
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Current Mathematical Publications was a subject index in print format that published the newest and upcoming mathematical literature, chosen and indexed by Mathematical Reviews editors. It covered the period from 1965 until 2012, when it was discontinued.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Citation_Quotient
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The New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) is a medium-sized member of the family Corvidae, native to New Caledonia. The bird is often referred to as the 'qua-qua' due to its distinctive call. It eats a wide range of food, including many types of invertebrates, eggs, nestlings, small mammals, snails, nuts and seeds.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow
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The New Caledonian crow sometimes captures grubs in nooks or crevices by poking a twig at the grub to agitate it into biting the twig, which the crow then withdraws with the grub still attached. This method of feeding indicates the New Caledonian crow is capable of tool use. They are also able to make hooks. This species is also capable of solving a number of sophisticated cognitive tests which suggest that it is particularly intelligent. As a result of these findings, the New Caledonian crow has become a model species for scientists trying to understand the impact of tool use and manufacture on the evolution of intelligence.
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The New Caledonian crow is a moderate-sized crow (40 centimetres (16 in) in length), similar in size to the house crow, but less slender-looking. The bird has an all-black appearance with a rich gloss to its feathers of purple, dark blue and some green in good light. The beak, feet and legs are all black. The beak is moderate in size but is unusual in that the tip of the lower mandible is angled upwards, making it somewhat chisel-like in profile. It has been suggested that this beak morphology evolved due to the selective pressure of needing to hold a tool straight.The vocalization is described as a soft "waa-waa" or "wak-wak", and sometimes as a hoarse "qua-qua" or "waaaark". Across New Caledonia, the bird is often referred to as a 'qua-qua' due to its distinctive call.
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The bird is endemic to the islands of New Caledonia in the Pacific, living in primary forest. It inhabits only the main island, Grande Terre, and one of the Loyalty Islands, Maré Island.
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The New Caledonian crow eats a wide range of food, including many types of insects and other invertebrates (some caught in flight with great agility, including night-flying insects which it catches at dusk), eggs and nestlings, small mammals, snails (which it drops from a height onto hard stones), and various nuts and seeds. This species is known for using plant material to create stick and leaf tools to capture prey hiding in cracks and crevices. These tools can have naturally occurring barbs, or are sometimes fashioned into hooks by the birds. The tool is inserted into the crack or crevice in the log or branch, and the prey is agitated into biting the tool.
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The crow then withdraws the tool with prey still attached, and devours the prey. Grubs caught in this way have been shown to be an integral part of the crows' diet. The New Caledonian crow appears to fill the ecological niche of the woodpeckers and the woodpecker finch of the Galapagos, since the latter and New Caledonia lack woodpeckers. The feeding method of the woodpecker finch differs in that it stabs at grubs and levers them slowly out of the log using a small twig. The nest of the New Caledonian crow is built high in a tree with usually 2–3 eggs laid from September to November.
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This species uses stick tools in the wild by finding small twigs and probing them into holes in logs to extract insects and larvae. New Caledonian crows are also able to manufacture tools by breaking twigs off bushes and trimming them to produce functional stick tools. Tool manufacture is rare in comparison to simple tool use and indicates a higher level of cognitive function. The crows can also make leaf tools by tearing rectangular strips off the edges of Pandanus spp.
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leaves. The creation of such leaf tools allows these crows to exploit naturally occurring hooks – the barbs running along the edges of these leaves can be used as hooks if the tool is held such that the barbs point towards the crows’ head. Other naturally occurring hooks are also incorporated within tools, such as the thorns that grow on vine species in New Caledonia.
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These crows create hooks by crafting both wood and ferns into hooks. This is done by trimming the junctions between two branches or fern stolons into a tick shape (i.e. one junction has a long piece of wood/stolon attached, one junction has a small piece of wood /stolon attached) and then removing material from this junction to create a functioning hook. This imposition of three-dimensional form onto a natural material resembles carving.
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This species has a particular method for crafting tools:Crows snip into the leaf edges and then tear out neat strips of vegetation with which they can probe insect-harboring crevices. These tools have been observed to come in three types: narrow strips, wide strips and multi-stepped strips—which are wide at one end and, via a manufacturing process that involves stepwise snips and tears, become narrow at the opposite end. The New Caledonian crow is the only non-primate species for which there is evidence of cumulative cultural evolution in tool manufacture.
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That is, this species appear to have invented new tools by modifying existing ones, then passing these innovations to other individuals in the cultural group. Gavin R. Hunt and colleagues at the University of Auckland studied tools the crows make out of pandanus (or screw pine) leaves. Observations of the distribution of 5,500 leaf counterparts or stencils left behind by the cutting process suggest that the narrow and the stepped tools are more advanced versions of the wide tool type.
