Effect of affective priming on prosocial orientation through mobile application: Differences between digital immigrants and natives

Digital revolution has drastically changed people’s lives in the last three decades inspiring scholars to deepen the role of technologies in thinking and information processing (Baranyi et al., 2015). Prensky (2001) has developed the notion of digital generation, differentiating between natives and immigrants. Digital natives are characterised by their highly automatic and quick response in hyper-textual environment. Digital immigrants are characterised by their main focus on textual elements and a greater proneness to reflection. The main goal of the present research is to investigate the effect of affective priming on prosocial orientation in natives and immigrants by using a mobile application. A quasi-experimental study has been conducted to test whether and how the manipulation of the priming, through positively and negatively connoted images, influences prosocial orientation. The results attested that negative affective priming elicited by app influences negatively prosocial orientation, while positive affective priming influences it positively prosocial orientation. However, this effect is true mainly for digital natives. Overall, findings underline the relevance of taking into account the effects of affective priming in technological environment, especially in the case of digital natives

Monetary shocks in models with inattentive producers

We study models where prices respond slowly to shocks because firms are rationally inattentive. Producers must pay a cost to observe the determinants of the current profit maximizing price, and hence observe them infrequently. To generate large real effects of monetary shocks in such a model the time between observations must be long and/or highly volatile. Previous work on rational inattentiveness has allowed for observation intervals that are either constant-but-long (e.g. Caballero, 1989 or Reis, 2006) or volatile-but-short (e.g. Reis’s, 2006 example where observation costs are negligible), but not both. In these models, the real effects of monetary policy are small for realistic values of the duration between observations. We show that non-negligible observation costs produce both of these effects: intervals between observations are infrequent and volatile. This generates large real effects of monetary policy for realistic values of the average time between observations

The implicit component of moral disengagement: applying the relational responding task to investigate its relationship with cheating behavior

This article aims to conceptualize, for the first time, an implicit form of moral disengagement and investigate its role in relation to cheating behavior. In line with the implicit social-cognition models, we argue that the implicit moral disengagement would represent an unintentional, automatic, and less accessible form of the mechanisms bypassing the moral self-regulatory system. We anticipate that in situations implying on-the-spot decisions and where individuals might suffer no consequences for the misconduct, the implicit moral disengagement would predict the actual behavior while the explicit moral disengagement would predict self-reported conduct. The results of three empirical studies provide support for the theorization of an implicit moral disengagement and its assessment through a newly developed implicit measurement procedure using the relational responding task. Results of the structural equation models, including both implicit and explicit moral disengagement, demonstrated that only the implicit one was associated with the actual misconduct

Type II muscle fibers atrophy associated with silent corticotroph adenoma in a dog.

The Silent Corticotroph Adenoma (SCA) is a pituitary adenoma variant characterized by the immunoreactivity for adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and related peptides, without the clinical signs of Cushing's disease. SCA has been postulated to either secrete structurally abnormal ACTH that is inactive but detectable by immunohistochemistry or radioimmunoassay, or to secrete ACTH intermittently or at low levels continuously. Excess of ACTH has been associated to type II muscle atrophy. We describe a case of type II muscle fibers atrophy associated with silent corticotroph adenoma in a dog. The dog showed moderate to severe proximal muscle wasting and weakness with normal levels of muscle-associated enzymes. In the limb muscle biopsies, type II fibers were uniformly smaller than type I fibers. In temporalis muscles, there were few atrophic fibers, and several irregular areas of loss of enzymatic activity observed in NADH, SDH and COX stains. The tumour showed a trabecular growth pattern and immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated the presence of cytoplasmic immunoreactivity for ACTH. The muscle atrophy was considered to be related to an excess of inactive ACTH. Studying spontaneous occurring rare diseases in animals could help to understand the mechanism of similar diseases in human has well

Perosomus elumbis in piglets: Pathological, radiological and cytogenetic findings

