Transparency in Meat Production – Consumer Perception at the Point of Sale

As a result of a large number of food scandals, societal interest in transparency in the food sector has grown considerably. Deficits have been discovered, which new legal frameworks of the EU and the German legislative body have attempted to address. Hence, the creation of transparency in the production process has been the focus of the legislation. In this context, traceability systems for animal-based foods, for instance, have been established (Regulation (EC) 178/2002). In addition to tracking and tracing, one finds in the public discussion an increasing number of demands for further information, for instance information on food safety, animal and environmental protection and generally for sustainability of the production processes for foods. This is intended as a response to the general call for more transparency or a "gläserne Produktion ". It has not been sufficiently clarified which information about the production process, and thus which level of transparency is actually desired, or can actually be processed, by consumers at the point of sale. This is related to the question of to what extent the demands for more transparency in meat production are influenced by new campaigns of many consumer organisations and NGOs, or whether these actually represent user preferences at the point of sale. In order to analyse this topic from the viewpoint of the consumer, a large-scale empirical study has been conducted. This is intended to determine what transparency expectations, in the form of information on packaged pork, consumers have, using an adaptive conjoint analysisTransparency, pork production, adaptive conjoint analysis., Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Labor and Human Capital,

A novel type of compliant and underactuated robotic hand for dexterous grasping

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The usefulness and versatility of a robotic end-effector depends on the diversity of grasps it can accomplish and also on the complexity of the control methods required to achieve them. We believe that soft hands are able to provide diverse and robust grasping with low control complexity. They possess many mechanical degrees of freedom and are able to implement complex deformations. At the same time, due to the inherent compliance of soft materials, only very few of these mechanical degrees have to be controlled explicitly. Soft hands therefore may combine the best of both worlds. In this paper, we present RBO Hand 2, a highly compliant, underactuated, robust, and dexterous anthropomorphic hand. The hand is inexpensive to manufacture and the morphology can easily be adapted to specific applications. To enable efficient hand design, we derive and evaluate computational models for the mechanical properties of the hand's basic building blocks, called PneuFlex actuators. The versatility of RBO Hand 2 is evaluated by implementing the comprehensive Feix taxonomy of human grasps. The manipulator's capabilities and limits are demonstrated using the Kapandji test and grasping experiments with a variety of objects of varying weight. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the effective dimensionality of grasp postures exceeds the dimensionality of the actuation signals, illustrating that complex grasping behavior can be achieved with relatively simple control

Objetivos y efectos de la terapia a través del movimiento y el deporte con personas dependientes del alcohol

Hoy en día la rehabilitación de personas dependientes del alcohol engloba un sistema integral e interdisciplinario de diferentes medidas médicas, psicoterapéuticas y socioterapéuticas. En Alemania la terapia a través del movimiento y el deporte ha llegado a estar integrada dentro del sistema rehabilitadora del tratamiento clínico de drogodependencias. A través del caso de Señor G. queremos explicar y aclarar como esta terapia puede contribuir al proceso terapéutico y qué resultados podemos esperar. Hacemos referencia tanto a las percepciones subjetivas del Señor G. como a las pruebas objetivas realizadas al inicio, durante y al final de la terapia a través del movimiento y el deporte. Concluyendo y basándonos en el modelo de Salutogenese de Antonovsky, podemos destacar que la terapia a través del movimiento y el deporte puede facilitar estímulos relevantes para el fortalecimiento de capacidades y destrezas de la persona, y así aumentar los recursos de resistencia frente al estrés y las cargas, y favorecer alternativas favorables y soluciones sin drogas

Networking in Meat Production Systems: The Influence of Cooperative Structures on Farmers’ Participation

Increasing competitive pressures as well as growing requirements with regard to quality and safety pose a continuous challenge for farmers in European agrifood netchains. Against this background, the significance of network‐wide collaboration has been pointed out in recent years, especially for German livestock farming (Petersen et al., 2007). In the literature, it is generally agreed that participation in specialized networks can be beneficial to the competitiveness of individual farms and firms (Gellynck, Vermeire and Viaene, 2006). (more....

Standortvorteil Nordwestdeutschland? Eine Untersuchung zum Einfluss von Netzwerk- und Clusterstrukturen in der Schweinefleischerzeugung

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Der Kosovo vor unsicherer Zukunft

Syftet med undersökningen har varit att få en bild av hur kristendomen som religion samt hur kristna identiteter framställs i svensk press. Undersökningen är en textanalys av ett antal artiklar där jag har undersökt vilka olika, eller lika, bilder som dags- och kvällstidningar ger av kristendomen och kristna i Sverige idag. Utifrån teorier om ”den andre” har jag undersökt om artiklarna framställer någon form av ”vi”- och ”de”- perspektiv mellan kristna och “icke-kristna”. Syftet har också varit att försöka utskilja vilka retoriska grepp som används i framställningen av kristendomen och kristna. Undersökningens frågeställningar är: Hur framställs kristendomen i artiklarna? Hur konstrueras kristna identiteter i artiklarna? Hur ser relationen ut mellan skribent och läsare? Vilka retoriska grepp används i framställningen av kristendom och kristna