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The 'geography of law' is an emerging subdiscipline within human geography. However, the 'geography of law firms' and their functional capabilities remains strangely neglected in both producer-service and world-city literatures. In this paper we begin to address these gaps by investigating the importance of London in the globalisation of law and the uneven nature of that globalisation. We focus upon why, how, and where leading London law firms are developing world-city office networks."Ten years on we believe the key players will have substantial presences in ... Asia, Europe and the US. That will be the profile of the successful global law firms."

Fear is a response to a known threat, anxiety is a response to a perceived threat. Both of these affective states can be detrimental to animal welfare in modern housing environments. In comparison to the well-validated tests for assessing fear in laying hens, tests for measuring anxiety are less developed. Perception of a threat can result in an attention bias that may indicate anxious affective states in individual hens following playback of an alarm call. In Experiment 1, an attention bias test was applied to hens that differed in their range access to show that hens that never ranged were more vigilant (stretching of the neck and looking around: P < 0.001) and slower to feed following the second alarm call playback (P = 0.01) compared with hens that ranged daily. All hens showed a reduction in comb temperature following the first alarm call (P < 0.001). In Experiment 2, an open field test was used to determine an effective dose of 2 mg/kg for the anxiogenic drug meta-Chlorophenylpiperazine (m-CPP) in adult laying hens. Hens dosed with 2 mg/kg showed reduced locomotion compared with a saline solution (P < 0.05). In Experiment 3, 2 mg/kg m-CPP or saline was administered to adult hens previously habituated to the open field arena to pharmacologically validate an attention bias test as a measure of anxiety. Hens dosed with m-CPP were slower to feed (P = 0.02) and faster to vocalize following a second alarm call playback (P = 0.03) but these hens did not exhibit the same vigilance behavior as documented in Experiment 1. The m-CPP hens also spent more time stepping and vocalizing (both P < 0.001) than the saline hens. An attention bias test could be used to assess anxiety. However, behavioral responses of hens may vary depending on their age or test environment familiarity, thus further refinement of the test is required. In these tests, 2 mg/kg of m-CPP resulted in motionless behavior when the environment was novel, but more movement and vocalizing when the environment was familiar. The extreme behavioral phenotypes exhibited by individually-tested birds may both be indicators of negative states.

So-called 'world cities': the evidential structure within a literature By referring to "so-called 'world cities '", Cox (1997, page 1) provides us with a salutary reminder of the dangers of attractive theoretical ideas turning into taken-for-granted conceptions. There is no doubt that Friedmann's (1986) revival of the notion of world cities by linking them to the recently discovered 'new international division of labour' created a very popular concept for studying 'the urban' in the age of 'the global'. This literature is the subject matter of this editorial comment which I write in the spirit of Cox's scepticism.Problematising the core concept of a literature suggests fundamental criticism of a research tradition either in terms of poverty of theory or in terms of empirical deficiency. In the case of world and/or global cities research both types of critique have been recently made-for instance, see Storper (1997) on theory and Short et al (1996) on evidence. In this comment I focus on the latter. Concern for the paucity of evidence for Friedmann's 'world city hypothesis' surfaced in the initial published discussion of the paper (Korff, 1987) and it might have been thought that this problem should have been sorted out by now. Below I show that this is most certainly not the case and suggest reasons why empirical deficiency has dogged this literature to the degree that Cox can imply that world cities may not even exist. This requires the construction of what I term an evidential structure of the literature.By the evidential structure of a literature I mean the nature of the empirical material which is marshalled to describe and test the propositions of a research field. It involves selecting key texts in an area and investigating the data employed with a view to finding particular biases in the resulting patterns. If these patterns are interpreted as more socially embedded than simply the outcome of free research decisions, then the literature can be said to be facing structural problems. I have argued previously (Taylor, 1997) that this is indeed the case for the world cities literature in two particular aspects. First, statistics in general have their origin in servicing the information needs of states and this has resulted in our contemporary world being measured through state-centric data. A browse through the publications of the United Nations and its associated institutions will quickly affirm this. Second, statistics in general have developed a critical bias towards measuring attributes at the expense of connections. Although flows-of people, of commodities, of information-are measured they pale in significance when compared with the quantity and quality of attribute data. Both these features of statistics in general have the potential to be quite debilitating for the needs of world cities research. In global research, cities may be subsumed and lost in data on countries which is likely to be particularly disastrous for measuring flows between cities. Intercity relations has the structural potential to be...

