MARKETING DATABASES - THE SHORTEST WAY TO CLIENT'S HEART

The aim of this paper is to present the potential which could be offered by managing databases in direct marketing through gathering the information that could offer the shortest and efficient way to the clients needs. The paper includes the necessary steps to make this activity a real successdatabases, marketing direct, customer database, information, databases update

ASPECTS REGARDING THE DIFICULT PROCESS OF BUILDING A ROMANIAN TOURISM BRAND

The image we have about a country has a huge impact on how we view it as a tourist destination, a place to invest in, or a place to buy the brands we love from. In today's globalised market the battle for tourism, exports, and inward investment is extremely intense as brands have become more and more the vehicles for communicating national identity.brand, tourism brand, image, country image, tourism.

MARKETING DATABASES – THE SHORTEST WAY TO CLIENT’S HEART

The aim of this paper is to present the potential which could be offered by managing databases in direct marketing through gathering the information that could offer the shortest and efficient way to the clients needs. The paper includes the necessary steps to make this activity a real succes

Flavour-saliva interactions: implications of submaxillary mucin and α-amylase

During food ingestion, a large proportion of the aroma and taste compounds remain trapped in the food bolus and are therefore not available for perception. These compounds serve no functional benefit as flavourings and may also have negative health impacts (e.g.hypertension through high levels of salt, diabetes from excess of sugar ) to the consumer. Understanding the interactions underpinning the partitioning of aroma and taste compounds from the bolus during oral processing is required to mitigate these adverse effects. Therefore, the focus of this study is on the interactions between functional food ingredients (dietary acidity, salt, polyphenols, polysaccharide mucoadhesives) and two of saliva’s most abundant macromolecules, salivary mucin and α-amylase. Firstly, the macromolecular hydrodynamic integrity of glycoproteins was assessed as a function of pH and ionic strength, as a way of understanding the effects of dietary acid and salt, and evaluate any resulting changes in the aroma release profile. An increase in acidity and saltiness impacted the native state of mucin and α-amylase, through charge shielding effects and aggregation phenomena. Protein interactions with pH and ionic strength are suggested to be, at least in part, responsible for the enhanced flavour perceived in acidic and salty foods. Then, green tea was investigated for its ability to interact with whole human saliva as a means of developing a platform for analysing interactions with food in their native dilute states. The green tea polyphenol epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) interacted with low molecular weight components in saliva and was found to be an essential step in the formation of green tea aroma. The development of new mucoadhesive biopolymers for oral processing formulations has received great attention in recent years for enhancing the release of flavour in food. The addition of pullulan to saliva was identified to result in the formation of lower molecular weight and lower viscosity fragments via salivary α-amylase hydrolisis. This property was correlated to an enhanced release of aroma and salt. To address issues associated with the rapid ingestion, a cationic pullulan analogue was developed to aid in its adhesion to submaxillary mucins. Dimethylaminoethyl pullulan (DMAE-Pullulan) was synthesised for the first time, and shown to bind to submaxillary mucin, and also degraded by salivary α-amylase. In addition, an in-vitro mucus-like biomimetic was developed for evaluating mucoadhesion and flavour retention by immobilising mucin glycoproteins in calcium alginate gels. This resulted in the formation of bead structures containing mucin and mucin aggregates both on and within the calcium-alginate matrix. Polysaccharides of different ionic properties were tested for their ability to retain flavour compounds onto the surface of the mucus like mimetic. It was found that mucins were the predominant driving force in the interaction with the polymers, with positively charged species showing the highest retention (electrostatic interactions). Findings from these investigations also added to our current understanding of the interactions between salivary proteins and aroma compounds. Current evidence suggests that high concentrations (>1 %), of aroma compounds i.e. ketones, aldehydes and phenols, can affect the hydrodynamic integrity of proteins. These changes are suggested to directly impact on the structure and function of mucosal proteins

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Gambling

Introduction. Gambling is a well-known social issue, which seems to address immediate needs of a large portion of population in the entire world. Throughout various periods of curfews enacted by the medical authorities, the society experiences various challenges, a fact that puts a great amount of psychological pressure on gamblers and their families, that is rather difficult to be asssessed.Aim. The presentation seeks to assess the effects of anti-pandemic social measures, especially those imposed after March 2020, on mental wellfare and behaviour of bettors. By assessing the intentions and measures related to sport competitions in the near future, we tried to identify the overall impact on spending routines and lifestyle from any available data.Materials and method. The paper found sources in the psychological and medical literature in order to identify spending routines of bettors and pathological behaviours, as expressed in DSM-5. The paper also discusses the factors introduced into society by coronavirus and the restrictions that accompanied the phenomenon of gambling. Sources from the international media are used to assess the intended measures upon gambling industry and the possible general impact on the mental health of the Romanian population.Results. The changes of some social routines, imposed upon population in the context of coronavirus, are simply supposed to be accompanied by increases in depression and anxiety. The new economic and societal challenges bring with them the risk of increasing mental health disturbances among the gamblers.Conclusion. Worldwide gambling spending has decreased during the pandemic. Various attempts of assessing whether this is a bad phenomenon or not should take into consideration the amount of money left in the economy by these measures, the unpaid taxes from a reduced activity in gambling, the psychiatric impact upon diagnosed gamblers. New lockdowns imposed on the population are possible in the near future, so better ways to deal with the impact upon gamblers are necessary.</p

Quantifying the concentration dependence of sedimentation coefficients for globular macromolecules: a continuing age-old problem

This retrospective investigation has established that the early theoretical attempts to directly incorporate the consequences of radial dilution into expressions for variation of the sedimentation coefficient as a function of the loading concentration in sedimentation velocity experiments require concentration distributions exhibiting far greater precision than that achieved by the optical systems of past and current analytical ultracentrifuges. In terms of current methods of sedimentation coefficient measurement, until such improvement is made, the simplest procedure for quantifying linear s-c dependence (or linear concentration dependence of 1/s) for dilute systems therefore entails consideration of the sedimentation coefficient obtained by standard c(s), g*(s) or G(s) analysis) as an average parameter (s¯) that pertains to the corresponding mean plateau concentration (following radial dilution) (c¯) over the range of sedimentation velocity distributions used for the determination of s¯. The relation of this with current descriptions of the concentration dependence of the sedimentation and translational diffusion coefficients is considered, together with a suggestion for the necessary improvement in the optical system

Full hydrodynamic reversibility of the weak dimerization of vancomycin and elucidation of its interaction with VanS monomers at clinical concentration

© 2017 The Author(s). The reversibility and strength of the previously established dimerization of the important glycopeptide antibiotic vancomycin in four different aqueous solvents (including a medically-used formulation) have been studied using short-column sedimentation equilibrium in the analytical ultracentrifuge and model-independent SEDFIT-MST analysis across a range of loading concentrations. The change in the weight average molar mass M w with loading concentration was consistent with a monomer-dimer equilibrium. Overlap of data sets of point weight average molar masses M w(r) versus local concentration c(r) for different loading concentrations demonstrated a completely reversible equilibrium process. At the clinical infusion concentration of 5 mg.mL-1 all glycopeptide is dimerized whilst at 19 μg.mL-1 (a clinical target trough serum concentration), vancomycin was mainly monomeric