Academic rejection: The coping strategies of women

This paper offers insights into the coping strategies employed by women researchers when handling academic rejection. Female researchers identify four main coping strategies for handling the rejection of an academic paper and the failure of a funding application. The study identified common coping strategies implemented by academic women, and determines whether these strategies are consistent regardless of the type of rejection being dealt with. The research found conflicting responses from the women between their tips or suggestions to others on how to best handle rejection, and the actual coping strategies employed

At risk policy and early intervention programmes for underperforming students: Ensuring success?

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine a University's at risk program and ask is the intervention strategy working? The program seeks to assist at risk students who may be experiencing difficulties transitioning, for example from school into university. The program also seeks to identify problems and suggest remediation strategies before attrition

Information richness and trust in V-commerce: implications for services marketing

Purpose: The potential for e-commerce is limited by a trust deficit when traders do not interact in a physical, bricks-and-mortar context. The theory of information richness posits that equivocal interactions, such as ones requiring trust, can be facilitated through communication media that transmit multiple cues interactively. We examine the potential of information-rich virtual worlds to reduce this trust deficit compared with more traditional web-based e-tailing environments. Design/Methodology: Rather than focusing on stated intentions we adopt an experimental approach to measure behaviour. Participants receive performance-related financial incentives to perform trust games in different information-rich treatments that represent three retail environments: a physical environment representing bricks-and-mortar trade, an electronic environment representing web-based online retailing and a virtual environment representing virtual world retail. Findings: We find that the two dimensions of trust significantly differ between the treatments. In particular, as hypothesised, both trustingness and trustworthiness are higher in the virtual than in the electronic environment. However, contrary to our hypotheses, physical trade is not associated with greater trust than virtual trade. Implications: We extend previous research by demonstrating how the information richness of the virtual world interface can promote e-commerce by deepening trust between trading partners. Our research also complements existing work that approaches product and service interfaces through the lens of servicescapes. The findings also contribute towards the development of services marketing practice and the design of e-commerce environments

WOM source characteristics and message quality: the receiver perspective

Purpose: Word-of-mouth (WOM) literature has identified the roles of source and message in WOM influence, but the relationship between them is yet to be investigated. The purpose of this paper is to explore this relationship by examining the mediation of message on the impact of perceived source characteristics from the perspective of the receiver. The paper also considered the mutual relationships between source characteristics and message quality. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative survey of prospective students was conducted to empirically examine the proposed conceptual model. A sample of 509 respondents was analysed using structural equation modelling. Findings: The findings suggest the significant impact of expertise, trustworthiness, homophily and opinion leadership of the WOM source on the judgement of message quality and the indirect effects on WOM influence mediated by the message quality. The results also indicate the moderating effects of receiver involvement and the valence of the message on the impact of message quality. Practical implications: The findings of this paper can inform the strategic development of WOM marketing. A deeper understanding of source characteristics and the role of the message may enable marketing practitioners to better target appropriate influencers for seeding programmes that stimulate WOM communication about their brands or products. Originality/value: This study examines how the receiver's evaluations of message content mediate the relationship between source characteristics and WOM influence. Source and message are two elements of communication which are processed when people receive information. However, nascent research examines their effects on each other. This research contributes to the understanding of this relationship through an empirical examination of the direct effects of primary source characteristics on perceived message quality

Role of paramagnetic polyconjugated clusters in lignin antioxidant activity (in vitro)

Using physico-chemical methods (EPR, SEC, Py-GC/MS and UV/VIS spectroscopy) and wet chemical analysis, the characteristics of 6 hardwood lignins in terms of functionality, molecular weight and composition of lignin substructures were determined and considered together with the results of DPPH•, ABTS •+ and O2•- antioxidant assays with the aim to understand the relationships governing antioxidant properties of lignin. The strong positive linear correlation between lignin antioxidant capacity in the three assays used and the extent of conjugation of paramagnetic polyconjugated clusters in lignin macromolecules was found. The biological activity of the most active alkaline lignins was assessed by in vitro experiment with human blood.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Information richness and trust in V-commerce: implications for services marketing

Purpose: The potential for e-commerce is limited by a trust deficit when traders do not interact in a physical, bricks-and-mortar context. The theory of information richness posits that equivocal interactions, such as ones requiring trust, can be facilitated through communication media that transmit multiple cues interactively. We examine the potential of information-rich virtual worlds to reduce this trust deficit compared with more traditional web-based e-tailing environments.Design/Methodology: Rather than focusing on stated intentions we adopt an experimental approach to measure behaviour. Participants receive performance-related financial incentives to perform trust games in different information-rich treatments that represent three retail environments: a physical environment representing bricks-and-mortar trade, an electronic environment representing web-based online retailing and a virtual environment representing virtual world retail.Findings: We find that the two dimensions of trust significantly differ between the treatments. In particular, as hypothesised, both trustingness and trustworthiness are higher in the virtual than in the electronic environment. However, contrary to our hypotheses, physical trade is not associated with greater trust than virtual trade.Implications: We extend previous research by demonstrating how the information richness of the virtual world interface can promote e-commerce by deepening trust between trading partners. Our research also complements existing work that approaches product and service interfaces through the lens of servicescapes. The findings also contribute towards the development of services marketing practice and the design of e-commerce environments

