An Assessment of on-line package customization for sheet size products packaged in paperboard envelopes

This study evaluates the on-line printing of paperboard envelopes as a means of supporting the need to provide customized packaging. Market forces and new business models are contributing to the need for customized packaging and rapid response to orders. Large retailers are demanding unique packaging presentations and global marketing requires localized packaging for different regions of the world. A business environment ofjust-intime delivery and minimal inventory levels demand flexibility to react to unpredictable product mix and volumes. These conditions require customized packaging within short cycle times. The traditional carton printing process using offset lithography does not respond quickly enough to meet these needs. Alternate methods of applying graphics to paperboard envelopes provide the capability to respond to the need for customized packaging quickly. This study evaluates several alternative application methods to test the hypothesis that on-line graphics application can provide high quality graphic presentation for low volume, customized packages at a cost that is competitive with traditional offset carton printing

Study and simulation of low rate video coding schemes

The semiannual report is included. Topics covered include communication, information science, data compression, remote sensing, color mapped images, robust coding scheme for packet video, recursively indexed differential pulse code modulation, image compression technique for use on token ring networks, and joint source/channel coder design

Social Media Marketing Strategies in the Organic Food Industry

This study used content analysis to review the social media marketing strategies of the organic food industry. The results reveal which social media channels are being used and which social media marketing strategies are being used. Qualitative techniques were used to generate a pool of eight organic companies. The social media channels used were highlighted by Chanthinok, Ussahawanitichakit, and Jhundra-indra (2015) as those used by frequency and the ability of the application to achieve the desired marketing goal. The marketing strategies assessed were categorized first as transformational or informational and then further subcategorized by the way it is perceived by the consumer. This study confirmed the greater use of transformational messaging by the organic food industry

A Content Analysis of Advertising in Magazines Directed at United States and United Kingdom Seniors

The seniors (55+) market is a growing, attractive market. While this market represents almost one-fourth of the total population in the United States and is slightly higher in the United Kingdom today, this segment is projected to grow to approximately one-third of the population over the next quarter century. Relative to their proportion of the total population, seniors, and especially women, have historically been underrepresented as general advertising models. When seniors are portrayed, they are often used in supporting roles or in a negatively stereotyped manner. While the aging process is associated with declines in mental and physical capabilities, and healthcare is a major concern of the group, this is only one of many areas of interest to this diverse population segment. There is evidence that the portrayal of seniors has improved; but advertising is still designed by persons with an average age of 30, who are focused on the declining youth market and who do not, nor do they desire to, know the senior market. This research expands prior advertising studies by investigating advertising practices toward seniors. That is, only limited research has been conducted using magazine advertisements targeted towards seniors and no cross-national studies were found in the literature. The study investigates (1) how firms currently advertise to the senior market; (2) how practitioners communicate with seniors in comparison to published academic research; (3) the similarities and differences of print advertisements for seniors from two similar countries; and (4) the support for standardization of print advertisements directed towards the senior market based upon advertising practices in two similar cultures. The literature advises that advertising targeted to seniors should utilize certain methods and techniques that are beneficial in reaching this market, although little evaluation has been made of the adoption of these recommendations. The literature also indicates that advertising is an important source of information for seniors. Half-page and larger advertisements from 1999 issues of magazines targeted specifically to the seniors market were analyzed utilizing the content analysis methodology (Kassarjian 1977). A number of advertising characteristics were discovered, which revealed that (1) senior models are frequently employed in advertising directed towards this population; (2) the frequency of usage of women has increased; (3) positive role portrayals of seniors in advertising are strongly evidenced; (4) senior models are associated with a limited number of high involvement products and services; and (5) greater amounts of informational cues are found in healthcare and financial service advertisements. Because advertising is a significant portion of marketing expenditures, the use of standardized advertising cross-nationally can result in economies of scale and efficiencies in creating a universal brand image for multinational companies. In this study data were collected from magazines in the U.S. and the U.K., two countries considered to be similar in many ways, including demographics. The cross-national data indicate that certain advertising techniques recommended in the literature for seniors are similarly utilized, but that significant differences remain in the application of advertising practices in the two countries. The findings suggest that advertisers should exercise caution and think locally, even when their advertising follows a global approach

