In helping people in wheelchairs, the city in effect discriminates against older New Yorkers, reducing them to discomfort and potential humiliation.
Clinicians who work with women poststernotomy often suggest that they wear a supportive brassiere to ameliorate pain, discomfort, and potential wound complications.
Here we hypothesised that chronic discomfort / potential pain (inferred from the presence of vertebral problems) in riding horses is associated with increased aggressiveness towards humans.
In that theory, unpleasant experiences (here discomfort / potential pain) produce negative affect that automatically stimulates aggressive thoughts, emotional and behavioural tendencies linked together in memory.
Most of the horses affected by vertebral problems keep on working, as discomfort / potential pain is generally underestimated through lack of direct measurements and owners' personal interpretations of behaviour they assume to reflect discomfort or pain [6].
Bearing in mind that chronic discomfort / potential pain and aggression are related may well alter the perception humans have of "bad-tempered" animals but also of other human beings.
These results, showing a clear relationship between vertebral problems, assumed to indicate the presence of chronic back pain, and aggressiveness is, to our knowledge, the first evidence of a relationship between chronic discomfort / potential pain and "bad temper" in an animal species.
It is therefore quite possible than horses build a "memory" of these negative associations between work with humans and discomfort or potential pain, as they do for positive actions [51].
Four-limb motor function was examined to avoid confounds of post-surgical discomfort and potential motor deficits, and was assessed using an accelerated rotarod test (7 cm diameter rod accelerating at 1 cm/s2).
To minimise discomfort and potential distress to the children, which might occur with multiple repeated measurements, we only performed inter-rater assessments.
In addition to patient discomfort and potential complications [ 6], these biopsies have an even higher risk of false negative diagnosis [ 7, 8].