Good Friends, Bad News - Affect and Virality in Twitter

The link between affect, defined as the capacity for sentimental arousal on the part of a message, and virality, defined as the probability that it be sent along, is of significant theoretical and practical importance, e.g. for viral marketing. A quantitative study of emailing of articles from the NY Times finds a strong link between positive affect and virality, and, based on psychological theories it is concluded that this relation is universally valid. The conclusion appears to be in contrast with classic theory of diffusion in news media emphasizing negative affect as promoting propagation. In this paper we explore the apparent paradox in a quantitative analysis of information diffusion on Twitter. Twitter is interesting in this context as it has been shown to present both the characteristics social and news media. The basic measure of virality in Twitter is the probability of retweet. Twitter is different from email in that retweeting does not depend on pre-existing social relations, but often occur among strangers, thus in this respect Twitter may be more similar to traditional news media. We therefore hypothesize that negative news content is more likely to be retweeted, while for non-news tweets positive sentiments support virality. To test the hypothesis we analyze three corpora: A complete sample of tweets about the COP15 climate summit, a random sample of tweets, and a general text corpus including news. The latter allows us to train a classifier that can distinguish tweets that carry news and non-news information. We present evidence that negative sentiment enhances virality in the news segment, but not in the non-news segment. We conclude that the relation between affect and virality is more complex than expected based on the findings of Berger and Milkman (2010), in short 'if you want to be cited: Sweet talk your friends or serve bad news to the public'.Comment: 14 pages, 1 table. Submitted to The 2011 International Workshop on Social Computing, Network, and Services (SocialComNet 2011

Influence of air diffusion on the OH radicals and atomic O distribution in an atmospheric Ar (bio)plasma jet

Treatment of samples with plasmas in biomedical applications often occurs in ambient air. Admixing air into the discharge region may severely affect the formation and destruction of the generated oxidative species. Little is known about the effects of air diffusion on the spatial distribution of OH radicals and O atoms in the afterglow of atmospheric-pressure plasma jets. In our work, these effects are investigated by performing and comparing measurements in ambient air with measurements in a controlled argon atmosphere without the admixture of air, for an argon plasma jet. The spatial distribution of OH is detected by means of laser-induced fluorescence diagnostics (LIF), whereas two-photon laser-induced fluorescence (TALIF) is used for the detection of atomic O. The spatially resolved OH LIF and O TALIF show that, due to the air admixture effects, the reactive species are only concentrated in the vicinity of the central streamline of the afterglow of the jet, with a characteristic discharge diameter of similar to 1.5 mm. It is shown that air diffusion has a key role in the recombination loss mechanisms of OH radicals and atomic O especially in the far afterglow region, starting up to similar to 4mm from the nozzle outlet at a low water/oxygen concentration. Furthermore, air diffusion enhances OH and O production in the core of the plasma. The higher density of active species in the discharge in ambient air is likely due to a higher electron density and a more effective electron impact dissociation of H2O and O-2 caused by the increasing electrical field, when the discharge is operated in ambient air

Seeing versus Doing: How Businesses Manage Tensions in Pursuit of Sustainability

Management of organizational tensions can facilitate the simultaneous advancement of economic, social, and environmental priorities. The approach is based on managers identifying and managing tensions between the three priorities, by employing one of the three strategic responses. Although recent work has provided a theoretical basis for such tension acknowledgment and management, there is a dearth of empirical studies. We interviewed 32 corporate sustainability managers across 25 forestry and wood-products organizations in Australia. Study participants were divided into two groups: (1) those considered effective at corporate sustainability and (2) a status-quo group. Contrary to current theory, our findings showed that acknowledgment of organizational tensions was widespread in the Australian forestry and wood-products industry and not limited to those managers who are effective at managing corporate sustainability. What differed was the degree to which managers did something about the perceived tensions—with the effective group more consistently acting to manage and resolve paradoxical scenarios. Our findings suggest that existing theoretical constructs of tension management may not adequately capture the individual-level complexity involved with managing tensions in practice

Development and validation of the Multi-dimensional University Research Workplace Inventory (MDURWI)

WOS:000454839600005This study describes the development and validation of an instrument aimed toward measuring organizational features of an academic research workplace. The question pool was developed based on data from a pilot study (N = 43). The survey was deployed to academic researchers in the field of higher education research worldwide (N = 850). An exploratory factor analysis conducted on 36 questions, followed by confirmatory factor analysis, which lead to a final pool of 27 questions in five subscales, one of which divided into three lower-order factors. The final model exhibited very good fit (X2/df = 2.561; CFI = 0.972; PCFI = 0.784; RMSEA = 0.043; P[rmsea ? 0.05] < 0.001; AIC = 891.018; BCC = 987.839) and psychometric properties, in the form of factorial, convergent, and discriminant validity, as well as reliability and sensitivity. Implications of this instrument for research and policymaking are discussed, as well as future research directions.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio