Counterfeit versus original patronage: Do emotional brand attachment, brand involvement, and past experience matter?

To enhance brand performance and to protect original brands from the unprecedented upsurge of counterfeits, marketers are continuously looking for effective anti-counterfeiting methods. Developing and maintaining emotional brand attachment and brand involvement with consumers have become a strategic marketing endeavor of luxury brands. A significant question bearing both theoretical and practical implications, however, is whether emotional brand attachment or brand involvement is more apposite to warrant a luxury brand’s performance and to safeguard the original brand from counterfeits, which remains unanswered. To address this knowledge gap, a survey was conducted. On the basis of an empirical study, this paper reveals that emotional brand attachment is a more prominent influencer than brand involvement to escalate original brand patronage although the effect of brand involvement is also significant. However, while improved brand involvement pushes consumers to patronize counterfeits, higher emotional brand attachment does not result in increased counterfeit patronage. These effects do not vary as a function of previous experience of either originals or counterfeits. Findings of this research contribute to brand literature by presenting empirical evidence of distinct influence of emotional brand attachment over brand involvement, which represents significant practical implications in relation to strategic brand management and anti-counterfeiting strategies

Comparative growth analysis of capsulated (Vi+) and acapsulated (Vi-) Salmonella Typhi isolates in human blood

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi) is a human restricted pathogen. It biosynthesizes a virulence capsular polysaccharide named as Vi antigen. S. Typhi regulates expression of genes involved in the biosynthesis of Vi antigen in response to osmolarity. Beside Vi-positive isolates, Vi-negative (acapsulated) isolates are also pathogenic. However, Vi-positive isolates are more prevalent. The present study was planned to investigate comparative growth of Vi-positive and Vi-negative S. Typhi isolates in an ex vivo human whole blood model. Four isolates of each type were tested for growth in human whole blood and in an enrichment medium (Tryptic soy broth-TSB) as a control. It was found that capsulated (Vi-positive) strains formed smooth circular colonies and grew with shorter lag and generation time than Vi-negative isolates. Overall growth pattern of S. Typhi isolates both in vitro and ex vivo conditions showed that Vi-positive isolates grew at a faster rate. Especially in human blood, the lag time of acapsulated isolates was almost doubled as compared to capsulated S. Typhi isolates. It was also observed that Vi-negative isolates reduced in number up to 81 % during the first 12 hours of incubation in human whole blood. Interestingly, both types of isolates had similar growth curve in TSB indicating that Vi capsule is dispensable for bacterial growth in vitro. This study shows for the first time that absence of capsular antigen retards the growth of Vi-negative isolates on initial contact with human blood, but with passage of time they adjust themselves according to the new environment

FaceAtt: Enhancing Image Captioning with Facial Attributes for Portrait Images

Automated image caption generation is a critical area of research that enhances accessibility and understanding of visual content for diverse audiences. In this study, we propose the FaceAtt model, a novel approach to attribute-focused image captioning that emphasizes the accurate depiction of facial attributes within images. FaceAtt automatically detects and describes a wide range of attributes, including emotions, expressions, pointed noses, fair skin tones, hair textures, attractiveness, and approximate age ranges. Leveraging deep learning techniques, we explore the impact of different image feature extraction methods on caption quality and evaluate our model's performance using metrics such as BLEU and METEOR. Our FaceAtt model leverages annotated attributes of portraits as supplementary prior knowledge for our portrait images before captioning. This innovative addition yields a subtle yet discernible enhancement in the resulting scores, exemplifying the potency of incorporating additional attribute vectors during training. Furthermore, our research contributes to the broader discourse on ethical considerations in automated captioning. This study sets the stage for future research in refining attribute-focused captioning techniques, with a focus on enhancing linguistic coherence, addressing biases, and accommodating diverse user needs

Household environmental conditions are associated with enteropathy and impaired growth in rural Bangladesh.

