Does explicit comparative advertising affect Indian consumers’ attitudes towards low and high-involvement product?

YesWith increasing use of explicit comparative advertisement to get share of consumers’ mind and influence their purchase decision in western context, the same is now used extensively in emerging markets like India. However, there has not been sufficient research to understand the effectiveness of explicit comparative advertisement in low and high-involvement product categories. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to understand the effectiveness of explicit comparative advertising on consumers’ attitude and purchase intention (PI) towards high and low-involvement products. The study carried out experimental treatments with 2 × 2 factorial design among 200 Indian young consumers who were in the age group 18-25. The independent variables were product categories and type of advertising (comparative and non-comparative) and dependent variables were consumer attitude and PIs. It was found that the comparative form of advertisement developed favourable response towards the advertisement, rather than towards the brand or PI. The study found that comparative advertising is effective for high as well as low-involvement product category in changing the consumer’s attitude towards the advertisement. The research has used print media for conducting the experiment. It can be inferred that comparisons should be supplemented with additional information in the form of the unique features and associated emotions and feeling of the product in order to develop favourable attitude towards the brand and PI. Comparative advertising is a growing domain and there has been very little contribution by the researchers specially on high and low-involvement product categories

Mid-infrared spectroscopy of calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions: a tool to detect primitive asteroids?

Calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions in Vigarano, Ornans and Allende have characteristic refractory components that may help us identify primitive near-Earth asteroids through mid-IR space telescope spectrometers. We have identified some features

Technology and Mother-Tongue Literacy in Southern India: Impact Studies among Young Children and Out-of-School Youth

The present research began with one main question: How can new technologies be effective for poor and illiterate children and youth in developing countries? We addressed this question through a research-based implementation project in India that included the development of local language multimedia software for literacy; a built-in, user-friendly interface; and the use of existing computer infrastructure. Two studies were undertaken in Andhra Pradesh state. One included a sample of youth and young adults who had never gone to school (or dropped out early) in peri-urban Hyderabad, and the other was composed of young second- and third-grade school children in rural West Godavari district. Based on a short-term intervention program, research results demonstrated a modest positive impact on the learning rate in reading with both groups of learners (when compared with control groups without the multimedia intervention). The findings provide support for the view that information and communications technologies for development can assist in promoting literacy among the poorest of the poor. In addition, the present results support the view that the digital divide, as it evolves over time, will only be narrowed when content-based solutions are sensitive to, and built on cultural and linguistic diversity

Analytical Study of a Case Series of Vancomycin Associated Adverse Drug Reactions in Paediatric Population at a Tertiary Care Hospital: A Brief Report

Background: Red man syndrome (RMS) is frequently reported from pediatric ward in patients receiving vancomycin, at the medical store of SGH, Pune. Though common in pediatric patients, not all patients receiving vancomycin developed Red man syndrome. Hence, this study was done to analyse the demographic, pathophysiological, and pharmacological aspects of the subject who experience adverse drug reactions with vancomycin and to determine if this predisposition is associated with any of these factors. Methods: All adverse drug reactions (ADR) to injection vancomycin in the pediatric ward that were reported from April 2018 - January 2022 were included. Controls were a similar number of randomly selected pediatric cases from the same ward who had received Intravenous vancomycin during the same period but did not experience the adverse drug reactions Results: The mean age was 29.91 ± 34.87 months in subjects who experienced ADR and 57.37 ± 41.58 months, in non-ADR group (p=0.0286). 37.4% were infants, 29.69% toddlers in ADR Group. Seventy four percent of patients who manifested with ADR were below age of 3 compared to barely 38% in controls (p=0.03). 66.6% were malnourished in the ADR group compared to 27.6% in controls (p=0.007). There was no association between the ADR and ethnicity, religion, gender, diagnosis, co-morbidities, co-administered drugs, or administered dose of vancomycin among the children. There was no apparent seasonal variation in occurrence of the ADR.Conclusion: RMS is more common in paediatric population than adults and is usually uneventful. Around 75% of the reactions occur within first 4 days of start of Vancomycin and usually occurs within 30 min of the preceding dose. Younger age groups (infants) and malnourishment were the two factors significantly associated with occurrence of RMS. We may also consider using lower than conventional doses and much slower infusions in such at-risk population

