The influencing effect of socialization agents on male children's sportswear choice decisions: a study of 8-11 year old male reactions to mother versus peers.

Academics, educationalists and parents have all expressed increasing concern about targeting and marketing towards children, particularly to those within the age group of eight to thirteen, and identified as tweenagers. Through an analysis of the literature it is established that inconsistencies exist on the influence of socialization agents on the reactions of young male consumers. Review of the literature also identifies that much is understood about female tweenagers but little is yet known about male tweenagers. The interpretive approach adopted explores the associations and reactions of male tweenagers to agents of consumer socialization, with a focus on mother versus peers. The study demonstrates how these agents affect the decisions of eight to eleven year old males, in the final years of the Scottish primary school system, within the sportswear sector. A two-stage research design combined a group based data procedure, supported by a projective comic strip scenario. Themes were identified from the analysis of friendship group discussions supported by the identification of phenomena emerging from projective data. An interpretivist epistemology supported an iterative, grounded process of data analysis, leading to the development of frameworks of consumer behaviour for male tweenagers within the product sector. The findings offer a different understanding from studies on female tweenagers in relation to parental involvement and influence, pester power and peer pressure. Four assertions emerged from the findings. Firstly, mum is identified as the gateway to brand information and in a positive attachment agent, evidenced through the exertion of positive reactions towards mum. Pester power was not in evidence, and instead supports the views on joint action between parent and child when participating in the consumer socialization game. Peer pressure is low, as these children demonstrate negative responses to peer socialization agents. And more importantly, these boys are identified as being different to girls in their socialization relationships. This thesis focuses on the voice of males tweenagers and reveals them to be embedded within social networks where they do not yet feel compelled to follow the directives of peers when making sportswear choices. The findings contribute to the literature by proposing that marketers and consumer researchers need to review the assumptions that what is known about children, and in particular girl tweenagers, can be transferred to male tweenagers. This exploratory study questions the usefulness of these assumptions as an appropriate basis for practitioner and researcher decisions, and underlines the need to study males tweenagers as a separate consumer social group

The Cellular Response to Glucocorticoids in Human Astrocytoma

Glucocorticoids have been widely used in reducing the oedema associated with brain tumours and post-operative pain. In vitro, they have been shown to inhibit growth of several different cell types, for example lung tumours and gliomas. Glucocorticoids have also been found to encourage immature malignant glioma cells to differentiate. This was measured by a reduction in immature properties, such as plasminogen activator activity, and the appearance of differentiated characteristics, such as glutamine synthetase activity

Transcultural Memory and the Troostmeisjes/Comfort Women Photographic Project

In 2008 and 2009, a Dutch photographer, Jan Banning, and an anthropologist, Hilde Janssen, traveled around Indonesia to document, with photographs and testimonies, survivors of militarized sexual abuse by the Japanese military during the three-year occupation (1942-1945) of the former Dutch colony, the Netherlands East Indies. We argue that the resultant photographic project can best be understood within the framework of the politics of pity and the associated genres of representation. The project creators anticipated a cosmopolitan audience that might be moved to action to support the survivors. Yet, as the project was exhibited in different sites, the women\u27s memories were interpreted through local knowledge systems and mnemonic practices. We analyze the reception of these photographs in diverse local contexts

The Increasing Global Market For Health Care: The Effect Of Emerging Technologies On Global Outsourcing & Offshoring Of Health Care Services

The use of outsourcing as a business management tool has a long history in the delivery of health and human services in the United States. But, the current price-pressured, highly-competitive U.S. health and human service market is also experiencing new competitive developments due to the introduction of new technologies and further use of lower-cost labor markets outside of the United States, commonly referred to as offshoring. This paper will explore the evolution of outsourcing and offshoring in health and human services and provide a model to analyze the technological factors that will likely contribute to a global transformation of the health and human services. Traditional thinking is that offshoring is usually limited to highly-repetitive, low-skill service tasks such as data entry and call center management. But, new research on the concept of offshoring posits that services that are labor intensive, information-based, codifiable, and/or highly transparent are candidates for technology-enabled outsourcing. A broader shift in labor models, from local to global, is likely to occur. Since these four characteristics apply to many of the professional functions in the health and human service field, it is imperative that health care executives understand the potential risks and opportunities of these emerging technologies. In particular, the authors will review the likely health service functions that will be subject to worker/labor competition through global outsourcing and suggest possible strategies for organizations in the field to address these new competitive threats

