Assessing the welfare of non-human sentient animals is a multifaceted scientific endeavour. A human psychology approach that holds promise for application to animals is affect balance, based on the idea that how one feels most of the time is determined by the balance between the separate dimensions of positive and negative affect. Affect balance has been shown to have profound relationships with mental and physical health and well-being in humans. The aim of this conceptual article is to evaluate whether the affect balance methodology might offer a useful integrative measure of the affective/hedonic component of animal welfare and to outline key considerations for its potential application. Due to the variation in human affect balance methods, any attempt to translate them to other species requires first extracting their main underlying principles. We extracted four underlying principles, the first three relating to estimating the frequencies of positive and negative affect over time, and the fourth relating to the integration of positive and negative affect into an affect balance score or category. We then discuss how the theory behind the affect balance methodology can be translated to other species, and the theoretical and practical considerations in the development and validation of potential assessment methods. Altogether, we think that this approach holds great potential for animal welfare science and we encourage empirical studies into this topic.

PURPOSE:Within one week of the Food and Drug Administration granting the COVID-19 vaccine Emergency Use Authorization, the HERO-Together study launched. We describe how the study utilized novel methods for streamlined enrollment and longitudinal data collection to efficiently monitor early and long-term safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. METHODS:HERO-Together is a fully remote, prospective observational cohort study, conducted through an online portal. Participants were recruited from an existing online community of healthcare workers that expanded to family and community members as vaccine eligibility expanded, as well as through marketing and point-of-vaccination efforts. Individuals received notifications to submit data at scheduled intervals for two years, and automated reminders prompted participants with missed check-ins, with centralized call center outreach for non-responders. RESULTS:Multiple recruitment approaches were adopted, including direct outreach, national and local media campaigns, downloadable enrollment toolkits (e.g., social media), social media influencer partnerships, and pharmacy referrals. A study population of n = 19, 858 was enrolled within nine months of emergency use authorization, most self-reporting as white, female, working in healthcare, and all for whom variable survey completion was observed. CONCLUSION:Collectively, diverse recruitment strategies, data collection through the online portal, and electronic consent enabled rapid, decentralized enrollment of study participants in order to remotely monitor COVID-19 vaccine safety during the early days of the pandemic. TRIAL REGISTRATION:EUPAS38671.

Indicators of dairy cow welfare are important for the future assessment and improvement of cow welfare on-farm. The objective of this study was to investigate three categories of non-invasive physiological parameters as potential indicators of welfare in dairy cows, namely cumulation of cortisol in the hair, variability in heart rate (HRV), and variability and composition of milk yield, while taking personality traits into account. These indicators were assessed when cows (all primiparous; n = 48) were housed under reference conditions and when exposed to either improving or worsening housing conditions (weekly changes over the course of six weeks). The worsening housing led to an increase in heart rate and a decrease in milk yield. The housing effects on HRV and other milk-derived indicators, however, were affected by the personality traits of activity, fearfulness and sociability. Less active cows, less fearful cows and less social cows all displayed increases in HRV in the improving housing, but more active cows showed against expectations increased HRV in the worsening housing. More fearful cows showed increases in daily milk fluctuations in the worsening housing. These results point to HRV and milk-derived indicators, the latter of which are often routinely collected and that in addition to being non-invasive are also non-intrusive, as providing interesting physiological indicators of dairy cow welfare which will warrant further research.

The concept of animal welfare is evolving due to progress in our scientific understanding of animal biology and changing societal expectations. Animal welfare science has been primarily concerned with minimizing suffering, but there is growing interest in also promoting positive experiences, grouped under the term positive animal welfare (PAW). However, there are discrepancies in the use of the term PAW. An interdisciplinary group arrived at a consensus that ‘PAW can be defined as the animal flourishing through the experience of predominantly positive mental states and the development of competence and resilience. PAW goes beyond ensuring good physical health and the prevention and alleviation of suffering. It encompasses animals experiencing positive mental states resulting from rewarding experiences, including having choices and opportunities to actively pursue goals and achieve desired outcomes’. The definition also considers individual and species-specific differences. It provides a framework for researchers to investigate PAW and thereby generate innovative, informative and reproducible science. Studies of PAW can contribute to a richer picture of an animal’s life and may elucidate the biological foundations of happiness. The definition creates opportunities to inspire scientific progress in animal biology and to align animal care practices, legislation and markets with societal expectations.