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"The geographical distribution of each tool type on the island suggests a unique origin, rather than multiple independent inventions". This implies that the inventions, which involve a delicate change in the manufacturing process, were being passed from one individual to another.The New Caledonian crow also spontaneously makes tools from materials it does not encounter in the wild. In 2002, researcher Alex Kacelnik and colleagues at the University of Oxford observed of a couple of New Caledonian crows called Betty and Abel: Betty's toolmaking abilities came to light by accident during an experiment in which she and Abel had to choose between a hooked and a straight wire for retrieving small pieces of pig heart, their favorite food.
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When Abel made off with the hooked wire, Betty bent the straight wire into a hook and used the tool to lift a small bucket of food from a vertical pipe. This experiment was the first time the crows had been presented with wire. This observation was further investigated in a series of studies.
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Out of ten successful retrievals, Betty bent the wire into a hook nine times. Abel retrieved the food once, without bending the wire. The process would usually start with Betty trying to get the food bucket with the straight wire, but then she would make a hook from it bending it in different ways, usually by snagging one end of the wire under something, and then using the bent hook to pick up the tray.
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Clearly, Betty's creation of hooks cannot be attributed to the shaping or reinforcement of trial-and-error behavior. In 2004, Hunt observed the crows in the wild also making hooks, but the adaptation to the new material of the wire was clearly novel and appeared purposeful. Intentional tool manufacture, even if it is generalizing a prior experience to a novel context, is rare in the animal world. These crows also use tools to investigate potentially dangerous objects, such as a rubber snake or a flashing LED bike light.
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Meta-tool use is using one tool on another tool to achieve the objective of the task. It is generally considered to be a behaviour requiring more complex cognitive ability than the use of just a single tool. Studies show that New Caledonian crows are capable of meta-tool use, at a level rivalling the best performances seen in primates.One such study involved putting food in a box out of the crows' reach. The crows were given a stick that was too short to reach the food.
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However, this short stick could be used to retrieve a longer stick from another box, which could then be used to retrieve the food. This complex behaviour involved the crow realising that a tool could be used on non-food objects, and suppressing the urge to go directly for the food.
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It was solved by six of seven birds on the first attempt. This behaviour had previously only been observed in primates. In a study conducted at the Max Planck Society crows have been shown to create compound tools from 2–4 short branches that could be slotted together.
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New Caledonian crows have shown they are able to process information from mirrors, a cognitive ability possessed by only a small number of species. By using a mirror, wild-caught New Caledonian crows are able to find objects they cannot see with a direct line of sight. However, the crows were unable to recognise themselves in the mirror – other corvids have tested positive for this capability.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow
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Dr. Leslie A. Zebrowitz is a social psychologist who studies the effects of the way people look on others' attitudes towards them. Her research has shown conclusively that babyfaced and angularly faced individuals are viewed differently. Among the effects, babyfaced individuals are seen as physically weaker, more submissive and less competent and, as Zebrowitz argued in a 2005 paper in Science, this may explain why politicians with more mature faces are more likely to win elections. She is the author of Reading Faces as well as many scholarly articles.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Zebrowitz
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Zebrowitz is Professor Emerita of Social Relations at Brandeis University. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1970.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Zebrowitz
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1GOAL Education for All campaign is run by the Education Week Foundation (India). Working with football and the footballing community, 1GOAL raises public awareness and involvement in achieving education for all the 67 million children out of school worldwide. It is supported by over 200 international footballers; over 70 football clubs including Manchester United, Corinthians, Los Angeles Galaxy, Chelsea FC, FC Barcelona, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Liverpool F.C., FC Porto, Sporting Lisbon and Arsenal; and national and international footballing organisations including the Confederation of African Football, FIFPro, the Professional Footballers' Association and FIFA. It was launched by Queen Rania of Jordan in August 2009.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1GOAL_Education_for_All
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Alongside Queen Rania, it is co-chaired by FIFA President Sepp Blatter and Nobel prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.It campaigns to secure schooling for some 67 million children worldwide in accordance with the Millennium Goal Promise of education for all by 2015. There are several barriers to achieving universal primary education: lack of funds to pay for infrastructure and ongoing costs (buildings, teachers' salaries, learning materials); lack of qualified teachers; conflict and the practice of charging school fees in some developing countries. As of July 2010, "Twelve million people have signed up to support 1Goal - that makes this the biggest campaign for education in history.
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Football is helping make something very special happen," says ambassador Anthony Baffoe of Ghana.By September 2010, 18 million people had joined 1GOAL. During the UN Millennium Development Goals Review Summit, held in New York, 20–22 September 2010, Queen Rania delivered this petition directly to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. At a 1GOAL event during the same summit, the World Bank announced an increase of $750 million to education and the Australian Government announced an increase of about $5 billion, of which 70% is ringfenced for primary education. Many world leaders, footballers and celebrities have supported the initiative including Shakira, Cristiano Ronaldo, Pelé, Mick Jagger, Jessica Alba, Matt Damon, Patrick Vieira, Michael Essien, Samuel Eto'o, Aaron Mokoena, Quinton Fortune, Rio Ferdinand, Michael Ballack, Sir Bobby Charlton and Marcel Desailly.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1GOAL_Education_for_All
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The history of the domestic sheep goes back to between 11,000 and 9,000 BC, and the domestication of the wild mouflon in ancient Mesopotamia. Sheep are among the first animals to have been domesticated by humans. These sheep were primarily raised for meat, milk, and skins. Woolly sheep began to be developed around 6000 BC. They were then imported to Africa and Europe via trading.
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The exact line of descent between domestic sheep and their wild ancestors is unclear. The most common hypothesis states that Ovis aries is descended from the Asiatic (O. orientalis) species of mouflon. : 5 A few breeds of sheep, such as the Castlemilk Moorit from Scotland, were formed through crossbreeding with wild European mouflon.The urial (O. vignei) was once thought to have been a forebear of domestic sheep, as they occasionally interbreed with mouflon in the Iranian part of their range. : 6 However, the urial, argali (O. ammon), and snow sheep (O. nivicola) have a different number of chromosomes than other Ovis species, making a direct relationship implausible, and phylogenetic studies show no evidence of urial ancestry.
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Further studies comparing European and Asian breeds of sheep showed significant genetic differences between the two. Two explanations for this phenomenon have been posited. The first is that there is a currently unknown species or subspecies of wild sheep that contributed to the formation of domestic sheep.
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The second explanation is that this variation is the result of multiple waves of capture from wild mouflon, similar to the known development of other livestock.One chief difference between ancient sheep and modern breeds is the technique by which wool could be collected. Primitive sheep can be shorn, but many can have their wool plucked out by hand in a process called "rooing". Rooing helps to leave behind the coarse fibers called kemps which are still longer than the soft fleece.
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The fleece may also be collected from the field after it falls out naturally. This rooing trait survives today in unrefined breeds such as the Soay and many Shetlands.
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Indeed, the Soay, along with other Northern European breeds with short tails, naturally rooing fleece, diminutive size, and horns in both sexes, are closely related to ancient sheep. Originally, weaving and spinning wool was a handicraft practiced at home, rather than an industry. Babylonians, Sumerians, and Persians all depended on sheep; and although linen was the first fabric to be fashioned into clothing, wool was a prized product.
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The raising of flocks for their fleece was one of the earliest industries, and flocks were a medium of exchange in barter economies. Numerous biblical figures kept large flocks, and subjects of the king of Judea were taxed according to the number of rams they owned. : 7
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Sheep were among the first animals to be domesticated by humans (although the domestication of dogs may be over 20,000 years earlier); the domestication date is estimated to fall between 11,000 and 8,000 BC in Mesopotamia. : 4: 11–14: 2 They may have been domesticated independently in Mehrgarh in South Asia (in present-day Pakistan) around the 7th millennium BC. Their wild relatives have several characteristics, such as a relative lack of aggression, a manageable size, early sexual maturity, a social nature, and high reproduction rates, which made them particularly suitable for domestication. : 78–80 Today, Ovis aries is an entirely domesticated animal that is largely dependent on humans for its health and survival.
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: 167 Feral sheep do exist, but exclusively in areas devoid of large predators (usually islands) and not on the scale of feral horses, goats, pigs, or dogs, although some feral populations have remained isolated long enough to be recognized as distinct breeds. : 75 The rearing of sheep for secondary products, and the resulting breed development, began in either southwest Asia or western Europe. Initially, sheep were kept solely for meat, milk and skins.
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Archaeological evidence from statuary found at sites in Iran suggests that selection for woolly sheep may have begun around 6000 BCE,: 5: 11 and the earliest woven wool garments have been dated to two to three thousand years later. : 8 Before this, when a sheep was slaughtered for its meat, the hide would be tanned and worn as a kind of tunic. Researchers believe that the development of such clothing encouraged humans to live in areas far colder than the Fertile Crescent, where temperatures averaged 70 °F (21 °C).
