In the nineteenth century, the colonial territories of California and Hawai'i underwent important cultural, economic, and ecological transformations influenced by an unlikely factor: cows. The creation of native cattle cultures, represented by the Indian vaquero and the Hawaiian paniolo, demonstrates that California Indians and native Hawaiians adapted in ways that allowed them to harvest the opportunities for wealth that these unfamiliar biological resources presented. But the imposition of new property laws limited these indigenous responses, and Pacific cattle frontiers ultimately became the driving force behind Euro-American political and commercial domination, under which native residents lost land and sovereignty and faced demographic collapse. Environmental historians have too often overlooked California and Hawai'i, despite the roles the regions played in the colonial ranching frontiers of the Pacific World. In Cattle Colonialism, John Ryan Fischer significantly enlarges the scope of the American West by examining the trans-Pacific transformations these animals wrought on local landscapes and native economies.

Why do America’s cities look the way they do? If we want to know the answer, we should start by looking at our relationship with animals. Americans once lived alongside animals. They raised them, worked them, ate them, and lived off their products. This was true not just in rural areas but also in cities, which were crowded with livestock and beasts of burden. But as urban areas grew in the nineteenth century, these relationships changed. Slaughterhouses, dairies, and hog ranches receded into suburbs and hinterlands. Milk and meat increasingly came from stores, while the family cow and pig gave way to the household pet. This great shift, Andrew Robichaud reveals, transformed people’s relationships with animals and nature and radically altered ideas about what it means to be human. As Animal City illustrates, these transformations in human and animal lives were not inevitable results of population growth but rather followed decades of social and political struggles. City officials sought to control urban animal populations and developed sweeping regulatory powers that ushered in new forms of urban life. Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals worked to enhance certain animals’ moral standing in law and culture, in turn inspiring new child welfare laws and spurring other wide-ranging reforms. The animal city is still with us today. The urban landscapes we inhabit are products of the transformations of the nineteenth century. From urban development to environmental inequality, our cities still bear the scars of the domestication of urban America.

The majority of meat, milk, and eggs consumed in the United States are produced in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO). With concentrated animal operations, in turn comes concentrated manure accumulation, which can pose a threat of contamination of air, soil, and water if improperly managed. Animal Manure: Production, Characteristics, Environmental Concerns, and Management navigates these important environmental concerns while detailing opportunities for environmentally and economically beneficial utilization.

This volume addresses in detail both livestock’s role in climate change and the impacts of climate change on livestock production and reproduction. Apart from these cardinal principles of climate change and livestock production, this volume also examines the various strategies used to mitigate livestock-related GHG emissions, and those which can reduce the impacts of climate change on livestock production and reproduction. Presenting information and case studies collected and analyzed by professionals working in diversified ecological zones, the book explores the influence of climate change on livestock production across the globe. The most significant feature of this book is that it addresses in detail the different adaptation strategies and identifies targets for different stakeholders in connection with climate change and livestock production. Further, it puts forward development plans that will allow the livestock industries to cope with current climate changes and strategies that will mitigate the effects by 2025. Lastly, it provides researchers and policymakers several researchable priorities to help develop economically viable solutions for livestock production with less GHG emissions, promoting a cleaner environment in which human beings and livestock can live in harmony without adverse effects on productivity. Given that livestock production systems are sensitive to climate change and at the same are themselves a contributor to the phenomenon, climate change has the potential to pose an increasingly formidable challenge to the development of the livestock sector. However, there is a dearth of scientific information on adapting livestock production to the changing climate; as such, well-founded reference material on sustaining livestock production systems under the changing climate scenarios in different agro-ecological zones of the world is essential. By methodically and extensively addressing all aspects of climate change and livestock production, this volume offers a valuable tool for understanding the hidden intricacies of climatic stress and its influence on livestock production.

When we think of the key figures of early American history, we think of explorers, or pilgrims, or Native Americans--not cattle, or goats, or swine. But as Virginia DeJohn Anderson reveals in this brilliantly original account of colonists in New England and the Chesapeake region, livestock played a vitally important role in the settling of the New World. Livestock, Anderson writes, were a central factor in the cultural clash between colonists and Indians as well as a driving force in the expansion west. By bringing livestock across the Atlantic, colonists believed that they provided the means to realize America's potential. It was thought that if the Native Americans learned to keep livestock as well, they would be that much closer to assimilating the colonists' culture, especially their Christian faith. But colonists failed to anticipate the problems that would arise as Indians began encountering free-ranging livestock at almost every turn, often trespassing in their cornfields. Moreover, when growing populations and an expansive style of husbandry required far more space than they had expected, colonists could see no alternative but to appropriate Indian land. This created tensions that reached the boiling point with King Philip's War and Bacon's Rebellion. And it established a pattern that would repeat time and again over the next two centuries. A stunning account that presents our history in a truly new light, Creatures of Empire restores a vital element of our past, illuminating one of the great forces of colonization and the expansion westward.

