Positive Service Encounter: A Tool for Customer Loyalty in Retail

Customers’ perception of service depends on service encounter. The purpose of this paper is to build and test a model of relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty in a retail context. It also aims at understanding different factors that effect service quality. The subject is approached by a cross-sectional survey on a random sample of 230 customers after their service encounter with store employees in retail outlets. Structural Equation Modeling is used to test the model developed during the study. The findings indicate that responsiveness and assurance provided by the retail employees are the most important contributors of good service quality. Although competence is a better tool of customers’ measurement of service quality, appeal of the employees’ in terms of looks and personality are not found to effect customers’ perception of service quality. Results suggest that good service quality contributes to development of customer loyalty through customer satisfaction. The study would give an insight into understanding the importance of positive service encounter along with the implications of employees’ behavior for customer loyalty in service setting. This study contributes to marketing practice by offering an understanding to acquire customer loyalty. It also emphasizes the need to understand a positive service encounter which impacts the service quality

Application of UAV based high-resolution remote sensing for crop monitoring

Advances in technologies could offer enormous potential for crop monitoring applications, allowing the real-time acquisition of various environmental data. Technology such as high spatio-temporal imagery of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) can be widely used in crop monitoring applications. These technologies are expected to revolutionize the global agriculture practices, by enabling decision-making during the crop cycle days. Such results allow the effective practice of agricultural inputs, aiding precision agriculture pillars, i.e., applying the right practice in the right place, with the right amount and time. However, the actual exploitation of UAV’s has not been much strong in smart farming, mainly due to the challenges faced during selecting and deploying relevant technologies, including data acquisition and processing methods. The major problem is that there is still no consistent workflow for the use of UAV’s in such areas, as this mechanization is relatively new. In this article, the latest applications of UAV’s for crop monitoring are reviewed. It covers the most common applications, the types of UAV’s used and then we focused on data acquisition methods and technologies, employing the benefit and drawbacks of each. It also indicates the most popular image processing methods and summarizes the potential application in agricultural operations. 

The Role of Antimicrobial Compounds in the Life Cycle of the Symbiotic Bacterium, Xenorhabdus Nematophila

The bacterium Xenorhabdus nematophila maintains a mutualistic relationship with the entomopathogenic nematode Steinernema carpocapsae and is also pathogenic towards insect larvae. X. nematophila possesses a large number of gene clusters potentially involved in antimicrobial production. Several antibiotics, including xenocoumacin (Xcn) produced at high levels in broth cultures, have been characterized. In this study I established that during nematode invasion of the insect body cavity (hemocoel) gut microbiota enter the hemocoel representing potential competitors for X. nematophila. As infection progressed some transient species, such as Staphylococcus saprophyticus disappeared early in infection, while other persistent species such as Enterococcus faecalis proliferated. S. saprophyticus was found to be highly sensitive towards X. nematophila antibiotics and E. faecalis was more resistant. S. saprophyticus was eliminated when co-injected with X. nematophila into the insect host, Manduca sexta. In contrast, E. faecalis proliferated when co-injected with X. nematophila. The induction of transcripts for cecropin, an insect antimicrobial peptide, by E. faecalis was suppressed by the presence of X. nematophila suggesting that E. faecalis proliferation was due in part to a combination of immune suppression and relatively high antibiotic resistance. Injection of E. faecalis into M. sexta caused mortality suggesting that E. faecalis may contribute to, but is not required for, virulence in an insect infected with X. nematophila. The role of antibiotics in interspecies competition was assessed using various antibiotic-deficient strains of X. nematophila co-inoculated in LB broth with either S. saprophyticus or E. faecalis. Antibiotics are produced at high levels in LB broth. During the course of this study I discovered a new non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) cluster (cluster F) that produced antibiotic activity. The elimination of S. saprophyticus required Xcn but not compound F. In contrast, elimination of E. faecalis was not dependent on either Xcn or compound F. When competitions were carried out in a more biologically relevant medium (Grace\u27s medium) based on lepidopteran insect hemolymph, both the competitors grew better than X. nematophila due to lower production of antibiotics in Grace\u27s medium and faster growth rate of the competitors. S. saprophyticus was eliminated when inoculated into growing cultures of either the xcn or F strains but grew in the presence of a strain (ngrA) completely devoid of antibiotic activity suggesting that antibiotics other than Xcn and compound F were required to eliminate the competitor. In contrast, E. faecalis was not eliminated in competition with any of the X. nematophila strains consistent with its relatively high antibiotic resistance. S. saprophyticus was eliminated when co-injected into M. sexta with either the xcn or ngrA strain while growth of E. faecalis was facilitated by co-inoculation with both of the mutant strains. Finally, when nematodes carrying the ngrA strain were used for natural infection of M. sexta, nematode reproduction was significantly reduced suggesting that NRPS-derived compounds may function as developmental signals. Together, these findings establish the competitors for X. nematophila and the role of antimicrobials in differential competition and nematode reproduction

