An exploratory study of influences on retail service quality: a focus on Kuwait and Lebanon.

Abstract: The Middle East is a growing and lucrative marketplace. This exploratory study examines retail service in Kuwait and Lebanon, regions with long histories of trade. Retail service, however, has not been well documented in this region. To our knowledge, this is the first study that examines customer and salespeople perceptions of service encounters in these countries, in light of their culture, religion, and nationalities. As retailers expand into new markets worldwide, such information is vital to their success. Future research directions are discussed

A shortened version of Raven's standard progressive matrices for children and adolescents

Numerous developmental studies assess general cognitive ability, not as the primary variable of interest, but rather as a background variable. Raven's Progressive Matrices is an easy to administer non-verbal test that is widely used to measure general cognitive ability. However, the relatively long administration time (up to 45 min) is still a drawback for developmental studies as it often leaves little time to assess the primary variable of interest. Therefore, we used a machine learning approach - regularized regression in combination with cross-validation - to develop a short 15-item version. We did so for two age groups, namely 9 to 12 years and 13 to 16 years. The short versions predicted the scores on the standard full 60-item versions to a very high degree r = 0.89 (9-12 years) and r = 0.93 (13-16 years). We, therefore, recommend using the short version to measure general cognitive ability as a background variable in developmental studies

Cerebrovascular Hemodynamics during Concentric and Eccentric Phases of Heavy Resistance Exercise

Rapid and drastic fluctuations in arterial blood pressures, such as those occurring during heavy resistance exercise pose a unique challenge to the maintenance of cerebral perfusion. During high-intensity leg cycling, regulation of cerebral perfusion is reduced by rapid decreases in beat-to-beat fluctuations in blood pressure (diastolic phase) rather than rapid increases (systolic phase). The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that rhythmic heavy resistance exercise will similarly impair the regulation of cerebral blood flow during the diastolic phase of beat-to-beat fluctuations in pressure. We studied seven healthy male subjects. Beat-to-beat finger arterial pressures, and middle cerebral artery blood velocity (MCAv) were measured during 10 repetitions (REP) of rhythmic high intensity leg press exercise. Velocities and arterial pressures were evaluated during both the isotonic concentric and eccentric phases of each REP. The Gosling pulsatility index (PI) of MCAv of each REP was calculated as MCAv systolic-MCAv diastolic/MCAv mean. During the concentric phase, systolic arterial pressures progressively increased from REP 1 through REP 10 (P \u3c 0.001), while systolic MCAv was not different across all REPs (P \u3e0.2). Diastolic arterial pressures during the eccentric phase also increased from REP 1 through REP 10 (P = 0.03) however diastolic MCAv decreased during REPs 7-10 compared with REP 2 (P ≤ 0.02). MCAv PI also increased during REP 7-10 compared to REP 2 (P ≤ 0.02). Similar to high-intensity leg cycling, our data suggest that during rhythmic high-intensity leg press exercise, cerebral perfusion is well controlled during periods of rapid increases in blood pressure, but regulation of cerebral perfusion is impaired during the diastolic phase of beat-to-beat fluctuations in pressure

The distribution of biodiversity richness in the tropics

We compare the numbers of vascular plant species in the three major tropical areas. The Afrotropical Region (Africa south of the Sahara Desert plus Madagascar), roughly equal in size to the Latin American Region (Mexico southward), has only 56,451 recorded species (about 170 being added annually), as compared with 118,308 recorded species (about 750 being added annually) in Latin America. Southeast Asia, only a quarter the size of the other two tropical areas, has approximately 50,000 recorded species, with an average of 364 being added annually. Thus, Tropical Asia is likely to be proportionately richest in plant diversity, and for biodiversity in general, for its size. In the animal groups we reviewed, the patterns of species diversity were mostly similar except for mammals and butterflies. Judged from these relationships, Latin America may be home to at least a third of global biodiversity

Local and global processing in savant artists with autism

Abstract. We explored the hypothesis that an enhanced local processing style is characteristic of both art and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by examining local and global processing in savant artists with ASD. Specifically, savant artists were compared against non-talented individuals with ASD or mild/moderate learning difficulties (MLD), as well as artistically talented or non- talented students, on the block-design task and meaningful and abstract versions of the embedded figures test (EFT). Results demonstrated that there were no significant differences between the meaningful and abstract versions of the EFT, in any of the groups. This suggests that the primary process governing performance on this task was perceptual (local), rather than conceptual (global). More interestingly, the savant artists performed above the level of the ASD and MLD groups on the block-design test, but not the EFT. Despite both the block-design task and the EFT measuring local processing abilities, we suggest that this result is due to the block-design task being an active construction task (requiring the conversion of a visual input into a motor output), whereas the EFT is a passive recognition task. Therefore, although an enhanced local processing style is an important aspect of savant artistic talent, motor control also appears to be a necessary skill

Operationalising and measuring language dominance

The paper offers a new way to measure language ability in bilinguals, based on measures of lexical richness. The validity of proposed approach is tested in a variety of ways