Rare association of thymoma, myasthenia gravis and sarcoidosis : a case report

case repor

Experience with rituximab in scleroderma: results from a 1-year, proof-of-principle study

Objective. To assess the efficacy of rituximab (RTX) in SSc

Authentic, but make it personal: an examination of social media influencer personal authenticity

Social Media Influencers (SMIs) occupy an increasingly focal position in the digital marketing landscape. Although authenticity has drawn researchers’ attention to understanding how digital influencers command influence over online consumers, the notion of personal authenticity, the human variant of authenticity has yet to be applied and tested in the marketing literature to understand online spokespersons and consumer responses. Accordingly, the present research aimed to investigate the role of SMI personal authenticity in influencing online customer behaviour. The first chapter in this thesis broadly explored the notion of authenticity across disciplines and defines SMI personal authenticity in reference to self-identification theory. Employing a bibliometric analysis, it further highlighted relatively limited empirical work on online influencers and their authentic self-representation in the marketing literature. The following chapter empirically investigated whether the online representations of SMIs’ self-identity exert consumer behaviour. The pilot study examined whether an SMI Instagram profile adequately reflected their personal authenticity after ruling out the possible confounding effects of gender and familiarity. Study 1 examined online consumer behaviour in response to SMI authentic representation. In Study 2, the preceding study was built upon, and investigated a mediating effect of SMI trustworthiness on the relationship between SMI personal authenticity and consumer responses. The final study (Study 3) tested the serial mediation of SMI trustworthiness and Inspirational capacity of the SMI as a means of explaining the relationship between SMI personal authenticity and consumer outcomes. The findings reveal consumers perceived SMIs who were high in personal authenticity to be more trustworthy and hence more inspirational, resulting in an increased tendency to purchase products advertised by them. Further analyses show that high levels of SMI personal authenticity had a negative effect on inspiration and then resulted in a decrease in consumer purchase intent. These findings challenge the existing marketing literature on authenticity by showing that highly authentic self-representations of SMIs are not always indicative of encouraging consumer purchase intent. The findings from this thesis make a significant and pertinent contribution by filling the current research gap in the extant literature on online influencers and authenticity, in addition to carrying a high degree of digital marketing practitioner value

An investigation of bio potentials for the pre-diagnosis of heart dysfunction using a novel portable high resolution electronic analyzer and software

An electrocardiogram (ECG) is a bioelectrical signal which records the heart‘s electrical activity versus time. It is an important diagnostic tool for assessing heart functions. The interpretation of ECG signal is an application of pattern recognition. The techniques used in this pattern recognition comprise: signal pre-processing, QRS detection, creation of variables and signal classification. In this research, signal processing and programs implementation are based in Matlab environment. The processed simulated signal source came from the SIMULAIDS® interactive ECG simulator™ device and the actual heart signals came from actual patients that suffer from various heart disorders, as well as healthy persons that hadn‘t recorded any form of heart condition in the past. For the creation of the database in this research, 5 types of ECG waveform were selected from the ECG simulator device. These are normal sinus rhythm (NSR), ventricular tachycardia (VT poly), ventricular fibrillation (VF), Atrial fibrillation (A FIB) and supra ventricular tachycardia (SVT). An essential part of this research was the development of a portable high resolution ECG device, capable of connecting with, either an ECG simulator device, or recording real human data. This device is able to produce higher resolution than normal ECG devices and high values of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). Matlab was used to develop a program that could further examine, analyze and study the ECG samples. Since the heart waveform can be simulated by cubic spline interpolation, this feature was used by the implemented Matlab program. The ECG samples were normalized and processed to produce 4 specific coefficients. These 4 coefficients of cubic spline were used in the applied methodology in order to evaluate and separate the various heart disorders with mathematical terms and equations. The database created was compared with the real human samples that were taken and passed through the same data process. Through this step, the entire data process and implementation was not only confirmed, but also proved that the capability to diagnose heart disorders was possible. Based on the results of the applied methodology, the categorization of heart disorders without actual clinical examination is possible. Further analysis of each group of results, can lead to heart disorder prediction. Also given are further suggestions to plan experiments for future work