The pre-natal period is of critical importance in defining how individuals respond to their environment throughout life. Stress experienced by pregnant females has detrimental effects on offspring behaviour, health and productivity. The sheep (Ovis aries) has been used as a model to inform human studies; however, in a farming context, the consequences for the lamb of stress experienced by the ewe have received less attention. The stressors that pregnant ewes are most frequently exposed to include sub-optimal nutrition and acute and chronic stressors related to husbandry and the environment. This review focuses upon the young sheep, from around 100 days old until adulthood and uses material identified from a systematic survey of the literature relating to production-relevant maternal stressors and lamb outcomes. Overall, the results demonstrated that stressors imposed upon the ewe altered progeny behavioural and physiological responses. However, detailed analysis of the literature shows several deficiencies in the field, as a whole, which greatly limit the ability to draw conclusions as to how welfare may be affected by pre-natal challenges in commercial sheep. These deficiencies included a lack of consistency in response due to the variety of both stressors imposed and responses measured. Key gaps in knowledge include the impact of ewe disease during pregnancy on outcomes for their progeny and more generally how different commercially relevant stressors interact. Furthermore, there is a need to develop a systematic series of behavioural and physiological measures that can be integrated to provide a holistic and practically applicable picture of offspring welfare.

A practical expert system is needed to handle POST weed control in herbicide-intensive crops such as wheat, barley, oat, rye, sugarbeet, corn, and sorghum. SELOMA is an expert system having a step-by-step problem-solving procedure closely resembling what a weed management expert would follow. It is based on field surveys of weed density, and crop and weed growth stage and height. SELOMA evaluates weed competitiveness and provides weed management advice. It suggests whether or not to intervene, chemical and mechanical weed control treatments, and selects the best herbicides, including commercial formulations, costs, and optimal dosages.

The strategy to optimize weed management systems with a minimum use of herbicides includes both the adaptation of crop management practices and well designed decision making systems, based on postemergence observations of weed infestations. Both strategies require thorough quantitative insight into the crop weed ecosystem, which can be provided by systems analysis, using process based models. These models also can be applied to similar systems like intercropping. For practical application, however, a simple measure of weed infestation and a simple model which relates weed infestation to yield loss are required. Recent progress in model development is discussed. An alternative empirical model that predicts yield loss from the relative leaf area of the weeds shortly after crop emergence, seems to be a useful approach for prediction of yield loss shortly after crop emergence. The use of systems approaches at different levels of detail for bridging the gap between research and practical application is discussed.

In Germany, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and NuclearSafety (BMU) has asked the German Commission on Radiological Protection (SSK) to provideadvice on the revision of the German “Radiological Fundamentals for Decisions on Measuresfor the Protection of the Population against Accidental Releases of Radionuclides”(Radiologische Grundlagen). A working group has been established to guide the preparationof a new version of that document. It was asked that the revision has to consider mostrelevant publications of international bodies such as ICRP, EC and IAEA. Therefore, theICRP recommendations 103, 109 and 111 have to be considered together with the draftdocuments of the European Union and the IAEA Basic Safety Standards. Recommendations ofworking groups of NEA (WPNEM) as well as the EPAL working group of HERCA (Heads ofEuropean Radiological Protection Competent Authorities) will be also taken into account.Within the discussion it turned out that the practical application of the newrecommendation for professionals working in the operational community is extremelyimportant. As the current recommendations are widely accepted and operational all overGermany, it was investigated to which extent the current procedures can be taken over withminor modifications.