Donna Roberts Knihy

We are an animal-loving population, with consumers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom spending top dollar on their pets. This trend indicates that pet owners want the best for their dogs and cats. Scientific research shows that home-cooked meals are better for your pets -- especially dogs and cats -- than store-brand food. Feeding pets all-natural homemade food and treats not only provides nutritional and health benefits, but allows pet owners to meet their pet's taste preferences and special needs, and gives them the opportunity to nurture their dog or cat as they would any other member of the family. The Good Food Cookbook for Dogs is full of information on nutrition for your pet and dozens of stories and recipes from real animal lovers and pet owners that give an intimate, personal voice to the book.

Psychographic segmentation divides markets based upon differences in consumer lifestyles and involves examining attributes such as personality dimensions, identifying characteristics and consumer values that represent the underlying motives of consumer behavior. Specifically, the determination of lifestyles is usually based on an analysis of a composite of the activities, interests and opinions (AIOs) of consumers. As such, lifestyle represents a patterned way of life into which consumers fit various products, activities and resources and describes the groups’ typical consumption behaviors and expectations. These lifestyles are then correlated with the consumers’ product, brand and/or media usage. Currently there are numerous classification schemes detailing lifestyles that attempt to explain consumer behavior. To date, no consensus has been reached regarding standardized lifestyle segments that exist in the United States or in other countries. Various psychographic studies have reached differing conclusions about the number and nature of lifestyle categories. This paper explores various popular psychographic segmentation schemes, detailing the way in which they use psychological aspects of the consumer to categorize market segments and predict behavior.

The use of brief intervention and brief therapy techniques focused on short-term, problem-specific approaches has become an increasingly important part of the continuum of care in the treatment of substance abuse problems and addictive disorders. Currently, the psychotherapy of substance abuse utilizes a wide variety of treatment modalities based on diverse theoretical perspectives, including cognitive-behavioral, strategic and interactional, humanistic and existential, psychodynamic, family systems and group therapy. This book provides an in-depth exploration of various approaches to brief therapy and their underlying theoretical constructs.

The term learning style emerged in educational literature during the 1970s, yet its definition and measurement remain contentious. Researchers have struggled to establish a cohesive theoretical framework for learning styles, leading to ongoing debates about how to define and assess them effectively. While there is general acceptance and interest in the concept, significant disagreements persist regarding characterization and measurement. Despite the intuitive appeal of various theories applied in schools and organizations, the scientific community often views assessment instruments with skepticism, criticizing their psychometric properties and lack of independent validation. As a result, some consider these overarching concepts to be meaningless or obsolete. However, the differences in learning styles are crucial as the volume of information and necessary skills for processing it continue to grow rapidly. The impact of these differences on learning and pedagogy has gained prominence, particularly in increasingly diverse and inclusive higher education environments, enhanced by technology. This book reviews the construct of learning styles and popular assessment instruments, detailing their strengths and weaknesses.

Diatoms are an important element of many polar marine microbial communities and particularly abundant in Antarctic lakes. However, few comprehensive studies, such as the study presented in this volume are available on Antarctic communities. The diatom floras encountered in surface sediment samples from 33 lakes of the Vestfold Hills, Antarctica are presented. 67 distinct diatom species were identified in these sediments. They include cosmopolitan, Southern Ocean, endemic Antarctic and new diatoms. Each species encountered is described and illustrated; autecological information on the species is included where possible. Epilimnion water chemistry of the lakes sampled was determined to investigate their influence on diatom distribution. The studied lakes span a very large range of salinities from 0.5 to 165 permil. The authors show that salinity seems to have a strong influence on the observed diatom taxa.