The Effect of Loyalty Program Fees on Program Perceptions and Engagement

Retailers may introduce loyalty program enrollment fees for several reasons, including to offset the costs of the program. The principle of commitment-consistency and sunk cost effects suggest consumers who pay a fee have a higher value to the firm and exhibit behavioral loyalty, while the zero-price effect predicts the opposite. Three studies show: consumers who pay to participate in a loyalty program have more favorable attitudes, more positive evaluations of value for the money and benefits than non-paying members (Study 1); and altering the wording of denominations of accrual can affect willingness to join fee-based programs (Studies 2 and 3). The results suggest a boundary effect to the numerosity heuristic. Presenting reward credit accumulations in higher numbers may be advantageous when program fees are high, since it shifts the focus of processing from the fee to the rewards. However, standard units may be more favorable when program fees are low

Face pareidolia in products : the effect of emotional content on attentional capture, eagerness to explore, and likelihood to purchase

Face‐like configurations can be perceived in everyday products. This perceptual phenomenon is known as face pareidolia. However, few studies have investigated the perception of pareidolic emotion in such products and the effect it could have on consumer behaviour. Therefore, in this study, across two experiments, we test the extent to which participants perceive core human emotions in products with pareidolic configurations (Experiment 1), and how this affects key consumer metrics (i.e., likely attentional capture, eagerness to explore, likelihood to purchase; Experiment 2). The findings show that these products do elicit the full range of affective content, with variation in perceived emotional intensity. Products with ‘happy’, ‘angry’ and ‘surprise’ configurations were likely to capture attention/promote product exploration, but only ‘happy’ products retained this advantage for purchasing decisions. Individual differences in mood and level of loneliness predicted likely engagement with these products. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed

Culture Connect: Diversity Resource Toolkit

Culture Connect: Diversity Resource Toolkit Globally, refugees are displaced at high rates and must integrate into a society where they are an ethnic minority. Since 2016, the International Rescue Committee has resettled over 300 refugees in Missoula; about 20% of which are school-aged children. Therefore, it is important that schools facilitate refugee inclusivity and intercultural competence within student peer groups. To aid in solving this global problem, we developed a project using the three steps of Human-Centered Design that aimed to enhance teacher competence, knowledge and increase the access to resources needed to address this global problem in the classroom setting. For the inspiration phase, we reviewed relevant literature and interviewed experts. During ideation, we integrated ideas and insights collected to develop and design our project, which includes a print and online diversity resource educational toolkit for use by pre-service and in-service teachers in elementary classrooms. The implementation intended to involve piloting the toolkit for six weeks in Missoula elementary classrooms with potential adaptation for school settings with similar characteristics beyond the Missoula community. Our five objectives that guide the development of the toolkit components are to 1) reduce prejudice in schools with daily exposure and practice; 2) enhance multicultural education and widen cultural representation in classrooms; 3) supplement existing language acquisition support for refugee students/parents and teachers; 4) enhance classroom introductory period for refugee students by including diverse representation in the classroom and inspiring students to be welcoming of refugee children; 5) streamline access to educational resources for teachers. As part of the implementation, we conducted pre/post-surveys to assess attitude change among students and teachers. In addition, we obtained feedback from teachers globally on toolkit improvements for its sustainable implementation. The expected learning outcomes are to decrease prejudice and enhance intercultural competence necessary for welcoming communities for refugees in a diverse society

A seasonal study of dissolved cobalt in the Ross Sea, Antarctica : micronutrient behavior, absence of scavenging, and relationships with Zn, Cd, and P

