Long-term effects of brand placement disclosure on persuasion knowledge and brand responses

Various studies have examined the short-term effects of brand placement disclosures. This study aims to (1) replicate previously identified short-term effects of brand placement disclosures on persuasion knowledge and brand responses, and, more importantly, (2) examine whether these effects persist, diminish, or grow in the long-term. We conducted an online experiment (N = 208) in which we compared the effects of including a disclosure (vs. no disclosure) in two waves (short-term, measured directly after watching the programme vs. long-term, measured two to three weeks later). Our results show that a disclosure increases ad recognition (i.e. conceptual persuasion knowledge) immediately after exposure, and that this effect persists even a few weeks after watching the programme. Moreover, a disclosure enhances brand memory via ad recognition, in both the short- and the long-term. However, resistance effects on skepticism (attitudinal persuasion knowledge), brand attitude and purchase intention are neither replicated in the short-term nor found in the long-term

Advanced Statistical Learning and Prediction of Complex Runway Incursion

In 2015, 1,507 runway incursions capable of inducing collisions occurred at airports in the United States, so it is obviously very important to identify significant factors underlying such incursions, to predict potential runway incursion occurrences, and to prepare systematic programs for reducing the number of incursions and prevent runway collisions. Presence of a large volume of data, multiple variables, and complex interactions among them pose a significant challenge to resolving this problem. To tackle this challenge, we developed a data-driven prediction model using a component of advanced statistical theory, i.e., a generalized additive model (GAM). GAM can account for flexible modeling of multiple variables over a broad range of modeling distributions. We obtained, parsed, and transformed various predictor variables from many heterogeneous databases to create interpretable datasets for statistical modeling. We demonstrated promising performance of GAM while making systematic investigations into prediction accuracy of runway incursion at United States airports (including all types of commercial, military, and other general data). Results show that GAM can identify critical factors (airport complexity, number of operations, and visibility) in predicting a number of the runway incursions. Performance comparison of two popular GAM smoothers (i.e., cubic regression splines and thin plate regression splines) has demonstrated promising accuracy of both methods. These results imply that statistical predictions developed using GAM will help in better prediction of runway incursion when more data become available in the future.This proceeding is published as Song, I., I. Cho, T. Tessitore, T. Gurcsik, and H. Ceylan. "Advanced statistical learning and prediction of complex runway incursion." In Airfield and Highway Pavements 2017, pp. 38-50. 2017. https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/9780784480953.004. Works produced by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not copyrighted within the U.S. The content of this document is not copyrighted

Surgical Treatment of Spinal Meningiomas in the Elderly (≥75 Years): Which Factors Affect the Neurological Outcome? An International Multicentric Study of 72 Cases

(1) Background: With the increasing life expectancy in the Western world, an increasing number of old patients presents with spinal meningioma. Considering the benign nature of these tumors, the functional outcome remains of great importance, since more people reach old age in general conditions of well-being and satisfactory autonomy. (2) Methods: We conducted an international multicenter retrospective study to investigate demographic, clinical and radiological data in a population of elderly patients (≥75 years of age) undergoing surgery for SM from January 2000 to December 2020 in four European referral centers. The aim was to identify prognostic and predictive factors for a good postoperative functional outcome. (3) Results: 72 patients were included in the study. Complete tumor resection (Simpson I or II) was achieved in 67 (95.7%) cases. Intraoperative complications were reported in 7 (9.9%) patients while postoperative complications were found in 12 (16.7%). An excellent general postoperative status (McCormick I and II) was achieved in 65.3%. Overall, surgical resection had a good impact on patients’ functional outcome (86.1% either showing an improvement or maintaining a good preoperative status). Uni- and multivariate analyses found that both age and preoperative modified McCormick independently correlated with relative outcome (coeff = −0.058, p = 0.0251; coeff = 0.597, p < 0.0001) and with postoperative status (coeff = 0.058, p = 0.02507; coeff = 0.402, p = 0.00027), respectively. (4) Conclusions: Age and preoperative modified McCormick were found to be independent prognostic factors. Nevertheless, advanced age (≥75), per se, did not seem to contraindicate surgery, even in those with severe preoperative neurological deficits. The functional results sustain the need for surgical resection of SM in the elderly