A Community-based Bacteriological Study of Quality of Drinking-water and Its Feedback to a Rural Community in Western Maharashtra, India

A longitudinal study of the bacteriological quality of rural water supplies was undertaken for a movement towards self-help against diseases, such as diarrhoea, and improved water management through increased community participation. Three hundred and thirteen water samples from different sources, such as well, tank, community standpost, handpumps, percolation lakes, and streams, and from households were collected from six villages in Maharashtra, India, over a one-year period. Overall, 49.8% of the 313 samples were polluted, whereas 45.9% of the samples from piped water supply were polluted. The quality of groundwater was generally good compared to open wells. Irregular and/or inadequate treatment of water, lack of drainage systems, and domestic washing near the wells led to deterioration in the quality of water. No major diarrhoeal epidemics were recorded during the study, although a few sporadic cases were noted during the rainy season. As a result of a continuous feedback of bacteriological findings to the community, perceptions of the people changed with time. An increased awareness was observed through active participation of the people cutting across age-groups and different socioeconomic strata of the society in village activities

Data sharing in DHT based P2P systems

International audienceThe evolution of peer-to-peer (P2P) systems triggered the building of large scale distributed applications. The main application domain is data sharing across a very large number of highly autonomous participants. Building such data sharing systems is particularly challenging because of the "extreme" characteristics of P2P infrastructures: massive distribution, high churn rate, no global control, potentially untrusted participants... This article focuses on declarative querying support, query optimization and data privacy on a major class of P2P systems, that based on Distributed Hash Table (P2P DHT). The usual approaches and the algorithms used by classic distributed systems and databases forproviding data privacy and querying services are not well suited to P2P DHT systems. A considerable amount of work was required to adapt them for the new challenges such systems present. This paper describes the most important solutions found. It also identies important future research trends in data management in P2P DHT systems

Studies on the antidiarrhoeal activity of Aegle marmelos unripe fruit: Validating its traditional usage

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Aegle marmelos </it>(L.) Correa has been widely used in indigenous systems of Indian medicine due to its various medicinal properties. However, despite its traditional usage as an anti-diarrhoeal there is limited information regarding its mode of action in infectious forms of diarrhoea. Hence, we evaluated the hot aqueous extract (decoction) of dried unripe fruit pulp of <it>A. marmelos </it>for its antimicrobial activity and effect on various aspects of pathogenicity of infectious diarrhoea.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The decoction was assessed for its antibacterial, antigiardial and antirotaviral activities. The effect of the decoction on adherence of enteropathogenic <it>Escherichia coli </it>and invasion of enteroinvasive <it>E. coli </it>and <it>Shigella flexneri </it>to HEp-2 cells were assessed as a measure of its effect on colonization. The effect of the decoction on production of <it>E. coli </it>heat labile toxin (LT) and cholera toxin (CT) and their binding to ganglioside monosialic acid receptor (GM1) were assessed by GM1-enzyme linked immuno sorbent assay whereas its effect on production and action of <it>E. coli </it>heat stable toxin (ST) was assessed by suckling mouse assay.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The decoction showed cidal activity against <it>Giardia </it>and rotavirus whereas viability of none of the six bacterial strains tested was affected. It significantly reduced bacterial adherence to and invasion of HEp-2 cells. The extract also affected production of CT and binding of both LT and CT to GM1. However, it had no effect on ST.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The decoction of the unripe fruit pulp of <it>A. marmelos</it>, despite having limited antimicrobial activity, affected the bacterial colonization to gut epithelium and production and action of certain enterotoxins. These observations suggest the varied possible modes of action of <it>A. marmelos </it>in infectious forms of diarrhoea thereby validating its mention in the ancient Indian texts and continued use by local communities for the treatment of diarrhoeal diseases.</p