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Sheep molars and bones found at Çatalhöyük suggest that populations of domestic sheep may have been established in the area. By that span of the Bronze Age, sheep with all the major features of modern breeds were widespread throughout Western Asia. : 6 The residents of the ancient settlement of Jeitun, which dates to 6000 BCE, kept sheep and goats as their primary livestock. There have also been numerous identifications of Nomadic pastoralism in archaeological sites, identified by a prevalence of sheep and goat bones, a lack of grain or grain-processing equipment, very limited architecture showing a set of characteristic traits, a location outside the region's zone of agriculture, and ethnographic analogy to modern nomadic pastoral peoples.
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There is a large but constantly declining minority of nomadic and seminomadic pastoralists in countries such as Saudi Arabia (probably less than 3%), Iran (4%), and Afghanistan (at most 10%).
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In India, there are efforts to 'grade up', or improve the quality of, the native desi sheep breed, by crossing it with Merino and other high-quality wool sheep. This is being done in an effort to produce a desi sheep that produces high-quality wool and mutton.
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Sheep are not an important part of China's agricultural economy, since the majority of China does not have the large open pastures required for sheep-rearing. Sheep farming is more common in the northwestern provinces of the country, where such tracts of land exist. China does have a native sheep breed, the zhan. The population of the breed has been in decline since 1985, despite government promotion of the breed.
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The Japanese government encouraged farmers to raise sheep throughout the 19th century. Sheep-rearing programs began to import Yorkshire, Berkshire, Spanish merino, and numerous Chinese and Mongolian sheep breeds, encouraged by government promotion of sheep farming. However, a lack of knowledge on the farmer's part of how to successfully keep sheep, and the government's failure to provide information to those importing the sheep they promoted, led to the project's failure, and in 1888 it was discontinued.
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Sheep herding has been one of the main economic activities and lifestyles of Mongolians for millennia. Mongolian sheep herding traditions and modern science are well developed. Mongolian selection and veterinary science classifies the sheep herd of the country by (i) wool fiber's length, thinness and softness, (ii) capability of surviving at various altitudes, (iii) physical appearance, tail form, size, and other criteria. The most common sheep breeds are Mongol Khalha, Gov-altai, Baidrag, Bayad, Uzenchin, Sumber and number of other breeds, all being of the fat-tailed family of breeds. A census of the entire domestic animals stock of the country is carried out annually. At the end of 2017, the census counted more than 30 million of sheep that makes up 45.5 percent of the entire herding stock.Annually before the Lunar New year the Government awards the prestigious “Best Herder” (in Mongolian “Улсын сайн малчин цол”) nomination to select herders.
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Sheep entered the African continent not long after their domestication in western Asia. A minority of historians once posited a contentious African theory of origin for Ovis aries. This theory is based primarily on rock art interpretations, and osteological evidence from Barbary sheep.
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The first sheep entered North Africa via Sinai, and were present in ancient Egyptian society between eight and seven thousand years ago. : 12 Sheep have always been part of subsistence farming in Africa, but today the only country that keeps significant numbers of commercial sheep is South Africa, with 28.8 million head. : 20 In Ethiopia, there are several varieties of sheep landrace. Attempts have been made to classify the sheep based on factors such as tail shape and wool type, and H. Epstein made an attempt at classifying them this way by dividing the breeds into 14 types based on those two factors. However, in 2002, further genetic analysis revealed that there are only four distinct varieties of Ethiopian sheep: short-fat-tailed, long-fat-tailed, fat-rumped, and thin-tailed.
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Sheep husbandry spread quickly in Europe. Excavations show that in about 6000 BCE, during the Neolithic period of prehistory, the Castelnovien people, living around Châteauneuf-les-Martigues near present-day Marseille in the south of France, were among the first in Europe to keep domestic sheep. Practically from its inception, ancient Greek civilization relied on sheep as primary livestock, and were even said to name individual animals. : 13 Scandinavian sheep of a type seen today — with short tails and multi-colored fleece — were also present early on.
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Later, the Roman Empire kept sheep on a wide scale, and the Romans were an important agent in the spread of sheep raising through much of Europe. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (Naturalis Historia), speaks at length about sheep and wool. Declaring "Many thanks, too, do we owe to the sheep, both for appeasing the gods, and for giving us the use of its fleece.
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", he goes on to detail the breeds of ancient sheep and the many colors, lengths and qualities of wool. Romans also pioneered the practice of blanketing sheep, in which a fitted coat (today usually of nylon) is placed over the sheep to improve the cleanliness and luster of its wool. : 74 During the Roman occupation of the British Isles, a large wool processing factory was established in Winchester, England in about 50 CE.
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: 11 By 1000 CE, England and Spain were recognized as the twin centers of sheep production in the Western world. : 8–9: 12 As the original breeders of the fine-wooled merino sheep that have historically dominated the wool trade, the Spanish gained great wealth. Wool money largely financed Spanish rulers and thus the voyages to the New World by conquistadors.
