Sincere flattery: trade-dress imitation and consumer choice.

A copycat strategy uses visual similarity to an established leader as a persuasion tool. Although not uncommon in the marketplace, little is known about consumer response to such imitation. Contrary to speculation regarding consumer sensitivity to salient persuasion tactics, we find only conditional evidence that consumers spontaneously penalize brands that blatantly imitate market leaders. The results are discussed in the context of common marketing wisdom regarding the virtues of differentiation.Model; Data; Strategy; Brands; Marketing;

The piecemeal approach to comparative advertising.

When attempting to portray the attractiveness of a brand vis-à-vis its competitors, an ad may make global claims about superiority or specific claims about one or more attributes. A special case of latter is the piecemeal ad in which the advertised brand is compared to a competitor on one attribute, a different competitor on a second attribute, another competitor on a third attribute, and so on. The present research demonstrates the effectiveness of this technique and explores the basis for its influence. A series of experiments reveals a robust effect mediated by perceived message credibility.Advertising; Effectiveness; Credibility;

Psychometric properties of the Chinese Internet Gaming Disorder Scale

published_or_final_versio

Novel Modifications of Parallel Jacobi Algorithms

We describe two main classes of one-sided trigonometric and hyperbolic Jacobi-type algorithms for computing eigenvalues and eigenvectors of Hermitian matrices. These types of algorithms exhibit significant advantages over many other eigenvalue algorithms. If the matrices permit, both types of algorithms compute the eigenvalues and eigenvectors with high relative accuracy. We present novel parallelization techniques for both trigonometric and hyperbolic classes of algorithms, as well as some new ideas on how pivoting in each cycle of the algorithm can improve the speed of the parallel one-sided algorithms. These parallelization approaches are applicable to both distributed-memory and shared-memory machines. The numerical testing performed indicates that the hyperbolic algorithms may be superior to the trigonometric ones, although, in theory, the latter seem more natural.Comment: Accepted for publication in Numerical Algorithm

Depressive symptoms and smoking among young Turkish and Moroccan ethnic minority groups in the Netherlands: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Although evidence indicates a strong association between depressive symptoms and smoking among host and migrant adults, less is known about this relationship among young ethnic minority groups in Europe. This paper aims to assess the relationship between depressive symptoms and smoking among young Turkish and Moroccan migrants in the Netherlands. METHODS: Multiple logistic regression analyses was used to analyze cross-sectional data from a sample of 364 Turkish and Moroccan migrants aged 15 to 24 years. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) was used to measure the presence of clinically significant depressive symptoms. Smoking behavior was measured by a number of questions. RESULTS: Of the respondents, 22% were smokers and 33% had depressive symptoms. The prevalence of depressive symptoms was significantly higher in smokers (42.9%) than in nonsmokers (29.5%). Respondents with depressive symptoms had increased odds of smoking even after adjusting for socioeconomic and cultural factors (OR = 2.68, 95% CI = 1.45-4.97). CONCLUSIONS: Depressive symptoms were significantly associated with smoking behavior in young Turkish and Moroccan migrants. In addition to other acknowledged factors, depressive symptoms should also be considered in relation to the smoking behavior of this group. Intervention programs for smoking behavior should take depressive symptoms into account for young Turkish and Moroccan migrant

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for new physics with same-sign isolated dilepton events with jets and missing transverse energy

A search for new physics is performed in events with two same-sign isolated leptons, hadronic jets, and missing transverse energy in the final state. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.98 inverse femtobarns produced in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. This constitutes a factor of 140 increase in integrated luminosity over previously published results. The observed yields agree with the standard model predictions and thus no evidence for new physics is found. The observations are used to set upper limits on possible new physics contributions and to constrain supersymmetric models. To facilitate the interpretation of the data in a broader range of new physics scenarios, information on the event selection, detector response, and efficiencies is provided.Comment: Published in Physical Review Letter