Development of a Search and Rescue Simulation to Study the Effects of Prolonged Isolation on Team Decision Making

The goals of this project were to identify and investigate aspects of team and individual decision-making and risk-taking behaviors hypothesized to be most affected by prolonged isolation. A key premise driving our research approach is that effects of stressors that impact individual and team cognitive processes in an isolated, confined, and hazardous environment will be projected onto the performance of a simulation task. To elicit and investigate these team behaviors we developed a search and rescue task concept as a scenario domain that would be relevant for isolated crews. We modified the Distributed Dynamic Decision-making (DDD) simulator, a platform that has been extensively used for empirical research in team processes and taskwork performance, to portray the features of a search and rescue scenario and present the task components incorporated into that scenario. The resulting software is called DD-Search and Rescue (Version 1.0). To support the use of the DDD-Search and Rescue simulator in isolated experiment settings, we wrote a player's manual for teaching team members to operate the simulator and play the scenario. We then developed a research design and experiment plan that would allow quantitative measures of individual and team decision making skills using the DDD-Search and Rescue simulator as the experiment platform. A description of these activities and the associated materials that were produced under this contract are contained in this report

Positive Shock: A Consumer Ethical Judgement Perspective

Existing debates on business ethics under-represent consumers’ perspectives. In order to progress understanding of ethical judgement in the marketplace, we unpack the interconnections between consumer ethical judgment, consent and context. We address the question of how consumers judge the morality of threat-based experiential marketing communications. Our interpretive qualitative research shows that consumers can feel positively about being shocked, judging threat appeals as more or less ethical by the nature of the negative emotions they experience. We also determine that the intersection between ethical judgement, consent and context lies where consumers’ perceptions of fairness and consequences lend contextualised normative approval to marketing practice. Our research makes three original contributions to existing literature. First, it extends theory in the area of ethical judgement, by highlighting the importance of consent for eliciting positive moral responses. Second, it adds to embryonic research addressing the role of emotions in ethical judgement, by ascertaining that negative emotions can elicit positive consumer ethical judgement. Third, our research contributes an original concept to ethical judgement theorisation, namely consumer-experienced positive shock (CEPS). We define CEPS as a consensual shock value judged as ethical due to its ephemerality, commercial resonance, brand alignment, target-audience appropriateness and contextual acceptability. We also extrapolate the dimensions of CEPS into an ethical judgement typology, elucidating how consumers judge some threat-based communications as ethical, but not others. Consequently, our work dovetails with wider business ethics debates on ethical judgement, adding value by clarifying the conditions that generate positive consumer ethical judgement

Earnings Momentum Shifts and Stock Price Movements for Flyer Fund Stocks

Earnings momentum is often considered a key factor in stock price movements. In this study we look at changes in the compound quarterly growth rates over periods of four and eight quarters, and relate these to the price movements of 30 stocks from the Flyer Fund Portfolio. The period of an analyses covers two years from 8-31-11 to 8-31-13. Using cross sectional regression analyses, we identified the statistical relationship between sector price movements and variations in the compound manual growth rate in earnings period. We test the hypothesis that the slop coefficient of the univariate regressions are positive (i.e. b\u3e0). The regressions are carried out separately for the eight quarter and four quarter CAGRs on stock price movements. A separate independent variable, the ratio of the four quarter CAGR to the eight quarter CAGR for each stock is also regressed on sector price movements. Meaningful R2s and statistically significant slope coefficients would suggest that CAGRs for short/intermediate time periods can be used as a selection factor in buying or selling stocks for the Flyer Fund Portfolio.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/1432/thumbnail.jp

Short-term losses and long-term gains: the non-native species Austrominius modestus in Lough Hyne Marine Nature Reserve

The non-native barnacle species Austrominius modestus was first recorded in Ireland, close to Lough Hyne marine nature reserve in 1957. This species was not recorded inside the Lough until 1980, but by 2001 was the dominant intertidal barnacle within the reserve. It has been suggested that increases in the abundance of this species at other locations in Europe may be linked to increasing sea surface temperatures, and that A. modestus is an “ecological sleeper”. Despite an overall trend for increasing sea surface temperatures, this long term warming is punctuated by extreme events such as severely cold winters. A. modestus is warm water adapted, and has been recorded to decrease in abundance following cold winters. The winters of 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 were amongst the coldest recorded in Ireland in past decades. In the present study, higher levels of mortality were recorded for A. modestus than native barnacle species in Lough Hyne following these cold winters. Additionally, this species was recorded at lower abundances at the majority of sites surveyed in Lough Hyne in 2011 compared with 2009. Despite this, A. modestus remains the dominant barnacle species in the Lough and monitoring the recruitment of intertidal barnacles within Lough Hyne during 2014e2015 revealed that A. modestus was the most abundant recruit at study sites, both in removal plots and in the pre-existing community. The year-round breeding of A. modestus in addition to the closed nature of the Lough promotes A. modestus within the reserve. Despite this, native barnacle species continue to persist in Lough Hyne, though generally at low abundances, with the exception of exposed locations such as the Rapids and Bullock Island where natives outnumber A. modestus. The future intertidal barnacle community within the Lough is likely to be dominated by A. modestus with Chthamalus montagui and C. stellatus being abundant at sites which are not suitable for A. modestus. While the consequences of this are unknown, it is possible that the presence of A. modestus may alter trophic interactions and energy flow within the reserve

Phytophthora Have Distinct Endogenous Small RNA Populations That Include Short Interfering and microRNAs