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: 12 The powerful Mesta (its full title was Honrado Concejo de la Mesta, the Honorable Council of the Mesta) was a corporation of sheep owners mostly drawn from Spain's wealthy merchants, Catholic clergy and nobility that controlled the merino flocks. By the 17th century, the Mesta held upwards of two million head of merino sheep.Mesta flocks followed a seasonal pattern of transhumance across Spain. In the spring, they left the winter pastures (invernaderos) in Extremadura and Andalusia to graze on their summer pastures (agostaderos) in Castile, returning again in the autumn.
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Spanish rulers eager to increase wool profits gave extensive legal rights to the Mesta, often to the detriment of local peasantry. The huge merino flocks had a lawful right of way for their migratory routes (cañadas).
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Towns and villages were obliged by law to let the flocks graze on their common land, and the Mesta had its own sheriffs that could summon offending individuals to its own tribunals. Exportation of merinos without royal permission was also a punishable offense, thus ensuring a near-absolute monopoly on the breed until the mid-18th century. After the breaking of the export ban, fine wool sheep began to be distributed worldwide.
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The export to Rambouillet by Louis XVI in 1786 formed the basis for the modern Rambouillet (or French Merino) breed. : 66 After the Napoleonic Wars and the global distribution of the once-exclusive Spanish stocks of Merinos, sheep raising in Spain reverted to hardy coarse-wooled breeds such as the Churra, and was no longer of international economic significance.The sheep industry in Spain was an instance of migratory flock management, with large homogenous flocks ranging over the entire country. The management model used in England was quite different but had a similar importance to economy of the country.
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Up until the early 20th century, owling (the smuggling of sheep or wool out of the country) was a punishable offense, and to this day the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords sits on a cushion known as the Woolsack.The high concentration and more sedentary nature of shepherding in the UK allowed sheep especially adapted to their particular purpose and region to be raised, thereby giving rise to an exceptional variety of breeds in relation to the land mass of the country. : 419 This greater variety of breeds also produced a valuable variety of products to compete with the superfine wool of Spanish sheep. By the time of Elizabeth I's rule, sheep and wool trade was the primary source of tax revenue to the Crown of England and the country was a major influence in the development and spread of sheep husbandry.
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: 9 An important event not only in the history of domestic sheep, but of all livestock, was the work of Robert Bakewell in the 18th century. Before his time, breeding for desirable traits was often based on chance, with no scientific process for selection of breeding stock. Bakewell established the principles of selective breeding—especially line breeding—in his work with sheep, horses and cattle; his work later influenced Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin. : 56 His most important contribution to sheep was the development of the Leicester Longwool, a quick-maturing breed of blocky conformation that formed the basis for many vital modern breeds. : 58 Today, the sheep industry in the UK has diminished significantly, though pedigreed rams can still fetch around 100,000 Pounds sterling at auction.
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No ovine species native to the Americas has ever been domesticated, despite being closer genetically to domestic sheep than many Asian and European species. The first domestic sheep in North America—most likely of the Churra breed—arrived with Christopher Columbus' second voyage in 1493.: 12 The next transatlantic shipment to arrive was with Hernán Cortés in 1519, landing in Mexico. No export of wool or animals is known to have occurred from these populations, but flocks did disseminate throughout what is now Mexico and the Southwest United States with Spanish colonists.
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: 12 Churras were also introduced to the Navajo tribe of Native Americans, and became a key part of their livelihood and culture. The modern presence of the Navajo-Churro breed is a result of this heritage. : 20
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The next transport of sheep to North America was not until 1607, with the voyage of the Susan Constant to Virginia. : 234 However, the sheep that arrived in that year were all slaughtered because of a famine, and a permanent flock was not to reach the colony until two years later in 1609.: 234 In two decades' time, the colonists had expanded their flock to a total of 400 head. By the 1640s there were about 100,000 head of sheep in the 13 colonies, and in 1662, a woolen mill was built in Watertown, Massachusetts. : 9: 11 Especially during the periods of political unrest and civil war in Britain spanning the 1640s and 1650s which disrupted maritime trade, the colonists found it pressing to produce wool for clothing.
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Many islands off the coast were cleared of predators and set aside for sheep: Nantucket, Long Island, Martha's Vineyard and small islands in Boston Harbor were notable examples. There remain some rare breeds of American sheep—such as the Hog Island sheep—that were the result of island flocks. Placing semi-feral sheep and goats on islands was common practice in colonization during this period.
