IAT, consumer behaviour and the moderating role of decision-making style: An empirical study on food products

This article discusses the reasons why the study of consumer preferences requires indirect measures. Particularly, the research is focused on the use of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The main aim of the present research is to verify the usefulness of the IAT in situation of ambivalent attitudes, such as in the food domain. On the basis of the relationship between interest/motivations and visual attention, the first study explores the effect of implicit associations on consumers’ visual behaviour on food labels. Moreover, the predictive and incremental validities of the IAT over traditional self-report measures on subjects’ intention to buy were tested in the specific field of food purchases, where attitudes can be ambivalent. Finally, the role of preference for intuition or deliberation in the decision-making process as a moderator of the relationship between the IAT score and the intention to buy was assessed. The second and the third studies aim to verify the same moderation pattern in real behavioural choices between tasty/healthy foods and between different food brands. Overall, the results (1) show the effect of implicit (and not explicit) associations on the way in which consumers read the information on food packaging; (2) demonstrate that the IAT enhances the understanding of consumer preference, intention to buy, and choices among different products, especially in domains where attitudes could be ambivalent; and (3) support the moderating role of the decision-making style. Overall, the research supports the employment of the IAT in consumer research

Spontaneous intracranial hypotension : two steroid-responsive cases

Purpose: Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is characterised by orthostatic headache, low cerebrospinal fluid pressure and diffuse pachymeningeal enhancement after intravenous gadolinium contrast administration. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) often plays a crucial role for correct diagnosis. Case description: We described two similar cases of SIH, whose clinical and imaging features are typical for this pathology. At MRI brain scan, both patients showed diffuse and intense pachymeningeal enhancement and moderate venous distension and epidural vein engorgement. The two patients were treated with bed rest and oral steroid therapy, with complete and long-lasting symptomatic relief. Conclusions: Orthostatic nature of headache is the most indicative clinical feature suggesting SIH; contrast-enhanced MRI provides definite imaging diagnostic findings. Conservative treatment coupled to steroid therapy is often sufficient to obtain complete disappearance of symptoms

Improving Assessment of Students through Semantic Space Construction

Assessment is one of the hardest tasks an Intel- ligent Tutoring System has to perform. It involves different and sometimes uncorrelated sub-tasks: building a student model to define her needs, defining tools and procedures to perform tests, understanding students’ replies to system prompts, defining suitable procedures to evaluate the correctness of students’ replies, and strategies to improve students’ abilities after the assessment session. In this work we present an improvement of our system, TutorJ, with particular attention to the assessment phase. Many tutoring systems offer only a limited set of assessment options like multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks tests or other types of predefined replies obtained through graphical widgets (radio-buttons, text-areas). This limited set of solutions makes interaction poor and unable to satisfy the users’ needs. Our interest is to enrich interaction with dialog in natural language. In this respect, the assessment problem is strictly connected to natural language understanding. The preliminary step is indeed to understand questions and replies of the student. We have reviewed the system design in the framework of a cognitive architecture with the aim to reach a double result: the reduction of the effort for the construction of the knowledge base and the improvement of the system capabilities in the assessment process. To this aim a new common semantic space has been defined and implemented. The entire architecture is oriented to intuitive and natural interaction

A Map-Based Visualization Tool To Support Tutors In E-Learning 2.0

Web 2.0 regards essentially the social issues about the new usage of web applications, but participative web and user generated contents induce a new way to think about the design of the web applications themselves. This is particularly true in the field educational systems that are all web based applications. Many researchers are now devoted to study what is called e-learning 2.0 both as regards the technological issues in the field of computer science, and in relation to the impact of the web 2.0 social and psychological issues on the education process itself. One of the most crucial topics in e-learning 2.0 is the way to provide support to the teacher/tutor to avoid cog- nitive overload when he/she is monitoring the evolution group dynamics inside the class, and decides the proper strategies to ensure the pursuit of the learning goals. Map visualization is a good way to present information without cognitive overload. We present a map-based tool in support of the tutor that is an extension of our ITS called TutorJ. The tool allows a human tutor to have multiple map visualizations about the domain of the course, the social (forum-based) interaction between the students, and the amount of topics faced by each student. The paper reports a detailed description of the architecture of the tool, and a discussion about its relevance in the field of e- learning 2.0

