The purposes of this research are to find out consumer¡¦s perception and expectation of beef safety. Our questionnaire research is by asking people who lives in Kaohsiung city and had bough beef before to find out those factors which affect purchasing willing. Our research contents two purposes. The first is to understand the consumer¡¦s perception of import beef safety. The other is to find out the factors those affect buying willing. The total responses are 204 questionnaires. Use ANCOVA and regression statistics to analyze our data. Results showed that: (1) age is significant to the knowledge of BSE. (2) the belief of government and Prof. who has positive attitude about BSE is significant to purchasing willing. (3) percentage of relatives and friends who also eat beef is significant to purchasing willing. According to our research results, we made some suggestions to government to improve beef permit system and to promote knowledge of BSE to consumer.

No description available.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2006. / Härtill 3 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alberta, 2010. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on April 6, 2010). Spring 2010. At head of title: University of Alberta. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Agricultural and Resource Economics, Department of Rural Economy. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2003. / Bibliography: leaves 137-149.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / Sports-related concussions are a very large public health concern and have only recently been brought into the national spotlight, thanks largely to the increased media coverage following the deaths of several current and former players of the National Football League (NFL). This problem extends not only to professional athletes, but reaches down through college, high school and to our youth athletes as well. The symptoms resulting from concussion are diverse and include both acute and long-term effects, and could have particularly debilitating effects on the developing brains of young athletes. Various neurocognitive deficits, as well as neurodegenerative diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) have been associated with concussions. Research about both the short and long-term effects of concussions has been growing in recent years, and will continue to grow as advanced neuroimaging tools and biomarkers become better developed. This will improve diagnostic capabilities, result in better prognoses, as well as treatments and prevention. This review analyzes current literature in order to evaluate the lasting impacts of sports-related concussions. By showing the effects of sports-related concussions, especially on the developing brain, policy changes aimed at the prevention of concussion in sports will be suggested, specifically in terms of mitigating the adverse effects of concussions on brain development.

Background: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is an enigma that has become synonymous with combat sports over the past few decades. Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a combat sport that is growing in popularity world-wide. The objective of this study is to determine the factors associated with head trauma among MMA athletes. Methods: Logistic regression analyses using SPSS 20 was employed to model putative covariates against the dichotomous outcomes of unconsciousness (for the full dataset) and diagnosed concussion (for the enriched subset of fighters who were rendered unconscious). Results: Increasing age, black or African-American ethnicity, shorter rest periods between fights, increasing numbers of significant clinch strikes landed, significant distance body strikes landed and power strikes landed to the body at distance are all factors associated with being diagnosed with a concussion among the fighters rendered unconscious. Conclusion: If bolstered by confirming laboratory and clinical evidence, policies should be developed for implementation by MMA governing bodies to help reduce incidences of head trauma and concussion, built around fighters’ demographic and behavioural characteristics. In particular, enforcing a mandatory rest period between fights and placing an upper limit on fighters’ age are ideas worth exploring.