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Early on, the British government banned further export of sheep to the Americas, or wool from it, in an attempt to stifle any threat to the wool trade in the British Isles. One of many restrictive trade measures that precipitated the American Revolution, the sheep industry in the Northeast grew despite the bans. : 10 Gradually, beginning in the 19th century, sheep production in the U.S.
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moved westward. Today, the vast majority of flocks reside on Western range lands. During this westward migration of the industry, competition between sheep (sometime called "range maggots") and cattle operations grew more heated, eventually erupting into range wars.
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Other than simple competition for grazing and water rights, cattlemen believed that the secretions of the foot glands of sheep made cattle unwilling to graze on places where sheep had stepped. : 4 As sheep production centered on the U.S. western ranges, it became associated with other parts of Western culture, such as the rodeo.
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In modern America, a minor event in rodeos is mutton busting, in which children compete to see who can stay atop a sheep the longest before falling off. Another effect of the westward movement of sheep flocks in North America was the decline of wild species such as Bighorn sheep (O. canadensis). Most diseases of domestic sheep are transmittable to wild ovines, and such diseases, along with overgrazing and habitat loss, are named as primary factors in the plummeting numbers of wild sheep.
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Sheep production peaked in North America during the 1940s and 1950s at more than 55 million head. : 14 By 2013 the number of sheep in the United States was 10 percent what it had been in the early 1940s.In the 1970s, Roy McBride, a farmer from Alpine, Texas, invented a collar filled with the poison compound 1080 to protect his livestock from coyotes, which tended to attack the throat. This device is known as the livestock protection collar and is in widespread use in Texas, as well as in South Africa.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_sheep
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In South America, especially in Patagonia, there is an active modern sheep industry. Sheep keeping was largely introduced through immigration to the continent by Spanish and British peoples, for whom sheep were a major industry during the period. South America has a large number of sheep, but the highest-producing nation (Brazil) kept only just over 15 million head in 2004, far fewer than most centers of sheep husbandry. The primary challenges to the sheep industry in South America are the phenomenal drop in wool prices in the late 20th century and the loss of habitat through logging and overgrazing.
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The most influential region internationally is that of Patagonia, which has been the first to rebound from the fall in wool prices. With few predators and almost no grazing competition (the only large native grazing mammal is the guanaco), the region is prime land for sheep raising. The most exceptional area of production is surrounding the La Plata river in the Pampas region. : 19 Sheep production in Patagonia peaked in 1952 at more than 21 million head, but has steadily fallen to fewer than ten today. Most operations focus on wool production for export from Merino and Corriedale sheep; the economic sustainability of wool flocks has fallen with the drop in prices, while the cattle industry continues to grow.
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Australia and New Zealand are crucial players in the contemporary sheep industry, and sheep are an iconic part of both countries' culture and economy. In 1980 New Zealand had the highest density of sheep per capita - sheep outnumbered the human population 12 to 1 (that number is now closer to 5 to 1), and Australia is indisputably the world's largest exporter of sheep (and cattle). In 2007, New Zealand even declared 15 February their official National Lamb Day to celebrate the country's history of sheep production.The First Fleet brought the initial population of 70 sheep from the Cape of Good Hope to Australia in 1788. The next shipment was of 30 sheep from Calcutta and Ireland in 1793.
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All of the early sheep brought to Australia were exclusively used for the dietary needs of the penal colonies. The beginnings of the Australian wool industry were due to the efforts of Captain John Macarthur. At Macarthur's urging 16 Spanish merinos were imported in 1797, effectively beginning the Australian sheep industry.
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By 1801 Macarthur had 1,000 head of sheep, and in 1803 he exported 111 kilograms (245 lb) of wool to England. Today, Macarthur is generally thought of as the father of the Australian sheep industry. The growth of the sheep industry in Australia was explosive.
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In 1820, the continent held 100,000 sheep, a decade later it had one million. By 1840, New South Wales alone kept 4 million sheep; flock numbers grew to 13 million in a decade.
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While much of the growth in both nations was due to the active support of Britain in its desire for wool, both worked independently to develop new high-production breeds: the Corriedale, Coolalee, Coopworth, Perendale, Polwarth, Booroola Merino, Peppin Merino, and Poll Merino were all created in New Zealand or Australia. : 34, 44, 64 Wool production was a fitting industry for colonies far from their home nations. Before the advent of fast air and maritime shipping, wool was one of the few viable products that was not subject to spoiling on the long passage back to British ports.
