Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effectiveness of Loyalty Programs in Customer Retention: A Multiple Mediation Analysis

The impact of loyalty programs on customer retention was investigated in this study. Concomitantly, the mediating effects of brand association and customer satisfaction between loyalty programs and customer retention were also tested in three ways, viz., in parallel, distinct, and sequential through a series of structural models. The study focuses on the Malaysian national car sector, and empirical data was collected from 313 Malaysian national cars users through convenience sampling. This explanatory, quantitative research adopts a questionnaire as a survey instrument, and the collected data was first subjected to normality and reliability assessment followed by confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling using IBM SPSS AMOS 24. Multiple mediation analysis was then conducted, and results were confirmed through bootstrapping. Findings show that there is a significant positive impact of loyalty programs on customer retention. The brand association has a full mediation effect between loyalty programs and customer retention when tested in parallel with customer satisfaction; on the contrary, customer satisfaction demonstrated an insignificant mediation effect. On the other hand, when tested distinctly, brand association showed a partial mediating effect while there was no mediation effect of customer satisfaction. Besides, customer satisfaction and brand association demonstrated sequential partial mediation.
Interaction of Changes in pH and Urease Activity Induced by Biochar Addition Affects Ammonia Volatilization on an Acid Paddy Soil Following Application of Urea

ABSTRACT A pot experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that the interaction of changes in pH and urease activity induced by biochar addition affects ammonia (NH3) volatilization on acid soils following application of urea. The results showed that the difference in accumulative NH3 volatilization between biochar addition rates of 20 and 0 Mg ha–1 was not significant, while the biochar addition rate of 40 Mg ha–1 had 42% higher accumulative NH3 volatilization than the biochar addition rate of 0 Mg ha–1. Soil pH significantly increased with increasing biochar addition rate. The soil urease activity was significantly reduced by biochar addition, but there was no significant difference between biochar addition rates of 20 and 40 Mg ha–1. These results support our hypothesis and suggest that the biochar addition rate may need to be properly selected in order to minimize fertilizer-N loss through NH3 volatilization on urea-fertilized acid paddy soils.
The Impact of HR Practices on Perceived Gender Sensitivity and Gender Bias: A Multilevel Analysis of Hotel Industry

Gender sensitivity aids as a probable solution for facilitating female talent in an organization. This study measures gender sensitivity by applying multilevel modeling in hotel industry with a twofold objective: to identify explanatory predictors at the organizational level as well as to check whether insensitivity is the result of inherent bias in the industry at the individual level. Primary data were obtained from 355 employees and 10 HR (human resource) managers of both five and four-star hotels of Udaipur, India. Since 19.132% of the variation in gender sensitivity lies among the hotels and variation at the individual level is 8.731%, the data is analyzed through hierarchical linear modeling. Perceived gender bias (PGB) and human resource policies and practices (HRP) were found to be both significant and enough to explain variation in gender sensitivity among hotels. Also, an inverse and significant relationship between perceived gender bias (PGB) and perceived gender sensitivity (PGS) and a positive and significant relationship between PGS and HRP were identified.
Building Store Equity: Role of Store Image, Consumer Satisfaction, and Store Loyalty in the Indian Retail Market

The Indian retail sector is poised for tremendous growth and thus provides ample opportunities for local and global retailers. Building store equity will not only be a challenge but also be a prerequisite for surviving in the highly competitive market. The objective of the current study is to understand the role of store image, consumer satisfaction, and store loyalty in building retail store equity in the Indian retail market. The study employed exploratory factor analysis for reducing the number of items and linear regression for hypothesis testing. A total of 210 actual patrons evaluated different retail stores. The empirical findings suggest that store image, consumer satisfaction, and store loyalty play a direct, positive, and significant role in building retail store equity in the Indian retail market. Store image was found to have the strongest impact on store loyalty, followed by customer satisfaction on store loyalty, customer satisfaction on store equity, and store loyalty on store equity. This study will add value to literature on store image, consumer satisfaction, store loyalty, and store equity. The study concludes with strategic implications, limitations, and directions for future research.
"I Reported My Wife to Her Mother …" An Analysis of Transgressions Within Child- and Parent-In-Law Relationships in Ghana