In the study of diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the ability to gather retrospective estimates of an individual’s total repetitive head impacts (RHI) is paramount. Although the exact mechanism responsible for the development of CTE is still unknown, it is well accepted that RHI play a critical role. Until recently, however, the methodology used to collect retrospective estimates of RHI have been very limited. In the beginning of 2016, Montenigro et al. from the Boston University’s Alzheimer’s Disease and CTE Center published a new method of RHI estimation called the Cumulative Head Impact Index (CHII). The CHII was developed by collecting self-reported football histories (years of play, positions of play and levels of play), and using that data to extrapolate the findings of short-term helmet-accelerometer studies into career-long estimates of cumulative head impacts. In addition to publishing this new method, Montenigro et al. (2016) also determined that the CHII was very successful at predicting later-life neurobehavioral and cognitive impairment, an essential ability of any RHI estimate intended to be used in CTE research. Participants in the Montenigro et al. (2016) analysis were part of an ongoing longitudinal study where individuals take yearly surveys of their neurobehavioral and cognitive well-being in addition to answering surveys about sports participation, head injuries and overall wellbeing. Participants had played football at the high school or college level, but had not played any other contact sports. This thesis serves as an initial validation of that publication, and also tests the ability of the CHII to predict later-life impairment in a more diverse population of athletes. Participants in this thesis were selected from the same ongoing longitudinal study according to two distinct sets of inclusion and exclusion criteria. For the purposes of conducting a validation study, the first set of criteria were identical to those used by Montenigro et al. (2016). The second experimental set allowed for participants who had participated in a secondary contact sport if it was at the high school level or below. These two sets of criteria resulted in 70 “validation” participants, and 82 “experimental” participants. Using the same methods as Montenigro et al. 2016, we calculated the CHII for all participants, and examined the ability of the CHII to predict later-life impairment. Our findings validated that the CHII was indeed successful at predicting later-life impairment from cumulative head impacts among the validation group of 70 participants. In particular, the CHII successfully predicted a threshold dose-response relationship between CHI and apathy (p >0.001), depression (p >0.001), executive function dysregulation (p >0.001), and self-reported cognitive impairment (p >0.001). We then found that the CHII was much less successful at predicting impairment in the experimental group of 82, only finding significance in measures of apathy (p=0.0502) and executive function dysregulation (p=0.0277). Overall, our findings indicate that the CHII is an excellent improvement in methods of estimating RHI in people whose only contact sport is football.

The diagnostic lesions of neurodegenerative tauopathies, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), are located in the cortex, however, white matter pathology is a contributing factor to neurodegeneration. At all stages of disease, white matter axonal and glial morphological abnormalities are present in CTE. Similarly, white matter changes may emerge before cortical pathology in AD. White matter irregularities bear functional consequences, as they are associated to some of the most common and onerous symptoms of these diseases, like cognitive deficits and depression. Individuals with AD present with both reduced white matter integrity and cognitive symptoms starting early in disease progression. In CTE, which is triggered by repetitive head impacts (RHI), individuals are particularly vulnerable to white matter damage as RHI exposure alone is sufficient to injure white matter tracts and induce depression symptoms. In this dissertation, I investigated the cellular and molecular presentation of white matter glial cells, including astrocytes, oligodendrocytes (OLs), and microglia in CTE and AD as compared to controls. To investigate white matter pathology, I examined glial cells on a cellular level. Neuropathologically-verified CTE samples were compared to RHI-experienced controls, with both groups containing samples with and without depressed mood. CTE with depressed mood had reduced myelin and increased neuroinflammatory peripheral cells compared to non-depressed CTE and contained increased numbers of microglia compared to non-depressed CTE and control samples. Using single-nucleus transcriptomics in neuropathologically-verified CTE samples compared to matched RHI-naïve controls, OL loss, iron aggregates, OL iron trafficking dysregulation, and two distinct astrocyte subpopulations were detected in CTE white matter. AD white matter, compared to the same control samples in the same brain region, was also depleted of OLs by single-nucleus transcriptomics. However, OLs did not demonstrate iron-related transcriptional profile like those in CTE and, in further contrast, displayed increased numbers of microglia and astrocytes. Together, these findings implicate previously uncharacterized white matter glia in the neurodegenerative process of CTE and AD and further elucidate the etiology of neurodegeneration-related symptoms in CTE. These findings may aid in the development of therapeutics targeting glial contributions to the pathologic processes of both CTE and AD.

A 6 year old boy developed a fatal, rapidly progressive encephalopathy 5 months after a matched unrelated cord blood transplant. Autopsy findings revealed spongiform changes in his brain. The clinical course of this child's illness had many findings consistent with that of a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). Pre-mortem and post-mortem studies failed to definitively determine an etiology. Spongiform encephalopathies include the TSEs and mitochondrial encephalopathies. Both should be considered in a post-hematopoietic stem cell transplant patient who develops a progressive encephalopathy when more common etiologies are not found.