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The abundant new land and milder winter weather of the region also aided the growth of the Australian and New Zealand sheep industries.Flocks in Australia have always been largely range bands on fenced land, and are aimed at production of medium to superfine wool for clothing and other products as well as meat. New Zealand flocks are kept in a fashion similar to English ones, in fenced holdings without shepherds. Although wool was once the primary income source for New Zealand sheep owners (especially during the New Zealand wool boom), today it has shifted to meat production for export. : 17
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The Australian sheep industry is the only sector of the industry to receive international criticism for its practices. Sheep stations in Australia are cited in Animal Liberation, the seminal book of the animal rights movement, as the author's primary evidence in his argument against retaining sheep as a part of animal agriculture. The practice of mulesing, in which skin is cut away from an animal's perineal area to prevent cases of the fatal condition flystrike, has been condemned by animal rights groups such as PETA as being a "painful and unnecessary" process. In response, a program of phasing out mulesing is currently being implemented, and some mulesing operations are being carried out with the use of anaesthetic.
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The Animal Welfare Advisory Committee to the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture Code of recommendations and minimum standards for the welfare of Sheep, considers mulesing a "special technique" which is performed on some Merino sheep at a small number of farms in New Zealand.Most of the sheep meat exported from Australia is either frozen carcases to the UK or is live export to the Middle East for halal slaughter. PETA has stated that sheep exported to countries outside the jurisdiction of Australia's animal cruelty laws are treated inhumanely and that halal meat processing facilities exist in Australia, making the export of live animals redundant. Entertainer Pink has pledged to boycott all Australian sheep products in protest.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_sheep
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Martin Smith is a former Professor of Robotics at Middlesex University in north London, UK. He is also a former President of the Cybernetics Society in the UK (1999 - 2020).Smith was awarded Freedom of the City of London, and was awarded the Public Awareness of Physics Award by the Institute of Physics.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Smith_(academic)
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Smith has appeared on many television programmes: as a technical presenter on the BBC television programme Techno Games and as a judge on Robot Wars from the third series having previously competed in the first series. He was a judge and programme consultant on Channel 4's Scrapheap Challenge and technical presenter on Granada TV's Mutant Machines. He has also appeared on Tomorrow's World, Tomorrow's World Live at the NEC, and the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures series entitled The Rise of Robots.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Smith_(academic)
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Smith is a member of the editorial boards of Kybernetes: The International Journal of Cybernetics and Systems, The International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, The International Journal of Applied Systemic Studies, the International Journal of General Systems, and The International Journal of Social Robotics. He is a Director of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics.
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He has held posts as Visiting Research Professor in Robotics at the Open University, Professor at the University of Central England UK, (now Birmingham City University) and at the University of East London (UK) where he was founder and Head of the Mobile Robots Research Unit.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Smith_(academic)
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The Circle of Friends approach is a method designed to increase the socialization and inclusion of a disabled person with their peers. A Circle of Friends consists of a "focus" child, for whom the group was established, six to eight classroom peers, and an adult facilitator who meet once weekly to socialize and work on specific goals. Most available resources about the Circle of Friends approach are geared toward its use with school-aged children with various difficulties.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Friends_(disabled_care)
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Circle of Friends was originally developed in North America to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities and other difficulties in their local communities and in mainstream educational settings. In the past, it was more common for adults with disabilities to be confined to institutions, and for students with special educational needs to be educated in separate schools. The Circle of Friends approach coincides with a shift in societal attitudes toward inclusion of people with disabilities in mainstream settings. It is intended to promote healthy friendships and to create and reinforce positive social experiences.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Friends_(disabled_care)
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Although it was developed in North America, Circle of Friends has been implemented and researched extensively in the United Kingdom in a variety of settings, and with children of varying ages and difficulties. The approach is often used for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) because they have trouble developing social and communication skills. In general, children with emotional, behavioral and social problems may benefit from the approach because they are often isolated and lack peer groups. In the UK the approach was promoted as a means of avoiding exclusions as well a practical form of inclusive education by Colin Newton and Derek Wilson of Inclusive Solutions. Their training in the approach was nationally recognised and well received in numerous Eastern European countries who valued an approach to inclusion that did not need high cost resources as it relies on mobilising the ever present peer group.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Friends_(disabled_care)
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In the educational setting, general guidelines exist for establishing a Circle of Friends. Establishment of prerequisites: Before starting a Circle of Friends, it is necessary to ensure the cooperation and collaboration of school personnel (e.g. principals, teacher) and obtain consent from the focus child's parents or caregivers. Class discussion to set up the Circle of Friends: The next step is to meet with the focus child's class. The focus child consents to this meeting but does not attend so that class members feel comfortable sharing information.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Friends_(disabled_care)
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The class discussion is meant to introduce the idea of a Circle of Friends. Students are encouraged to think about the benefits of friendship and consider the barriers to friendship the focus child encounters, and also empathize and share their own experiences with friendship. The focus child's strengths and difficulties are discussed, and links between the focus child's behavior and problems with peer relationships are made.
