Impact of Cultural Elements on Brand Preferences An Explorative Research

Building a brand and creating a professional image requires a thorough understanding of culture. Different civilizations have unique passions, convictions, values, and traditions. Culture-specific expectations and boundaries exist. Products and services reflect culture, and they frequently express the symbolic cultural meaning associated with them. A marketer has an advantage over rivals by being aware of the culture and family structure and consumption patterns. Cultural variables have a big impact on people's decisions to purchase and consume. The research aimed to verify whether there is an impact of cultural elements on brand preference and whether their profile factors differentiate the impact of culture on brand preference. The research reveals that the influence of culture on brand choice is consistent across age groups, family sizes, family types, jobs, and respondents' religious affiliations. Regarding how culture influences brand choice, male and female responses differ significantly. The languages that they speak have an impact on how much culture impacts brand preferences. Keywords: Culture, Brand, Preference, Cultural Elements. JEL Classification: M 31 DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/15-10-03 Publication date:May 31st 202

Treatment outcome of antiretroviral treatment naive HIV infected patients initiated on antiretroviral therapy in a tertiary care hospital in South India

Background: About 2.1 million people are infected with HIV in India. Clinical profile of patients has evolved over a period of time in the Antiretroviral treatment (ART) era. This study was done to document the clinical presentation of patients in a tertiary care in Mysuru in Karnataka. The aim of the study was to follow the patients who were initiated on ART over a period of time and to know its effect on the clinical outcome and overall morbidity and mortality of the patients.Methods: A prospective study of HIV positive patients who were initiated on ART was done regarding clinical profile and outcome over a period of one and a half to two years depending on when they were initiated on ART.Results: Totally 183 patients were registered during the period, out of which 114 patients (62.29%) were males and the rest were females (37.70%). The commonest route of transmission was heterosexual route seen in 97.3% (178). Most (56.8%) of the patients were asymptomatic. The mean basal CD4 count was 162.70. The mean age of patients was 39.07. The mean BMI was 20.29. A 23.5% (43) had one or other side effects. Anemia (44.2%) was the most common side effects seen. There were 18 deaths (12.2%). A 39.34% (72) patients had opportunistic infections (OI), the commonest being tuberculosis 45(%).Conclusions: It was concluded that patients with low CD4 count, low BMI were more prone for Opportunistic infections and death. Early initiation of ART can prevent such incidences and improve the quality of life of HIV positive patients

Assessment of depression and diabetes distress in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients in a tertiary care hospital of South India

Background: Depression is one of the many complications seen among diabetics. Depression leads to lack of self-care by the diabetic and endangers the therapeutic compliance, accounting for a derangement in metabolic control which in turn causes further diabetic complications and may even result in hospitalization. This leads to an increase in depressive symptoms and thus the vicious cycle continues.Methods: It is a Descriptive, cross sectional study conducted in the Medicine outpatient department. Depression was assessed by Hamilton depression rating scale. Diabetic distress was assessed by diabetic distress scale.Results: Out of the 250 study participants, 142 (56.8%) were found to be suffering from depression and 6 (2.4%) were found to have diabetes distress. The magnitude of depression was similar in both male and female. Depression was high among illiterates, unemployed (70%), single, separated individuals and patients with complications of diabetes. There was no significant association between religion and low economic status with depression. Treatment modalities, complications of diabetes, sociodemographic factors like age, sex, occupation, education, marital status, religion and socio-economic status had no significant correlation with diabetic distress. But there was a statistically significant association between diabetic distress and co-morbid conditions. 95.8% with depression had no distress and this association was found to be statistically significant (0.038).Conclusions: The magnitude of depression and distress is much high among diabetics. Early detection, counselling and treatment are required for all diabetics, especially those who have additional risk factors for the development of depression

Hemicastration-induced changes in the electrophoretic pattern of some enzymes in the brain of the skink, Mabuya carinata

Hemicastration in the skink induces change in the electrophoretic pattern of some enzymes like LDH, MDH, acid phosphatase and esterases

Cooperation in one machine scheduling

Contains fulltext : 172966.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

First-Principles Calculation of Born Effective Charges and Spontaneous Polarization of Ferroelectric Bismuth Titanate