Affinity chromatography of ovine casein

Abstract Sheep milk casein was separated into two fractions: one containing α s1 -plus β- and the other α s2 plus κ-caseins by affinity chromatography on activated thiol-Sepharose 4B. Milk samples were from the Leccese breed with the most common electrophoretic pattern. Electrophoresis of the chromatographic fractions on SDS-PAGE and on starch urea gel at pH 8.6 and 1.7 clarified the electrophoretic pattern of whole casein. Acidic pH electrophoresis of the two fractions obtained by affinity chromatography may be useful for investigations on the polymorphism of the casein fractions

Pain perception and migraine

Background: It is well-known that both inter-and intra-individual differences exist in the perception of pain; this is especially true in migraine, an elusive pain disorder of the head. Although electrophysiology and neuroimaging techniques have greatly contributed to a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in migraine during recent decades, the exact characteristics of pain threshold and pain intensity perception remain to be determined, and continue to be a matter of debate.Objective: The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of clinical, electrophysiological, and functional neuroimaging studies investigating changes during various phases of the so-called "migraine cycle" and in different migraine phenotypes, using pain threshold and pain intensity perception assessments.Methods: A systematic search for qualitative studies was conducted using search terms "migraine," "pain," "headache," "temporal summation," "quantitative sensory testing," and "threshold," alone and in combination (subject headings and keywords). The literature search was updated using the additional keywords "pain intensity," and "neuroimaging"to identify full-text papers written in English and published in peer-reviewed journals, using PubMed and Google Scholar databases. In addition, we manually searched the reference lists of all research articles and review articles.Conclusion: Consistent data indicate that pain threshold is lower during the ictal phase than during the interictal phase of migraine or healthy controls in response to pressure, cold and heat stimuli. There is evidence for preictal sub-allodynia, whereas interictal results are conflicting due to either reduced or no observed difference in pain threshold. On the other hand, despite methodological limitations, converging observations support the concept that migraine attacks may be characterized by an increased pain intensity perception, which normalizes between episodes. Nevertheless, future studies are required to longitudinally evaluate a large group of patients before and after pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions to investigate phases of the migraine cycle, clinical parameters of disease severity and chronic medication usage

Banco Tensore d'Inerzia

Nella presente relazione si descrive il Banco Tensore d'Inerzia realizzato presso il Dipartimento al fine di soddisfare la richiesta, avanzata in particolar modo dalle aziende del settore automotive, di disporre della misura dei parametri d'inerzia di interi veicoli o di suoi componenti. Dopo aver descritto il principio di funzionamento, si illustreranno le procedure di prova e le tecniche adottate per la calibrazione

Effective electrothermal analysis of electronic devices and systems with parameterized macromodeling

We propose a parameterized macromodeling methodology to effectively and accurately carry out dynamic electrothermal (ET) simulations of electronic components and systems, while taking into account the influence of key design parameters on the system behavior. In order to improve the accuracy and to reduce the number of computationally expensive thermal simulations needed for the macromodel generation, a decomposition of the frequency-domain data samples of the thermal impedance matrix is proposed. The approach is applied to study the impact of layout variations on the dynamic ET behavior of a state-of-the-art 8-finger AlGaN/GaN high-electron mobility transistor grown on a SiC substrate. The simulation results confirm the high accuracy and computational gain obtained using parameterized macromodels instead of a standard method based on iterative complete numerical analysis

Il monolinguismo dell'altro: subalternità, voce e migrazione

L'analisi muove dalla produzione narrativa e poetica di autori brasiliani - che scrivono in italiano e portoghese - in un certo senso già consacrati dal canone (se canone esiste) della Letteratura della Migrazione italiana o italofona. Mi piacerebbe indagare maggiormente gli aspetti teorici legati alle questioni della lingua, della voce e del subalterno, e alle rappresentazioni che esse innescano nel campo letterario