We assessed the relationship of fecal environmental contamination and environmental enteropathy. We compared markers of environmental enteropathy, parasite burden, and growth in 119 Bangladeshi children (≤ 48 months of age) across rural Bangladesh living in different levels of household environmental cleanliness defined by objective indicators of water quality and sanitary and hand-washing infrastructure. Adjusted for potential confounding characteristics, children from clean households had 0.54 SDs (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.06, 1.01) higher height-for-age z scores (HAZs), 0.32 SDs (95% CI = -0.72, 0.08) lower lactulose:mannitol (L:M) ratios in urine, and 0.24 SDs (95% CI = -0.63, 0.16) lower immunoglobulin G endotoxin core antibody (IgG EndoCAb) titers than children from contaminated households. After adjusting for age and sex, a 1-unit increase in the ln L:M was associated with a 0.33 SDs decrease in HAZ (95% CI = -0.62, -0.05). These results are consistent with the hypothesis that environmental contamination causes growth faltering mediated through environmental enteropathy

Pathogen-specifi c burdens of community diarrhoea in developing countries: a multisite birth cohort study (MAL-ED)

Background Most studies of the causes of diarrhoea in low-income and middle-income countries have looked at severe disease in people presenting for care, and there are few estimates of pathogen-specifi c diarrhoea burdens in the community. Methods We undertook a birth cohort study with not only intensive community surveillance for diarrhoea but also routine collection of non-diarrhoeal stools from eight sites in South America, Africa, and Asia. We enrolled children within 17 days of birth, and diarrhoeal episodes (defi ned as maternal report of three or more loose stools in 24 h, or one loose stool with visible blood) were identifi ed through twice-weekly home visits by fi eldworkers over a follow-up period of 24 months. Non-diarrhoeal stool specimens were also collected for surveillance for months 1–12, 15, 18, 21, and 24. Stools were analysed for a broad range of enteropathogens using culture, enzyme immunoassay, and PCR. We used the adjusted attributable fraction (AF) to estimate pathogen-specifi c burdens of diarrhoea. Findings Between Nov 26, 2009, and Feb 25, 2014, we tested 7318 diarrhoeal and 24 310 non-diarrhoeal stools collected from 2145 children aged 0–24 months. Pathogen detection was common in non-diarrhoeal stools but was higher with diarrhoea. Norovirus GII (AF 5·2%, 95% CI 3·0–7·1), rotavirus (4·8%, 4·5–5·0), Campylobacter spp (3·5%, 0·4–6·3), astrovirus (2·7%, 2·2–3·1), and Cryptosporidium spp (2·0%, 1·3–2·6) exhibited the highest attributable burdens of diarrhoea in the fi rst year of life. The major pathogens associated with diarrhoea in the second year of life were Campylobacter spp (7·9%, 3·1–12·1), norovirus GII (5·4%, 2·1–7·8), rotavirus (4·9%, 4·4–5·2), astrovirus (4·2%, 3·5–4·7), and Shigella spp (4·0%, 3·6–4·3). Rotavirus had the highest AF for sites without rotavirus vaccination and the fi fth highest AF for sites with the vaccination. There was substantial variation in pathogens according to geography, diarrhoea severity, and season. Bloody diarrhoea was primarily associated with Campylobacter spp and Shigella spp, fever and vomiting with rotavirus, and vomiting with norovirus GII. Interpretation There was substantial heterogeneity in pathogen-specifi c burdens of diarrhoea, with important determinants including age, geography, season, rotavirus vaccine usage, and symptoms. These fi ndings suggest that although single-pathogen strategies have an important role in the reduction of the burden of severe diarrhoeal disease, the eff ect of such interventions on total diarrhoeal incidence at the community level might be limited

Comparative Quality Analysis of Milk Collected from Open Markets and Dairy Industries in Bangladesh

