Moderating role of self-congruence: Impact of brand personality on Brand attachment through the Mediating role of Trust

Increasingly companies are focused on searching for ways to create strong brand connections with consumers. It is illustrated that such connections lead to higher levels of consumer loyalty, which increases companies’ financial performance. The main purpose of this study is to explore the impact of brand personality on brand attachment through the mediating role of trust. Also investigate the moderating role of self-congruence on the relationship between brand personality and brand trust.  SPSS 23 is used to analyze the data. Data was collected through survey questionnaire technique and snow-ball sampling technique was used for data collection. Analysis reveal Brand personality have significant and positive relationship with brand trust. On the other side trust significantly enhance the brand attachment. While the results prove that self-congruence have significant moderating effect on the relationship between brand personality and brand trust.&nbsp

Teacher Perception About Implementation Strategy of B.Ed Teaching practice in Real School Classrooms: Issues and Challenges

Teaching practice is the core component of all pre-service teacher education programs. Through teaching practice, a novice teacher is assumed to have inculcated a supposedly viable pedagogic experience to transfer the core competency of the subject knowledge to students in real classroom situation. This study encompasses the challenges and issues that the novice teachers experience at post-training level of their B.Ed programme of studies. The investigations also enlighten the gaps that the trained teachers have shared with the researchers. The study highlights the extent to which the on-training components of teaching practice is reflected in the attitude of the trained teachers while implementing the set of learned skills in real classrooms. Study participants comprised randomly selected n = 120 student-teachers who had obtained their Bachelors Degree in Education in 2008. SPSS v16 independent sample t-test was used to measure the difference in the mean perception scores of the two groups of teachers. The tested hypotheses indicated that the mean scores of the two groups of sampled teachers were not significantly different. Student-teachers’ interviews revealed that teaching practice in the B.Ed programme was ineffective from the implementation perspectives. Teaching methods and techniques employed during the coursework were only lecture based and did not help novice teachers implement innovative classroom teaching techniques. Experiences of the two trained groups of teachers showed no significant difference on the basis of B.Ed teaching practice objectives and its implementation in professional teaching contexts

An Overview of Functional Food

Functional foods are responsible for the improvement of human health and can significantly reduce the probability of disease in the host body. Functional foods are directly or indirectly part of different food ingredients and can induce functional activities in the host biological system. Functional foods are present in fruits, vegetables, dairy, bakery, cereals and meat products. Functional foods are not additional food supplements, drugs or antibiotics, they are the main component of a normal human and animal diet. Functional foods are cost-effective and easily available in the market. Daily consumption of functional foods can prevent the gastrointestinal diseases and also provide ease against different acute and chronic diseases. Adequate administration of probiotics in a human food can convert a normal food into functional food. This chapter will highlight the effective role of functional food in an individual’s daily life

Modeling and Simulation of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Alongside a Waste Heat Recovery System Based on the Organic Rankine Cycle in MATLAB/SIMULINK Environment

The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is the fastest growing fuel cell technology on the market. Due to their sustainable nature, PEMFCs are widely adopted as a renewable energy resource. Fabricating a PEMFC is a costly process; hence, mathematical modeling and simulations are necessary in order to fully optimize its performance. Alongside this, the feasibility of a waste heat recovery system based on the organic Rankine cycle is also studied and power generation for different operating conditions is presented. The fuel cell produces a power output of 1198 W at a current of 24A. It has 50% efficiency and hence produces an equal amount of waste heat. That waste heat is used to drive an organic Rankine cycle (ORC), which in turn produces an additional 428 W of power at 35% efficiency. The total extracted power hence stands at 1626 W. MATLAB/Simulink R2016a is used for modeling both the fuel cell and the organic Rankine cycle

Synthesis and application of titanium dioxide nanoparticles on cotton fabrics for UV protection

