Campylobacter monitoring in German broiler flocks: an explorative time series analysis

Campylobacter, a major zoonotic pathogen, displays seasonality in poultry and in humans. In order to identify temporal patterns in the prevalence of thermophilic Campylobacter spp. in a voluntary monitoring programme in broiler flocks in Germany and in the reported human incidence, time series methods were used. The data originated between May 2004 and June 2007. By the use of seasonal decomposition, autocorrelation and cross-correlation functions, it could be shown that an annual seasonality is present. However, the peak month differs between sample submission, prevalence in broilers and human incidence. Strikingly, the peak in human campylobacterioses preceded the peak in broiler prevalence in Lower Saxony rather than occurring after it. Significant cross-correlations between monthly temperature and prevalence in broilers as well as between human incidence, monthly temperature, rainfall and wind-force were identified. The results highlight the necessity to quantify the transmission of Campylobacter from broiler to humans and to include climatic factors in order to gain further insight into the epidemiology of this zoonotic disease.

Self-Reported Capabilities Among Young Male Adults in Switzerland: Translation and Psychometric Evaluation of a German, French and Italian Version of a Closed Survey Instrument

There is a shortage of empirical applications of the capability approach that employ closed survey instruments to assess self-reported capabilities. However, for those few instruments that have been designed and administered through surveys until now, no psychometric properties (reliability, validity, and factor structure) were reported. The purpose of this study is the assessment of the psychometric properties of three new language versions (German, French, and Italian) of an established (English) set of eight self-reported capability items. The set of items is taken from a previously published British study by Anand and van Hees (J Soc Econ 35(2):268–284, 2006). Our sample consists of 17,152 young male adults aged 18–25 years from the three major language regions in Switzerland. The results indicate good reliability of the three language versions. The results from the exploratory factor analyses suggest a one-dimensional factor structure for seven domain specific items. Furthermore, the results from multiple regression analyses suggest that a global summary item on overall capabilities represents a measurement alternative to the set of seven domain specific capability items. Finally, the results confirm the applicability of the closed capability instrument in a large scale survey questionnaire and represent the first attempt to measure self-reported capabilities in Switzerland.

Transatlantic Echoes. Alexander von Humboldt in World Literature

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was a world traveler, bestselling writer, and versatile researcher, a European salon sensation, and global celebrity. Yet the enormous literary echo he generated has remained largely unexplored. Humboldt inspired generations of authors, from Goethe and Byron to Enzensberger and García Márquez, to reflect on cultural difference, colonial ideology, and the relation between aesthetics and science. This collection of one-hundred texts features tales of adventure, travel reports, novellas, memoirs, letters, poetry, drama, screenplays, and even comics—many for the first time in English. The selection covers the foundational myths and magical realism of Latin America, the intellectual independence of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and Whitman in the United States, discourses in Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, East, and West Germany, as well as recent films and fiction. This documented source book addresses scholars in cultural and postcolonial studies as well as readers in history and comparative literature.