Covert Marketing Unmasked: A Legal and Regulatory Guide for Practices that Mask Marketing Messages

Masked marketing—one form of covert marketing—involves marketing communications that appear to be from independent third parties rather than from product marketers. This article presents a typology of masked marketing practices, illustrating whether they may be deceptive to consumers. To accomplish this, the authors apply the Federal Trade Commission’s three-part definition of deception (i.e., misleadingness, reasonable consumer, and materiality) in the evaluation of such practices. The article concludes with policy recommendations including areas for further research

Ultralow noise performance of an 8.4-GHz maser-feedhorn system

A total system noise temperature of 6.6 K was demonstrated with an 8.4-GHz traveling wave maser and feedhorn operating in a cryogenic environment. Both the maser and feedhorn were inserted in the helium cryostat, with the maser operating in the 1.6-K liquid bath and the feedhorn cooled in the helium gas, with a temperature gradient along the horn ranging from the liquid bath temperature at its lower end to room temperature at its top. The ruby maser exhibited 43 dB of gain with a bandwidth of 76 MHz(-3 dB) centered at 8400 MHz. Discussions of the maser, cooled feedhorn, and cryostat designs are presented along with a discussion of the noise temperature measurements

What Does Finance Have to Say to the Entrepreneur?

There has developed within the past decade an increased interest among academicians and policy makers in the small companies and entrepreneurs of the world. Domestically, small business is viewed by the “true believers” as the engine that drives the machinery, citing innovation and job creation as two areas where the small firm has outdistanced its larger counterpart

The integrated database for African policymakers

The Integrated Database for African Policymakers (IDAPs; http://www.walker.ac.uk/projects/idaps-integrated-database-for-african-policy-makers/), is a technological initiative to intended to provide valuable insight and quantitative evidence to policy makers, planners and doers, at international, national and local levels to inform scenario planning and support investment interventions for early action and adaptation. It also provides a rich source of data for researchers exploring the impacts of climate change in rural African communities, and potentially beyond. IDAPS is jointly led by the Walker Institute and Evidence for Development, our embedded NGO partner

The quality of political information

The article conceptualizes the quality of political information and shows how the concept can be used for empirical research. I distinguish three aspects of quality (intelligibility, relevance, validity) and use them to judge the constituent foundations of political information, that is component claims (statements of alleged facts) and connection claims (argumentative statements created by causally linking two component claims). The resulting conceptual map thus entails six manifestations of information quality (component claimintelligibility, connection claim intelligibility, component claimrelevance, connection claim relevance, component claim validity, and connection claim validity). I explain how the conceptual map can be used to make sense of the eclectic variety of existing research, and how it can advance new empirical research, as a guide for determining variation in information quality, as a conceptual template for the analysis of different types of political messages and their common quality deficiencies, and as a generator of new research questions and theoretical expectations

Age and sex-selective predation moderate the overall impact of predators

© 2014 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. Acknowledgements: Thanks to J. Reid, S. Redpath, A. Beckerman and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. This work was partly funded by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship NE/J500148/1 to SH and a grant NE/F021402/1 to XL and by Natural Research Limited. Forest Research funded all the fieldwork on goshawks, tawny owls and field voles during 1973–1996. We thank B. Little, P. Hotchin, D. Anderson and all field assistants for their help with data collection and Forest Enterprise, T. Dearnley and N. Geddes for allowing and facilitating work in Kielder Forest. In addition, we are grateful to English Nature and the BTO for kindly issuing licences annually visit goshawk nest sites. Data accessibility: All data associated with the study which have not already been given in the text are available from the Dryad Digital Repository: http://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h1289 (Hoy et al. 2014).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Total neoadjuvant therapy in oesophageal and gastro-oesophageal junctional adenocarcinoma

Adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus and gastro-oesophageal junction represent a large burden of cancer death in the Western World with an increasing incidence. In the past two decades, the overall survival of patients on a potentially curative treatment pathway has more than doubled due to the addition of perioperative oncological therapies to surgery. However, patients often fail to respond to oncological treatment or struggle to complete their treatment after surgery. In this review, we discuss the current evidence for total neoadjuvant therapy and options for assessment of treatment response.</p

Using parent metaphors for learning about the neonatal care experience: an interpretive perspective

© 2019 The Author(s). The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Journal of Child Health Care by Sage Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. It is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1367493519875853.This study focuses on how metaphors are used by parents who have had a premature baby to describe their neonatal care experience and how these can contribute to empathic learning of health professionals. In health, metaphors are commonly used to communicate and explain difficult topics. When patients tell their story, metaphor can be a means of expression from which we can learn about their experience of illness or hospitalisation. Limited research exits on how metaphor can improve our understanding of parent’s emotional experience in neonatal care and subsequently inform education in this field. Employing narrative inquiry within an interpretive, constructivist paradigm, 20 narrative interviews with 23 parents of premature babies were analysed using a process of metaphor identification. Findings revealed common metaphors used to describe experience. Metaphor clusters used by parents in order of frequency were journeying, altered reality, darkness, breaking, connections, fighting, salvation and being on the edge. Parents widely used compelling and emotive metaphors to describe and express both difficult and challenging times as well as progression forward. Metaphors serve as a powerful way for health professionals to learn about the emotional experiences of parents and potentially enhance their empathic understanding.Peer reviewe

The knowledge and learning needs of health professionals in providing support for parents of premature babies at home: A mixed-methods study

© 2019 The Authors Premature babies and their families often require on-going community-based care after discharge from the neonatal unit. Parents themselves have identified the need for health professionals to understand the specific needs of parents of premature babies in order to provide the optimal support they require. This study aimed to explore the existing knowledge base and learning needs of community health professionals, to further understand how they can adequately support parents in the community with premature babies. A mixed-methods approach was used comprising a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews and secondary data analysis. Participants included thirteen Health Visitor [HV] students, eight educators and seven parents from a previous study. Thematic analysis revealed important insights into the knowledge and learning needs necessary to support parents of premature babies in the community. Three main themes emerged: development of prior knowledge; the importance of practice-based learning; learning and training needs. Knowledge, confidence and skills in relation to caring for parents with premature babies varied between individuals depending on their placement during training and subsequent experiences. While transferable skills in supporting parents in the community were present, more education and training in the specific needs of premature babies and parents would be welcomed. Tailored resources for community-based health professionals on the specific needs of the premature baby would enhance provision of optimal support for parents

Optical Spectroscopic Survey of High-latitude WISE-selected Sources

We report on the results of an optical spectroscopic survey at high Galactic latitude (|b| ≥ 30°) of a sample of WISE-selected targets, grouped by WISE W1 (λ_eff = 3.4 μm) flux, which we use to characterize the sources WISE detected. We observed 762 targets in 10 disjoint fields centered on ultraluminous infrared galaxy candidates using DEIMOS on Keck II. We find 0.30 ± 0.02 galaxies arcmin–2 with a median redshift of z = 0.33 ± 0.01 for the sample with W1 ≥ 120 μJy. The foreground stellar densities in our survey range from 0.23 ± 0.07 arcmin–2 to 1.1 ± 0.1 arcmin–2 for the same sample. We obtained spectra that produced science grade redshifts for ≥90% of our targets for sources with W1 flux ≥120 μJy that also had an i-band flux gsim 18 μJy. We used this for targeting very preliminary data reductions available to the team in 2010 August. Our results therefore present a conservative estimate of what is possible to achieve using WISE's Preliminary Data Release for the study of field galaxies