Economic Impacts of Farm Program Payment Limits

The high levels of government payments to farmers resulting from the 1985 farm bill have once again led the Congress to examine the payment limit issue. Payment limits were initially established in 1970 and have since been revised several times. In this report, policy and farm management economists analyze the consequences of alternative payment limits on economic efficiency, economic viability of family-size farms, international competitiveness, and consumer food costs. Effective payment limits encourage reduced farm size and in the presence of economies of size, tend to increase production costs for program crops. The Agricultural and Food Policy Center is charged with evaluating economic impacts of policy alternatives -- not recommending, advocating, or opposing particular policies. The Center's orientation is toward Texas agriculture -- evaluating policy impacts on its producers and consumers. Farm prices and income, however, are determined in world markets that are influenced by national economic policy and farm programs. Texas impacts, therefore, must be evaluated in a much broader national and international market and policy context.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Carcass Trait Effects from Environment, Growth Rate on Pasture, and Breedtypes

Last updated: 6/12/200

Capacity as philosophy: review of Lippke's Ethics of Plea Bargaining

Plea bargaining is a response to capacity overload in the criminal justice system. It both preserves and belies the right to trial, making possible its glorious display but only by denying it in most cases. While plea bargaining has been documented and analysed copiously in historical, sociological and legal terms, its ethical status as an institutional practice are hazy. Richard Lippke offers an account of plea bargaining that draws on the normative debates over responsibility, culpability and desert, in aid of a holistic proposal for a morally defensible system of pre-trial adjudication. In proposing an ethical system of plea bargaining, and working through the normative challenges to this, two bigger questions become visible. These are: what are the implications of developing, in essence, an ethics of efficiency, and, how should the criminal justice system be held to account for the inequalities (and iniquities) that exist before and outside it? In this review essay, I show how these questions are constructed in the book and make some attempt at analysing them, thus engaging with the more urgent and general issue of the complicated relationship of the ideal to the real when it comes to penal practice

Health-Promoting and Health-Risk Behaviors: Theory-Driven Analyses of Multiple Health Behavior Change in Three International Samples

Background: Co-occurrence of different behaviors was investigated using the theoretical underpinnings of the Transtheoretical Model, the Theory of Triadic Influence and the concept of Transfer. Purpose: To investigate relationships between different health behaviors' stages of change, how behaviors group, and whether study participants cluster in terms of their behaviors. Method: Relationships across stages for different behaviors were assessed in three studies with N = 3,519, 965, and 310 individuals from the USA and Germany by telephone and internet surveys using correlational analyses, factor analyses, and cluster analyses. Results: Consistently stronger correlations were found between nutrition and physical activity (r = 0.16-0.26, p < 0.01) than between non-smoking and nutrition (r = 0.08-0.16, p < 0.03), or non-smoking and physical activity (r = 0.01-0.21). Principal component analyses of investigated behaviors indicated two factors: a "health-promoting" factor and a "health-risk" factor. Three distinct behavioral patterns were found in the cluster analyses. Conclusion: Our results support the assumption that individuals who are in a higher stage for one behavior are more likely to be in a higher stage for another behavior as well. If the aim is to improve a healthy lifestyle, success in one behavior can be used to facilitate changes in other behaviors--especially if the two behaviors are both health-promoting or health-risky. Moreover, interventions should be targeted towards the different behavioral patterns rather than to single behaviors. This might be achieved by addressing transfer between behaviors

On the Harmony of Feminist Ethics and Business Ethics

If business requires ethical solutions that are viable in the liminal landscape between concepts and corporate office, then business ethics and corporate social responsibility should offer tools that can survive the trek, that flourish in this well-traveled, but often unarticulated, environment. Indeed, feminist ethics produces, accesses, and engages such tools. However, work in BE and CSR consistently conflates feminist ethics and feminine ethics and care ethics. I offer clarification and invoke the analytic power of three feminist ethicists 'in action' whose investigations into the "grey zones" of harms; identity and representational conventions; and "asymmetrical reciprocity" harmonize with business ethics' requirements

A bio-psycho-social exercise program (RÜCKGEWINN) for chronic low back pain in rehabilitation aftercare - Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is strong, internationally confirmed evidence for the short-term effectiveness of multimodal interdisciplinary specific treatment programs for chronic back pain. However, the verification of long-term sustainability of achieved effects is missing so far. For long-term improvement of pain and functional ability high intervention intensity or high volume seems to be necessary (> 100 therapy hours). Especially in chronic back pain rehabilitation, purposefully refined aftercare treatments offer the possibility to intensify positive effects or to increase their sustainability. However, quality assured goal-conscious specific aftercare programs for the rehabilitation of chronic back pain are absent.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>This study aims to examine the efficacy of a specially developed bio-psycho-social chronic back pain specific aftercare intervention (RÜCKGEWINN) in comparison to the current usual aftercare (IRENA) and a control group that is given an educational booklet addressing pain-conditioned functional ability and back pain episodes. Overall rehabilitation effects as well as predictors for compliance to the aftercare programs are analysed. Therefore, a multicenter prospective 3-armed randomised controlled trial is conducted. 456 participants will be consecutively enrolled in inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation and assigned to either one of the three study arms. Outcomes are measured before and after rehabilitation. Aftercare programs are assessed at ten month follow up after dismissal form rehabilitation.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Special methodological and logistic challenges are to be mastered in this trial, which accrue from the interconnection of aftercare interventions to their residential district and the fact that the proportion of patients who take part in aftercare programs is low. The usability of the aftercare program is based on the transference into the routine care and is also reinforced by developed manuals with structured contents, media and material for organisation assistance as well as training manuals for therapists in the aftercare.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>Trial Registration number: NCT01070849</p

Developing theory-informed behaviour change interventions to implement evidence into practice : a systematic approach using the Theoretical Domains Framework

PMID: 22531013 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] PMCID: PMC3443064 Free PMC ArticlePeer reviewedPublisher PD

Alberta Diabetes and Physical Activity Trial (ADAPT): A randomized theory-based efficacy trial for adults with type 2 diabetes - rationale, design, recruitment, evaluation, and dissemination

Background: The primary aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of three physical activity (PA) behavioural intervention strategies in a sample of adults with type 2 diabetes. Method/Design: Participants (N = 287) were randomly assigned to one of three groups consisting of the following intervention strategies: (1) standard printed PA educational materials provided by the Canadian Diabetes Association [i.e., Group 1/control group)]; (2) standard printed PA educational materials as in Group 1, pedometers, a log book and printed PA information matched to individuals' PA stage of readiness provided every 3 months (i.e., Group 2); and (3) PA telephone counseling protocol matched to PA stage of readiness and tailored to personal characteristics, in addition to the materials provided in Groups 1 and 2 (i.e., Group 3). PA behaviour measured by the Godin Leisure Time Exercise Questionnaire and related social-cognitive measures were assessed at baseline, 3, 6, 9, 12 and 18-months (i.e., 6-month follow-up). Clinical (biomarkers) and health-related quality of life assessments were conducted at baseline, 12-months, and 18-months. Linear Mixed Model (LMM) analyses will be used to examine time-dependent changes from baseline across study time points for Groups 2 and 3 relative to Group 1. Discussion: ADAPT will determine whether tailored but low-cost interventions can lead to sustainable increases in PA behaviours. The results may have implications for practitioners in designing and implementing theory-based physical activity promotion programs for this population