2,570 research outputs found
Effects of the consumption of halal products on Muslim piety and transcendental wellbeing
While there has been substantial research done on the topic of halal consumption behavior from an economic perspective, there is no research available from a sociological perspective that studies the halal consumption behavior of Muslims who may perhaps conspicuously indulge in halal certified products. This thesis argues that consumers may need to demonstrate their association with their religion to some extent by their consumption choices. And, a product’s Islamic brand image helps consumers to display their Muslim piety in their groups or communities. As in today’s consumer society a halal logo is representative of an Islamic brand and Muslims may prefer a product with halal logo for its religious connotations or values. In the process of halalaisation,commodities transform to non-commodities as they are thereby linked to the religious domain. Our research seeks to examine the effects of the halalisation phenomenon on the person’s Muslim piety and their transcendental wellbeing by using online surveys and in-depth interviews with Australian Muslims with a mixed method approach. The inter-view data was transcribed into electronic format to combine and compare the responses and, analysed for themes that guided the proposed conceptual model which was underpinned by the renowned sociological theories (theory of conspicuous consumption, the rational choice theory of religion and the self-transcendence theory). The conceptual model hypothesized that consumer’s perceived public image of halal products will positively relate to their Muslim piety. And, the consumer’s Muslim piety will strengthen their preference for halal products which may positively correlate with consumer’s transcendental wellbeing. The quantitative data was prepared using the statistical software SPSS. Further, the data analysis was conducted following the two-step approach to Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). In this approach, the measurement scales of the constructs in the model were first subjected to Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and then the structure model was assessed to show hypothesized relationships among key constructs by using the statistical software AMOS. The result shows that the pro-posed hypotheses were accepted. That is, consumer’s perceived public image of halal products has a positive influence on the Muslim piety. Besides, the Muslim piety strongly related to their preference for halal products which contributes to consumer’s transcendental wellbeing. Over-all, the empirical evidence suggests that halalised products can be conspicuously consumed and more importantly, contributes towards Muslim piety and transcendental wellbeing.
The limitation of the study is that the conceptual model developed to test the relationships between consumer’s perceived public image of halal products and its impact on their Muslim piety and transcendental wellbeing was only tested in a Muslim context with widely accepted scales used to measure all the variables of the model. This limits the findings to Muslims; otherwise the model could be employed to other religions to assess consumer preference for products with religious orientations and consumer’s transcendental wellbeing
A fixed point theorem for L 1 spaces
We prove a fixed point theorem for a family of Banach spaces including notably L 1 and its non-commutative analogues. Several applications are given, e.g. the optimal solution to the "derivation problem” studied since the 1960
Fully-dynamic Approximation of Betweenness Centrality
Betweenness is a well-known centrality measure that ranks the nodes of a
network according to their participation in shortest paths. Since an exact
computation is prohibitive in large networks, several approximation algorithms
have been proposed. Besides that, recent years have seen the publication of
dynamic algorithms for efficient recomputation of betweenness in evolving
networks. In previous work we proposed the first semi-dynamic algorithms that
recompute an approximation of betweenness in connected graphs after batches of
edge insertions.
In this paper we propose the first fully-dynamic approximation algorithms
(for weighted and unweighted undirected graphs that need not to be connected)
with a provable guarantee on the maximum approximation error. The transfer to
fully-dynamic and disconnected graphs implies additional algorithmic problems
that could be of independent interest. In particular, we propose a new upper
bound on the vertex diameter for weighted undirected graphs. For both weighted
and unweighted graphs, we also propose the first fully-dynamic algorithms that
keep track of such upper bound. In addition, we extend our former algorithm for
semi-dynamic BFS to batches of both edge insertions and deletions.