Young calves are susceptible to disease. Studies indicate that calf activity often changes prior to a clinical diagnosis. Accelerometers can monitor activity continuously, offering an opportunity for early detection of disease in individual reared calves, based on deviation from their 'normal' activity patterns. This requires the prior understanding of these 'normal' activity patterns in healthy calves. This study aimed at describing the group activity patterns of healthy group-housed calves. Holstein and crossbred calves (n = 231; 17 +/- 4 d of age at arrival) were housed in six large pens (N = 38 +/- 2 calves per pen). Calves had milk replacer via automated milk feeders twice or three times daily and ad libitum access to solid feed. High frequency activity data were continuously recorded from 6 to 28 weeks of age using leg accelerometers. Clinical examination was performed twice per week between 8 and 25 weeks of age, whereby any symptom of disease was scored based on the severity, and summed to reach a total 'health score'. Activity data from sick calf days between two healthy days were extrapolated to surrounding 'none-health monitoring' days between the corresponding two healthy days. Generalized additive models with a Gaussian response were used to estimate daily group patterns of 'being active' and 'being inactive' per week, corrected for trends over time/age. Four features were extracted from the data and used in the model based on weekly averages: number of peaks, time (of the day) at which peaks occurred, the height (i.e. absolute value) of each peak, and the proportion of the night activity. The results showed that normal activity patterns can be described using the above features. The number of peaks in activity in a day went from 4 to 3 over the fattening period, with most peaks corresponding to availability times of new milk replacer. A peak in activity was consistently observed prior to darkness. Night-time activity was consistently around 20 % between 8 and 20 weeks of age and gradually increased to 27 % between 21 and 25 weeks of age. A leave-one-out analysis showed a medium accuracy (0.646) of using the fitted model to predict activity patterns of individual calves, indicating that most calves deviate in some way from this average pattern. The next steps are to identify which factors (e.g. personality, weight) lead to individual differences between calves in terms of activity and to develop valid models to detect deviations indicative of health issues in calves.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted home healthcare (HHC) as a crucial part of the healthcare industry that faced challenges related to staffing, exposure, and limited access to personal protective equipment. It was unknown how these challenges impacted the well-being of these workers. This analysis summarizes data from the Healthcare Worker Exposure Response and Outcomes (HERO) study participants who reported employment as home healthcare workers (HHCWs): describing their personal health and other self-reported items from May 2020 through December 2021. HERO, an online research registry, was developed to understand the experience of healthcare workers and their communities during the pandemic. Descriptive data analysis included demographics, vaccination status, exposure, hours worked, and medical history. We analyzed the level of reported burnout and depression, and overall physical and mental health wellbeing in three 6-month time frames (May-December 2020; January-June 2021; July-December 2021). About 1139 HHCWs enrolled in the HERO registry as of January 2022. Participants were 91.2% female, with a mean age of 41.8 years (SD = 11.6). More than half of the sample identified as White (58.8%). From May 2020 through December 2021, HHCWs reported an upward trend in the level of burnout; a significant decrease in mental health scores; and a significant change in the percentage reporting depression. Over 25% of open responses indicated HHCWs have concerns about stress, mental health, burnout, and personal protective equipment use. Between May 2020 and December 2021, HHCWs reported increasing levels of burnout, depression, and declining mental health status. Strategies are needed to continually assess level and causes of stress among HHCW in order to mitigate incidence of burnout and depression.