In recent years, the requirements for the sun protection has increased dramatically with climate change specially in high UV index regions. This study was carried out to examine, test and enhance the ultraviolet protection of cotton fabric after applying titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Samples with different concentration of titanium dioxide nanoparticles were prepared by pad-dry- cure method and used in multiple test settings which investigated the presence and effectiveness of applied nanoparticles on fabric. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-Ray diffraction (XRD), ultraviolet protection and tensile strength were used to investigate the resultant effect. The results demonstrated that titanium dioxide nanoparticles showed effective resistance against ultraviolet rays and provided excellent ultraviolet protection while, little increase in tensile strength of treated fabric was observed

Microwave power absorption profile of detergent surfactant agglomerates during microwave heating

The microwave energy absorption behavior of the linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS) surfactant detergent agglomerates was studied while considering changes in the physical properties of the samples. Microwave heating was used to change the internal structure of the agglomerates to make a reduced density (fluffy) product. The absorption of energy within LAS samples indicated fluctuating trends as microwave heating progressed. This was associated with the dielectric properties of the material which are strongly dependent upon the nature (“free” or “bound”) and quantity of water present in them at any instant which changes during heating. Therefore, complete profiles of the energy absorbed by the samples have been recorded to determine their actual power absorption behavior/total energy consumption over time. The bulk density of the agglomerates decreased significantly when exposed to microwave fields. Hot air drying can be combined with microwave heating to reduce the total heating time. It has been observed that the pre-heating of the samples reduces the total heating time and microwave energy requirement. This is due to the temperature-dependent decomposition of hydrates releasing more “free” water

Catalytic performance of the biosynthesized AgNps from Bistorta amplexicaule: antifungal, bactericidal, and reduction of carcinogenic 4-nitrophenol

This study was focused to synthesize silver nanoparticles (AgNps) from the aqueous extract of Bistorta amplexicaule and to evaluate their antimicrobial, antifungal, and 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) degradation potential. The AgNps from B. amplexicaule were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies. The biological activity of the AgNps was checked against the three bacterial and two fungal strains. The inhibition activities of the synthesized nanoparticles on pathogenic bacteria and fungi were equally studied using the colony-forming unit method. The AgNps synthesized showed excellent bactericidal and fungicidal activities against pathogenic Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Candida albicans, and Candida tropicalis. The removal of nitrophenols is one of the most demanding tasks, due to their injurious impact on the health of the living organisms. The AgNps showed superior performance compared with the pure plant extract. The AgNps also displayed efficient catalytic ability in reducing toxic 4-NP into harmless 4-aminophenol in the presence of NaBH4 solution. Hence, the synthesized AgNps can be effectively used against bacterial and fungal infections and in the decontamination of 4-NP polluted water

An international observational study to assess the impact of the Omicron variant emergence on the clinical epidemiology of COVID-19 in hospitalised patients

Background: Whilst timely clinical characterisation of infections caused by novel SARS-CoV-2 variants is necessary for evidence-based policy response, individual-level data on infecting variants are typically only available for a minority of patients and settings. Methods: Here, we propose an innovative approach to study changes in COVID-19 hospital presentation and outcomes after the Omicron variant emergence using publicly available population-level data on variant relative frequency to infer SARS-CoV-2 variants likely responsible for clinical cases. We apply this method to data collected by a large international clinical consortium before and after the emergence of the Omicron variant in different countries. Results: Our analysis, that includes more than 100,000 patients from 28 countries, suggests that in many settings patients hospitalised with Omicron variant infection less often presented with commonly reported symptoms compared to patients infected with pre-Omicron variants. Patients with COVID-19 admitted to hospital after Omicron variant emergence had lower mortality compared to patients admitted during the period when Omicron variant was responsible for only a minority of infections (odds ratio in a mixed-effects logistic regression adjusted for likely confounders, 0.67 [95% confidence interval 0.61-0.75]). Qualitatively similar findings were observed in sensitivity analyses with different assumptions on population-level Omicron variant relative frequencies, and in analyses using available individual-level data on infecting variant for a subset of the study population. Conclusions: Although clinical studies with matching viral genomic information should remain a priority, our approach combining publicly available data on variant frequency and a multi-country clinical characterisation dataset with more than 100,000 records allowed analysis of data from a wide range of settings and novel insights on real-world heterogeneity of COVID-19 presentation and clinical outcome