Inter-hemispheric EEG coherence analysis in Parkinson's disease : Assessing brain activity during emotion processing

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is not only characterized by its prominent motor symptoms but also associated with disturbances in cognitive and emotional functioning. The objective of the present study was to investigate the influence of emotion processing on inter-hemispheric electroencephalography (EEG) coherence in PD. Multimodal emotional stimuli (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust) were presented to 20 PD patients and 30 age-, education level-, and gender-matched healthy controls (HC) while EEG was recorded. Inter-hemispheric coherence was computed from seven homologous EEG electrode pairs (AF3–AF4, F7–F8, F3–F4, FC5–FC6, T7–T8, P7–P8, and O1–O2) for delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands. In addition, subjective ratings were obtained for a representative of emotional stimuli. Interhemispherically, PD patients showed significantly lower coherence in theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands than HC during emotion processing. No significant changes were found in the delta frequency band coherence. We also found that PD patients were more impaired in recognizing negative emotions (sadness, fear, anger, and disgust) than relatively positive emotions (happiness and surprise). Behaviorally, PD patients did not show impairment in emotion recognition as measured by subjective ratings. These findings suggest that PD patients may have an impairment of inter-hemispheric functional connectivity (i.e., a decline in cortical connectivity) during emotion processing. This study may increase the awareness of EEG emotional response studies in clinical practice to uncover potential neurophysiologic abnormalities

Evidence for sparse synergies in grasping actions

Converging evidence shows that hand-actions are controlled at the level of synergies and not single muscles. One intriguing aspect of synergy-based action-representation is that it may be intrinsically sparse and the same synergies can be shared across several distinct types of hand-actions. Here, adopting a normative angle, we consider three hypotheses for hand-action optimal-control: sparse-combination hypothesis (SC) – sparsity in the mapping between synergies and actions - i.e., actions implemented using a sparse combination of synergies; sparse-elements hypothesis (SE) – sparsity in synergy representation – i.e., the mapping between degrees-of-freedom (DoF) and synergies is sparse; double-sparsity hypothesis (DS) – a novel view combining both SC and SE – i.e., both the mapping between DoF and synergies and between synergies and actions are sparse, each action implementing a sparse combination of synergies (as in SC), each using a limited set of DoFs (as in SE). We evaluate these hypotheses using hand kinematic data from six human subjects performing nine different types of reach-to-grasp actions. Our results support DS, suggesting that the best action representation is based on a relatively large set of synergies, each involving a reduced number of degrees-of-freedom, and that distinct sets of synergies may be involved in distinct tasks

Effects of pitch size and skill level on tactical behaviours of Association Football players during small-sided and conditioned games

In Association Football, the study of variability in players' movement trajectories during performance can provide insights on tactical behaviours. This study aimed to analyse the movement variability present in: i) the players' actions zones and ii), distances travelled over time, considered as a player's positional spatial reference. Additionally, we investigated whether the movement variability characteristics of players from different skill levels varied. Two groups of U-17 yrs players of different performance levels (national and regional) performed in three small-sided games with varying pitch dimensions (small, intermediate and large). Linear and non-linear analyses were used to capture the magnitude and structure of their movement variability. Results showed that increases in pitch size resulted in more restricted action zones and higher distance values from personal spatial positional references for both groups. National-level players were more sensitive to pitch modifications and displayed more variability than regional-level players in the small and intermediate pitches. These findings advance understanding about individual tactical behaviours in Association Football and have implications for training design, using pitch size manipulation

Baseline Leptin Levels Predict Change in Leptin Levels During Weight Loss in Obese Breast Cancer Survivors

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73051/1/j.1524-4741.2007.00397.x.pd