Hur retusch påverkar skönhetsannonsers attraktion : En studie om målgruppens åsikter och köplust

Tidigare studier som gjorts inom området visade att kvinnor anser att kvinnors skönhet inte är värderad enligt rimliga normer i vårt samhälle. Hård retuschering motarbetas på många håll, bland annat genom att organisationer som ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) och politiska partier som Liberaldemokraterna i Storbritannien arbetar för att missledande retuschering ska försvinna. En studie har visat att det, för att öka annonsers attraktionskraft, är viktigt att den ökade skönheten hos en modell är relevant för produktens användningsområde, då betraktaren anstränger sig intellektuellt vid betraktandet av bilden. Det finns dock inga tidigare studier som bevisar om en retuscherad modell faktiskt ökar målgruppens köplust av skönhetsprodukter vid rådande samhällsattityder och skönhetsideal. Två enkätundersökningar gjordes därför med sammanlagt 1480 deltagare. Produkten i studien var en fiktiv hudkräm. Genom att i den ena undersökningen låta betraktaren möta modellbilden i en situation som efterliknade verkligheten, på så sätt att de inte fick veta om den var retuscherad, kunde studien svara på om retuschering ökade köplusten. Bilder med bortretuscherade skönhetsfläckar och utväxt prefererades. Att retuschera bort flyghår ökade inte köplusten. I den andra jämförande undersökningen kunde betraktaren jämföra den retuscherade med den oretuscherade modellbilden. Resultaten visade att skönhetsfläckar och flyghår tillåts och prefereras borttagna, men inte utväxt. I intervjuer med fem kvinnor hördes målgruppens attityder om vad som ansågs var tillåtet att retuschera. Svaren tydde på att en relevant och försiktig retuschering prefererades. Att lämna några födelsemärken ökade trovärdigheten.

Attitudes Towards and Uses of the Japanese Adverbzenzen by Swedish Learners of Japanese

The word zenzen is an adverb that is used frequently in daily conversational Japanese. From the Meiji period (1868-1912) until the early Showa period (1924-1989) the word was used together with both affirmative and negative words to form expressions. In the early Showa period the grammatical rules in education changed so that the only acceptable use was together with a negative word. From the 1990’s onward, the use together with an affirmative word has made a comeback especially among younger Japanese people. However even though the usage together with an affirmative word has made a comeback and was considered normal once in history, in today’s society it is still considered as slang and thus not recommended usage in formal situations. Foreign language learners however, tend not to learn a language only by textbooks but also by imitating the language of native Japanese speakers and Japanese popular culture. This may lead to a confusion regarding what words are acceptable to use in conversations. Therefore in this study, an online survey that examines the usage and attitudes regarding the word zenzen aimed at Japanese language learners at Swedish universities was conducted. The results of the survey showed that although a majority of the learners showed a good understanding of the usage, more than half of the learners displayed a feeling of confusion regarding the usage of the word. The gender comparison regarding the usage showed no major differences. Having lived in Japan, having Japanese friends whom you speak Japanese with regularly and length of Japanese study was associated with an increased understanding of the usage. Regular consumption of Japanese popular culture, however, was not associated with an increased understanding of the usage. A literature analysis was also conducted to examine the attitudes regarding the usage of zenzen in a variety of books with topics including business language and books aimed at Japanese language teachers. The results showed that zenzen used together with a negative word was considered as the norm while zenzen used together with an affirmative word was not recommended to be used in formal situations. When recommending proper usage of the word zenzen together with an affirmative word to foreign learners of Japanese, hijou-ni and totemo was seen as better alternatives to zenzen in a formal situation.

Técnica de criação e parâmetros biológicos de Stegasta bosquella em amendoim

Studies with Stegasta bosquella in peanut crop are little explored by researchers, mainly by the need of obtaining, in the field, a large quantity of closed leaflets. Therefore, it was sought a way of rearing in a natural diet that facilitates the attainment of the insect. The research was developed at the Laboratorio de Resistencia de Plantas a Insetos (FCAV/Jaboticabal) (T: 25 +/- 2 degrees C, RH 60 +/- 10% and photophase: 12 hours) (Runner IAC 886). The rearing stock of was carried out by collecting caterpillars from the field and keeping them in flat bottom glass tubes until adult emergence and test performance. Caterpillars were individualized in Petri dish plates, lined with moistened filter paper, which contained closed and early opened leaflets, but closed with paper clips (imitating the closed leaflet). A randomized design with two treatments and 36 repetitions was used. After the pupae formation, they were separated into five couples and the adults were kept in transparent plastic cages containing a peanut stem with leaves for oviposition, and fed with a 10% honey solution. The duration and viability of the larval and pupal periods, male and female longevity with and without food, and fertility were evaluated. The two forms of larvae rearing (closed leaflet and leaflet closed with clips) did not influence on any of the studied parameters. Therefore, the rearing of S. bosquella becomes feasible in natural diet, which means there is no need to use the enclosed leaflets for this purpose, and implies the easiness for rearing.

