Do consumers want public or private bodies to monitor animal friendly production and marketing schemes? And does trust matter?

Producing according to enhanced farm animal welfare (FAW) standards increases costs along the livestock value chain, especially for monitoring certified animal friendly products. In the choice between public or private bodies for carrying out and monitoring certification, consumer preferences and trust play a role. We explore this issue by applying logit analysis involving socio-economic and psychometric variables to survey data from Italy. Results identify marked consumer preferences for public bodies and trust in stakeholders a key determinant.

Automated identification of neural correlates of continuous variables

Background: The electroencephalogram (EEG) may be described by a large number of different feature types and automated feature selection methods are needed in order to reliably identify features which correlate with continuous independent variables. New method: A method is presented for the automated identification of features that differentiate two or more groups inneurologicaldatasets basedupona spectraldecompositionofthe feature set. Furthermore, the method is able to identify features that relate to continuous independent variables. Results: The proposed method is first evaluated on synthetic EEG datasets and observed to reliably identify the correct features. The method is then applied to EEG recorded during a music listening task and is observed to automatically identify neural correlates of music tempo changes similar to neural correlates identified in a previous study. Finally,the method is applied to identify neural correlates of music-induced affective states. The identified neural correlates reside primarily over the frontal cortex and are consistent with widely reported neural correlates of emotions. Comparison with existing methods: The proposed method is compared to the state-of-the-art methods of canonical correlation analysis and common spatial patterns, in order to identify features differentiating synthetic event-related potentials of different amplitudes and is observed to exhibit greater performance as the number of unique groups in the dataset increases. Conclusions: The proposed method is able to identify neural correlates of continuous variables in EEG datasets and is shown to outperform canonical correlation analysis and common spatial patterns.

Automated artifact removal from the electroencephalogram; a comparative study

Contamination of the electroencephalogram (EEG) by artifacts greatly reduces the quality of the recorded signals. There is a need for automated artifact removal methods. However, such methods are rarely evaluated against one another via rigorous criteria, with results often presented based upon visual inspection alone. This work presents a comparative study of automatic methods for removing blink, electrocardiographic, and electromyographic artifacts from the EEG. Three methods are considered; wavelet, blind source separation (BSS), and multivariate singular spectrum analysis (MSSA)-based correction. These are applied to data sets containing mixtures of artifacts. Metrics are devised to measure the performance of each method. The BSS method is seen to be the best approach for artifacts of high signal to noise ratio (SNR). By contrast, MSSA performs well at low SNRs but at the expense of a large number of false positive corrections.

FORCe: fully online and automated artifact removal for brain-computer interfacing

A fully automated and online artifact removal method for the electroencephalogram (EEG) is developed for use in brain-computer interfacing. The method (FORCe) is based upon a novel combination of wavelet decomposition, independent component analysis, and thresholding. FORCe is able to operate on a small channel set during online EEG acquisition and does not require additional signals (e.g. electrooculogram signals). Evaluation of FORCe is performed offline on EEG recorded from 13 BCI particpants with cerebral palsy (CP) and online with three healthy participants. The method outperforms the state-of the-art automated artifact removal methods Lagged auto-mutual information clustering (LAMIC) and Fully automated statistical thresholding (FASTER), and is able to remove a wide range of artifact types including blink, electromyogram (EMG), and electrooculogram (EOG) artifacts.

The application of social marketing in reducing road traffic accidents amoung young male drivers: an investigation using physical fear threat appeals

There were 338 road fatalities on Irish roads in 2007. Research in 2007 by the Road Safety Authority in Ireland states that young male drivers (17 – 25 years) are seven times more likely to be killed on Irish roads than other road users. The car driver fatality rate was found to be approximately 10 times higher for young male drivers than for female drivers in 2000. Young male drivers in particular demonstrate a high proclivity for risky driving behaviours. These risky behaviours include drink driving, speeding, rug-driving and engaging in aggressive driving. Speed is the single largest contributing factor to road deaths in Ireland. Approximately 40% of fatal accidents are caused by excessive or inappropriate speed. This study focuses on how dangerous driving behaviours may be addressed through social marketing. This study analyses the appropriate level of fear that needs to be induced in order to change young male driving behaviour.