Using approximation, our algorithms are the first to make in-memory
computation of betweenness in fully-dynamic networks with millions of edges
feasible. Our experiments show that they can achieve substantial speedups
compared to recomputation, up to several orders of magnitude
Schwangerschaftsdepression und deren Behandlung
Zusammenfassung: Etwa 11% aller schwangeren Frauen leiden unter einer behandlungsbedürftigen Depression, welche unbehandelt mit Risiken wie Frühgeburt oder niederem Geburtsgewicht verbunden ist. Da manche Symptome der Depression oft der Schwangerschaft zugeschrieben werden, ist die Diagnose einer Schwangerschaftsdepression nicht immer leicht. Eine weitere Herausforderung ist die Wahl der geeigneten Therapiemaßnahme. Als Behandlungsmöglichkeiten stehen neben Psycho- und Pharmakotherapie auch die Elektrokrampftherapie (EKT) sowie Lichttherapie zur Auswahl. Aktuelle Berichte über Auswirkungen von Antidepressiva auf die Entwicklung des Ungeborenen und postpartale Anpassungsschwierigkeiten führen zu großen Verunsicherungen. Die Entscheidung, welche Therapiemaßnahme ergriffen wird, kann nur mit der werdenden Mutter zusammen getroffen werden; ein sorgfältiges Abwägen der Vor- und Nachteile der Behandlung ist dafür Voraussetzun
VISIBIOweb: visualization and layout services for BioPAX pathway models
With recent advancements in techniques for cellular data acquisition, information on cellular processes has been increasing at a dramatic rate. Visualization is critical to analyzing and interpreting complex information; representing cellular processes or pathways is no exception. VISIBIOweb is a free, open-source, web-based pathway visualization and layout service for pathway models in BioPAX format. With VISIBIOweb, one can obtain well-laid-out views of pathway models using the standard notation of the Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN), and can embed such views within one's web pages as desired. Pathway views may be navigated using zoom and scroll tools; pathway object properties, including any external database references available in the data, may be inspected interactively. The automatic layout component of VISIBIOweb may also be accessed programmatically from other tools using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The web site is free and open to all users and there is no login requirement. It is available at: http://visibioweb.patika.org
Assessment of varicella vaccine effectiveness in Germany: a time-series approach
A multivariate time-series regression model was developed in order to describe the 2005-2008 age-specific time-course of varicella sentinel surveillance data following the introduction of a varicella childhood vaccination programme in Germany. This ecological approach allows the assessment of vaccine effectiveness under field conditions by relating vaccine coverage in cohorts of 24-month-old children to the mean number of cases per reporting unit in the sentinel network. For the 1-2 years age group, which is directly affected by the vaccination programme, a one-dose vaccine effectiveness of 83·2% (95% CI 80·2-85·7) was estimated which corresponds to previous approaches assessing varicella vaccine effectiveness in the field in the US
Susceptibility of Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii from clinical and environment sources in Nairobi, Kenya
Objective: To determine anti-fungal susceptibility of Cryptococcus neoformans andCryptococcus gattii from environmental and clinical sources in Nairobi, Kenya.Design: Prospective study.Setting: Kenya Medical Research Institute, Mycology laboratory, Nairobi, Kenya.Subjects: A total of 123 isolates were tested for their susceptibility to fluconazole(FLC), amphotericin B(AMP) and fluorocytosine (5FC). Clinical isolates were 70(66Cryptococcus neoformans and 4 Cryptococcus gattii) while environmental isolates were53(41 C. neoformans and 12 C. gattii). The isolates were characterised using variousphenotypic tests including microscopic morphology, physiological and biochemicaltests (API 20 Caux), pigmentation on bird seed agar and reaction on canavanineglycine-bromthymolblue agar. European Committee on Anti-microbial SusceptibilityStandards (EUCAST) was used as the reference method for susceptibility testing.Results: Most C. neoformans isolates; clinical (61/66; 92.4%) and environmental (38/41;92.7%) were susceptible to FLC. The number of C. neoformans isolates inhibited atsusceptible dose dependent (SDD) range (16-32μg/ml) by FLC were clinical (4/66; 6.1%)and environmental (2/41; 4.9%). One C. neoformans isolate each; clinical (1/66; 1.5%)and environmental (1/41; 2.4%) was resistant to FLC. All C. gatti isolates from clinicaland environmental were fully susceptible