One qubit and one photon -- the simplest polaritonic heat engine

Hybrid quantum systems can often be described in terms of polaritons. These are quasiparticles formed of superpositions of their constituents, with relative weights depending on some control parameter in their interaction. In many cases, these constituents are coupled to reservoirs at different temperatures. This suggests a general approach to the realization of polaritonic heat engines where a thermodynamic cycle is realized by tuning this control parameter. Here we discuss what is arguably the simplest such engine, a single qubit coupled to a single photon. We show that this system can extract work from feeble thermal microwave fields. We also propose a quantum measurement scheme of the work and evaluate its back-action on the operation of the engine.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, new contents adde

An Integrated Model with Variable Production and Demand Rate under Inflation

AbstractIn this article, an integrated model is developed in which a manufacturer purchases raw materials from a supplier, and then produces finished products/goods, after that delivers them to a buyer. In the intended model production rate is assumed as a function of demand rate and customer demand rate is time dependent. To make the model more realistic the effect of inflation and time value of money is also taken into consideration. The concept of the model is illustrated through the numerical example and sensitivity analysis with respect to the system parameters is also performed

Occult Hepatitis B Virus infection in ART-Naive HIV-Infected Patients seen at a Tertiary Care Centre in North India

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Co-infections of hepatitis B and C viruses are frequent with HIV due to shared routes of transmission. In most of the tertiary care health settings, HIV reactive patients are routinely tested for HBsAg and anti-HCV antibodies to rule out these co-infections. However, using the routine serological markers one can only detect active HBV infection while the occult HBV infection may be missed. There is insufficient data from India on HIV-HBV co-infection and even scarce on occult HBV infection in this group.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We estimated the burden of HBV infection in patients who were tested positive for HIV at a tertiary care centre in north India. We also attempted to determine the prevalence and clinical characteristics of occult HBV infection among these treatment-naïve patients and compare their demographic features with other HIV patients. During a period of 6 years between January 2002 to December 2007, 837 HIV positive patients (631 males and 206 females (M: F :: 3.06:1) were tested for serological markers of HBV (HBsAg) and HCV (anti-HCV antibodies) infections in our laboratory. For comparison 1000 apparently healthy, HIV-negative organ donors were also included in the study. Data on demographics, sexual behaviour, medical history, laboratory tests including the serum ALT and CD4 count of these patients were recorded. A sub-group of 53 HBsAg negative samples from HIV positive patients were assessed for anti-HBs, anti-HBc total (IgG+IgM) and HBV-DNA using a highly sensitive qualitative PCR and analysed retrospectively.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overall, 7.28% of HIV positive patients showed presence of HBsAg as compared to 1.4% in the HIV negative control group. The prevalence of HBsAg was higher (8.55%) in males than females (3.39%). The study revealed that occult HBV infection with detectable HBV-DNA was prevalent in 24.5% of patients positive for anti-HBc antibodies; being 45.5% in HBsAg negative patients. Most importantly the occult infection was seen in 20.7% patients who were positive for anti-HBs antibodies. However, in none of the seronegative patient HBV-DNA was detected. Five of the nine HBV-DNA positive (55.6%) patients showed raised alanine aminotransferase levels and 66.7% had CD4⁺T cell counts below 200 cells/cumm.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>High prevalence of HIV-HBV co-infection was found in our patients. A sizeable number of co-infected patients remain undiagnosed, if only conventional serological markers are used. Presence of anti-HBs antibodies was not a reliable surrogate marker to rule out occult HBV infection. The most reliable method to diagnose occult HBV co-infection in HIV seropositive patients is the detection of HBV-DNA.</p

I-V Curve Tracer Communication Protocol

This thesis aims at developing a communication protocol for an I-V Curve Tracer. The IV Curve Tracer consists of a Raspberry Pi as the central unit to which a Source Measuring Unit (SMU) and a Relay Board is connected via USB and Ethernet, respectively. The SMU measures the I-V curve by generating a voltage sweep and measuring the resulting current. The relay board enables testing of multiple specimens. We include an Arduino Mega in this set up to accelerate the communication interface between the Relay modules and the Raspberry Pi. Therefore, our project aims to address the challenge of a scalable, low latency communication between the Pi-Arduino-Relay interface. Each Arduino is connected to one or multiple relay modules that are used to configure the interconnection between a single measurement device and various combinations of multiple PV cells in a current-voltage curve tracer (IVCT) testbed. This is significant because the time taken to complete a battery of tests using previous methods is over 15 minutes. However, an initial timing analysis found that the majority of the testing interval was spent on the communication to setup the relay configuration, not on the actual measurement process and hence, caused the relay boards to be slow to respond. This significantly limited the ability of the IVCT to scale-up in number of DUTs and complexity of interconnections tested. Our project seeks to overcome limitations of the current technology by significantly reducing the packet size of the transmitted data and eliminating the bloated and slow IoT platform. The expected outcome is a lightweight communication platform that is flexible and scalable with fast messaging not just for the IVCT testbed but also suitable for other research laboratory automation and control

Vulvar malignant melanoma: a rare tumor with worse prognosis

Malignant melanoma, which has a highly malignant potential, is a tumor of the skin and mucosal membranes. Malignant melanomas of the female genital tract, including the vulva and vagina, are rare. Their overall prognosis is worse. A 75 year old woman presented with complaint of growth in vulvar region since 4 months. There was history of itching in vulvar region over growth. Surgery is still the best available treatment for the control and potential cure of malignant melanomas