In this study, we present the results of our first-principles calculations of the band structure, density of states and the Born effective charge tensors for the ferroelectric (ground state B1a1) and paraelectric (I4/mmm) phases of bismuth titanate. The calculations are done using the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) as well as the local density approximation (LDA) of the density functional theory. In contrast to the literature, our calculations on B1a1 structure using GGA and LDA yield smaller indirect band gaps as compared to the direct band gaps, in agreement with the experimental data. The density of states shows considerable hybridization among Ti 3d, Bi 6p and O 2p states indicating covalent nature of the bonds leading to the ferroelectric instability. The Born effective charge tensors of the constituent ions for the ground state (B1a1) and paraelectric (I4/mmm) structures were calculated using the Berry phase method. This is followed by the calculation of the spontaneous polarization for the ferroelectric B1a1 phase using the Born effective charge tensors of the individual ions. The calculated value for the spontaneous polarization of ferroelectric bismuth titanate using different Born effective charges was found to be in the range of 55+/-13 $\mu$C/cm2 in comparison to the reported experimental value of (50+/-10 $\mu$C/cm2) for single crystals. The origin of ferroelectricity is attributed to the relatively large displacements of those oxygen ions in the TiO6 octahedra that lie along the a-axis of the bismuth titanate crystal.Comment: 36 pages, 5 figure

Vectored Machine Learning Rearing Process: Early Detection of Leaf Diseases

619-625Over the past years, the plant leaf analyses through image processing have drawn a remarkable approach in assessing leaf disease severity through accurate and precise conclusions. We proposed, ‘Scale Invariant Feature Transform’ (SIFT) based Distinctive Scale Invariant Mapping Procedure (DSIMP) for training images. Random Separation Propagation (RSP) Procedure and Redundant multiclass Support Vector Machine (RM-SVM) are implemented to detect the rice and groundnut leaf diseases at its early stages. Discriminative Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (DGLCM) and K means clustering is used for recognition and quantification to give the best color analysis. Experiments with 1000 samples of rice and groundnut leaf images show promising performance

Molecular cloning and functional characterisation of a glucose transporter, CaHGT1, of Candida albicans

We have cloned the first glucose transporter CaHGT1 (Candida albicanshigh-affinity glucose transporter) of a pathogenic yeast, Candida albicans. The DNA sequence (GenBank accession number Y16834) analysis revealed an ORF encoding a novel protein of 545 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 60.67 kDa. The putative protein with 12 transmembrane domains has 51% identity with Kluyveromyces lactis high-affinity glucose transporter, HGT1. The protein signatures which are conserved and distinctive of the sugar transporters belonging to the major facilitator superfamily (MFS) were also found in CaHgt1p. When heterologously expressed, the ORF functionally complemented a mutant strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae RE700A which was deleted in seven hexose transporter genes and thus was unable to grow or transport glucose. The expression of CaHGT1 in C. albicans showed a transcript of 1.6 kb which was enhanced in response to the human steroid hormone progesterone. Interestingly, the transcript levels were also enhanced in the presence of drugs, e.g. cycloheximide, chloramphenicol and benomyl. The results suggest that CaHGT1, which encodes a MFS protein, could be linked to the drug resistance phenomenon in C. albicans

Biology and management of mealybug, Paracoccus marginatus Williams and Granara de Willink on Jatropha curcas L.

Jatropha cultivation is gaining importance as potential source of biofuel. Recently Paracoccus marginatus has been found to cause serious damage on Jatropha. Studies on the biology and management of P. marginatus at GKVK, Bangalore revealed that the females had three nymphal instars without any pupal stage, while the male had three nymphal instars besides, pre-pupal and pupal stages. The total nymphal period for female ranged from 14 to 21 days, (mean- 17.32±1.6 days) while for male the range was 16 to 23 days, (mean- 18.9±1.3 days). Bisexual and parthenogenetic modes of reproduction were observed. The fecundity of the female mealybug ranged from 248 to 967, with an average of 618.9±19 eggs. Evaluation of insecticides revealed that during first spray and second spray, mean per cent reduction of mealy bug population was highest in profenophos 0.05% (68.05 and 79.35) followed by buprofezin 0.025% (63.61 and 72.69). Least per cent reduction of mealy bug was observed in the NSKE 5% (17.94 and 25.77) treatment