Simple SummaryFree-range chicken meat consumption has increased. However, little is known about how meat chickens use the outdoor range. Understanding ranging behaviour could help improve management and shed and range design to ensure optimal ranging opportunities. We tracked 1200 individual broiler chickens in four mixed sex flocks on one commercial farm across two seasons. More chickens accessed the range in summer than winter. Chickens that accessed the range in winter did so less frequently and for a shorter period of time daily than chickens ranging in summer. The number of chickens ranging and the frequency and duration of range visits increased over the first two weeks of range access and stabilised thereafter. More chickens entered and exited the range through particular doors in the shed. More chickens ranged in the morning and evening compared to the middle of the day. Ranging behaviour decreased with increased rainfall and shed dew point. This study provides knowledge regarding ranging behaviour in commercial conditions that may guide improvements on farm to provide chickens with optimal ranging opportunities.AbstractLittle is known about the ranging behaviour of chickens. Understanding ranging behaviour is required to improve management and shed and range design to ensure optimal ranging opportunities. Using Radio Frequency Identification technology, we tracked 300 individual broiler chickens in each of four mixed sex ROSS 308 flocks on one commercial farm across two seasons. Ranging behaviour was tracked from the first day of range access (21 days of age) until 35 days of age in winter and 44 days of age in summer. Range use was higher than previously reported from scan sampling studies. More chickens accessed the range in summer (81%) than winter (32%; p < 0.05). On average, daily frequency and duration of range use was greater in summer flocks (4.4 ± 0.1 visits for a total of 26.3 ± 0.8 min/day) than winter flocks (3.2 ± 0.2 visits for a total of 7.9 ± 1.0 min/day). Seasonal differences were only marginally explained by weather conditions and may reflect the reduction in range exposure between seasons (number of days, hours per day, and time of day). Specific times of the day (p < 0.01) and pop-holes were favoured (p < 0.05). We provide evidence of relationships between ranging and external factors that may explain ranging preferences.

Little is known about the implications of accessing an outdoor range for broiler chicken welfare, particularly in relation to the distance ranged from the shed. Therefore, we monitored individual ranging behaviour of commercial free-range broiler chickens and identified relationships with welfare indicators. The individual ranging behaviour of 305 mixed-sex Ross 308 broiler chickens was tracked on a commercial farm from the second day of range access to slaughter age (from 16 to 42 days of age) by radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The radio frequency identification antennas were placed at pop-holes and on the range at 2.7 and 11.2 m from the home shed to determine the total number of range visits and the distance ranged from the shed. Chickens were categorised into close-ranging (CR) or distant-ranging (DR) categories based on the frequency of visits less than or greater than 2.7 m from the home shed, respectively. Half of the tracked chickens (n=153) were weighed at 7 days of age, and from 14 days of age their body weight, foot pad dermatitis (FPD), hock burn (HB) and gait scores were assessed weekly. The remaining tracked chickens (n=152) were assessed for fear and stress responses before (12 days of age) and after range access was provided (45 days of age) by quantifying their plasma corticosterone response to capture and 12 min confinement in a transport crate followed by behavioural fear responses to a tonic immobility (TI) test. Distant-ranging chickens could be predicted based on lighter BW at 7 and 14 days of age (P=0.05), that is before range access was first provided. After range access was provided, DR chickens weighed less every week (P=0.001), had better gait scores (P=0.01) and reduced corticosterone response to handling and confinement (P<0.05) compared to CR chickens. Longer and more frequent range visits were correlated with the number of visits further from the shed (P<0.01); hence distant ranging was correlated with the amount of range access, and consequently the relationships between ranging frequency, duration and distance were strong. These relationships indicate that longer, more frequent and greater ranging from the home shed was associated with improved welfare. Further research is required to identify whether these relationships between ranging behaviour and welfare are causal.