Modern sensor technologies and algorithms have the potential to continuously monitor indicators of individual animal welfare, but in growing-finishing pigs the validity of such welfare monitoring remains low for unclear reasons. This study explored how sudden deviations in individual pig feeding behaviour, detected as alerts by a dynamic linear model with Kalman filter, relate to the onset of welfare issues. Alerts frequencies varied across feeding behaviour components, with higher occurrences for feed intake, feeding duration, feeding rate and night intake (approximately 14.5

When calves are reared by cows, separation can be stressful, and it is often advised to use gradual weaning to minimize this stress. In foster cow systems, one gradual weaning method is to remove the foster cows, one by one, from the cow-calf group. The response to one-by-one removal of foster cows of 32 calves housed in 5 groups was studied. Calves were fostered to a designated foster cow individually, in pairs, or in trios, at the age of 1 to 2 weeks and then housed in groups of 4 to 6 foster cows and 6 to 11 calves until gradual weaning started at 3 mo of age. Calf behavior and aggression received by calves from cows were recorded using video during 18 h before any foster cow was removed, as well as 18 h before and 18 h after the designated foster cow was removed from the group. Before any foster cow was removed, the calves spent a similar amount of time sucking the designated foster cow and other cows (in total 43 ± 5 min/18 h). The total duration of sucking was similar before and after the designated foster was removed, as the duration of sucking other cows increased. The number of aggressive events received from other cows also increased. The results indicate that milk availability for the group of calves decreases as foster cows are gradually removed and that the older and heavier calves increasingly compete with the younger and lighter calves for the available milk. This weaning method may also compromise the welfare of the foster cows which are left to wean off an increasing number of calves, and this warrants further research.

Participant representation, including the Good Participatory Practice guidelines, in the design and execution of clinical research can profoundly affect research structure and process. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, an online registry called the Healthcare Worker Exposure Response and Outcomes (HERO) Registry, was launched to capture the experiences of healthcare workers (HCWs) on the pandemic frontlines. It evolved into a program that distributed COVID-19-related information and connected participants with COVID-19-related research opportunities. Furthermore, a subcommittee of HCWs was created to inform the COVID-19-related clinical research, engagement, and communication efforts. This paper, coauthored by the HERO HCW subcommittee, describes how it was formed, the impact of community participation on the HERO Registry and Research Program, reflections on lessons learned, and implications for future research. Engagement of the HCW Subcommittee resulted in representing their lived experience and ensured that their perspectives as HCWs were incorporated into the HERO Research. The strategies not only supported recruitment and retention efforts but also influenced the HERO research team in framing research questions and data collection pertinent to the participant community. This experience demonstrated the importance of having participants' input as expert advisors to an investigative team in their research efforts during a global health emergency.

A large variation in feeding patterns between pigs and over time hampers the use of data from electronic feeding stations in the continuous monitoring of growing-finishing pig welfare. Individual feeding strategies (i.e. differences between pigs that are consistent within a pig across time) likely explain part of this variation, both at the daily level - based on feeding components intake, frequency and rate - and at the diurnal level - based on feeding components circadian rhythms and night feeding. It is, however, not known exactly which feeding strategies pigs display, nor which types of pigs display which strategies. This study aimed 1) to test which (combinations of) feeding components contribute to independent feeding strategies; and 2) to see whether pigs with different feeding strategies also differ in other physical and behavioural characteristics. To identify feeding strategies, we calculated the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) for each day-level feeding component, which reflects the proportion of variation explained by an individual pig effect (n=98 pigs). Subsequently, high ICC day-level components were correlated to diurnal-level components known to contain feeding strategies, to assess possible overlap. Pigs with different strategies were then characterised based on physical (n=52) and behavioural (home pen and play tests, n=22-27) variables at different ages, using (generalised) linear mixed models. Four dimensions of individual feeding strategies emerged: nibbling/meal eating, fast/slow eating, day/day-night eating and consistent/inconsistent eating from day to day, sustaining after correction for pig sex or body weight. All dimensions except day/day-night eating partially overlapped at the beginning of the growing-finishing phase, but became more distinct over time. Pigs with different feeding strategies also differed in their general activity, diurnal activity and possibly dominance rank. Feeding strategies did not relate to behaviours possibly indicative of more positive or negative emotional states of pigs. Our results demonstrate that pigs showed individual differences in their feeding behaviour that are consistent across time, along continua in four distinct dimensions. These differences went beyond differences in body weight and sex, and were related to other behavioural characteristics of pigs. The presence of feeding strategies suggests that the use of pig feeding behaviour data should be corrected for individual differences between pigs.

