Pastoralism in Africa

To find the origins of African pastoralism it is important archaeologists look for the wild progenitors of animals. The wild sheep of Africa (Ammotragus lervia) were never domesticated, so all domestic sheep and goats came from the Near East. There has been some debate over whether there was an independent domestication of African cattle, because wild cattle (Bos primigenius) remains have been found in the Nile Valley. Genetic evidence shows that the source of African domesticated cattle was the Levant, some 8,000 years ago. Cattle spread across the Sahara as the environment was conducive to pastoralism, being well watered at this time. This lasted until after 5000 bp when the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) retreated and the Sahara dried up to its present condition. The tsetse barrier also retreated at this time, allowing pastoralists to move south into West Africa and, via the Ethiopian highlands, to East Africa, arriving c.4500 bp, although it took another 1,000 years for them to fully adapt to the grasslands of southern Kenya and Tanzania. Domestic stock then went on to southern Africa via a tsetse-free corridor, arriving around 2000 bp. The effect of herding societies on local hunters throughout Africa appears to have been an initial rapprochement, with a later hardening of relations. In East Africa, this was probably due to the need to learn about the new environment with the help of local hunters and to adjust to new epizootic diseases. In southern Africa, the first pastoralists were primarily sheep herders during the 1st millennium bce, with few cattle bones being found from this time. Pastoralists only became fully fledged cattle herdsmen around 1000 bp when they developed the attributes of the historic Khoekhoen. A further debate existed in southern Africa over whether pastoralism there was the result of immigrant herders who arrived in the northern Kalahari and then spread to the Cape, or if local hunters took up sheep herding.

Research Progress and Challenges in Vaccine Development against Classical Swine Fever Virus

Classical swine fever (CSF), caused by CSF virus (CSFV), is one of the most devastating viral epizootic diseases of swine in many countries. To control the disease, highly efficacious and safe live attenuated vaccines have been used for decades. However, the main drawback of these conventional vaccines is the lack of differentiability of infected from vaccinated animals (DIVA concept). Advances in biotechnology and our detailed knowledge of multiple basic science disciplines have facilitated the development of effective and safer DIVA vaccines to control CSF. To date, two types of DIVA vaccines have been developed commercially, including the subunit vaccines based on CSFV envelope glycoprotein E2 and chimeric pestivirus vaccines based on infectious cDNA clones of CSFV or bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV). Although inoculation of these vaccines successfully induces solid immunity against CSFV, none of them could ideally meet all demands regarding to safety, efficacy, DIVA potential, and marketability. Due to the limitations of the available choices, researchers are still striving towards the development of more advanced DIVA vaccines against CSF. This review summarizes the present status of candidate CSFV vaccines that have been developed. The strategies and approaches revealed here may also be helpful for the development of new-generation vaccines against other diseases.

Framing Epizootic Diseases in Mass Media

This article deals with general and specific aspects of how Romanian media covered the African swine flu crisis between 2014 and 2018. The analysis was mainly based on the available ground of media framing theory. The mediatic tone of reporting the African swine flu predicament complies with the pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis stages, as identified in the literature. Concerning the Romanian media approach on the African swine flu subject, the economic consequences and the mediatic leadership frames proved to be strongly related to similar inter-human and zoonotic diseases. The Romanian coverage of epizootics' main frames indicates a detached approach to the subject with exciting variations regarding the connections between information units and the general norms of mediatic content. This research suggests a few remarkable aspects that hint at current changes in the journalistic paradigm and the need to acknowledge crisis communication's significance when dealing with epizootic diseases.

The Dominance Indices and the Probability to Involve Different Fleas Types in Epizootic Diseases on the Example of Central-Caucasian High-Mountain Natural Plague Focus

The paper attempts to use an indicator of the number of fleas of different species in the natural focus of the plague to assess the intensity of epizootics. The correlation between the number of fleas of seven species and the number of isolated strains of plague microbe is established. It is shown for small species to be more often involved in epizootics during their intensive course, which corresponded to the first period of the focus activity. In the second period characterized the tendency to decrease the share of small species in the epizootic process. The third period demonstrated a significant difference with the first two previous ones. The detection insamples of field material of infected secondary carriers of these species or random carriers was indirect evidence of intense epizootics.

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification for diagnosis of 18 World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) notifiable viral diseases of ruminants, swine and poultry

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a simple, powerful state-of-the-art gene amplification technique used for the rapid diagnosis and early detection of microbial diseases. Many LAMP assays have been developed and validated for important epizootic diseases of livestock. We review the LAMP assays that have been developed for the detection of 18 viruses deemed notifiable of ruminants, swine and poultry by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). LAMP provides a fast (the assay often takes less than an hour), low cost, highly sensitive, highly specific and less laborious alternative to detect infectious disease agents. The LAMP procedure can be completed under isothermal conditions so thermocyclers are not needed. The ease of use of the LAMP assay allows adaptability to field conditions and works well in developing countries with resource-limited laboratories. However, this technology is still underutilized in the field of veterinary diagnostics despite its huge capabilities.

Sir William Macgregor Henderson. 17 July 1913 – 29 November 2000

W. M. ‘Gregor’Henderson belonged to the great tradition of veterinary involvement in the control of epizootic diseases that was such a feature of the middle part of the twentieth century. He was one of the pioneers of research into the virology of foot–and–mouth disease and the development and application in the field of vaccines to control it. Throughout his career, first as scientist, latterly as administrator, he maintained a close interest in the animals to whose wellbeing research was directed and in the work of the practising veterinary surgeons who ultimately translated veterinary science into veterinary practice.