Development of an open case-based decision-support system for diagnosis in oral pathology

Making diagnoses in oral pathology are often difficult and confusing in dental practice, especially for the lessexperienced dental student. One of the most promising areas in bioinformatics is computer-aided diagnosis, where a computer system is capable of imitating human reasoning ability and provides diagnoses with an accuracy approaching that of expert professionals. This type of system could be an alternative tool for assisting dental students to overcome the difficulties of the oral pathology learning process. This could allow students to define variables and information, important to improving the decision-making performance. However, no current open data management system has been integrated with an artificial intelligence system in a user-friendly environment. Such a system could also be used as an education tool to help students perform diagnoses. The aim of the present study was to develop and test an open case-based decisionsupport system.Methods: An open decision-support system based on Bayes' theorem connected to a relational database was developed using the C++ programming language. The software was tested in the computerisation of a surgical pathology service and in simulating the diagnosis of 43 known cases of oral bone disease. The simulation was performed after the system was initially filled with data from 401 cases of oral bone disease.Results: the system allowed the authors to construct and to manage a pathology database, and to simulate diagnoses using the variables from the database.Conclusion: Combining a relational database and an open decision-support system in the same user-friendly environment proved effective in simulating diagnoses based on information from an updated database.

O brincar como experiência: um estudo com crianças de primeira série de uma escola pública rural

Pós-graduação em Educação - IBRC

Uma análise de O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis face ao Portugal salazarista

Pós-graduação em Letras - FCLAS

A evocação de sonoridades instrumentais na escrita para piano no ciclo Winterreise de Franz Schubert

Pós-graduação em Música - IA

O pós-moderno e a relação entre literatura e história em Running dog, de Don Delillo

Pós-graduação em Letras - IBILCE

Mecanismos de resistência de aedes aegyoti L. (Diptera: Culicidae) a inseticidas

Pós-graduação em Biologia Geral e Aplicada - IBB

Ambiete de tanque-rede aumenta as interações agressivas e o estresse social na tilápia-do-Nilo

Pós-graduação em Aquicultura - FCAV

Miedo e inseguridad de la gestante durante el trabajo de parto como motivos para la demanda de internación precoz

Objective. To identify reasons why women look for early health care attention at the end of pregnancy. Methodology. Qualitative study based in socio-existential phenomenology proposed by Alfred Schütz. Nine pregnant women who consulted to the maternity service without being in real labor were interviewed. Results. The following analysis categories emerged: Having different symptoms or signals from the ones they had felt or been informed about, not being able to identify real labor, fear to fetal complications for being close to the probable labor date, feeling calmer when being seen by professionals of the institution, lack of problem solving by other services of the health institution, fearing out of hospital delivery, imitating real labor, looking for tranquility in the idealization of labor and modifying behaviors to guarantee attention. Conclusion. Women are insecure and fear because of a fragmented health care, where they do not perceive themselves linked to the prenatal control program anymore, and at the same time they don’t find the health care assistance they want.

Segmentação interativa de imagens utilizando competição e cooperação entre partículas

