Entomophagy or the practice of eating insects has been known and practiced for millennia by people around the world, and being taken into account in countries where insect consumption is considered to be exotic behavior or the evolution of society begins to impose it. Food security is a prerequisite for the welfare of the population and can be achieved by appropriately capitalizing on the natural resources available to Romania's agriculture. Its approach and development must be in two directions, strongly interrelated with each other, namely a quantitative one and a qualitative one. The quantitative aspect regards as a matter of priority the provision of the necessary amount of food to meet the physiological needs of a reference population, while the quality aspect focuses on the nutritional value of foods consumed by the population so that its health is not affected or compromised. Considering the two above-mentioned aspects, we consider that the practice of consuming edible insects presents several advantages, both quantitative and qualitative, which should not be neglected in ensuring food security. Innovation must be implemented throughout the agri-food chain, and entomophagy can be one of the viable solutions to support food security. In order to emphasize the importance of entomophagy in ensuring food security, the paper brings to the fore a series os aspects regarding the review of the scientific literature in the field, the nutritional value of insects, the impact of insect food production on the environment, and consumer attitudes towards entomophagy. At the end of the paper, a small attempt is made to assess to what extent Romanian consumers are prepared to accept edible insects in their food.

Traditionally, in biomedical animal research, laboratory rodents are individually examined in test apparatuses outside their home cages at selected time points. However, the outcome of such tests can be influenced by the novel environment, the time of day, separation from the social group, or the presence of an experimenter. Moreover, valuable information may be missed when the animals are only monitored in short periods. These issues can be overcome by longitudinal monitoring mice and rats in their home cages. To shed light on the development of home cage monitoring (HCM) and the current state of the art, a systematic review was carried out on 521 publications retrieved through PubMed and Web of Science. Both the absolute (~ x26) and relative (~ x7) number of HCM-related publications increased from 1974 to 2020. In both mice and rats, there was a clear bias towards males and individually housed animals, but during the past decade (2011-2020), an increasing number of studies used both sexes and group housing. More than 70% of the studies did not involve a disease model, but the percentage of studies using disease models increased since the 2000s. In most studies, animals were kept for short (up to 4 weeks) length periods in the HCM systems; intermediate length periods (4-12 weeks) increased in frequency in the years between 2011 and 2020. Before the 2000s, HCM techniques were predominantly applied for less than 12 hours, while 24-hour measurements have been more frequently since the 2000s. The systematic review demonstrated that manual monitoring is decreasing but still relevant. Until (and including) the 1990s, most techniques were applied manually but have been progressively replaced by automation since the 2000s. Independent of the publication year, the main behavioral parameters measured were locomotor activity, feeding, and social behaviors; the main physiological parameters were heart rate and electrocardiography. External appearance-related parameters were rarely examined in the home cages. Due to technological progress and application of artificial intelligence, more refined and detailed behavioral parameters could be investigated in the home cage in recent times. Over the period covered in this study, techniques for HCM of mice and rats has improved considerably. This development is ongoing and further progress and validation of HCM systems will extend the applications to allow for continuous, longitudinal, non-invasive monitoring of an increasing range of parameters in group-housed small rodents in their home cages.

La presente revisión tuvo como objetivo de identificar la importancia de la leptospirosis en la salud pública a través de un análisis de literatura en bases de datos a partir del año 2004 al 2019 para realizar un aporte teórico a este importante tema. Se dio a conocer las características de la bacteria Leptospira spp. y sus principales reservorios, la epidemiología y las prevalencias de la enfermedad, ubicaciones geográficas, las herramientas diagnósticas y el control y prevención de la leptospirosis. Se identificó cuantiosa información en cuanto a generalidades de leptospirosis y sobre el curso de la enfermedad, se denota la ausencia de información en varios sectores sociales para evitar su contagio, controlar la diseminación de la enfermedad, realizar diagnósticos tempranos y los pocos tratamientos para esta zoonosis.

The environmental stress has been implicated in adverse marked effects on egg production and eggshell quality of hens. The effect of heat stress was studied on three hen breeders (White Leghorn, Rhode Island, and White Plymouth Rock). The experiments were conducted on 4210 hens aged 31 weeks for each breed. The experimental period was 4 weeks. At age 32 weeks, the environmental temperature was 34.4-36.4°C, into the hall. There were monitored the following productive parameters: feed intake, laying rate, egg weight, and shell thickness. After one week of heat stress the feed intake decreased with 32.4% at White Leghorn females stock, 21.8% at Rhode Island and 27.3% at Plymouth Rock. After three weeks of heat exposure, the laying rate decreased with 10.4% at White Leghorn, 6.1% at Rhode Island, and 5.8% at White Plymouth Rock (p≤0.05). The egg weight decreased with 3-3.2 g to all groups. The shell thickness was lower with 0.07 mm at White Leghorn, 0.04 mm at Rhode Island and 0.03 mm at White Plymouth Rock. The lower egg quality established a decrease of eggs for incubation. White Leghorn breed was more affected by the heat exposure, because the productive parameters production had a drastic decline. In this breed, mortality was determined by cannibalism and internal haemorrhages.

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