Proactive self-disclosure of threats : the effects of voluntary disclosure of corporate issues on perceived organizational transparency, credibility, and perceived severity of issues

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on February 27, 2013).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisors: Dr. Maria Len-Rios and Dr. Glen T. CameronIncludes bibliographical references.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2012."December 2012"Guided by the public relations literature of stealing thunder and organizational transparency, this study examined the effects of corporations' self-disclosure claims of their issues via Facebook on audience perceptions. The study used a 3 (information disclosure: voluntary vs. responsive vs. obligatory disclosure) x 2 (referral source: presence vs. absence) mixed-subject design experiment with 142 adult participants (mean age = 35.4). The results showed that regardless of one's prior involvement toward a stimuli brand, the voluntary disclosure of a corporate issue led the participants to perceive that company as more transparent and more credible than either the “responsive” disclosure messages or the “obligatory” disclosure. Notwithstanding, the voluntary, self-disclosure condition, when compared to the obligatory condition, was more effective in reducing participants' perceived severity of the particular issue. The results theoretically extend the stealing-thunder literature, in a way that public might view a company's disclosure as either volunteered or forced to respond, given that the responsive and the mandatory disclosure of information were essentially the same in responses. The findings also suggest that an organization may strategically use the voluntary information disclosure with their social media platforms, if the strategy can enhance greater transparency and credibility perceptions toward the organization using that strategy and further, mitigate the severity perceptions toward the threats.Includes bibliographical reference

Introducing an Integrated Model of Adults’ Wearable Activity Tracker Use and Obesity Information–Seeking Behaviors From a National Quota Sample Survey

Background: Research from multiple perspectives to investigate adults’ use of wearable activity-tracking devices is limited. We offer a multiperspective model and provide empirical evidence of what leads to frequent usage of wearable health technologies from a large, nationally representative survey sample. Objective: This study aims to explore factors affecting the use of wearable activity-tracking devices among health consumers from the perspectives of individual health beliefs (perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, perceived benefits, and self-efficacy) and information-seeking behaviors. Methods: Our Integrated Model of Wearable Activity Tracker (IMWAT) use and proposed hypotheses were validated and tested with data collected from a telephone survey with a national quota sample. The data were analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques, including structural equation analysis. Results: The sample comprised 2006 participants. Our results showed that the perceived benefits of physical activity, perceived susceptibility, and self-efficacy toward obesity were significant predictors of information-seeking behaviors, which, in turn, mediated their effects on the use of wearable activity trackers. Perceptions of obesity severity directly promoted wearable device usage. Conclusions: This study provided a new and powerful theoretical model that combined the health beliefs and information-seeking behaviors behind the use of wearable activity trackers in the adult population. The findings provide meaningful implications for developers and designers of wearable health technology products and will assist health informatics practitioners and obesity prevention communicators

Are they still determining? Analysis of associations among ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, neighborhood factors, and COVID-19 vaccination

IntroductionThis study explores associations among adult vaccination, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic variables such as educational attainment and income, as well as neighborhood factors.MethodsA telephone quota sample of New Jersey adults (N = 1,984) was used to text associations among proposed predictors of vaccination behaviors.ResultsOur multivariate logistic regression analyses found that certain races/ethnicity, respondents' household income, and perceived safety of one's community were the strongest predictors of COVID-19 vaccination. The odds of COVID-19 vaccination were 52% lower for Black/African American respondents compared to white/Caucasian respondents (p = 0.001) and 44% lower for Hispanic/Latino respondents compared to white/Caucasian respondents (p = 0.001).DiscussionThe results add new insights to public health communication research and suggest careful interventions across racial groups, considering existing racial disparities in vaccination

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of motor cortex enhances running performance.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a technique used to modulate neuronal excitability through non-invasive brain stimulation that can enhance exercise performance. We hypothesize that tDCS would improve submaximal running time to exhaustion (TTE) and delay the increase in the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) over time. We also hypothesize that tDCS would not lead to difference in cardiorespiratory responses. We employed a randomized, single-blinded, and counterbalanced design in which 10 trained men participated. After receiving either 20 min of 1.98 mA anodal tDCS applied over the primary motor cortex (M1) or sham-operated control on separate days, participants completed a constant-load test involving running at a speed equivalent to 80% of their own maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max). During this constant-load test, RPE, heart rate (HR), VO2, pulmonary ventilation (VE), respiratory exchange ratio (RER), and ventilatory threshold (VT) were continuously monitored. TTE was recorded at the end of the test. TTEs were significantly longer in the tDCS than in the sham conditions (21.18 ± 7.13 min; 18.44 ± 6.32 min; p = 0.011). For TTE, no significant differences were found in RPE between conditions at isotime. In addition, no significant differences in HR, VO2, VE, RER, and VT were found during TTE between the two stimulation conditions at any time point. These results indicate that the application of tDCS does not induce a change of the exercise performance-related index; however, it can affect the increase of the exercise duration due to the stimuli in the M1 area

Essays on health economics and public policy

Substance use disorders (SUDs) are a major public health concern both in the United States and worldwide. The three chapters of this dissertation examine the intended and unintended consequences of public policies designed to tackle SUDs. Chapter 1 explores the short- and long-run impacts of SUD treatment on human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes among at-risk adolescents. Specifically, I study the effect of treatment center schools, which provide residential SUD treatment and have a school on site. Using administrative data that link individual-level records across multiple government agencies in Texas, I examine within-individual changes in outcomes around the time of SUD treatment with a difference-in-differences design. I find that treated students experience declines in chronic absenteeism, disciplinary action, and course failure in the first two years following SUD treatment relative to a matched comparison group. I also find positive long-term impacts on college enrollment and employment at ages 17–20. My findings suggest that SUD treatment among adolescents may have lasting consequences and is a promising tool to promote human capital development among at-risk youth. Chapter 2, previously published in the Journal of Health Economics, investigates the consequences of “mandatory access” prescription drug monitoring programs (MA PDMPs). MA PDMPs legally require providers to access a state-level database with a patient's prescription history before prescribing controlled substances under certain circumstances. Using a difference-in-differences specification, I find strong evidence that MA PDMPs have increased heroin death rates. My results suggest that even if MA PDMPs reduce prescription opioid deaths, the decrease is offset by a large increase in illegal opioid deaths. Chapter 3, coauthored with David Beheshti, examines the effect of MA PDMPs on non-opioid-related outcomes. While many policies exclusively target prescription opioid misuse, PDMPs are designed to monitor the use of a wider range of prescription drugs. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that MA PDMPs led to decreases in stimulant prescribing. In contrast, we find suggestive evidence that these policies resulted in increases in benzodiazepine prescriptions. Our findings highlight that MA PDMPs do have effects on non-opioid drug prescribing, but these effects differ substantially across drug types.Economic

Transthyretin Misfolding, A Fatal Structural Pathogenesis Mechanism

Transthyretin (TTR) is an essential transporter of a thyroid hormone and a holo-retinol binding protein, found abundantly in human plasma and cerebrospinal fluid. In addition, this protein is infamous for its amyloidogenic propensity, causing various amyloidoses in humans, such as senile systemic amyloidosis, familial amyloid polyneuropathy, and familial amyloid cardiomyopathy. It has been known for over two decades that decreased stability of the native tetrameric conformation of TTR is the main cause of these diseases. Yet, mechanistic details on the amyloidogenic transformation of TTR were not clear until recent multidisciplinary investigations on various structural states of TTR. In this review, we discuss recent advancements in the structural understanding of TTR misfolding and amyloidosis processes. Special emphasis has been laid on the observations of novel structural features in various amyloidogenic species of TTR. In addition, proteolysis-induced fragmentation of TTR, a recently proposed mechanism facilitating TTR amyloidosis, has been discussed in light of its structural consequences and relevance to acknowledge the amyloidogenicity of TTR. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.1

???????????? ????????? ???????????? ???????????? ?????? ??????

It is crucial to provide forest fire risk forecast information to minimize forest fire-related losses. In this research, forecast models of forest fire risk at a mid-range (with lead times up to 7 days) scale were developed considering past, present and future conditions (i.e., forest fire risk, drought, and weather) through random forest machine learning over South Korea. The models were developed using weather forecast data from the Global Data Assessment and Prediction System, historical and current Fire Risk Index (FRI) information, and environmental factors (i.e., elevation, forest fire hazard index, and drought index). Three schemes were examined: scheme 1 using historical values of FRI and drought index, scheme 2 using historical values of FRI only, and scheme 3 using the temporal patterns of FRI and drought index. The models showed high accuracy (Pearson correlation coefficient >0.8, relative root mean square error <10%), regardless of the lead times, resulting in a good agreement with actual forest fire events. The use of the historical FRI itself as an input variable rather than the trend of the historical FRI produced more accurate results, regardless of the drought index used