Strategic Usability and Response in Ecommerce Marketing: A Framework and Investigation

In the literature usability is presented as an objective standard to which firms aspire to assist in the consumer decision-making process. In this paper, we introduce the concept of strategic usability, which we define as the variation of usability components to influence mindset formation and response that are most desired by the firm. We further illustrate how laws of UX design identified in the literature can impact usability components in different ways to influence response. A strategic usability framework is then presented and examined using preliminary data collected from Amazon.com. Results suggest that firms can indeed implement strategic usability to heighten motivation and response to the offers most desired by the firm and minimize response and interactions towards those less desired. However, such a strategy can pose risks for the firm. Implications for consumer welfare and accessibility are discussed

Peak Performance for Student-Athletes

The academic advisors, working with a sport psychologist, selected freshman football players as the target group for their first attempt at reinforcing the use of psycho-educational techniques across the athletic and academic dimensions. Subsequently, the football coaching staff was asked to identify three major psychological constructs they believed would lead to optimal performance in football for the forthcoming season. Based on the coaches' rankings of the perceived importance of specific constructs for athletic success, the prioritized list included goal-setting, stress management, and visualization (imagery), respectively. These constructs were then used as the focal points for a 15-week class designed to demonstrate similarities between concepts used during football practices and games and academic situation. Samples of comparable patterns were game/test, practice/homework, pregame jitters/pretest anxiety, work as a team/study in groups, and review plays in your mind/mentally rehearse important point to remember. It was hoped that academic appeal and enthusiasm could be generated for student-athletes by relying on their high motivation toward athletics. Fifteen freshman football players participated in the project. The group met four days a week for 30 minutes per day prior to a designated study-hall period. Athletic and academic pre-posttest measures were obtained using goal-setting contracts, competitive stress inventories (Sports Competition Anxiety Test-SCAT; Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 with cognitive, somatic, and confidence subscales-CSAI-2), confidence questionnaires (Trait-State Confidence Inventory-TSCI), and self-reports of vividness and controllability during visualization (Vealey, 1986). The same sports tests were used to evaluate academic traits by substituting academic words and phrases for the sport-related terminology. Additionally, grade point averages for fall and spring semesters were obtained. After conducting this year-long exploratory program, two conclusions were reached. First a reduction of anxiety in sport and academic settings occurred for freshman football athletes at the end of two semesters, and secondly, student-athletes preferred personal-social topics over performance-enhancement topics

Protecting the Brand: Evaluating the Cost of Security Breach from a Marketer’s Perspective

Cyberattacks have increased over the years both at the individual and firm level. Yet, the organizational budgets directed toward information security remains low. One reason is that the ramifications of information breach, such as increased consumer perception of risk and brand equity erosion remain, to the senior executives and board of directors in organizations, almost invisible. The second reason is that managers are required to justify budgets. The cost of system breach is often difficult to quantify. There are direct and enduring costs of information breach. As such, it has implications that impact not just the downtime during a data breach but loss of customers, trust, loyalty and brand equity, all of great concern to marketing managers. This paper analyzes the impact of a breach announcement on the market valuation of the company. Such an analysis using the event study methodology provides a clear indication of how the market reacts to the firm’s breach in information. The results of the study indicate that the market punishes the firm with a small but significant negative abnormal return on the announcement of the breach, and this trend persists. This result, together with the indirect or enduring costs related to brand erosion, provides a good justification to senior executives for protecting the integrity of information, and by so doing, protecting the equity of the brand

The Iowa Homemaker vol.17, no.4

A Handful of Flour by Marie Larson, page 2 15 Years at a Cook Stove by Welch Richardson, page 3 Vegetables To Be Seen, Not Eaten by Helen Clark, page 4 Does It Work? by Peggy Schenk, page 5 Jottings From Sally’s Notebook by Gaynold Carroll, page 6 Blind Date – He Says and She Says, page 8 Discourage That Sniffle by Frances Hoffman, page 9 Beauties by Courtesy of Grooming by Ruth Hendrix Stouffer, page 10 Furs Dislike Hot Radiators by Betty Grant, page 11 What’s New in Home Economics, page 12 Sky High, page 14 Alums in the News by Faithe Danielson, page 15 Behind Bright Jackets, page 16 It’s a Good Idea, page 18 It’s a Popping Month, page 19 Dear Folks –, page 20 Formals Begin, page 21 A Child May Overthink, page 23 All Hands on Deck for Red Cross, page 24 Talking Turkey by Peggy Schenk, page 2

Association of Pyrethroid Pesticide Exposure With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in a Nationally Representative Sample of U.S. Children