Internationally, consumer dissatisfaction with cow-calf separation at birth has led to increased interest in alternative calf-rearing methods, specifically cow-calf contact (CCC) systems. The objectives of this preliminary study were to estimate whether CCC could be incorporated into an Irish spring-calving, pasturebased system, and to investigate the effects on cow milk production and health. Three systems were compared: the conventional Irish system (CONV;18 cows), cow and calf were separated < 1 h postbirth, cows were pasture-based and milked twice-a-day; a full-time access system (FT;14 cows), cow and calf were allowed constant, unrestricted access, were pasture-based, and cows were milked twice-a-day; and a part-time access system (PT;18 cows), cow and calf had unrestricted access when indoors at night, cows grazed outdoors by day while calves remained indoors, and cows were milked once-a-day in the morning. Cows were blocked and balanced across the three systems by previous lactation machine milk yield (MMY), BW, and body condition score (BCS). Following an 8-week CCC period, all calves were weaned (FT and PT underwent a 7-d gradual weaning and separation process) and all cows were milked twicea-day. Cow MMY was recorded daily and milk composition was recorded weekly; milk data were analysed from weeks 1 to 8 (CCC period), weeks 9 to 35 (post-CCC period), and weeks 1 to 35 (cumulative lactation). Cow BW and BCS were taken weekly for weeks 1-12, and at the end of the lactation. During the CCC period, all systems differed ( P < 0.001) in MMY (mean +/- SEM; 24.0, 13.6, and 10.3 +/- 0.50 kg/d for CONV, FT, and PT cows, respectively). After the CCC period, CONV MMY (20.2 +/- 0.48 kg/d) remained higher ( P < 0.001) than the FT (16.6 kg/d) and PT cows (15.7 kg/d). The FT and PT cows yielded 24 and 31% less in cumulative lactation MMY and 26 and 35% less in cumulative lactation milk solids yield, respectively, compared to CONV (5 072 +/- 97.0 kg and 450 +/- 8.7 kg). During the CCC period, somatic cell score was higher ( P = 0.030) in PT cows (5.15 +/- 0.118) compared to FT cows (4.70 +/- 0.118), while CONV (4.9 4 +/- 0.118) were inconclusive to both. The PT cows (523 +/- 4.9 and 520 +/- 6.8 kg) were heavier than the CONV (474 +/- 4.9 and 479 +/- 6.8 kg) and FT (488 +/- 4.9 and 487 +/- 6.8 kg) cows at week 4 and week 8 (both P < 0.001). The PT cows had higher BCS than CONV and FT at all observed times. This preliminary research suggests that although CCC was incorporated without impacting cow health, the two CCC systems investigated negatively affected cow production. (c) 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Animal Consortium. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