Abstract:We investigated transgressions in the context of in-law relationships in Ghana. In-laws form an integral part of the family structure in Ghana. However, psychological studies on in-law relationships in this country are rare. The current study interviewed thirty-seven individuals, aged between 32 and 76 who had been married between 2 and 59 years, from two regions in Southern Ghana. Through semi-structured interviews, participants described transgressions in-laws commit in the context of marriage. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically. Findings revealed two major transgressions: role failure; and failure/resistance to changes in the in-law relationship. For children-in-law, failure to discharge roles as child bearers and meet financial obligations were considered as transgressions. Transgressions committed by parents-in-law include poor conflict handling, failures associated with customary postnatal care duties, privacy violations, and usurpation of daughter-in-law's cooking rights. Findings have implications for couple and family interventions. Résumé:Nous avons étudié les transgressions commises dans le contexte des relations entre beaux-parents au Ghana. Les beaux-parents font une partie intégrante de la structure familiale au Ghana. Cependant, les études psychologiques sur les beaux-parents dans ce pays sont rares. L'étude actuelle a interrogé trente- sept personnes âgés de 32 à 76 ans, mariées entre 2 et 59 ans, de deux régions du sud du Ghana. Par le biais d'entretiens semi-structurées, les participants ont décrit les transgressions commises par la belle-famille dans le cadre du mariage. Les entretiens ont été enregistrées, transcrits textuellement et analysés thématiquement. Les résultats ont révélé deux transgressions majeures: l'échec du rôle et l'échec/ la résistance aux changements dans la belle-famille. Pour les beaux-enfants, les manquements à leur rôle de parents et à leurs obligations financières étaient considérés comme des transgressions. Les transgressions commises par les beaux- parents comprennent une mauvaise gestion des conflits, des échecs associés aux obligations coutumières de soins post-natal, des violations de la vie privée et l'usurpation des droits de la belle-fille en matière de cuisine. Les résultats ont des implications pour les interventions de couple et de famille.
Validation of a brief French version of the sexual anxiety scale

Abstract:Although sexual anxiety (SA) is associated with significant sexual and relationship difficulties, to date, we lack brief scales to adequately assess SA. The aim of the present study was to develop a brief and reliable French version of the Sexual Anxiety Scale (SAS) that can be used to screen the manifestations of SA and their severity. A community sample (n = 576) was recruited to investigate the reliability and validity of the brief form of the scale (SAS-BF). Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the original three-factor model (SAS) and on the new, four-factor SAS-BF. Its convergent validity was tested with theoretically relevant correlates (e.g., anxiety, sexual satisfaction). The SAS-BF yielded strong psychometric properties in terms of factor structure and reliability, and was reasonably correlated with associated variables. SAS-BF can be considered a valid short scale to assess SA in studies where a brief form of the questionnaire is desirable or during clinical screening with patients experiencing variable levels of SA.
Moisture sorption characteristics of a heat-desiccated whole milk product (khoa)

Etablissement des isothermes de sorption a 25 degres C d'apres les equations B.E. T. et de G.A. B. , pour du khoa additionne de 0, 15 ou 30 % de saccharose et dans le domaine des aw de 0,11 a 0,97
Immobilization of Lycinibacillus fusiformis B26 cells in different matrices for use in turquoise blue HFG decolourization