Standing on the shoulders of giants: an examination of the interdisciplinary foundation of relationship marketing

In the 20th century, the scholarly study of human relationships both grew dramatically and simultaneously fragmented into various disciplines and subdisciplines. Although diversity of thought is generally considered helpful for the evolution of scientific fields, the value accrued from interdisciplinary discourse depends on the ability of scholars to integrate multiple perspectives and synthesize foundational works in a systematic manner. The goal of this study is to synthesize foundational theories from social and behavioral sciences that have contributed to an understanding of relationship marketing. In seeking to provide a holistic understanding of the field, we incorporate contributions from the disciplines of marketing, management, psychology, and sociology. In building on our analysis, we synthesize our findings into a conceptual model that examines the systematic dimensions of relationship marketing. The article concludes by identifying key themes for contributors to the Journal of Relationship Marketing to consider going forward.

Viral marketing and the new competitive advantage

The role played by viral marketing has received considerable academic and digital media attention recently. Key issues in viral marketing have been examined through the lens of the mode of marketing message transmission, including self-replicating on the basis of quality difference, individuals’ emotional needs, as well as how users are connected across various social networks. This paper presents a review and analysis of viral marketing studies from 2001 to the present day. It investigates how viral marketing facilitate the diffusion of social media products and the relationship between marketers and these product users by taking a look at the implementation of viral marketing in two European online game firms Jagex Games Studio and Rovio Entertainment. The results from this review and analysis indicate that viral marketing plays an important role in accelerating the interaction between marketers and users (as well as the user groups) in the field of digital media and high tech consumption. Therefore, it is evident that firms should understand the social contagion process and target well-connected users purposefully in order to create its competitive advantage.

Diversity lessons from Wales: how marketing bilingualism contributes to language shift and language maintenance

Wales is one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. While sharing much of its political and social history with England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, it has retained a distinct cultural identity.In particular, over 560,000 people, a significant minority of the population of 2.2 million, speak Welsh, a member of the Celtic family of languages, and the country is officially bilingual. In this paper, we will look at attempts to maintain and grow the number of speakers of the language and at the relevance of this development for speakers of minority languages in other settings.

Differences between the CME fronts tracked by an expert, an automated algorithm, and the Solar Stormwatch project

Observations from the Heliospheric Imager (HI) instruments aboard the twin STEREO spacecraft have enabled the compilation of several catalogues of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), each characterizing the propagation of CMEs through the inner heliosphere. Three such catalogues are the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL)-HI event list, the Solar Stormwatch CME catalogue, and, presented here, the J-tracker catalogue. Each catalogue uses a different method to characterize the location of CME fronts in the HI images: manual identification by an expert, the statistical reduction of the manual identifications of many citizen scientists, and an automated algorithm. We provide a quantitative comparison of the differences between these catalogues and techniques, using 51 CMEs common to each catalogue. The time-elongation profiles of these CME fronts are compared, as are the estimates of the CME kinematics derived from application of three widely used single-spacecraft-fitting techniques. The J-tracker and RAL-HI profiles are most similar, while the Solar Stormwatch profiles display a small systematic offset. Evidence is presented that these differences arise because the RAL-HI and J-tracker profiles follow the sunward edge of CME density enhancements, while Solar Stormwatch profiles track closer to the antisunward (leading) edge. We demonstrate that the method used to produce the time-elongation profile typically introduces more variability into the kinematic estimates than differences between the various single-spacecraft-fitting techniques. This has implications for the repeatability and robustness of these types of analyses, arguably especially so in the context of space weather forecasting, where it could make the results strongly dependent on the methods used by the forecaster.

Rapid, automated detection of stem canker symptoms in woody perennials using artificial neural network analysis

Background Pseudomonas syringae can cause stem necrosis and canker in a wide range of woody species including cherry, plum, peach, horse chestnut and ash. The detection and quantification of lesion progression over time in woody tissues is a key trait for breeders to select upon for resistance. Results In this study a general, rapid and reliable approach to lesion quantification using image recognition and an artificial neural network model was developed. This was applied to screen both the virulence of a range of P. syringae pathovars and the resistance of a set of cherry and plum accessions to bacterial canker. The method developed was more objective than scoring by eye and allowed the detection of putatively resistant plant material for further study. Conclusions Automated image analysis will facilitate rapid screening of material for resistance to bacterial and other phytopathogens, allowing more efficient selection and quantification of resistance responses.

