THE DRIVERS AND IMPACTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS: THE ROLE OF MIMICRY

Despite the growing trend of influencer marketing, little effort has been made to understanding the comprehensive mechanism as to how social media influencers (SMIs) influence their target audiences. Although previous SMI literature identified possible drivers and effects of SMIs, much of former research has focused on the peripheral traits of SMIs: identifying the effect of a SMI’s number of followers on a target’s influencer likability. Not much investigation has been undertaken to understand the principal traits of SMIs that allow them to amass audience in the first place and gain influence over their audiences. The dissertation filled this void in the literature. Drawing upon Influence Framework and Consumer’s Doppelganger Effect theory, the study developed an overarching, structural framework that explains the influence mechanism of a SMI over her target audience as a whole in which (i) a target’s perceptions toward a SMI’s influence attempts (attractiveness, prestige, expertise, information, and interaction) affect the target’s attitudes toward the SMI, believing that the SMI exercises taste leadership and opinion leadership (H1 to H6), (ii) the target’s positive attitudes toward the SMI trigger her conscious mimicry desire toward the SMI (H7 and H8), and (iii) the target’s mimicry desire directs her performance outcomes of social media WOM and purchase intention (H9 and H10). The study included both a qualitative method approach (focus group (n = 11)) and quantitative approaches (pre-test (n = 48), pilot test (n = 155), and main-test (n = 395) surveys via Mechanical Turk) to attest its conceptual model. The main-test results, using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis via AMOS 23, confirmed that the conceptual model and all the hypothesized relationships were statistically significant. Further, the bootstrap results demonstrated that a target’s mimicry desire indeed served as a significant mediator linking the target’s attitudinal beliefs to behavioral decisions. The study’s findings provide insightful contributions to the SMI literature and practical implications for brand marketers in developing successful influencer marketing strategies

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon degradation by novel bacteria isolated from burrow sediments of marine benthic macrofauna

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are significant environmental pollutants and represent a severe health threat. Many cosmopolitan areas including coastal environments are heavily impacted by PAH. This research investigates the isolation of PAH-degrading bacteria from burrow sediment of marine benthic macrofauna and their potential in bioremediation. Macrofaunal burrow sediment is biogeochemically distinct from bulk sediment and has high microbial activities. Samples were collected from a local uncontaminated cove and PAH degradation potential was measured by incubating sediment slurries with exogenous PAH. Burrow sediments from two polychaetes and a mollusc showed significantly higher PAH degradation potential than the bulk sediment. The degradation potential was sensitive to the oxygen level during incubation. Prolonged anoxia arrested the PAH degradation in the slurries however degradation resumed when oxygen became available. Periodic anoxia only slowed the rate of degradation, These results indicated that burrow sediments likely harbored bacteria which degraded PAH using oxygen. The presence of PAH-degrading bacteria from burrow sediments was confirmed by enrichment culture of the burrow sediment slurries. Isolate LC8 was isolated from Nereis burrow sediment and isolate M4-6 was isolated from Mya burrow sediment. These isolates were characterized using phenotypic and phylogenetic techniques. The combined results suggested that LC8, Lutibacterium anuloederans (nov.gen., novsp.), is a novel genus most closely related to the genus Erythrobacter. M4-6, Cycloclasticus spirillensus, is a new species of Cycloclasticus which is an established PAH-degrading genus. To study the potential for the two isolates to serve as bioremediation agents, LC8 and M4-6 were re-introduced into a sediment matrix and the degradation potential of the inoculated slurries was measured. Although both strains were isolated from the same locale, LC8-inoculated slurries showed much better PAH degradation potential in both uncontaminated and heavily polluted sediments. M4-6-inoculated slurries showed similar PAH degradation but the rate declined rapidly with time. Moreover, M4-6 seemed to be sensitive to other pollutants in the system. In summary, two novel PAH degraders were isolated from marine macrofaunal burrow sediments. They degraded PAH under laboratory conditions and when re- introduced into a sediment matrix. However, M4-6 will not be a suitable bioremediation agent due to its sensitivity to other pollutants which may be present in the environment

Effects of acute hypoxia on gene expression and physiology in Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) after chronic dietary exposure to an organophosphate pesticide

Masteroppgave i biovitenskap og akvakultur - Nord universitet 202

A non-perturbative field theory approach for the Kondo effect: Emergence of an extra dimension and its implication for the holographic duality conjecture