The present study was conducted to analysis the quality indicators of cow’s milk both in open market and processing industries in Bangladesh. Total 84 samples of fluid milk (15 samples from the open market of each district are Sirajganj, Pabna, Tangail and Dhaka and 6 samples of pasteurized milk of 4 different brands) were collected. The determination of physicochemical properties, microbial quality and presence of adulterant of all milk samples were carried out. Highest average milk fat was found in the raw milk collected from the open market at Dhaka district and in Brand 4 as 4.2% and 3.55% respectively. The lowest corrected lactometer reading (CLR) was found in Sirajganj as 25.5. A few of the pasteurized milk and open market milk were being adulterated by skimmed milk, sugar, added water and soda and alcohol respectively. Results pertaining to the enumeration of E.coli, Salmonella and V. Cholera exhibited 56.66%, 45% and 10% of samples of open market and 12.5%, 8.33% and 4.17% of samples of brands respectively. Due to unhygienic milking practice and very poor sanitary facilities, the highest amount of total plate count was 7.9 x 106 cfu/ml at Sirajganj district.Keywords: Milk quality, Pasteurization, Open market, Adulteration, Food safetyDOI: 10.7176/FSQM/101-05Publication date:September 30th 202

An Assessment of the Interaction between Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Available Nutrients from the Lifecycle of Several Agricultural Crops

Agricultural products cause the emission of certain significant amount of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most important greenhouse gases and its emissions are increasing day by day as a result of the increase in agricultural productivity. This study aims to pinpoint the most environmentally friendly crops and fruits that are sources of good nutrients and emits less CO2 throughout their life cycles. Relation between nutrient availability and CO2 emissions from staple foods namely; wheat, maize, rice, potato, sugarcane, sugar beet, soybean, palm oil, sunflower, rapeseed, banana, apple and grape are investigated in this study. Secondary data was collected from dataset’s website. Spearman's rank and diagram interpretation technique are used to find out the correlation between nutrient availability and CO2 emissions. Among carbohydrate diets, rice emits 4 kg CO2 kg-1 of crops, which is significantly higher than that of wheat, maize and potato. However, the amount of carbohydrates in rice (0.26%) is less than those carbohydrate diets. Similarly, sugarcane emits more CO2 as 2.6 kg kg-1 of crops than sugar beet (1.4 kg kg-1 of crops) among sugar crops. Soybean and palm oil emit more CO2 as 6 kg kg-1 and 7.2 kg kg-1 of crops, respectively, as compared to other oilseed crops, but every oilseed crop has the same food value. Among fruits, bananas emit less CO2 (1.1 kg kg-1 of crops) and have a higher content of carbohydrates (0.23%) than other selected fruits. Proper crop selection based on nutrient content can lead to lower CO2 emissions than at present and a consistent balance between environmental and nutritional needs in the future

DSR and OLSR routing protocol based performance evaluation and integration on MIP with MANET

This paper describes the integration of mobile IP in mobile ad hoc network (MIPMANET) in large area network (LAN) between 8 nodes, where latency, delay, throughput is considered for the quality of service (QoS) consideration. For the best result of MIPMANET, the Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (DSR) and Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) are considered. Although MANET has other routing protocols, the DSR performs better in MIPMANET integration in NS2. Mobile IP is applied for doing the dynamic topology to static topology as the nodes are flexible in an ad-hoc network. Simulation result suggests that the MANET performs better in DSR with MIP as the amount of packet drop is low and throughput is hig

General and ICT Self-Efficacy in Different Participants Roles in Cyberbullying/Victimization Among Pakistani University Students

The study examines both general and Internet and Communication Technology (ICT) self-efficacy in cyber-victims, cyber-bullies, and cyber bully victims in comparison to un-involved students. Gender differences were also examined. A total of 1115 Pakistani university students from six universities participated in the study. Analyses were conducted on 950 complete cases (371 males, and 579 females). Data were collected on cyberbullying/victimization, general self-efficacy (GSE), ICT self-efficacy, traditional bullying/victimization, ICT usage, social desirability, and demographics. Multinomial logistic regression analysis indicated that ICT self-efficacy significantly decreased the probability of being a cyber-victim and significantly increased the chances of being a cyber-bully whereas GSE appeared to have no role in predicting participant roles in cyberbullying after controlling for covariates (i.e., age, gender, traditional bullying, traditional victimization, social desirability, Internet usage, time spent on the Internet, and social networking sites (SNS). Findings of the study have important implications for developing and enhancing interventions with respect to the inclusion of ICT related skills in anti-cyberbullying programs. With respect to gender, findings showed that females reported a higher level of victimization while males reported higher perpetration on both traditional and cyberbullying.Open access journal.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]