Grouping Districts/Cities in Kalimantan Island Based on The People's Welfare Indicators Using Fuzzy C-Means and Subtractive Fuzzy C-Means Methods

Cluster analysis has the aim of grouping several objects of observation based on the data found in the information to describe the objects and their relationships. The grouping method used in this research is the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) and Subtractive Fuzzy C-Means (SFCM) methods. The two grouping methods were applied to the people's welfare indicator data in 42 regencies/cities on the island of Kalimantan. The purpose of this study was to obtain the results of grouping districts/cities on the island of Kalimantan based on indicators of people's welfare and to obtain the results of a comparison of the FCM and SFCM methods. Based on the results of the analysis, the FCM and SFCM methods yield the same conclusions, so that in this study the FCM and SFCM methods are both good to use in classifying districts/cities on the island of Kalimantan based on people's welfare indicators and produce an optimal cluster of two clusters, namely the first cluster consisting of 10 Regencies/Cities on the island of Kalimantan, while the second cluster consists of 32 districts/cities on the island of Borneo.

Tingkat Kesejahtaraan Masyarakat Desa Sari Tani Sebagai Desa Penyangga Kawasan Suaka Margasatwa Nantu-Boliyohuto

It is essential to involve communities in the surrounding areas or buffer zones towards effective and efficient forest area management in the management of forest conservation areas. As one of the supporting villages in the Nantu-Boliyohuto Wildlife Sanctuary area, Sari Tani Village is located in the Wonosari sub-district, Boalemo Regency, which needs to be a part of a collaboration or partner in sustainable forest management. Therefore, the community's welfare in the buffer village should be a common concern as a manifestation of the vision of sustainable forest management. Accordingly, this research seeks to measure the welfare level of the community in the village. The data were generated from interviews and observations on 85 families as research samples. Those were further analyzed using descriptive, qualitative, and quantitative methods, referring to eight welfare indicator criteria based on the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS 2016) with weighting or scoring. The results indicated that the score of the welfare indicator assessment was 13. It means that the welfare level of the Sari Tani village community was in the low category number interval. Thus, it is suggested to develop the village area as the smallest government administration area and as a buffer village for the Nantu-Boliyohuto wildlife sanctuary area using an approach to indicators that affect the level of welfare, viz. education, employment, levels and patterns of consumption, and poverty.

Assessment of Yemen’s macroeconomy performance during 2001-2015 using Kaldor’s magic square

Assessing a certain country’s macro-economy performance faces innumerable challenges, of which the most important ones are running counter to the objectives of economic policy. Added to these challenges is the absence of a consensus among economists regarding the identification of variables, which can be taken for granted while assessing a country’s macro-economy performance? The present study aims at assessing Yemen’s macro-economy performance during the period 2001-2015 using the four economic variables (economic growth, unemployment, inflation, and current account) that constitute Kaldor’s Magic Square chart of 1971. To avoid challenges connected with variables’ measurement, the economic welfare indicator has been used. The findings show a drastic deterioration in the level of economic welfare during the period mentioned above, with an impressive decrease in the value of economic welfare from 0.36 in 2001 to zero in 2015 as the magic square scale showed. Assessing the economic performance during the period showed that the economic performance in 2001 was better than that of 2015, with a departure of Yemen’s economic performance from the performance of the wonderland economy. Hence, Yemen’s economy can be described as an ill-performance economy, basically due to the high averages of unemployment and inflation.

Walking on Tiptoes: Digital Pads Deserve Increased Attention When Scoring Footpad Dermatitis as an Animal Welfare Indicator in Turkeys

Animal welfare is one of the most challenging issues in modern farm animal husbandry. Animal welfare indicators can be used to monitor welfare on farms or at slaughterhouses, with footpad dermatitis (FPD) being one of the most important indicators used in turkeys. Up to now, the severity of FPD has been measured by evaluating the size of altered lesions on the metatarsal pad of birds. However, such lesions are not only found on the metatarsal pads, but alterations can also occur on the digital pads of the animals, the latter is not included in the European standard scoring systems for turkeys so far. The aim of the present study was to give a detailed outline of alterations on the digital pads of turkeys and associate their occurrence to a standardly used five-point scoring system, which is based on alterations of the metatarsal pad only. Therefore, pictures of 500 feet of turkeys from 16 flocks at the end of the fattening phase were taken, using an automatic camera system. Based on these pictures, alterations on the digits were scored according to different parameters (lesions, swellings, and number of affected digits). Furthermore, detailed measurements were conducted using an imaging software. Results were compared with a standardly used five-point scoring system (standard FPD scoring system), based on the metatarsal pad as reference. Results provide no equivalence in occurrence and severity of alterations on the metatarsal pads compared to those found on the digits. Pathologic alterations on the digits were already present at standard FPD scoring level 0; no differentiation became obvious between the higher scoring levels 2–4. Strong correlations were found when comparing percentage of alterations of the standard FPD scoring system to those of a system including alterations on the digits and the metatarsal pad, using the total foot as a reference (rp = 0.9, p < 0.001). This was the first study conducting a detailed analysis of alterations on the digits of turkeys. In conclusion, results of this study show that including the evaluation of alterations on digits could refine the present FPD scoring system, especially when using FPD as an animal welfare indicator.

Welfare assessment of Icelandic competition horses.

Veterinary examination of Icelandic competition horses, according to a specially designed protocol 'fit for competition', is performed prior to every entrance to the track during Landsmót, the National Championships of the Icelandic horse. This has provided valuable data for welfare assessment that have been used for improvement of general rules for the benefit of competition horses. It further prevents suffering on an individual level as horses expressing pain during the examination are found not to be fit for competition and are not allowed to start or continue competition during the event. The frequency of bit-related lesions can be regarded as a welfare indicator for Icelandic competition horses, reflecting the pressure placed on the mouth of the horse.

Play in Elephants: Wellbeing, Welfare or Distraction?

We explore elephant play behaviour since (a) play has been proposed to represent a potential welfare indicator; and (b) play has been associated with long-term survival in the wild. We categorised play into four types, and investigate both social (gentle, escalated-contact) and non-social (lone-locomotor, exploratory-object) play from observations made on wild (Asian N = 101; African N = 130) and captive (Asian N = 8; African N = 7) elephant calves ranging in age from birth to five years. Social play was the most frequent type of play among immature elephants, accounting for an average of 3%–9% of active time. Non-social play accounted for an additional 1%–11% of time. The most time spent in play was seen in captive Asian calves, particularly at the ages of 1–6 months, while wild African calves spent the least time in play overall, even though they had the greatest number and most diverse range of play partners available. We assessed calf energetics using time spent suckling, resting, moving and independent feeding. Time spent playing was unrelated to time spent suckling but negatively associated with time spent independently feeding. There were no associations with time spent moving or resting. Maternal energy via lactation was unrelated to play early in life, but energy acquired independently may constrain or enable play. Play, while a potential indicator of compromised welfare for many species when absent, can act as a highly stimulating activity for captive elephants in the absence of other forms of arousal.