to FLC. The percentage of C. neoformansisolates that were susceptible (S) (MIC ≤ 1.0 μg/ml) to AMP were; clinical(52/66; 90.2%)and environmental (37/41; 78.8%) while the rest were susceptible dose dependent(SDD) with MIC (2-8μg/ml). Reduced susceptibilities to 5FC was displayed in allclinical and environmental C. neoformans and C. gatii isolates; for instance resistanceto 5FC was reported in C. neoformans; clinical (8/66; 12.1%) and environmental (1/41;2.4 %). Among the C. gattii isolates there was also decreased susceptibility to 5FCwith Minimum Inhibition Concentration (MIC) range of between 0.5-32 μg/ml. Therewere no significant differences in susceptibility ranges among all the clinical andenvironmental isolates.Conclusion: This study demonstrated reduced susceptibilities among C. neoformansand C. gattii isolates to commonly used anti-fungal drugs
Distributed Graph Clustering using Modularity and Map Equation
We study large-scale, distributed graph clustering. Given an undirected
graph, our objective is to partition the nodes into disjoint sets called
clusters. A cluster should contain many internal edges while being sparsely
connected to other clusters. In the context of a social network, a cluster
could be a group of friends. Modularity and map equation are established
formalizations of this internally-dense-externally-sparse principle. We present
two versions of a simple distributed algorithm to optimize both measures. They
are based on Thrill, a distributed big data processing framework that
implements an extended MapReduce model. The algorithms for the two measures,
DSLM-Mod and DSLM-Map, differ only slightly. Adapting them for similar quality
measures is straight-forward. We conduct an extensive experimental study on
real-world graphs and on synthetic benchmark graphs with up to 68 billion
edges. Our algorithms are fast while detecting clusterings similar to those
detected by other sequential, parallel and distributed clustering algorithms.
Compared to the distributed GossipMap algorithm, DSLM-Map needs less memory, is
up to an order of magnitude faster and achieves better quality.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures; v3: Camera ready for Euro-Par 2018, more
details, more results; v2: extended experiments to include comparison with
competing algorithms, shortened for submission to Euro-Par 201
Functional characterization of GABAA receptor-mediated modulation of cortical neuron network activity in microelectrode array recordings
The numerous γ-aminobutyric acid type A receptor (GABAAR) subtypes are differentially expressed and mediate distinct functions at neuronal level. In this study we have investigated GABAAR-mediated modulation of the spontaneous activity patterns of primary neuronal networks from murine frontal cortex by characterizing the effects induced by a wide selection of pharmacological tools at a plethora of activity parameters in microelectrode array (MEA) recordings. The basic characteristics of the primary cortical neurons used in the recordings were studied in some detail, and the expression levels of various GABAAR subunits were investigated by western blotting and RT-qPCR. In the MEA recordings, the pan-GABAAR agonist muscimol and the GABABR agonist baclofen were observed to mediate phenotypically distinct changes in cortical network activity. Selective augmentation of αβγ GABAAR signaling by diazepam and of δ-containing GABAAR (δ-GABAAR) signaling by DS1 produced pronounced changes in the majority of the activity parameters, both drugs mediating similar patterns of activity changes as muscimol. The apparent importance of δ-GABAAR signaling for network activity was largely corroborated by the effects induced by the functionally selective δ-GABAAR agonists THIP and Thio-THIP, whereas the δ-GABAAR selective potentiator DS2 only mediated modest effects on network activity, even when co-applied with low THIP concentrations. Interestingly, diazepam exhibited dramatically right-shifted concentration-response relationships at many of the activity parameters when co-applied with a trace concentration of DS1 compared to when applied alone. In contrast, the potencies and efficacies displayed by DS1 at the networks were not substantially altered by the concomitant presence of diazepam. In conclusion, the holistic nature of the information extractable from the MEA recordings offers interesting insights into the contributions of various GABAAR subtypes/subgroups to cortical network activity and the putative functional interplay between these receptors in these neurons
Hard axis magnetization behavior and the surface spin flop transition in antiferromagnetic Fe Cr 100 superlattices
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