Thesis (M.A.)--Kent State University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed July 10, 2007). Advisor: Jay Lee. Keywords: Retail Location Analysis; geographic information systems(GIS); Statistical Analysis; Regression Analysis; Geocoding; Catchment Area Analysis; Buffer Polygons; Thiessen Polygons; McDonald's; Burger King; Fast Food Restaurants; Overlay Analysis. Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-151).

Thesis--University of Michigan. / Includes bibliographical references.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 24, 2010). Thesis advisor: Dr. Matthew Foulkes. Includes bibliographical references.

Buying the same product at the neighborhood store or at a shopping mall implies different carbon emissions. This paper quantifies carbon impacts of consumer choices of retail channel and shop location (where to buy), extending footprint assessments of product choices (what to buy). Carbon emissions of shopping situations are shown in the current situation, in a business-as-usual projection in 2020, and in policy scenarios with changed market shares of shopping situations. The analysis covers the product categories: groceries, clothing, and electronics & computers, from the shopping situations: neighborhood store, town center, discount store, shopping mall, and mail order/online selling. Stages of the product life cycle which differ between shopping situations are examined: freight transport, warehousing, store operation, and the last mile of the consumers' trip to the store. Carbon emissions of shopping situations amount to 2.7% of overall Austrian emissions in the base year. Dominant car use on the last mile substantially contributes to the overall footprint. In the business-as-usual scenario, carbon emissions from shopping situations increase by +33% until 2020, corresponding to 4.2% of the overall Austrian emissions target for 2020. Restricting shopping malls or supporting neighborhood stores could limit this increase to +25% and +20%, respectively. Facilitating online selling achieves no notable effects. The study underlines that an absolute reduction in private demand for household goods is necessary, as available policy instruments aiming at shopping situations fail to compensate the steady growth in private consumption.

Les cancers de l’ovaire représentent la première cause de décès par cancer gynécologique. L’échec des traitements, lié à l’apparition d’une chimiorésistance, implique de trouver de nouvelles stratégies thérapeutiques. Dans ce cadre, le laboratoire a mis en évidence la coopération de deux molécules anti-apoptotiques surexprimées dans les cancers de l’ovaire, Mcl-1 et Bcl-xL, qui empêchent alors le déclenchement de la mort cellulaire par apoptose. L’inhibition de ces cibles est alors mise en place. Un BH3-mimétique inhibiteur de Bcl-xL a été développé par la société Abbvie, l’ABT-737, qui possède un dérivé administrable par voie orale l’ABT-263 en essai clinique. En revanche, aucun inhibiteur de Mcl-1 n’est actuellement en clinique. L’inhibition de cet anti-apoptotique est donc l’un des objectifs du laboratoire. Sachant que Mcl-1 est extrêmement régulée, que l’inhibition de la voie de signalisation PI3K/Akt/mTOR conduit à l’inhibition de cet anti-apoptotique, et que le calcium est capable de moduler cette voie, nous nous sommes demandés si la modulation des flux calciques permettait l’inhibition de Mcl-1 dans nos cellules. Ces travaux de thèse ont pu montrer dans un premier temps que la chélation calcique par le BAPTA-AM permettait d’inhiber Mcl-1 via la voie mTORC1 et de sensibiliser les cellules à l’ABT-737. Dans un second temps, l’étude de l’effet d’un inhibiteur des flux calciques en essais cliniques, le carboxyamidotriazole a permis de mettre en évidence que l’inhibition des canaux calciques capacitifs pouvait entraîner l’inhibition de Mcl-1 de nouveau en inhibant mTORC1 et induire la mort cellulaire en combinaison avec l’ABT-737. Enfin des observations morphologiques ont montré que le CAI induisait un changement morphologique aboutissant à la mort des cellules. Ce type de mort semble être lié à une perturbation du métabolisme des cellules cancéreuses IGROV1-R10 et se rapprocherait d’une mort récemmement décrite dans la littérature : l’autosis. / Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death from gynecological cancer. There is an urgent need to find new therapeutic strategies due to failure of treatments associated to development of chemoresistance. In this context, the laboratory has shown the cooperation of two anti-apoptotic proteins overexpressed in ovarian cancer, Mcl-1 and Bcl-xL, for preventing apoptotic cell death. ABT-737, a Bcl-xL inhibitor BH3-mimetic, was developed by Abbvie and has a clinically derivative named ABT-263. In contrast, no Mcl-1 inhibitor is currently available in clinic. The inhibition of this anti-apoptotic protein is therefore one of the objectives of the laboratory. Since inhibition of PI3K / Akt / mTOR signaling pathway leads to inhibition of Mcl-1 expression and calcium is able to modulate this pathway, we wondered if the modulation of calcium fluxes allowed the inhibition of Mcl-1 in ovarian cancer cells. First we were able to show that calcium chelation by BAPTA-AM allowed to inhibit Mcl-1 expression via mTORC1 pathway and to sensitize the cells to ABT-737. In a second step, we investigated the effect of an inhibitor of calcium fluxes that is evaluated in clinical studies, carboxyamidotriazole. We show that the inhibition of capacitive calcium channels could lead to Mcl-1 down-expression via inhibition of mTORC1 and promote apoptosis in combination with ABT-737. Finally, we observed that CAI induces a morphological change resulting in cell death. This type of death seems to be related to disruption of metabolism in IGROV1-R10 cancer cells and would be close to a cell death recently described in the literature: autosis.