In eukaryotes, RNA silencing pathways utilize 20-30-nucleotide small RNAs to regulate gene expression, specify and maintain chromatin structure, and repress viruses and mobile genetic elements. RNA silencing was likely present in the common ancestor of modern eukaryotes, but most research has focused on plant and animal RNA silencing systems. Phytophthora species belong to a phylogenetically distinct group of economically important plant pathogens that cause billions of dollars in yield losses annually as well as ecologically devastating outbreaks. We analyzed the small RNA-generating components of the genomes of P. infestans, P. sojae and P. ramorum using bioinformatics, genetic, phylogenetic and high-throughput sequencing-based methods. Each species produces two distinct populations of small RNAs that are predominantly 21- or 25-nucleotides long. The 25-nucleotide small RNAs were primarily derived from loci encoding transposable elements and we propose that these small RNAs define a pathway of short-interfering RNAs that silence repetitive genetic elements. The 21-nucleotide small RNAs were primarily derived from inverted repeats, including a novel microRNA family that is conserved among the three species, and several gene families, including Crinkler effectors and type III fibronectins. The Phytophthora microRNA is predicted to target a family of amino acid/auxin permeases, and we propose that 21-nucleotide small RNAs function at the post-transcriptional level. The functional significance of microRNA-guided regulation of amino acid/auxin permeases and the association of 21-nucleotide small RNAs with Crinkler effectors remains unclear, but this work provides a framework for testing the role of small RNAs in Phytophthora biology and pathogenesis in future work

Risk factors for Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) death in a population cohort study from the Western Cape province, South Africa

Risk factors for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) death in sub-Saharan Africa and the effects of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis on COVID-19 outcomes are unknown. We conducted a population cohort study using linked data from adults attending public-sector health facilities in the Western Cape, South Africa. We used Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, sex, location, and comorbidities, to examine the associations between HIV, tuberculosis, and COVID-19 death from 1 March to 9 June 2020 among (1) public-sector “active patients” (≥1 visit in the 3 years before March 2020); (2) laboratory-diagnosed COVID-19 cases; and (3) hospitalized COVID-19 cases. We calculated the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) for COVID-19, comparing adults living with and without HIV using modeled population estimates.Among 3 460 932 patients (16% living with HIV), 22 308 were diagnosed with COVID-19, of whom 625 died. COVID19 death was associated with male sex, increasing age, diabetes, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease. HIV was associated with COVID-19 mortality (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 2.14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.70–2.70), with similar risks across strata of viral loads and immunosuppression. Current and previous diagnoses of tuberculosis were associated with COVID-19 death (aHR, 2.70 [95% CI, 1.81–4.04] and 1.51 [95% CI, 1.18–1.93], respectively). The SMR for COVID-19 death associated with HIV was 2.39 (95% CI, 1.96–2.86); population attributable fraction 8.5% (95% CI, 6.1–11.1)

Branded Entertainment:A Return to the Hidden Persuaders?

This work focuses on branded entertainment, an advanced product placement form. We use mediated discourse analysis to examine seventeen branded entertainment industry practitioners’ interviews and multimodal analyses of relevant film and television content. Findings reveal the denial of branded entertainment’s manipulative potential yet expose ideological notions of power and persuasion

Consumer ethical judgement of threat appeals

Existing literature tends to examine ethical judgement in organizational contexts (Jones 1991; Trevino 1992), or the connection between ethical judgement and consumers’ own ethical or unethical behaviors (Hunt and Vitell 1986; Vitell et al. 2016). These debates under-represent consumers’ perspectives (Shabbir et al. 2018). Thus, we focus on unpacking the interconnections between consumer ethical judgment, consent and context. We do so by using Miller and Wertheimer’s (2010) theory of consent transactions to explore how consumers judge the morality of threat-based experiential marketing communication campaigns. An understanding of consent in ethical judgement is needed, where consumers might experience visceral emotions through marketing communications without being fully informed, and where the moral beliefs of marketers and consumers might clash (Wempe 2009). Given that ethical judgement involves the degree to which something is morally acceptable to a consumer (Reidenbach and Robin 1990), lack of perceived consent can lead to negative consumer ethical judgement. Therefore, there is a need to explore how consumers judge threat-based experiential communications. We examine how consumers judge the morality of such marketing communication campaigns in the context of horror film marketing, given the congruency between the genre’s threat appeals and the emotional responses horror communication campaigns elicit from their audiences, for hedonic consumption purposes (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982). The three-stage qualitative research included 27 participants and we used a thematic approach to data analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006; King and Horrocks 2010). Our findings demonstrate that consumers can feel positively about being shocked, judging threat appeals as more or less ethical depending on the kinds of negative emotions they experience. Data also show that the intersection between ethical judgement, consent and context lies where perceptions of fairness and consequences lead to contextualized normative approval of marketing communication practice. Our research makes three contributions to relevant literature. First, it extends theory in the area of ethical judgement, by focusing on the significance of consent for eliciting positive consumer moral responses to experiential communications. Second, this research adds to research on emotions in consumer ethical judgement (Singh et al. 2016), by determining that negative emotions can elicit positive consumer ethical judgement. Third, this research contributes an original perspective to prior works in marketing ethics by illuminating the criteria that can make experienced shock positive or negative, boring or risky.</p

Branded Entertainment:A Return to the Hidden Persuaders?

This work focuses on branded entertainment, an advanced product placement form. We use mediated discourse analysis to examine seventeen branded entertainment industry practitioners’ interviews and multimodal analyses of relevant film and television content. Findings reveal the denial of branded entertainment’s manipulative potential yet expose ideological notions of power and persuasion