Psychological Influencers of a Consumer\u27s Innovative Propensity: A Cross-Cultural Examination

The purpose of this effort was to focus on measuring the psychological characteristics (specifically perceived risk, dogmatism, fatalism, self esteem, empathy, and cognitive complexity) of the innovative consumer. In order to assess the various relationships and interrelationships that exist in the psychological determinants of innovativeness, a structural modeling approach was employed. The model was also tested in a two country setting in order to determine its robustness cross-culturally. The innovative behavior measure focused on a single domain, the Internet, since innovativeness does not typically overlap across product categories (e.g. Gatignon and Robertson 1985). Overall, the results of the test of the model of innovativeness used in this study support the assertions of recent researchers (Goldsmith and Hofacker 1991; Mudd 1990) that a relationship exists between a consumer\u27s personality traits, innovativeness predisposition and adoption behavior. It also provides credence for the long held belief that early adopters of new products exhibit a tendency toward innovativeness (e.g., Midgley and Dowling 1978; Rogers and Shoemaker 1971). This may be important for marketers since it can provide future researchers with the ability to use trait innovativeness as a surrogate for actual adoption behavior. The findings of this study also showed that three of the six personality measures were directly related to innovativeness predisposition: fatalism, cognitive complexity, and risk. Thus, consumers who are innovative can be said to (1) perceive themselves as able to control their own future; (2) actively seek out information and enjoy interpreting stimuli multidimensionally; and (3) enjoys change and is not afraid of situations with uncertain outcomes. Finally, the innovativeness model was verified cross-culturally. The fact that the overall model was structurally similar in the United States and Australia reconfirms the notion that countries which share a cultural rather than a geographic proximity may exhibit similar innovative styles (Cosmos and Sheth 1980; Green and Langeard 1975). In summary, the findings from this study support the notion that the adoption of a new product is an actualization of an innovativeness trait

Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

The Effect of Dramatic Play on Children\u27s Graphic Representation of Emotion

Drawing is valued as a non-verbal assessment tool to measure children\u27s conceptual development and emotional state. Drawing has also been described as a problem-solving activity and unique symbol system. Although drama has been known to facilitate learning in other symbol systems, such as reading and writing, and to bring about advances in perspective taking and understanding of emotion, its impact on drawing has not been previously examined. In this study, Kindergarten and first grade children were instructed to draw a happy tree, sad tree, and angry tree before and after a 10-hour drama intervention. Half of the children participated in the intervention while the remaining children were members of a control group who participated in the regular school program. Consistent with expectations, children who participated in the drama program showed significantly greater improvement from pretest to posttest in drawing emotion compared to control children. Their drawings of emotion improved in clarity, that is, they depicted more clearly the emotion they were instructed to convey. Participants in the drama program also used significantly more highter level drawing strategies. The results suggest that the experience in emotional perspective taking provided by dramatic play may generalize to the domain of drawing and enhance expression

Remote Sensing Data Compression

A huge amount of data is acquired nowadays by different remote sensing systems installed on satellites, aircrafts, and UAV. The acquired data then have to be transferred to image processing centres, stored and/or delivered to customers. In restricted scenarios, data compression is strongly desired or necessary. A wide diversity of coding methods can be used, depending on the requirements and their priority. In addition, the types and properties of images differ a lot, thus, practical implementation aspects have to be taken into account. The Special Issue paper collection taken as basis of this book touches on all of the aforementioned items to some degree, giving the reader an opportunity to learn about recent developments and research directions in the field of image compression. In particular, lossless and near-lossless compression of multi- and hyperspectral images still remains current, since such images constitute data arrays that are of extremely large size with rich information that can be retrieved from them for various applications. Another important aspect is the impact of lossless compression on image classification and segmentation, where a reasonable compromise between the characteristics of compression and the final tasks of data processing has to be achieved. The problems of data transition from UAV-based acquisition platforms, as well as the use of FPGA and neural networks, have become very important. Finally, attempts to apply compressive sensing approaches in remote sensing image processing with positive outcomes are observed. We hope that readers will find our book useful and interestin