Perosomus elumbis (PE) is a rare congenital condition characterized by agenesis of the lumbar, sacral and coccygeal vertebrae. Perosomus elumbis has rarely been reported in literature as morphological description of singles or few cases. Here we report the first extensive description of eight cases of PE detected in two consecutive litters from the same parents of Casertana pig breed. In August 2018, eight piglets were investigated for multiple malformations. All malformed animals, but one, died in the first day of life. The survivor piglet died at 23 days of age. Pathological, radiological and cytogenetic examination was performed. Furthermore, a farm epidemiological investigation was carried out to investigate the percentage of piglets born dead or with malformations in 2018. The radiological and pathological exams showed skeletal abnormalities at the spinal cord level and visceral malformations. Cytogenetic investigations showed a normal chromosome arrangement. Finally, epidemiological investigation revealed a low prevalence of malformations in newborn pigs, equal to 0.5% of the total birth rate of the farm. Our findings report the first extensive description of PE cases in pigs and suggest an underestimation of this malformation in veterinary medicine. Our findings also suggest a specific genetic etiological basis as cause of PE in pigs and exclude chromosomal abnormalities. Further studies will be performed to confirm this hypothesis

Identification of dust outbreaks on infrared msg-seviri data by using a Robust Satellite Technique (RST)

Dust storms are meteorological phenomena of great interest for scientific community because of their potential impact on climate changes, for the risk that may pose to human health and due to other issues as desertification processes and reduction of the agricultural production. Satellite remote sensing, thanks to global coverage, high frequency of observation and low cost data, may highly contribute in monitoring these phenomena, provided that proper detection methods are used. In this work, the known Robust Satellite Techniques (RST) multitemporal approach, used for studying and monitoring several natural/environmental hazards, is tested on some important dust events affecting Mediterranean region in May 2004 and Arabian Peninsula in February 2008. To perform this study, data provided by the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) have been processed, comparing the generated dust maps to some independent satellite-based aerosol products. Outcomes of this work show that the RST technique can be profitably used for detecting dust outbreaks from space, providing information also about areas characterized by a different probability of dust presence. They encourage further improvements of this technique in view of its possible implementation in the framework of operational warning systems

Mature teratoma arising from an undescended testis in a horse: comparison between ultrasonographic and morphological features

Scant information is available on the ultrasonographic appearance of different testicular tumours in the stallion. Preoperative ultrasound imaging and gross and microscopic features of a testicular teratoma in a horse is described. An asymptomatic 4 years old cryptorchid Arabian horse was admitted for orchiectomy. Combined transabdominal and inguinal ultrasound examination revealed a large complex ovoid mass, containing both solid and cystic elements with internal echoes, located dorsally to the superficial inguinal ring. Two main hypoechoic cavities divided by a linear hyperechoic septum were evident, with a hyperechoic circular structure inside the lumen of the largest one. A tumour of the undescended testis was suspected. Ultrasound findings guided a provisional diagnosis of teratoma that was confirmed by histology following surgical removal of the tumour. Due to the correspondence between ultrasonographic and morphological features, trans-abdominal ultrasonography was conclusive in the preoperative planning

Crashworthiness of a composite bladder fuel tank for a tilt rotor aircraft

The fulfilment of the crash is a demanding requirement for a Tiltrotor. Indeed, such a kind of aircraft, being a hybrid between an airplane and a helicopter, inherits the requirements mainly from helicopters (EASA CS 29) due to its hovering ability. In particular, the fuel storage system must be designed in such a manner that it is crash resistant, under prescribed airworthiness requirements, in order to avoid the fuel leakage during such an event, preventing fire and, thus, increasing the survival chances of the crew and the passengers. The present work deals with the evaluation of crashworthiness of the fuel storage system of a Tiltrotor (bladder tank), and, in particular, it aims at describing the adopted numerical approach and some specific results. Crash resistance requirements are considered from the earliest design stages, and for this reason they are mainly addressed from a numerical point of view and by simulations that treat both single components and small/medium size assemblies. The developed numerical models include all the main parts needed for simulating the structural behavior of the investigated wing section: the tank, the structural components of the wing, the fuel sub-systems (fuel lines, probes, etc.) and the fuel itself. During the crash event there are several parts inside the tanks that can come into contact with the tank structure; therefore, it is necessary to evaluate which of these parts can be a damage source for the tank itself and could generate fuel loss. The SPH approach has been adopted to discretise fuel and to estimate the interaction forces with respect to the tank structure. Experimental data were used to calibrate the fuel tank and foam material models and to define the acceleration time-history to be applied. Thanks to the optimized foam’s configuration, the amount of dissipated impact energy is remarkable, and the evaluation of tanks/fuel system stress distribution allows estimating any undesired failure due to a survivable crash event