Federal State Of Rhineland-Palatinate Research Articles

Disease Course and Patient’s Characteristics in a Regional First Level Hospital in Western-Germany During the First Three Covid-19 Surges from March 2020 to July 2021

The worldwide spread of SARS-CoV-2 profoundly affected almost all aspects of public life and challenged international and national health institutions of all different medical care levels including Europe up from the very beginning in 2020 until today. Public and press perception might have been weighed somehow towards third level health care providers offering treatment options like ECMO therapy for Covid-19 patients with the worst disease course, the majority of patients who needed hospital care were treated in hospitals of the first level. These hospitals provided about 50% of intensive care treatments in the federal state of Rhineland Palatinate (RLP) in Germany, too [1]. According to the Destatis [2] about 71000 additional deaths were registered in Germany during the first 12 months (02/2020 – 02/2021) of pandemic of which about 50000 could be attributed to Covid-19 as given in the medical death reports. However, only few data has been published on the concrete disease course and patient´s outcome on the scale of a single treatment site. Thus, this analysis provides routine data on patient´s characteristics, treatment modalities and outcome in a single first level hospital in RLP during the first three Covid-19 surges during 03/2020 – 07/2021.

Recall vs. Recognition: How the Strength of Sponsor Awareness Influences the Perceived Brand Personality

Aim: The aim of this paper is to investigate whether remembering a sponsor actively (recall) or passively (recognition) has an influence on the perceived brand image. Because brand personality is a psychological and multi-dimensional construct, it is worthwhile to investigate the influence of information retrieval from the long-term memory.
 Study design: The study contains two independent samples. On the one hand spectators were interviewed at different sports events that were sponsored by the same brand (field sample). Additionally, a representative sample of the population was drawn and questioned about the same brand outside the environment of sports events (online sample).
 Place and Duration of Study: Both samples were collected in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany within a period of four months.
 Methodology: In total, 2761 questionnaires from spectators and 1000 questionnaires from representative online sample of the population in the same region were collected. Regression analyses were conducted to compare the influence of sponsor awareness on brand image with other drivers of image transfer found in literature.
 Results: Both tests (recall and recognition) show a significant influence on brand image, but they defer in the extent and the addressed dimensions of brand personality. Logistic regressions show that a low sponsor awareness is sufficient to strengthen some general positive brand associations, whereas it requires a higher sponsor awareness to raise intended associations successfully.
 Conclusion: The strength of sponsor awareness should be considered when selecting the test procedure (recall or recognition test) for measuring image outcomes – both in marketing research and sponsorship controlling. Depending on the type of objectives the sponsor wants to achieve, this can be crucial for a sponsor in strategic management.

High-Resolution MaxEnt Modelling of Habitat Suitability for Maternity Colonies of the Barbastelle Bat Barbastella barbastellus (Schreber, 1774) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

The barbastelle bat Barbastella barbastellus (Schreber, 1774), probably one of the rarest of western European bat species, has suffered from substantial population declines over the last several decades. In fact, it was believed to be extinct within the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate (western Germany) until the discovery of a maternity colony in 2004. More reproduction sites have since been found, which demonstrates a substantial knowledge gap about the actual distribution and abundance of the species in Rhineland-Palatinate. Suitable habitats for maternity colonies are crucial for the survival of a population and knowledge of their location is critical for conservation. We modelled the suitability of habitats for use by maternity colonies in Rhineland-Palatinate based on high-resolution data of the forest structure and roosting sites of maternity colonies, using the presence-only machine learning approach MaxEnt. In addition to statistical tests of the model performance, we analysed general occurrence surveys from the last few years for evidence of barbastelle and conducted an in-situ survey on one of the sites identified as highly suitable by the model, but for which no occurrence records exist. On this site, we discovered a new maternity colony. Analysis of third-party surveys resulted in two recently discovered colonies, which shows the barbastelle's range is not restricted to the area south of the Moselle River. The results of our study along with the scattered pattern of potentially suitable locations for maternity colonies in the region challenge previous assumptions of the geographic distribution of barbastelle in Rhineland-Palatinate. This study demonstrates the potential of habitat suitability modelling in conservation ecology and the results may provide a basis for future preservation strategies in the region.