Kinetics analysis and automated online screening of aminocarbonylation of aryl halides in flow

Temperature, pressure, gas stoichiometry, and residence time were varied to control the yield and product distribution of the palladium-catalyzed aminocarbonylation of aromatic bromides in both a silicon microreactor and a packed-bed tubular reactor. Automation of the system set points and product sampling enabled facile and repeatable reaction analysis with minimal operator supervision. It was observed that the reaction was divided into two temperature regimes. An automated system was used to screen steady-state conditions for offline analysis by gas chromatography to fit a reaction rate model. Additionally, a transient temperature ramp method utilizing online infrared analysis was used, leading to more rapid determination of the reaction activation energy of the lower temperature regimes. The entire reaction spanning both regimes was modeled in good agreement with the experimental data.

Marketing the Damaged Self: The Construction of Identity in Advertisements Directed Towards People with HIV/AIDS

This paper explores the identities projected in advertisements directed towards HIV positive individuals and people with AIDS. Fifty such advertisements were collected from three popular American magazines for gay men over a period of seven months. Analysis of the ads reveals a paradoxical presentation of people with HIV/AIDS, which offers simultaneous conflicting images of hope and fear, power and weakness, innocence and guilt. An interactive sociolinguistic model through which this contradictory discourse might be understood is presented, drawing on Goffman’s insights on stigma management and the presentation of the self in social interaction. Advertisements directed towards people with HIV/AIDS, it is suggested, present a contradictory discourse in which the advertisers are positioned as ‘the wise’, offering to mediate the conflicting identities of the stigmatized. The identity values enacted in this contradictory discourse are further measured against American conceptions of communication and the self as observed by Carbaugh and others. The possible consequences of these positionings on the roles made available to people with HIV/AIDS in the wider social context are discussed.

Formal validation of automated policy refinement in the management of network security systems

Policy hierarchies and automated policy refinement are powerful approaches to simplify administration of security services in complex network environments. A crucial issue for the practical use of these approaches is to ensure the validity of the policy hierarchy, i.e. since the policy sets for the lower levels are automatically derived from the abstract policies (defined by the modeller), we must be sure that the derived policies uphold the high-level ones. This paper builds upon previous work on Model-based Management, particularly on the Diagram of Abstract Subsystems approach, and goes further to propose a formal validation approach for the policy hierarchies yielded by the automated policy refinement process. We establish general validation conditions for a multi-layered policy model, i.e. necessary and sufficient conditions that a policy hierarchy must satisfy so that the lower-level policy sets are valid refinements of the higher-level policies according to the criteria of consistency and completeness. Relying upon the validation conditions and upon axioms about the model representativeness, two theorems are proved to ensure compliance between the resulting system behaviour and the abstract policies that are modelled.

Square wave adsorptive cathodic stripping voltarnmetry automated by sequential injection analysis - Potentialities and limitations exemplified by the determination of methyl parathion in water samples

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a sequential injection method to automate the determination of methyl parathion by square wave adsorptive cathodic stripping voltammetry exploiting the concept of monosegmented flow analysis to perform in-line sample conditioning and standard addition. Accumulation and stripping steps are made in the sample medium conditioned with 40 mmol L-1 Britton-Robinson buffer (pH 10) in 0.25 mol L-1 NaNO3. The homogenized mixture is injected at a flow rate of 10 mu Ls(-1) toward the flow cell, which is adapted to the capillary of a hanging drop mercury electrode. After a suitable deposition time, the flow is stopped and the potential is scanned from -0.3 to -1.0 V versus Ag/AgCl at frequency of 250 Hz and pulse height of 25 mV The linear dynamic range is observed for methyl parathion concentrations between 0.010 and 0.50 mgL(-1), with detection and quantification limits of 2 and 7 mu gL(-1), respectively. The sampling throughput is 25 h(-1) if the in line standard addition and sample conditioning protocols are followed, but this frequency can be increased up to 61 h(-1) if the sample is conditioned off-line and quantified using an external calibration curve. The method was applied for determination of methyl parathion in spiked water samples and the accuracy was evaluated either by comparison to high performance liquid chromatography with UV detection, or by the recovery percentages. Although no evidences of statistically significant differences were observed between the expected and obtained concentrations, because of the susceptibility of the method to interference by other pesticides (e.g., parathion, dichlorvos) and natural organic matter (e.g., fulvic and humic acids), isolation of the analyte may be required when more complex sample matrices are encountered. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.