With increasing public concern for farm animal welfare, understanding their current welfare status is paramount. Animal welfare can be inferred from their behaviour, as behaviour represents the combination of internal and external cues. The aims of this study were to quantify a behavioural baseline for group-housed, pre-weaned dairy calves that were reared under conventional management conditions, and to determine how different internal (i.e. age) and external (i.e. temperature) factors affected this behaviour. Female dairy calves (n=47) were allocated to 1 of 3 pens based on birth date and reared under conventional Irish management conditions; after 3-4 d in individual pens, calves were moved into group pens where they had ad libitum access to water, concentrates, and forage (first barley straw, then hay). Milk replacer (6 L/d) was fed through an automatic milk feeder; calves were gradually weaned from day 42-84. A 24 h period/week of video recording was used for behaviour scoring for 8 consecutive weeks (scan sampling at 10-min intervals). Behaviours included posture (lying or standing) and activity (17 behaviours). Calves were scored for clinical health twice weekly and only healthy calves were used in the analysis (n=39). Behaviour proportions were analysed using generalised linear mixed models. Proportion of time spent lying decreased as calves aged (week 1 vs. 9; percentage mean +/- standard deviation; 79.8 +/- 4.04 vs. 72.1 +/- 6.52 %; P=0.004), while time spent ruminating (2.0 +/- 2.51 vs. 14.1 +/- 8.72 %; P<0.001), eating bedding (0.8 +/- 1.16 vs. 6.1 +/- 4.66 %; P<0.001), eating forage (0.9 +/- 1.20 vs. 1.8 +/- 1.81 %; P=0.007), and eating concentrates (0.5 +/- 1.15 vs. 2.2 +/- 1.72 %; P=0.018) increased with age. On days when the minimum shed temperature was <4 degrees C compared to >6 degrees C, calves spent more time lying (75.9 +/- 5.27 vs. 72.3 +/- 5.78 %; P<0.001) and less time eating concentrates (0.8 +/- 1.11 vs. 1.4 +/- 1.49 %; P=0.035), eating forage (0.8 +/- 0.91 vs. 1.5 +/- 1.57 %; P=0.005), eating bedding (2.7 +/- 2.87 vs. 4.0 +/- 4.78 %; P=0.003), and walking (1.5 +/- 1.20 vs. 2.0 +/- 1.40 %; P=0.017), independent of age. These findings provide a normal behaviour baseline for future calf behaviour studies and highlight potential areas of improvement in current, conventional calf rearing practices.

The feeding behaviour of pigs can be continuously recorded using sensors, providing promising avenues for automatic monitoring of pig performance and welfare. To utilise this potential, however, the data must be cleaned and aggregated meaningfully. A common aggregation is from visits into meals, in which visits separated by intervals shorter than a meal criterion (s or min) are merged. Methods to determine the criterion and the criteria themselves vary widely between studies, and have been applied indiscriminately or only when no pen mates visited the feeder during the interval. Aggregation choices should be biologically relevant, but there is no empirical knowledge on how pigs behave during these intervals or how the intervals are influenced by feeder competition. This study had three aims: 1) test the method that classifies intervals using a three-part probability density function (short, intermediate and long intervals); 2) determine whether feeder competition differed between interval types and application methods; and 3) describe and compare the behaviours of pigs between intervals. Visit intervals were obtained from 110 barrows in ten pens with one IVOGⓇ electronic feeding station each. A three-part probability density function was fitted to the log-transformed intervals, and its fit was assessed visually. For each pig, a short and an intermediate interval were selected for behavioural observations from camera. We found that pigs had relatively more intermediate intervals (1-28min) than cows and that the fit of the three-part function was suboptimal. Nevertheless, identified meal criteria were in similar ranges as for other species. Intermediate intervals were more often initiated by displacements than short intervals (≤1min), and there was more aggression and less pen exploration if pen mates visited the feeder during these intervals. Short intervals reflected interruptions in feeding behaviour, shown by standing (e.g. vigilance/chewing outside the feeder) and pen exploration (e.g. rooting, searching for pellets), while intermediate intervals contained non-feeding behaviours, such as social nosing, drinking and, predominantly, lying inactive. We conclude that intermediate intervals indicated completed feeding bouts, while short intervals reflected continued feeding-focused behaviours. Therefore, only visits separated by short intervals should be merged into meals. The exact criterion depends on the dataset but may, considering the suboptimal fit of the function, be more precisely determined using other methods. Whether visits should be merged indiscriminately or only when no pen mates entered the EFS during the interval depends on whether competition effects are of interest in the study.