abstract: This study was designed to influence consumer habits, specifically those relating to purchases of fruits, vegetables, and junk food. Previous studies have clearly shown the ineffectiveness of simply describing the health benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables (F/V). In contrast, this study aimed to change the result by changing the message: providing participants with insight into the hidden agendas of food companies and grocery stores, provide useful tips on how to include children when selecting F/V, and emphasizing the importance of parental modeling in regard to food purchases. Participants of this study were separated into two groups, the tour group and the education group. The tour group was guided through a grocery store where they learned about sales tactics and manipulations used by grocery stores and food companies to influence purchases. Education group participants were provided with an education session focusing on USDA and FDA handouts displaying current educational suggestions for increasing F/V consumption. Grocery store receipts were collected and analyzed to track the progress of both groups. The goal of the study was to identify a method of informing consumers that will produce a significant change in behavior. Increasing F/V consumption, even in relatively small amounts, would be an important step forward in improving the diet and overall health of Americans. This study was the first of its kind to measure purchasing patterns objectively (through analysis of purchase receipts, rather than personal opinion/evaluation surveys) and in a wide-scope retail environment that includes all grocery store purchases by participants. Significant increases or decreases in the amount of money spent on F/V, or the amount (pounds) of F/V purchased were not seen, however a small correlation (r = 0.133) exists when comparing the weight of F/V purchased pre/post intervention. Data from Food Frequency Questionnaires shows participants consuming significantly higher amounts of F/V post intervention (p=0.043). The tour group and education group experienced an average increase of 0.7 servings per day. Future interventions might benefit by extending their scope to include cooking demonstrations, in-home interventions, and education on healthy eating outside of the home. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Nutrition 2013