Pós-graduação em Ciência da Computação - IBILCE

A Culture of Relationships: Early Care for Italian and American Children

A culture of childhood is a shared vision – an agreed upon vision – of the needs and rights of children, including ideas about how the people of the community can collectively nurture them and at the same time be renewed by them. In other words, it is a set of values, beliefs, and practices that people have created to guide their way of nurturing young children and their families. The vision is about investing in young children and investing in the supports and relationships that children need to learn and grow, both for the reason that children carry our future and because they carry our hopes and dreams for the future. These hopes and dreams begin with birth. Sensitive, emotionally available parents create the framework for interaction with their children by responding to the baby’s cues, engaging the baby in mutual gazes, and imitating the baby. The baby, born with a primary ability to share emotions with other human beings eagerly joins the relationship dance. The intimate family circle soon widens. Providers, teachers, and directors of early childhood programs become significant figures in children’s lives—implicit or explicit partners in a "relationship dance" (Edwards & Raikes, 2002). These close relationships are believed to be critical to healthy intellectual, emotional, social, and physical development in childhood and adolescence as well. These conclusions have been documented by diverse fields of science, ranging from cognitive science to communication studies and social and personality psychology. Close relationships contribute to security and trust, promote skill development and understanding, nurture healthy physical growth, infuse developing self-understanding and self-confidence, enable self-control and emotion regulation, and strengthen emotional connections with others that contribute to prosocial motivation (Dunn, 1993; Fogel, 1993; Thompson, 1996). Furthermore, many studies showing how relationship dysfunction is linked to child abuse and neglect, aggression, criminality, and other problems involving the lack of significant human connections (Shankoff & Meisels, 2000). In extending the dance of primary relationships to new relationships, a childcare teacher can play a primary role. The teacher makes the space ready--creating a beautiful place that causes everyone to feel like dancing. Gradually, as the dance between them becomes smooth and familiar, the teacher encourages the baby to try out more complex steps and learn how to dance to new compositions, beats, and tempos. As the baby alternates dancing sometimes with one or two partners, sometimes with many, the dance itself becomes a story about who the child has been and who the child is becoming, a reciprocal self created through close relationships.

Topics in Local Economic Development

This thesis contributes to the current debate in literature about local economic development by considering two different topics: quality of institutions, and the role of clusters in innovation and productivity growth. The research is built upon three papers. The first paper deals with the analysis of the effect of administrative continuity on administrative efficiency. The analysis underlines the importance of different typologies of social capital. Findings reveal a positive impact on administrative efficiency (AE) by administrative continuity (AC) when it is coupled by bridging and linking social capital. On the contrary, bonding social capital influences negatively the effect by AC on AE. The second paper investigates the spatial interaction in levels of quality of government (QoG) among European regions. Notwithstanding the largely recognised role by institutions in the design of regional policies, no study has been conducted about the mechanisms of interaction and diffusion of QoG at regional level. This research wants to overcome this knowledge gap in literature. Findings reveal a heterogeneity in spatial interaction among groups of regions, i.e. ‘leader regions’ (Northern regions) and ‘lagging regions’ (Southern regions), when considering different mechanisms of interaction (learning / imitating competition and pure competition). Moreover, the effect of wealth on the levels of QoG is nonlinear. Finally, the third paper analyses the relation among specialization and productivity within the agricultural sector. In literature, the study of clusters dynamics has long neglected agriculture. The analysis describes the changes in sectorial specialization for eight main crop groups in Italian regions (NUTS 3), assessing the existence of spatial autocorrelations by using an exploratory data analysis. Furthermore, the effect of specialization on productivity is analysed within the main crop groups using a spatial panel data model. Findings reveal a marked tendency to specialization in the Italian agriculture, and a heterogeneous effect by specialization on productivity.

Evaluation of 3D cell culture systems for host-pathogen interaction studies

Traditional cell culture models have limitations in extrapolating functional mechanisms that underlie strategies of microbial virulence. Indeed during the infection the pathogens adapt to different tissue-specific environmental factors. The development of in vitro models resembling human tissue physiology might allow the replacement of inaccurate or aberrant animal models. Three-dimensional (3D) cell culture systems are more reliable and more predictive models that can be used for the meaningful dissection of host–pathogen interactions. The lung and gut mucosae often represent the first site of exposure to pathogens and provide a physical barrier against their entry. Within this context, the tracheobronchial and small intestine tract were modelled by tissue engineering approach. The main work was focused on the development and the extensive characterization of a human organotypic airway model, based on a mechanically supported co-culture of normal primary cells. The regained morphological features, the retrieved environmental factors and the presence of specific epithelial subsets resembled the native tissue organization. In addition, the respiratory model enabled the modular insertion of interesting cell types, such as innate immune cells or multipotent stromal cells, showing a functional ability to release pertinent cytokines differentially. Furthermore this model responded imitating known events occurring during the infection by Non-typeable H. influenzae. Epithelial organoid models, mimicking the small intestine tract, were used for a different explorative analysis of tissue-toxicity. Further experiments led to detection of a cell population targeted by C. difficile Toxin A and suggested a role in the impairment of the epithelial homeostasis by the bacterial virulence machinery. The described cell-centered strategy can afford critical insights in the evaluation of the host defence and pathogenic mechanisms. The application of these two models may provide an informing step that more coherently defines relevant molecular interactions happening during the infection.