The media use of American youngsters in the age of narcissism : Surviving in a 24/7 media shock and awe – distracted by everything

Digital life in the age of nonstop connection is not easy, especially not for the so-called Millennials, youngsters born after 1980. Research findings, such as the recently released comprehensive reports by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Pew Foundation, highlight that media are among the most powerful forces in young people’s lives today. Eight- to twenty-somethings in the US spend more than 50 h in front of a screen each week. That is more than a regular working week. The TV shows they watch, video games they play, songs they listen to, books they read, text messages they send and websites they visit are an enormous part of their lives, offering a constant stream of messages about families, peers, relationships, gender roles, sex, violence, food, values, clothes, and so on.     

Oral sodium chlorate, topical disinfection, and younger weaning age reduce Salmonella enterica shedding in pigs

Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica can cause swine illness or human foodborne disease. Although nontoxic to mammalian cells, chlorate can be converted to cytotoxic chlorite by salmonellae. To test whether chlorate is effective at reducing Salmonella shedding in weaned pigs exposed to shedding dams, a chlorate-nitrate-lactate (chlorate) oral dose was administered daily for 5 days following weaning, and this treatment was evaluated in combination with two weaning ages and a topical disinfectant. A total of 80 pigs were weaned at 10 or 21 days of age. Half within each age group were topically disinfected at weaning. Piglets were selected from dams for which Salmonella was detected in feces shortly after giving birth. Chlorate treatment reduced Salmonella prevalence and estimated Salmonella concentration in feces, cecal contents, and ileocolic lymph nodes. Younger weaning age (10 days of age) was associated with reduced shedding (lower concentration and prevalence) in samples collected at 10 days postweaning (DPW) and later. Chlorate treatment reduced the concentration of Salmonella in fecal samples at 5 DPW and in cecal samples at 14 DPW. The protective effects persisted through the end of the study at 14 DPW, 9 days after the final administration of chlorate. Disinfectant treatment reduced shedding in fecal samples at 14 DPW. Interactions were detected between the effects of chlorate and disinfection and between chlorate and weaning age. Chlorate treatment, topical disinfection, and younger weaning age may be useful tools for reducing Salmonella shedding on farms that practice segregated weaning and where sow-to-piglet transfer of Salmonella is an important source of infection in nursery pigs.