Abstract The decolourization of Turquoise Blue HFG by immobilized cells of Lysinibacillus fusiformis B26 was investigated. Cells of L. fusiformis B26 were immobilized by entrapment in agar and calcium alginate matrices and attached in pumice particles. The effects of operational conditions (e.g., agar concentrations, cell concentrations, temperature, and inoculum amount) on microbial decolourization by immobilized cells were investigated. The results revealed that alginate was proven to be the best as exhibiting maximum decolourization (69.62%), followed by agar (55.55%) at 40°C. Pumice particles were the poorest. Optimum conditions for agar matrix were found: concentration was 3%, cell amount was 0.5 g and temperature was 40°C (55.55%). Ca-alginate beads were loaded with 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 g of wet cell pellets and the highest colour removal activity was observed with 2.0 g of cell pellet at 40°C for alginate beads. Also, 0.5 and 1.0 g of pumice particles that were loaded with 0.25 and 0.5 g of cell pellets respectively were used and the results were found very similar to each other.
ObscureNet: Learning Attribute-invariant Latent Representation for Anonymizing Sensor Data

In this paper, we introduce ObscureNet, an encoder-decoder architecture that effectively conceals private attributes associated with time series data generated by sensors in IoT devices, while preserving the information content of the original time series. Drawing on conditional generative models and adversarial information factorization, ObscureNet learns latent representations that are invariant to the user-specified private attributes. This allows for modifying the private attributes or generating them randomly before using the decoder to synthesize a new version of data. We present three approaches to alter private attributes at anonymization time, and show that non-deterministic approaches can prevent an adversary from re-identifying private attributes. We compare ObscureNet with the autoencoder-based anonymization methods proposed in the literature and other generative models in terms of the accuracy of sensitive and desired inferences. Our experiments on two human activity recognition datasets show that compared to the original data, the sensitive inference accuracy is reduced by 80.38% on average, while the desired inference accuracy is only reduced by 6.82%. Moreover, ObscureNet reduces the sensitive inference accuracy by an additional 13.48% on average compared to the best baseline method. We report the computation overhead of running ObscureNet on a Raspberry Pi, and corroborate that it can be used for real-time anonymization of sensor data.
Information seeking, personal experiences, and their association with COVID-19 risk perceptions: demographic and occupational inequalities

Abstract The impacts of COVID-19 are not evenly distributed in society. Understanding demographic and occupational differences in personal experiences and information seeking and how these shape perceptions of COVID-19 related risk may help to improve the effectiveness of public health strategies in the future. We surveyed a nationally representative sample of 496 participants during the first UK lockdown, in May 2020. We recorded data to assess people’s experiences of the pandemic, examining how they varied with demographic factors such as age, gender, occupational status, and key worker status. We also recorded data on COVID-19 related information seeking, and how experiences and information seeking behaviours were related to perceptions of COVID-19 related risk. We found that key workers reported greater exposure to COVID-19 and more extensive experience of the virus within their social circles. Those key workers who perceived their personal protective equipment to be more effective felt that the virus was less of a threat to their lives. Trust in COVID-19 information was highest in information from the UK Government and NHS, and lowest in information from social media. We also found that men reported lower levels of perceived threat to life from the virus than women – a difference that mirrors the gender difference in occupational risk within our sample. Among those in employment, lower occupational class was also associated with higher levels of perceived risk of infection and perceived threat to life. Key workers who feel that they are insufficiently protected by their PPE experience increased levels of perceived threat, which may lead to negative health behaviours. This highlights the need for employers to ensure that key workers feel they are adequately protected from COVID-19. Our findings highlight some of the inequalities in the distribution of risk across society and discuss demographic differences in perceptions of risk.
White pain

ABSTRACT President Trump’s 2016 electoral victory prompted a series of journalist inquiries into the pain of white Rust Belt voters. Imploring readers to heed their cries for help, profiles of “Trump Country” suggested that declining physical health and economic anxiety explained Trump’s success more so than racism and xenophobia. This essay argues that the rhetoric of white working-class pain reproduces what Franz Fanon called a historical-racial schema: a corporeal grid of intelligibility that prefigures how racialized subjects perceive their bodily sensations and movements in relation to others. Building on critical race scholarship on personhood, I contend that public pain is rhetorically constructed along a racialized continuum from fully actualized (white) humanity to (black) insensate flesh. As a result, profiles of the white body-in-pain implicitly register as uniquely worthy of public sympathy, particularly when juxtaposed to the black working class whose flesh bears the marks of historical racial violence.
Maturity, Storage Quality, Carbohydrate, and Mineral Content of ‘Goldspur’ Apples as Influenced by Rootstock