Modern Methods in Protein Nutrition and Metabolism grew out of a series of seminars (Modern Views in Nutrition) held in 1989 at Iowa State University. These seminars and this book were financed primarily through the Wise and Helen Burroughs Lectureship endowment generously established by the late Dr. Wise Burroughs and his wife Helen. This book comprises 12 chapters, and begins with a focus on amino acid analysis in food and physiological samples. Succeeding chapters go on to discuss concepts and techniques on nitrogen balance; determination of the amino acid requirements of animals; and novel methods for determining protein and amino acid digestibilities in feedstuffs. Other chapters cover measurement of protein digestion in ruminants; evaluation of protein status in humans; surgical models to measure organ amino acid metabolism in vivo; and measurement of whole-body protein content in vivo. The remaining chapters discuss estimation of protein synthesis and proteolysis in vitro; isotopic estimation of protein synthesis and proteolysis in vivo; n-glycine as a tracer to study protein metabolism in vivo; and mathematical models of protein metabolism. This book will be of interest to practitioners in the fields of human nutrition and medicine.

The sensation of flavor reflects the complex integration of aroma, taste, texture, and chemesthetic (oral and nasal irritation cues) from a food or food component. Flavor is a major determinant of food palatability—the extent to which a food is accepted or rejected—and can profoundly influence diet selection, nutrition, and health. Despite recent progress, gaps in knowledge still remain regarding how taste and flavor cues are detected at the periphery, conveyed by the brainstem to higher cortical levels, and then interpreted as a conscious sensation. Taste signals are also projected to central feeding centers where they can regulate hunger and fullness. Individual differences in sensory perceptions are also well known and can arise from genetic variation, environmental causes, or a variety of metabolic diseases, such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, and cancer. Genetic taste/smell variation could predispose individuals to these same diseases. Recent findings have opened new avenues of inquiry, suggesting that fatty acids and carbohydrates may provide nutrient-specific signals informing the gut and brain of the nature of the ingested nutrients. This Special Issue, Taste, Nutrition, and Health, presents original research communications and comprehensive reviews on topics of broad interest to researchers and educators in sensory science, nutrition, physiology, public health, and health care.

This New York Times bestseller recounts the true story of the touching gift bestowed on the US by the Maasai people in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In June of 2002, a mere nine months since the September 11 attacks, a very unusual ceremony begins in a far-flung village in western Kenya. An American diplomat is surrounded by hundreds of Maasai people. A gift is about to be bestowed upon the American men, women, and children, and he is there to accept it. The gift is as unexpected as it is extraordinary. Hearts are raw as these legendary Maasai warriors offer their gift to a grieving people half a world away. Word of the gift will travel newswires around the globe, and for the heartsick American nation, the gift of fourteen cows emerges from the choking dust and darkness as a soft light of hope―and friendship. With stunning paintings from Thomas Gonzalez, master storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy (in collaboration with Naiyomah) hits all the right notes in this elegant story of generosity that crosses boundaries, nations, and cultures.

Air Emissions from Animal Feeding Operations: Current Knowledge, Future Needs discusses the need for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to implement a new method for estimating the amount of ammonia, nitrous oxide, methane, and other pollutants emitted from livestock and poultry farms, and for determining how these emissions are dispersed in the atmosphere. The committee calls for the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish a joint council to coordinate and oversee short - and long-term research to estimate emissions from animal feeding operations accurately and to develop mitigation strategies. Their recommendation was for the joint council to focus its efforts first on those pollutants that pose the greatest risk to the environment and public health.

This issue of Veterinary Clinics: Small Animal Practice, guest edited by Drs. Christopher A. Adin and Kelly D. Farnsworth, will cover Effective Communication in Veterinary Medicine. This is one of six issues each year. This issue will provide insights on the most critical and contemporary issues facing veterinary practitioners—from compassion fatigue to the use of social media. The material can be applied by veterinarians both inside and outside the workplace. Articles in this issue include, but are not limited to: Generational Difference in the Team, Intercultural Communication with Clients, Valuing Diversity in the Team, Compassion Fatigue, Suicide Warning Signs and What to Do, Performance Evaluation for Underperforming Employees, Leading and Influencing Culture Change, Veterinary Clinical Ethics and Patient Care Dilemmas, The Mentor-Mentee Relationship, and Communicating Patient Quality and Safety in Your Hospital.