The feeding behaviour of individual growing-finishing pigs can be continuously monitored using sensors such as electronic feeding stations (EFSs), and this could be further used to monitor pig welfare. To make accurate conclusions about individual pig welfare, however, it is important to know whether deviations in feeding behaviour in response to welfare issues are shown only on average or by each individual pig. Therefore, this study aimed 1) to quantify the individual variation in changes of feeding behaviour in response to a range of welfare issues, and 2) to explain this individual variation by quantifying the responses to welfare issues for specific subgroups of pigs. We monitored four rounds of 110 growing-finishing pigs each (3-4 months per round). We collected feeding behaviour data using IVOG® EFSs, and identified health issues and heat stress using climate sensors and twice-weekly health observations. For each pig, a generalised additive model was fitted which modelled feeding behaviour through time and estimated the effect of each welfare issue that the pig had suffered from. The range of these effect estimates was compared between pigs to study the individual variation in responses. Subsequently, pigs were repeatedly grouped using physical and feeding characteristics, and with meta subset analysis it was determined for each group whether a deviation in response to the welfare issue (i.e.their combined effect estimates) was present. We found that the range in effect estimates was very large, approaching normal distributions for most combinations of welfare issues and feeding variables. This indicates that most pigs did not show feeding behaviour deviations during the welfare issue, while those that did could show both increases and reductions. One exception was heat stress, for which almost all pigs showed reductions in their feed intake, feeding duration and feeding frequency. When looking at subgroups of pigs, it was seen that especially for lameness and tail damage pigs with certain physical characteristics or feeding strategies did consistently deviate on some feeding components during welfare issues (e.g.only relatively heavier pigs reduced their feeding frequency during lameness). In conclusion, while detection of individual pigs suffering from heat stress using feeding variables should be feasible, detection of (mild) health issues would be difficult due to pigs responding differently, if at all, to a given health issue. For some pigs with specific physical or behavioural characteristics, nevertheless, detection of some health issues, such as lameness or tail damage, may be possible.

Purpose: To understand nursing home workers' experience during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and investigate the prevalence of health-related quality of life, emotional distress, job satisfaction, and the impact of the pandemic. Method: The Healthcare Worker Exposure Response and Outcomes (HERO) Registry served as the data source for this descriptive cross-sectional analysis. Recruitment was conducted nationally. Eligible nursing home workers ( N = 1,409) enrolled in the study online, self-reported demographic and employment characteristics, and completed electronic surveys. Results: Nursing home workers reported overall good physical health, frequent depressive symptoms, burnout, and a high prevalence of feeling tired, stressed, having trouble sleeping, and feeling worried. Age and race were found to be positively associated with the impact of the pandemic. Conclusion: Findings demonstrate the difficulties and challenges nursing home workers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Future research needs to evaluate the relationships among nursing home workers' roles, mental health, depressive symptoms, and prevalence of burnout with a larger, more diverse sample. [ Research in Gerontological Nursing, 17 (3), 131–140.]

BACKGROUND:Results from the COORDINATE-Diabetes trial (Coordinating Cardiology Clinics Randomized Trial of Interventions to Improve Outcomes - Diabetes) demonstrated that a multifaceted, clinic-based intervention increased prescription of evidence-based medical therapies to participants with type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. This secondary analysis assessed whether intervention success was consistent across sex, race, and ethnicity. METHODS:COORDINATE-Diabetes, a cluster randomized trial, recruited participants from 43 US cardiology clinics (20 randomized to intervention and 23 randomized to usual care). The primary outcome was the proportion of participants prescribed all 3 groups of evidence-based therapy (high-intensity statin, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor/angiotensin receptor blocker, and sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitor or glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist) at last trial assessment (6 to 12 months). In this prespecified analysis, mixed-effects logistic regression models were used to assess the outcome by self-reported sex, race, and ethnicity in the intervention and usual care groups, with adjustment for baseline characteristics, medications, comorbidities, and site location. RESULTS:Among 1045 participants with type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, the median age was 70 years, 32% were female, 16% were Black, and 9% were Hispanic. At the last trial assessment, there was an absolute increase in the proportion of participants prescribed all 3 groups of evidence-based therapy in women (36% versus 15%), Black participants (41% versus 18%), and Hispanic participants (46% versus 18%) with the intervention compared with usual care, with consistent benefit across sex (male versus female; Pinteraction=0.44), race (Black versus White; Pinteraction=0.59), and ethnicity (Hispanic versus Non-Hispanic; Pinteraction= 0.78). CONCLUSIONS:The COORDINATE-Diabetes intervention successfully improved delivery of evidence-based care, regardless of sex, race, or ethnicity. Widespread dissemination of this intervention could improve equitable health care quality, particularly among women and minority communities who are frequently underrepresented in clinical trials. REGISTRATION:URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT03936660.