Influences of rootstocks on ‘Goldspur Golden Delicious’ apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) respiration rate, ethylene evolution, skin color, firmness, internal color, soluble solids content (SSC), acidity, carbohydrate, and mineral content were evaluated over an extended harvest and after cold storage. At first harvest, fruit from trees on seedling rootstock entered the climacteric (as determined by ethylene evolution) first (after 10 days) followed by fruit from M.26 trees, while apples from trees on MM.111 required 16 days. After 60 days in storage, CO2 and ethylene production were greatest for apples from trees on MM.111 rootstock. Fruit from trees on M.26 developed more external color, contained more acids, had a higher SSC, and appeared to mature between apples grown on the other two rootstocks. Fruit from trees on M.26 were firmer than those on MM.111. Apples from trees on seedling rootstock contained less fructose, glucose, and sucrose than apples from M.26 or MM.111. Calcium content was highest in fruit from trees on M.26.
Impact of perceived risk on epidemic information seeking during the outbreak of COVID-19 in China

Abstract This paper examines how perceived risk influences epidemic information seeking behaviour, which in turn helps us understand public information seeking generally. To this end, the effects of perceived risk, information needs and negative emotions on public epidemic information seeking were examined using a structural equation model (SEM) based on data collected via an online survey (N = 407) covering two regions in China, Guangdong and Hubei, and based on the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP). The results show that the epidemic risk perceived by citizens impacts information seeking based on the mediating effects of information needs and negative emotions. Furthermore, perceived risk has positive effects on information needs and negative emotions in that higher levels of information needs and stronger negative emotions positively facilitate the seeking of epidemic information.
METTL3 Promotes Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Metastasis Through Enhancing GLS2 Expression

Recent studies have identified pleiotropic roles of methyltransferase-like 3 (METTL3) in tumor progression. However, the roles of METTL3 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) are still unclear. Here, we investigated the function and mechanism of METTL3 in ESCC tumorigenesis. We reported that higher METTL3 expression was found in ESCC tissues and was markedly associated with depth of invasion and poor prognosis. Loss- and gain-of function studies showed that METTL3 promoted the migration and invasion of ESCC cells in vitro. Integrated methylated RNA immunoprecipitation sequencing (MeRIP-Seq) and RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) analysis first demonstrated that glutaminase 2 (GLS2) was regulated by METTL3 via m6A modification. Our findings identified METTL3/GLS2 signaling as a potential therapeutic target in antimetastatic strategies against ESCC.
HEMNMA-3D: Cryo Electron Tomography Method Based on Normal Mode Analysis to Study Continuous Conformational Variability of Macromolecular Complexes

Cryogenic electron tomography (cryo-ET) allows structural determination of biomolecules in their native environment (in situ). Its potential of providing information on the dynamics of macromolecular complexes in cells is still largely unexploited, due to the challenges of the data analysis. The crowded cell environment and continuous conformational changes of complexes make difficult disentangling the data heterogeneity. We present HEMNMA-3D, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the first method for analyzing cryo electron subtomograms in terms of continuous conformational changes of complexes. HEMNMA-3D uses a combination of elastic and rigid-body 3D-to-3D iterative alignments of a flexible 3D reference (atomic structure or electron microscopy density map) to match the conformation, orientation, and position of the complex in each subtomogram. The elastic matching combines molecular mechanics simulation (Normal Mode Analysis of the 3D reference) and experimental, subtomogram data analysis. The rigid-body alignment includes compensation for the missing wedge, due to the limited tilt angle of cryo-ET. The conformational parameters (amplitudes of normal modes) of the complexes in subtomograms obtained through the alignment are processed to visualize the distribution of conformations in a space of lower dimension (typically, 2D or 3D) referred to as space of conformations. This allows a visually interpretable insight into the dynamics of the complexes, by calculating 3D averages of subtomograms with similar conformations from selected (densest) regions and by recording movies of the 3D reference's displacement along selected trajectories through the densest regions. We describe HEMNMA-3D and show its validation using synthetic datasets. We apply HEMNMA-3D to an experimental dataset describing in situ nucleosome conformational variability. HEMNMA-3D software is available freely (open-source) as part of ContinuousFlex plugin of Scipion V3.0 (http://scipion.i2pc.es).
Emerging Role of m6 A Methylome in Brain Development: Implications for Neurological Disorders and Potential Treatment

Dynamic modification of RNA affords proximal regulation of gene expression triggered by non-genomic or environmental changes. One such epitranscriptomic alteration in RNA metabolism is the installation of a methyl group on adenosine [N6-methyladenosine (m6A)] known to be the most prevalent modified state of messenger RNA (mRNA) in the mammalian cell. The methylation machinery responsible for the dynamic deposition and recognition of m6A on mRNA is composed of subunits that play specific roles, including reading, writing, and erasing of m6A marks on mRNA to influence gene expression. As a result, peculiar cellular perturbations have been linked to dysregulation of components of the mRNA methylation machinery or its cofactors. It is increasingly clear that neural tissues/cells, especially in the brain, make the most of m6A modification in maintaining normal morphology and function. Neurons in particular display dynamic distribution of m6A marks during development and in adulthood. Interestingly, such dynamic m6A patterns are responsive to external cues and experience. Specific disturbances in the neural m6A landscape lead to anomalous phenotypes, including aberrant stem/progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation, defective cell fate choices, and abnormal synaptogenesis. Such m6A-linked neural perturbations may singularly or together have implications for syndromic or non-syndromic neurological diseases, given that most RNAs in the brain are enriched with m6A tags. Here, we review the current perspectives on the m6A machinery and function, its role in brain development and possible association with brain disorders, and the prospects of applying the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)–dCas13b system to obviate m6A-related neurological anomalies.
Carp Edema Virus Infection Is Associated With Severe Metabolic Disturbance in Fish

Significant mortalities associated with emerging viral diseases are challenging the economy of common carp aquaculture. As such, there is an increased need to disentangle how infected fish cope with progressive disease pathology and lose the ability for homeostatic maintenance of key physiological parameters. A natural carp edema virus (CEV) infection outbreak at a carp fish farm provided an opportunity to examine diseased and healthy carp in the same storage pond, thereby contributing to our better understanding of CEV disease pathophysiology. The disease status of fish was determined using PCR-based virus identification combined with analysis of gill pathology. Compared with healthy control carp, the blood chemistry profile of CEV-infected fish revealed major disruptions in electrolyte and acid-base balance (i.e., hyponatraemia, hypochloraemia, hyperphosphatemia, elevated pH, base excess, and anion gap and decreased partial dissolved carbon dioxide). In addition, we recorded hyperproteinaemia, hyperalbuminaemia, hypotonic dehydration, endogenous hyperammonaemia, and decreased lactate along with increased creatinine, alkaline phosphatase, alanine aminotransferase, and aspartate aminotransferase. Red blood cell associated hematology variables were also elevated. The multivariate pattern of responses for blood chemistry variables (driven by sodium, pH, partial dissolved carbon dioxide, ammonia, and albumin in the principal component analysis) clearly discriminated between CEV-infected and control carp. To conclude, we show that CEV infection in carp exerts complex adverse effects and results in severe metabolic disturbance due to the impaired gill respiratory and excretory functioning.