Background Pyrethroid pesticides cause abnormalities in the dopamine system and produce an ADHD phenotype in animal models, with effects accentuated in males versus females. However, data regarding behavioral effects of pyrethroid exposure in children is limited. We examined the association between pyrethroid pesticide exposure and ADHD in a nationally representative sample of US children, and tested whether this association differs by sex. Methods Data are from 8–15 year old participants (N = 687) in the 2001–2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Exposure was assessed using concurrent urinary levels of the pyrethroid metabolite 3-phenoxybenzoic acid (3-PBA). ADHD was defined by either meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition criteria on the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC) or caregiver report of a prior diagnosis. ADHD symptom counts were determined via the DISC. Multivariable logistic regression examined the link between pyrethroid exposure and ADHD, and poisson regression investigated the link between exposure and ADHD symptom counts. Results Children with urinary 3-PBA above the limit of detection (LOD) were twice as likely to have ADHD compared with those below the LOD (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.42; 95 % confidence interval [CI] 1.06, 5.57). Hyperactive-impulsive symptoms increased by 50 % for every 10-fold increase in 3-PBA levels (adjusted count ratio 1.50; 95 % CI 1.03, 2.19); effects on inattention were not significant. We observed possible sex-specific effects: pyrethroid biomarkers were associated with increased odds of an ADHD diagnosis and number of ADHD symptoms for boys but not girls. Conclusions We found an association between increasing pyrethroid pesticide exposure and ADHD which may be stronger for hyperactive-impulsive symptoms compared to inattention and in boys compared to girls. Given the growing use of pyrethroid pesticides, these results may be of considerable public health import

Improving Integration of Behavioral Health Into Primary Care for Adolescents and Young Adults

Problems related to mood, substance use, anxiety, body image issues, post-traumatic stress, and suicidality are common in adolescence and become even more common in young adulthood. Integrated behavioral health (IBH) in primary care has shown great promise in identifying and treating adolescents and young adults who have these problems. Treatment outcomes in IBH settings outperform those in usual primary care settings where a primary care provider may identify behavioral health problems and refer youth to colocated or outside behavioral health specialists. Despite the success of IBH care systems, limited training opportunities and inadequate financial compensation for these services jeopardize the wide scale expansion and universal adoption of IBH. To optimize patient care, providers from all disciplines in adolescent primary care settings should have dedicated professional training in IBH. This should include incorporating IBH professional competencies into each discipline's formal training program and building interprofessional, multidisciplinary IBH training settings. Likewise, payers should work with primary care systems to create and implement reimbursement models for IBH services. Efforts to expand the footprint of IBH would pay off significantly by building more worldwide BH systems with increased efficacy at identifying and treating adolescents with BH conditions

A haploid pseudo-chromosome genome assembly for a keystone sagebrush species of western North American rangelands

Increased ecological disturbances, species invasions, and climate change are creating severe conservation problems for several plant species that are widespread and foundational. Understanding the genetic diversity of these species and how it relates to adaptation to these stressors are necessary for guiding conservation and restoration efforts. This need is particularly acute for big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata; Asteraceae), which was once the dominant shrub over 1,000,000 km2 in western North America but has since retracted by half and thus has become the target of one of the largest restoration seeding efforts globally. Here, we present the first reference-quality genome assembly for an ecologically important subspecies of big sagebrush (A. tridentata subsp. tridentata) based on short and long reads, as well as chromatin proximity ligation data analyzed using the HiRise pipeline. The final 4.2-Gb assembly consists of 5,492 scaffolds, with nine pseudo-chromosomal scaffolds (nine scaffolds comprising at least 90% of the assembled genome; n = 9). The assembly contains an estimated 43,377 genes based on ab initio gene discovery and transcriptional data analyzed using the MAKER pipeline, with 91.37% of BUSCOs being completely assembled. The final assembly was highly repetitive, with repeat elements comprising 77.99% of the genome, making the Artemisia tridentata subsp. tridentata genome one of the most highly repetitive plant genomes to be sequenced and assembled. This genome assembly advances studies on plant adaptation to drought and heat stress and provides a valuable tool for future genomic research.This research was made possible by 2 NSF Idaho EPSCoR grants (award numbers OIA-1757324 and OIA-1826801), as well as a Dovetail Genomics Tree of Life Award.Introduction Materials and methods Sample collection, in vitro tissue propagation, and biomass production Flow cytometry and genome complexity analysis PacBio and Omni-C sequence data generation PacBio long-read de novo assembly and validation Pseudomolecule construction with HiRise Genome annotation RNA sequencing Repeat identification Functional annotation Results and discussion Validation of genome assembly and annotation Genome complexity and evidence of past polyploidization Comparing the A. tridentata and A. annua genome assemblies Applications of the sagebrush reference genome Data availability Acknowledgments Literature cite

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN