The impact of face-to-face street fundraising on organizational reputation

Although many stakeholders perceive face-to-face street fundraising as unpleasant, nonprofit managers encourage it as a way to attract donors. To understand the long-term effects of this fundraising method, we used a mixed-methods experimental design to investigate how face-to-face street fundraising affects organizational reputation and stakeholder support intentions in comparison with letter fundraising. The findings reveal that face-to-face street fundraising has a significant negative influence on the stakeholders' perceptions of an organization. Further, qualitative datashow that the negative perception originates primarily from perceived pressure, distrust, and obtrusion, which are triggered by face-to-face street fundraising. Our studythus reveals long-term reputational consequences that nonprofit organizations should consider before deciding on fundraising methods

Using Memory Management to Detect and Extract Illegitimate Code for Malware Analysis

Exploits that successfully attack computers are mostly based on some form of shellcode, i.e., illegitimate code that is injected by the attacker to take control of the system. Detecting and extracting such code is the first step to detailed analysis of malware containing illegitimate code. The amount and sophistication of modern malware calls for automated mechanisms that perform such detection and extraction. In this paper we present a novel generic and fully automatic approach to detect the execution of illegitimate code and extract such code upon detection. The basic idea of the approach is to flag critical memory pages as non-executable and use a modified page fault handler to dump corresponding memory pages. We present an implementation of the approach for the Windows platform called CWXDetector. Evaluations using malicious PDF documents as example show that CWXDetector produces no false positives and has a similarly low false negative rate

Optical inter-site spin transfer probed by energy and spin-resolved transient absorption spectroscopy

Optically driven spin transport is the fastest and most efficient process to manipulate macroscopic magnetization as it does not rely on secondary mechanisms to dissipate angular momentum. In the present work, we show that such an optical inter-site spin transfer (OISTR) from Pt to Co emerges as a dominant mechanism governing the ultrafast magnetization dynamics of a CoPt alloy. To demonstrate this, we perform a joint theoretical and experimental investigation to determine the transient changes of the helicity dependent absorption in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range. We show that the helicity dependent absorption is directly related to changes of the transient spin-split density of states, allowing us to link the origin of OISTR to the available minority states above the Fermi level. This makes OISTR a general phenomenon in optical manipulation of multi-component magnetic systems. Optically driven spin transfer is the fastest process to manipulate magnetism. Here, the authors show that this process emerges as the dominant mechanism in femtosecond spin dynamics enabling to the engineering of functional magnetic systems for future all optical technologies

Multi-Color Imaging of Magnetic Co/Pt Multilayers

We demonstrate for the first time the realization of a spatial resolved two color, element-specific imaging experiment at the free-electron laser facility FERMI. Coherent imaging using Fourier transform holography was used to achieve direct real space access to the nanometer length scale of magnetic domains of Co/Pt heterostructures via the element-specific magnetic dichroism in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range. As a first step to implement this technique for studies of ultrafast phenomena we present the spatially resolved response of magnetic domains upon femtosecond laser excitation

The InMAS Approach

The Internet Malware Analysis System (InMAS) is a modular platform for distributed, large-scale monitoring of malware on the Internet. InMAS integrates diverse tools for malware collection (using honeypots) and malware analysis (mainly using dynamic analysis). All collected information is aggregated and accessible through an intuitive and easy-to-use web interface. In this paper, we provide an overview of the structure of InMAS and the various tools it integrates. We also introduce the web frontend that displays all information on different levels of abstraction, from a coarse-grained overview down to highly detailed information on demand

"What else to say?" – Primary health care in times of COVID-19 from the perspective of German general practitioners: an exploratory analysis of the open text field in the PRICOV-19 study

Background The international collaboration study PRICOV-19 –Primary Health Care in times of COVID-19 aims to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the organisation of primary health care. The German part focuses on the subjective perceptions of general practitioners on primary health care and the impact of political measures during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Within this survey, the “open text field” of the questionnaire was utilised remarkably frequently and extensively by the respondents. It became clear that the content that was named needed to be analysed in an exploratory manner. Accordingly, this paper addresses the following question: What preoccupies general practitioners in Germany during COVID-19 that we have not yet asked them enough? Methods The data collection took place throughout Germany from 01.02.2021 to 28.02.2021with a quantitative online questionnaire consisting of 53 items arranged across six topics as well as an “open text field” for further comments. The questionnaire’s open text field was analysed following the premises of the qualitative content analysis. Results The topics discussed by the respondents were: insufficient support from health policies, not being prioritised and involved in the vaccination strategy, feeling insufficient prepared, that infrastructural changes and financial concerns threatened the practice, and perceiving the own role as important, as well as that health policies affected the wellbeing of the respondents. One of the main points was the way general practitioners were not sufficiently acknowledged for their contribution to ensuring high-quality care during the pandemic. Discussion German general practitioners perceived their work and role as highly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. In controversy with their perception, they described political conditions in which they were the ones who contributed significantly to the fight against the pandemic but were not given enough recognition

The antioxidant Trolox restores mitochondrial membrane potential and Ca2+-stimulated ATP production in human complex I deficiency

Malfunction of mitochondrial complex I caused by nuclear gene mutations causes early-onset neurodegenerative diseases. Previous work using cultured fibroblasts of complex-I-deficient patients revealed elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reductions in both total Ca2+ content of the endoplasmic reticulum (ERCa) and bradykinin(Bk)-induced increases in cytosolic and mitochondrial free Ca2+ ([Ca2+]C; [Ca2+]M) and ATP ([ATP]C; [ATP]M) concentration. Here, we determined the mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψ) in patient skin fibroblasts and show significant correlations with cellular ROS levels and ERCa, i.e., the less negative Δψ, the higher these levels and the lower ERCa. Treatment with 6-hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethylchromane-2-carboxylic acid (Trolox) normalized Δψ and Bk-induced increases in [Ca2+]M and [ATP]M. These effects were accompanied by an increase in ERCa and Bk-induced increase in [Ca2+]C. Together, these results provide evidence for an integral role of increased ROS levels in complex I deficiency and point to the potential therapeutic value of antioxidant treatment

The association between mitochondrial DNA abundance and stroke : A combination of multivariable-adjusted survival and Mendelian randomization analyses

Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to the UK Biobank for allowing us the use of their data. The analyses done in UK Biobank were done under project number 56340. Furthermore, the authors acknowledge the participants and investigators of the MEGASTROKE consortium and the FinnGen Biobank who contributed to the summary statistics data which are made available for further studies. Financial support This work was supported by the VELUX Stiftung [grant number 1156] to DvH and RN, and JL was supported by the China Scholarship Counsel [No.201808500155]. RN was supported by an innovation grant from the Dutch Heart Foundation [grant number 2019T103 to R.N.]. Parts of this work were funded by the Åke Wibergs Foundation (grant number M19-0294 to F.G).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Soluble CD59 in peritoneal dialysis:a potential biomarker for peritoneal membrane function

INTRODUCTION: Various studies have reported the importance of complement regulators in preventing mesothelial damage during peritoneal dialysis (PD). Its assessment, however, is limited in clinical practice due to the lack of easy access to the peritoneal membrane. Recently, a soluble form of the complement regulatory protein CD59 (sCD59) has been described. We therefore aimed to investigate the role of sCD59 in PD. METHODS: Plasma sCD59 was measured in 48 PD patients, 41 hemodialysis patients, 15 non-dialysis patients with chronic kidney disease and 14 healthy controls by ELISA (Hycult; HK374-02). Additionally, sCD59 and sC5b-9 were assessed in the peritoneal dialysate. RESULTS: sCD59 and sC5b-9 were detectable in the peritoneal dialysate of all patients, and marginally correlated (r = 0.27, P = 0.06). Plasma sCD59 levels were significantly higher in PD patients than in patients with chronic kidney disease and healthy controls, but did not differ from hemodialysis patients. During follow-up, 19% of PD patients developed peritoneal membrane failure and 27% of PD patients developed loss of residual renal function. In adjusted models, increased sCD59 levels in the dialysate (HR 3.44, 95% CI 1.04–11.40, P = 0.04) and in plasma (HR 1.08, 95% CI 1.01–1.17, P = 0.04) were independently associated with the occurrence of peritoneal membrane failure. Higher plasma levels of sCD59 were also associated with loss of residual renal function (HR 1.10, 95% CI 1.04–1.17, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that sCD59 has potential as a biomarker to predict peritoneal membrane function and loss of residual renal function in PD, thereby offering a tool to improve patient management. GRAPHIC ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40620-020-00934-7