Does Humour Influence Perceptions of the Ethicality of Female-Disparaging Advertising?

This article responds to calls for further research on ethical issues in advertising. The study examines whether advertising strategies which use female-disparaging themes are perceived as ethical, and what effect this has on ad and brand attitudes. It also examines whether or not humour assuages ethical evaluations of female-disparaging ads. The findings from an experimental research design, which included 336 British respondents, show that non-disparaging and non-humorous ads are considered to be the most ethical, while disparaging ads (regardless of the level of humour) are considered the least ethical. Across the board, female-disparaging ads are not perceived as ethical; however, high benevolent sexists appear to favour them most. Finally, an ad’s perceived ethicality mediates the relationship between ad disparagement and ad attitudes; likewise, an ad’s perceived ethicality and ad attitudes mediate the relationship between an ad’s female disparagement and brand attitudes. Female-disparaging ads should be avoided given that they are perceived as less ethical and given the impact that advertising has on behaviour, as well as on societal and moral values. Advertisers should also avoid using female-disparaging advertising themes, even light-hearted ones, since they constitute a risky strategy for the ad and the brand as they can backfire and alienate consumers

Human Development and Subnationalism: A Disaggregated Analysis of Indian States: Kerala and Uttar Pradesh

This thesis investigates achievements in human development outcomes on health, education, and poverty indicators across Indian states, in order to discern what factors might influence a state’s better orientation toward social policies. After conducting data analysis, the study explains differences in outcomes, as achieved by Kerala and Uttar Pradesh, by building an argument of subnational solidarity and its impact on determining the state’s policy agendas

Event Planning and Promotion

Faculty reflection on VCU Great Bike Race Book course. Course Description: Students will gain a basic understanding of the effective approaches to promote events to donors and sponsors

Nepalese women migrants in Portugal and their experience with socio-cultural integration

This research is about socio-cultural integration of Nepalese women who migrated to Portugal either in search of job or to join their family members. The study population of this research is Nepalese women and the purpose of this study was to understand the Nepalese woman migrant’s experience of integration in Portuguese society as well as in Nepalese society in Portugal. This research also tries to understand the components that affect their integration especially in terms of cultural, interactive, structural and identification integration. It also identifies the support system of Nepalese women which help them to integrate in the society better. The research design for this study is qualitative research which is also supported by statistical data analysis and exploratory interview with the key informants. Qualitative study was carried out to understand the integration process through experience and feelings shared by the participants. Data were conducted through 10 individual interviews which were transcribed and analyzed through content analysis. The research found that most of the women who were researched were educated. Participants who came to Portugal alone expressed that they were ‘independent’ and participant who joined their husband are also independent in work place but did not express that they were independent directly

Multicasting in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Environment

Network Function Virtualization is a growing concept in the research field because of its ability to decouple network functions, like network address translation (NAT), domain name service (DNS), firewall, intrusion detection (IDS) etc., from proprietary hardware equipment. They can now run in software making the network more flexible and agile. This also reduces hardware and maintenance costs of the network. Nowadays many applications use multicasting as it saves a huge amount of communication bandwidth. But many packets need intermediary processing before reaching their destinations. For this processing, Virtual Network functions (VNFs) are implemented in the network where processing of packets takes place. Because of this the path through which the packets traverse changes, and delay increases. This project considers different number and placements of VNFs in four real-world topologies namely NSFNET, Cost239, Arpanet and Random12, and observes the delay for every case. As the VNFs are duplicated on different nodes in the network, the cost of deployment and maintenance of VNFs is increased, but the delay decreases up to a certain number of VNFs. After this, the delay becomes constant. This project presents this trade-off between cost and delay

Foundations of Business [OER]

The Open Educational Resource (OER), Foundations of Business, was created for use in Virginia Commonwealth University BUSN 201. In this course, students will study the concepts, principles and operations of private enterprise. They will compare and contrast sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations – and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Students will explore the functions of modern business management, marketing, and ethics and social responsibility that can improve or tarnish a brand. They will also look at the human resource management side of running a business, and learn how employers can motivate their employees. Finally, students will address the numbers side of running a business and examine bookkeeping, accounting, financial management, and financial statements

Pain related genes in endometriosis: A meta-analysis

Endometriosis is often associated with chronic pelvic pain. Processes involved in pain generation include neuronal development, peripheral sensitisation due to inflammation, signal transduction, conduction and pain modulation. A range of genes play important roles in these processes and their expression levels are altered in other pain conditions. Dysregulated genes may contribute to pain generation in women with endometriosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of pain related genes in women with endometriosis compared to women without endometriosis by conducting a meta-analysis of available microarray gene expression data and associated clinical information. Suitable studies and data were identified from electronic databases, gene expression repositories and within a University Obstetrics and Gynaecology department. Sixteen published studies and one unpublished thesis were included. RNA hybridisation with whole human genome microarray data were extracted and dysregulated gene expression determined through meta-analyses of microarray data. This study showed that in the eutopic endometrium from women with endometriosis and endometriotic lesions, pain related genes were significantly upregulated. Genes involved in pain generation were also upregulated in the secretory phase of the menstrual cycle in endometriosis. Upregulation of genes involved in pain generation likely contributes to pain symptoms in women with endometriosis

Cytotoxicity Of Orthodontic Temporary Anchorage Devices In Vitro

Introduction: Cytotoxicity is a major concern in the clinical application of dental materials including Temporary Anchorage Devices (TADs). The purpose of this study was to test the cytotoxicity of four of the commercially available brands of TADs (Aarhus, American Orthodontics; Dual top, RMO; Vector TAS, ORMCO; Unitek TAD, 3M UNITEK). Materials and Methods: Twenty-four (six from each brand) TADs were individually incubated in complete cell culture medium and shaken at a rate of 1.5 rpm at 37ºC for 30 days to generate the conditioned medium (CM). To test the cytotoxicity, human periodontal ligament fibroblasts (hPDLF) were exposed to the CM for 24 hours. As endpoints, morphological changes were observed along with cell death and damage which were quantified by MTT and LDH assays, followed by statistical analysis of oneway ANOVA with Bonferroni adjustment. Results: No morphological changes were found in any of the four types of TADs compared to the control cells. LDH assay showed that none of the tested TADs caused significant cell death after CM treatment in contrast to the positive control (P \u3e 0.05). No significant intragroup differences were found between any of the four brands of TADs (P \u3e 0.05). MTT assay showed similar results as for the LDH assay, except for a marginally significant increase of MTT release found in the TADs from 3M UNITEK compared to the negative control (P = 0.047). Conclusions: According to the ISO10993:5 standards, none of the tested TADs exhibited statistically significant cytotoxicity, suggesting their safe clinical application