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Making these links is an important first step in problem solving solutions. At the close of the meeting, six to eight volunteers are sought to take part in the Circle of Friends. Initial meeting of the Circle of Friends: At the initial Circle of Friends meeting, details of the class discussion are summarized for the focus child.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Friends_(disabled_care)
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Ground rules for the group are then set (i.e. confidentiality, listening, seeking adult help when needed), as well as a schedule for meetings. Weekly meetings of the Circle of Friends: At weekly meetings, classmates play an important role in helping the focus child set and reach goals. Some research suggests that all children involved in the Circle of Friends benefit from the experience and not just the focus child.Adapted versions of Circle of Friends exist. One version differs from the original approach in that the focus child is not absent for the initial class meeting. Others have described Circle of Friends meetings taking place on a daily basis.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Friends_(disabled_care)
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The Million Women Study is a study of women’s health analysing data from more than one million women aged 50 and over, led by Dame Valerie Beral and a team of researchers at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford. It is a collaborative project between Cancer Research UK and the National Health Service (NHS), with additional funding from the Medical Research Council (UK). One key focus of the study relates to the effects of hormone replacement therapy use on women's health. The study has confirmed the findings in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) that women currently using HRT are more likely to develop breast cancer than those who are not using HRT. Results from the Million Women Study, together with those of the WHI trial from the USA, have influenced national policy, including recent recommendations on the prescribing and use of hormone replacement therapy from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and from the Commission on Human Medicines.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Women_Study
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The Million Women Study is a multi-centre, population-based prospective cohort study of women aged 50 and over invited to routine breast cancer screening in the UK. Between 1996 and 2001, women were invited to join the Million Women Study when they received their invitation to attend breast screening at one of 66 participating NHS Breast Screening Centres in the UK. At these centres, women received a study questionnaire with their invitation, which they were asked to complete and return at the time of screening. Around 70% of those attending the programme returned questionnaires and agreed to take part in the study, over 1 in 4 women in the UK in the target age group. The Million Women Study is the largest study of its kind in the world.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Women_Study
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The Million Women Study was set up with the aim of recruiting 1,000,000 women in the UK into a cohort study, to provide answers to the following questions: What effects do combined estrogen and progestogen hormone replacement therapy (HRT) preparations have on breast cancer risk? Are breast cancers detected at screening in women who have used HRT or oral contraceptives different in terms of size and invasiveness from the cancers detected in women who have never used these hormones? How does HRT use affect the efficacy of breast cancer screening? How does HRT use affect mortality from breast cancer and other conditions?
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Initial analysis of the results from over 1 million women in the Million Women Study appeared to confirm preliminary findings from other studies at the turn of the century finding that women currently using progestin-estrogen HRT were more likely to develop breast cancer than those who are not using HRT. This initial analysis received extensive press coverage. The initial reading of results showed that this effect is substantially greater for combined (estrogen-progestogen) HRT than for estrogen-only HRT; and that the effects were similar for all specific types and doses of estrogen and progestogen, for oral, transdermal and implanted HRT, and for continuous and sequential patterns of use.
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Current users of estrogen-progestogen HRT were at 2 fold increased risk of developing breast cancer, and current users of estrogen-only HRT appeared to have a 1.3 fold risk. Use of HRT by women aged 50–64 in the UK in the decade from 1993-2003 was estimated to have caused 20,000 extra breast cancers. Past users were not seen as having increased risk. A reanalysis refuting the initial conclusion that HRT increased the risk of breast cancer, was published in a 2012 paper in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care. The paper's authors, led by Samuel Shapiro of the University of Cape Town, claimed that the study had not in fact establish a causal relationship between HRT and breast cancer, and that the original analysis had been flawed.
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It is well known that post-menopausal women who have not had a hysterectomy are at increased risk of cancer of the endometrium (the lining of the womb) if they take estrogen-only HRT. Follow up of over 700 000 women in the Million Women Study confirmed this and showed that the risk of endometrial cancer is also increased in women who take tibolone; but is not altered, or may even be reduced, in women taking combined estrogen-progestogen HRT. These effects depend also on a woman’s body mass index (BMI, a measure of obesity) such that adverse effects of tibolone and estrogen-only HRT are greatest in thinner women, and the beneficial effects of combined HRT are greatest in fatter women.
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Results of the study show a small increase in risk of ovarian cancer in women taking HRT. Such an increased risk had been suspected from some previous studies, and has now been confirmed with the larger numbers available in this study. The findings come from analyses on 948,576 post-menopausal women in the study, followed up for about 5 years. Women currently taking HRT were at higher risk of developing and of dying from ovarian cancer than women not using HRT.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Women_Study
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