Atom-molecule coherence in a one-dimensional system

We study a model of one-dimensional fermionic atoms that can bind in pairs to form bosonic molecules. We show that at low energy, a coherence develops between the molecule and fermion Luttinger liquids. At the same time, a gap opens in the spin excitation spectrum. The coherence implies that the order parameters for the molecular Bose-Einstein Condensation and the atomic BCS pairing become identical. Moreover, both bosonic and fermionic charge density wave correlations decay exponentially, in contrast with a usual Luttinger liquid. We exhibit a Luther-Emery point where the systems can be described in terms of noninteracting pseudofermions. At this point, we provide closed form expressions for the density-density response functions.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, Revtex 4; (v2) added a reference to cond-mat/0505681 where related results are reported; (v3) Expression of correlation functions given in terms of generalized hypergeometric function

Building Strategic Business Partnerships With Software Vendors: A Best Practice Model For Behavioral Health & Social Service Organizations

Deployment of emerging technology holds great promise to improve the operation of organizations in the behavioral health and social service field.  New technology can reduce operating costs, improve service quality, and enable new service offerings, providing strategic advantage in an increasingly competitive market.  With increasingly strategic implications of technology in the field, it is important that managers understand the importance of choosing technology vendors that will be not just a supplier, but a strategic business partner.  Among the many technology vendors, strategic relationships with software vendors are key.  Software selection is an important and often underestimated process that holds the key to developing these strategic business partnerships.  In the current market, it is not unusual to find many software vendors offering a wealth of functionality in their applications at a wide range of price points. Traditionally, managers in the field have selected a software vendor with a simplistic value equation of the amount of functionality per dollar spent, with an assumption of  fixed useful life of the software product.   However, as the health and human service field has become more competitive and more dynamic, the ability to work with the software platform and the software vendor to collaboratively and quickly meet those needs is a key to maintaining strategic advantage.   This article outlines a ‘best practice’ in software selection process that builds the framework for creation of such a strategic partnership with a software vendor – a selection process that weighs software functionality and price, but adds the dimension of vendor responsiveness to the equation

Isoform-selective susceptibility of DISC1/phosphodiesterase-4 complexes to dissociation by elevated intracellular cAMP levels

Disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) is a genetic susceptibility factor for schizophrenia and related severe psychiatric conditions. DISC1 is a multifunctional scaffold protein that is able to interact with several proteins, including the independently identified schizophrenia risk factor phosphodiesterase-4B (PDE4B). Here we report that the 100 kDa full-length DISC1 isoform (fl-DISC1) can bind members of each of the four gene, cAMP-specific PDE4 family. Elevation of intracellular cAMP levels, so as to activate protein kinase A, caused the release of PDE4D3 and PDE4C2 isoforms from fl-DISC1 while not affecting binding of PDE4B1 and PDE4A5 isoforms. Using a peptide array strategy, we show that PDE4D3 binds fl-DISC1 through two regions found in common with PDE4B isoforms, the interaction of which is supplemented because of the presence of additional PDE4B-specific binding sites. We propose that the additional binding sites found in PDE4B1 underpin its resistance to release during cAMP elevation. We identify, for the first time, a functional distinction between the 100 kDa long DISC1 isoform and the short 71 kDa isoform. Thus, changes in the expression pattern of DISC1 and PDE4 isoforms offers a means to reprogram their interaction and to determine whether the PDE4 sequestered by DISC1 is released after cAMP elevation. The PDE4B-specific binding sites encompass point mutations in mouse Disc1 that confer phenotypes related to schizophrenia and depression and that affect binding to PDE4B. Thus, genetic variation in DISC1 and PDE4 that influence either isoform expression or docking site functioning may directly affect psychopathology