Implementing Wilsonian renormalization group transformations in an iterative way, we develop a non-perturbative field theoretical framework, which takes into account all-loop quantum corrections organized in the $1/N$ expansion, where $N$ represents the flavor number of quantum fields. The resulting classical field theory is given by an effective Landau-Ginzburg theory for a local order parameter field, which appears in one-dimensional higher spacetime. We claim that such all-loop quantum corrections are introduced into an equation of motion for the order parameter field through the evolution in the emergent extra dimension. Based on this non-perturbative theoretical framework, we solve the Kondo effect, where the quantum mechanics problem in the projective formulation is mapped into a Landau-Ginzburg field theory for the hybridization order parameter field with an emergent extra dimension. We confirm the non-perturbative nature of this field theoretical framework. Intriguingly, we show that the Wilsonian renormalization group method can explain non-perturbative thermodynamic properties of an impurity consistent with the Bethe ansatz solutions. Finally, we speculate how our non-perturbative field theoretical framework can be connected with the AdS$_{d+2}$/CFT$_{d+1}$ duality conjecture.Comment: Completely rewritte

Improvement of the Determination of the WIMP Mass from Direct Dark Matter Detection Data

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the leading candidates for Dark Matter. We developed a model-independent method for determining the WIMP mass by using data (i.e., measured recoil energies) of direct detection experiments. Our method is independent of the as yet unknown WIMP density near the Earth, of the form of the WIMP velocity distribution, as well as of the WIMP-nucleus cross section. It requires however positive signals from at least two detectors with different target nuclei. At the first phase of this work we found a systematic deviation of the reconstructed WIMP mass from the real one for heavy WIMPs. Now we improved this method so that this deviation can be strongly reduced for even very high WIMP mass. The statistical error of the reconstructed mass has also been reduced. In a background-free evironment, a WIMP mass of ~ 50 GeV could in principle be determined with an error of ~ 35% with only 2 times 50 events.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the SUSY08 proceeding

Cooper-Pair Spin Current in a Strontium Ruthenate Heterostructure

It has been recognized that the condensation of spin-triplet Cooper pairs requires not only the broken gauge symmetry but also the spin ordering as well. One consequence of this is the possibility of the Cooper-pair spin current analogous to the magnon spin current in magnetic insulators, the analogy also extending to the existence of the Gilbert damping of the collective spin-triplet dynamics. The recently fabricated heterostructure of the thin film of the itinerant ferromagnet SrRuO3 on the bulk Sr2RuO4, the best-known candidate material for the spin-triplet superconductor, offers a promising platform for generating such spin current. We will show how such heterostructure allows us to not only realize the long-range spin valve but also electrically drive the collective spin mode of the spin-triplet order parameter. Our proposal represents both a new realization of the spin superfluidity and a transport signature of the spin-triplet superconductivity.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Analysis of the effect of initial conditions on the initial development of a turbulent jet

The effect of the initial condition at the jet exit on the downstream evolution, particularly within the potential core length, were numerically investigated as well as with available experimental data. In order to select the most dependable computational model for the present numerical experiment, a comparative study has been performed with different turbulence models at k-epsilon level, and it was found that the k-epsilon-gammma model yields superior prediction accuracy over other conventional models. The calculated results show that the potential core length and the spreading rate the initial mixing layer are dependent on the initial length scale as well as the turbulent kinetic energy at the jet exit. Such effect of the initial length scale increases with higher initial turbulence level. An empirical parameter has been devised to collapse the calculated data of the potential core length and the spreading rate with various initial conditions onto a single curve

Asymmetric Neutrino Emission from Magnetized Proto-Neutron Star Matter including Hyperons in Relativistic Mean Field Theory

We calculate asymmetric neutrino absorption and scattering cross sections on hot and dense magnetized neutron-star matter including hyperons in fully relativistic mean field theory. The absorption/scattering cross sections are suppressed/enhanced incoherently in the direction of the magnetic fielld, B. The asymmetry is 2-4% at the matter density \rho_0 < \rho_B < 3\rho_0 and temperature T < 40 MeV for B=2 X 10^{17} G. This asymmetry is comparable to the effects owing to parity violation or asymmetric magnetic field topology proposed for the origin of pulsar kicks.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figur