Exploring Consumer Preference towards the On-Farm Slaughtering of Beef in Germany: A Discrete Choice Experiment.

Current production standards and communication campaigns about animal welfare in relation to beef strongly emphasise the "humane" rearing of cattle. Aspects such as transport and slaughtering conditions are often overlooked in both production standards and communications with consumers. Long transport routes and conventional slaughtering can cause significant stress to animals and have negative impacts on their welfare and on meat quality.

Community financing for sustainable food and farming: a proximity perspective.

An increasing number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the German organic agri-food sector involves citizens through different community financing models. While such models provide alternative funding sources as well as marketing opportunities to SMEs, they allow private investors to combine their financial and ethical concerns by directly supporting the development of a more sustainable food system. Due to the low level of financial intermediation, community financing is characterized by close relations between investors and investees.

Impact of surface disinfection with hydrogen peroxide on the prevalence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) in hospital wards.

Vancomycin-resistant (VRE) are of major concern in infection control. Although broad infection control actions to check VRE have been implemented, VRE remain part of daily infection prevention in clinical settings. Cleaning procedures in the inanimate ward environment might play a key role in controlling VRE.

Management of Hypertension on the Labor and Delivery Unit: Delivering Care in the Era of Protocols and Algorithms.

Introduction: Preeclampsia with severe hypertension, which occurs in 5% to 8% of pregnancies, is a leading cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality in the US. Early recognition and treatment of hypertensive crises can significantly reduce poor outcomes. A protocol to ensure prompt treatment with antihypertensive medication (intravenous labetalol) was implemented at our institution.

Age-related decline in bottom-up processing and selective attention in the very old.

Previous research demonstrating age-related deficits in selective attention have not included old-old adults, an increasingly important group to study. The current investigation compared event-related potentials in 15 young-old (65-79 years old) and 23 old-old (80-99 years old) subjects during a color-selective attention task. Subjects responded to target letters in a specified color (Attend) while ignoring letters in a different color (Ignore) under both low and high loads.

The dissociation between early and late selection in older adults.

Older adults exhibit a reduced ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli; however, it remains to be determined where along the information processing stream the most salient age-associated changes occur. In the current study, ERPs provided an opportunity to determine whether age-related differences in processing task-irrelevant stimuli were uniform across information processing stages or disproportionately affected either early or late selection. ERPs were measured in young and old adults during a color-selective attention task in which participants responded to target letters in a specified color (attend condition) while ignoring letters in a different color (ignore condition).

The impact of visual acuity on age-related differences in neural markers of early visual processing.

The extent to which age-related differences in neural markers of visual processing are influenced by changes in visual acuity has not been systematically investigated. Studies often indicate that their subjects had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, but the assessment of visual acuity seems to most frequently be based only on self-report. Consistent with prior research, to be included in the current study, subjects had to report normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Communication technology access, use, and preferences among primary care patients: from the Residency Research Network of Texas (RRNeT).

Objective: The digital revolution is changing the manner in which patients communicate with their health care providers, yet many patients still lack access to communication technology. We conducted this study to evaluate access to, use of, and preferences for using communication technology among a predominantly low-income patient population. We determined whether access, use, and preferences were associated with type of health insurance, sex, age, and ethnicity.

The influence of executive capacity on selective attention and subsequent processing.

Recent investigations that suggest selective attention (SA) is dependent on top-down control mechanisms lead to the expectation that individuals with high executive capacity (EC) would exhibit more robust neural indices of SA. This prediction was tested by using event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine differences in markers of information processing across 25 subjects divided into two groups based on high vs. average EC, as defined by neuropsychological test scores.

Does modulation of selective attention to features reflect enhancement or suppression of neural activity?

Numerous studies have demonstrated that selective attention to color is associated with a larger neural response under attend than ignore conditions, but have not addressed whether this difference reflects enhanced activity under attend or suppressed activity under ignore. In this study, a color-neutral condition was included, which presented stimuli physically identical to those under attend and ignore conditions, but in which color was not task relevant. Attention to color did not modulate the early sensory-evoked P1 and N1 components.

Treatment of anxiety in autism spectrum disorders using cognitive behaviour therapy: A systematic review.

Objective: To review studies involving the treatment of anxiety in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) with the intent to inform practice and to identify areas for future research.

Methods: Systematic searches of electronic databases, reference lists and journals identified nine studies. Each identified study that met pre-determined inclusion criteria was analysed and summarized in terms of: (a) participants, (b) intervention procedures, (c) dependent variables, (d) results of intervention and (e) certainty of evidence.