© The Authors, 2010. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The definitive version was published in Biogeosciences 7 (2010): 4059-4082, doi:10.5194/bg-7-4059-2010.We report the distribution of cobalt (Co) in the Ross Sea polynya during austral summer 2005–2006 and the following austral spring 2006. The vertical distribution of total dissolved Co (dCo) was similar to soluble reactive phosphate (PO43−), with dCo and PO43− showing a significant correlation throughout the water column (r2 = 0.87, 164 samples). A strong seasonal signal for dCo was observed, with most spring samples having concentrations ranging from ~45–85 pM, whereas summer dCo values were depleted below these levels by biological activity. Surface transect data from the summer cruise revealed concentrations at the low range of this seasonal variability (~30 pM dCo), with concentrations as low as 20 pM observed in some regions where PO43− was depleted to ~0.1 μM. Both complexed Co, defined as the fraction of dCo bound by strong organic ligands, and labile Co, defined as the fraction of dCo not bound by these ligands, were typically observed in significant concentrations throughout the water column. This contrasts the depletion of labile Co observed in the euphotic zone of other ocean regions, suggesting a much higher bioavailability for Co in the Ross Sea. An ecological stoichiometry of 37.6 μmol Co:mol−1 PO43− calculated from dissolved concentrations was similar to values observed in the subarctic Pacific, but approximately tenfold lower than values in the Eastern Tropical Pacific and Equatorial Atlantic. The ecological stoichiometries for dissolved Co and Zn suggest a greater overall use of Zn relative to Co in the shallow waters of the Ross Sea, with a Co:PO43−/Zn:PO43− ratio of 1:17. Comparison of these observed stoichiometries with values estimated in culture studies suggests that Zn is a key micronutrient that likely influences phytoplankton diversity in the Ross Sea. In contrast, the observed ecological stoichiometries for Co were below values necessary for the growth of eukaryotic phytoplankton in laboratory culture experiments conducted in the absence of added zinc, implying the need for significant Zn nutrition in the Zn-Co cambialistic enzymes. The lack of an obvious kink in the dissolved Co:PO43− relationship was in contrast to Zn:PO43− and Cd:PO43− kinks previously observed in the Ross Sea. An excess uptake mechanism for kink formation is proposed as a major driver of Cd:PO43− kinks, where Zn and Cd uptake in excess of that needed for optimal growth occurs at the base of the euphotic zone, and no clear Co kink occurs because its abundances are too low for excess uptake. An unusual characteristic of Co geochemistry in the Ross Sea is an apparent lack of Co scavenging processes, as inferred from the absence of dCo removal below the euphotic zone. We hypothesize that this vertical distribution reflects a low rate of Co scavenging by Mn oxidizing bacteria, perhaps due to Mn scarcity, relative to the timescale of the annual deep winter mixing in the Ross Sea. Thus Co exhibits nutrient-like behavior in the Ross Sea, in contrast to its hybrid-type behavior in other ocean regions, with implications for the possibility of increased marine Co inventories and utility as a paleooceanographic proxy.This research was supported by the US National Science Foundation through research grants (OPP-0440840, OPP-0338097, OPP-0732665, OCE-0452883, OCE-0752991, OCE-0928414)

Naïve Transient Cast Insertion Isn’t (That) Bad

Transient gradual type systems often depend on type-based cast insertion to achieve good performance: casts are inserted whenever the static checker detects that a dynamically-typed value may flow into a statically-typed context. Transient gradually typed programs are then often executed using just-in-time compilation, and contemporary just-in-time compilers are very good at removing redundant computations. In this paper we present work-in-progress to measure the ability of just-in-time compilers to remove redundant type checks. We investigate worst-case performance and so take a na'ive approach, annotating every subexpression to insert every plausible dynamic cast. Our results indicate that the Moth VM still manages to eliminate much of the overhead, by relying on the state-of-the-art SOMns substrate and Graal just-in-time compiler. We hope these results will help language implementers evaluate the tradeoffs between dynamic optimisations (which can improve the performance of both statically and dynamically typed programs) and static optimisations (which improve only statically typed code)

X-Ray Follow-Up of Extragalactic Transients

Most violent and energetic processes in our universe, including mergers of compact objects,explosions of massive stars and extreme accretion events, produce copious amounts of X-rays. X-ray follow-up is an efficient tool for identifying transients: (1) X-rays can quickly localize transients with large error circles; (2) X-rays reveal the nature of transients that may not have unique signatures at other wavelengths. Here, we identify key science questions about several extragalactic multi-messenger andmulti-wavelength transients, and demonstrate how X-ray follow-up helps answer these questions

Serum neurofilament dynamics predicts neurodegeneration and clinical progression in presymptomatic Alzheimer's disease

Neurofilament light chain (NfL) is a promising fluid biomarker of disease progression for various cerebral proteopathies. Here we leverage the unique characteristics of the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network and ultrasensitive immunoassay technology to demonstrate that NfL levels in the cerebrospinal fluid (n = 187) and serum (n = 405) are correlated with one another and are elevated at the presymptomatic stages of familial Alzheimer's disease. Longitudinal, within-person analysis of serum NfL dynamics (n = 196) confirmed this elevation and further revealed that the rate of change of serum NfL could discriminate mutation carriers from non-mutation carriers almost a decade earlier than cross-sectional absolute NfL levels (that is, 16.2 versus 6.8 years before the estimated symptom onset). Serum NfL rate of change peaked in participants converting from the presymptomatic to the symptomatic stage and was associated with cortical thinning assessed by magnetic resonance imaging, but less so with amyloid-β deposition or glucose metabolism (assessed by positron emission tomography). Serum NfL was predictive for both the rate of cortical thinning and cognitive changes assessed by the Mini-Mental State Examination and Logical Memory test. Thus, NfL dynamics in serum predict disease progression and brain neurodegeneration at the early presymptomatic stages of familial Alzheimer's disease, which supports its potential utility as a clinically useful biomarker