An instrument for assessing the public communication of scientists

An instrument for valid, quantitative assessment of scientists’ public communication promises to promote improved science communication by giving formative feedback to scientists developing their communication skills and providing a mechanism for summative assessment of communication training programs for scientists. A quantitative instrument also fits with the scientific ethos, increasing the likelihood that the assessment will gain individual and institutional adoption. Unfortunately, past assessment instruments have fallen short in providing a methodologically sound, theory-based assessment instrument to use in assessing public science communication. This dissertation uses the Evidence Centered Design (ECD) method for language testing to develop and test the APPS—the Assessment for Public Presentations by Scientists—a f filled-cell rubric and accompanying code book based on communication theory and practice that can be used to provide formative and summative assessments of scientists giving informative presentations to public, non-scientist audiences. The APPS rubric was developed by employing an extensive domain analysis to establish the knowledge, skills, and abilities most desired for scientists who speak to public audiences, based on a methodical review of scientific organizations and a systematic review of science communication scholarship. This analysis found that scientists addressing public audiences should speak in language that is understandable, concrete, and free from scientific jargon, translating important scientific information into language that public audiences can understand; should convey the relevance and importance of science to the everyday lives of audience members; should employ visuals that enhance the presentations; should explain scientific processes, techniques, and purposes; should engage in behaviors that increase the audience’s perceptions of scientists as trustworthy, human, and approachable; and should engage in interactive exchanges about science with public audiences. The APPS operationalizes these skills and abilities, using communication theory, in a detailed, user-friendly rubric and code book for assessing public communication by scientists. The rubric delineates theory-based techniques for demonstrating the desired skills, such as using explanatory metaphors, engaging in behaviors that increase immediacy, using first-person pronouns, telling personal stories, and engaging in back-and-forth conversation with the audience. Four rounds of testing provided evidence that the final version of the APPS is a reliable and valid assessment, with constructs that measure what they are intended to measure and that are seen similarly by different raters when used in conjunction with rater training. Early rounds of testing showed the need to adjust wording and understanding of some of the constructs so that raters understood them similarly, and later testing showed marked improvement in those areas. Although the stringent interclass agreement measure Cohen’s kappa did not show strong agreement in most measures, the adjacent agreement (where raters choose scores that are within one point of each other) was high for every category in the final testing. This shows that although raters did not often have exactly the same score for speakers in each construct, they nearly always understood the construct similarly. The agreement ratings also accentuate the study’s finding that the raters’ backgrounds may affect their abilities to objectively score science speakers. Testing showed that science raters had difficulty separating themselves from their inherent science knowledge and had difficulty objectively rating communication skills. Therefore, this study finds that scientists can act as communication raters if they are trained by practicing rating science presentations as a group to norm scoring and by studying communication skills discussed in the code book. However, because of the possible difficulty separating themselves from their intrinsic science knowledge and their lack of experience in identifying excellent communication practices, the assessment of science speakers will nearly always be more accurate and the communication performance of scientists more enhanced when utilizing communication experts to help train and assess scientists in their science communication with public audiences. Therefore, the APPS can be a valuable tool for improving the knowledge, skills, and abilities of scientists communicating with public audiences when used by communication training programs to provide prompt, specific feedback. Given the reliability limitations, the rubric should not be used for high-stakes purposes or for “proving” a speaker’s competence. However, when used in a science communication training program with consistent raters, the APPS can provide valuable summative and formative assessment for science communicators