O shopping center ainda é, sem dúvida nenhuma, um local atraente para os clientes realizarem suas compras. O mix de lojas presentes neste modal varejista, responsável pela oferta de serviços como estacionamento, entretenimento, alimentação, além de uma gama interminável de todo tipo de mercadoria que se possa imaginar, é o responsável por atrair, todos os dias, milhares de clientes para seu interior. Não obstante todas essas facilidades, os lojistas de shopping centers estão enfrentando uma forte concorrência de outros modais varejistas como as vendas diretas (por meio de demonstradores), as compras eletrônicas; a venda automática (por meio das máquinas de venda) e os serviços de compras (varejo sem loja que atende a clientes específicos). Em função disso, este trabalho propôs-se a discutir como as lojas poderiam atrair uma maior atenção de seus clientes por intermédio do valor percebido por eles. Este valor, sob a perspectiva do benefício, deriva da avaliação global do cliente quanto às vantagens que ele ganha ao ponderar os benefícios e os sacrifícios percebidos quando adquire produtos. Tais sacrifícios podem ser de ordem não monetária (custos de transação, pesquisa, negociação, tempo incorrido na aquisição do produto etc.). Também se estudou o impacto deste valor na fidelização do cliente a certa loja. Após extensa consulta bibliográfica sobre os conceitos apresentados, adotou-se a metodologia do Discurso do Sujeito Coletivo (DSC) para se analisar os resultados obtidos na coleta dos dados por meio de entrevista com clientes fiéis de lojas situadas em shoppings. O DSC apoia-se na teoria da representação social, de Jodelet, segundo a qual grupos sociais específicos compartilham ideias e valores comuns em um dado momento. Ele busca, portanto, estabelecer um caminho sistemático para descobrir estas representações sociais destes grupos específicos no que tange aos temas propostos. Os resultados apresentados revelaram que o ambiente da loja e sua imagem influenciaram, muito positivamente, a percepção dos clientes como atributos importantes para se gerar valor percebido, enquanto o prestígio e o local onde a loja está situada dentro do shopping foram avaliados por eles como características medianamente influenciadoras neste sentido. Além disso, verificou-se que o valor percebido pelo cliente influencia, positivamente, em sua decisão de se tornar fiel a determinada loja. No final, foram lembradas ações de marketing que poderiam ser desenvolvidas pelos gestores de loja a fim de alavancarem o valor de loja percebido pelo cliente, na perspectiva dos benefícios, vital à sua fidelização. / The shopping mall is also, undoubtedly, an attractive location for customers to conduct their purchases. The mix of shops present in this retailer modal, responsible for the provision of services such as parking, entertainment, food, and an endless array of all kinds of unimaginable merchandises, is responsible for attracting, every day, thousands of customers to inside the mall. Despite all these easinesses, shopping center tenants are facing strong competition from other retailers modal as direct sales (through demonstrators), electronic shopping; automatic sale (through vending machines) and shopping services (retail without store that caters to specific customers). As a result, this study aimed to discuss how the stores could attract more attention of their customers through the non-monetary value perceived by them. This value, from the perspective of benefits, derives from the overall assessment of the client as to the advantages that he gets to weigh the benefits and perceived sacrifices when he purchase products. Such sacrifices may be non-monetary order (transaction costs, search, negotiation, time incurred in acquiring the product etc.). This Thesis also studied the impact of this value in the loyalty of the customer towards the certain store. After extensive bibliographical research on the concepts presented, we adopted the Collective Subject Discourse methodology (CSD) to analyze the results obtained in data collection through interviews with loyal customers of stores located in malls. The CSD is based on the theory of social representation, from Jodelet, according to which specific social groups share common ideas and values at a given time. It seeks therefore to establish a systematic way to discover these social representations of these specific groups regarding the proposed themes. The presented results show that the store environment and its image influenced very positively the perception of the customer as important attributes to generate non-monetary perceived value, while the prestige and the place where the store is located inside the mall were evaluated by them as moderately influential features in this regard. In addition, it was found that the non-monetary perceived value by the customer influences positively in his decision to become loyal to a particular store. In the end, marketing actions were reminded that could be carried out by store managers to promote the non-monetary perceived value by the customers, vital to their loyalty

An event store is a database for storing events in an event sourcing system. Instead of storing the current state, a very common way to persist data, an event sourcing system captures all changes to an application state as a sequence of events. Usually the event store is a relational database. Relational databases have several drawbacks and therefore NoSQL databases have been developed. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the possibility of using a NoSQL database in an event sourcing system. We will see how data is stored in an event store and then evaluate di↵erent solutions to find a suitable database. The graph database Neo4j was selected to be further investigated and a Neo4j event store has been implemented. At last the implemented solution is evaluated against the existing event store that uses a relational database. The conclusion of this thesis is that event store data could easily be modeled in Neo4j but some queries became complex to implement. The performance tests showed us that the implemented event store had poorer performance than the existing one using a relational database.

The Masters Thesis follows up with the development of the retail store of farm food in South Bohemia by using marketing tools. The theoretical part of the thesis defines market, basic marketing tools and customer. It further analyses a situation of farmers market and farm food in Czech Republic. The application part focuses on the development of the retail store in Tábor in South Bohemia. It analyses each marketing tool the owner of the store uses to keep a relationship with his customers. At the same time to make connection towards to new customers. The conclusion provides data evaluation from certain marketing tools and activities.

The retail sections of central business districts of municipalities of British Columbia have a low degree of retail compatibility. Many unrelated commercial and other land uses that exist within the prime retail areas of central business districts weaken the degree of retail compatibility of the prime retail areas. The hypothesis of this study is that planning measures can and should be taken to improve the low degree of retail land use compatibility existing in the central business districts of municipalities in British Columbia. The need for study of this subject is justified on the basis of the importance and concern placed on central business districts. The improvement of a central business district must include the improvement of the retail section which comprises a vital component of any central business district. The decline of the shopping function in central business districts has been the cause of serious concern to planning and city officials alike, and needless to say, to the affected retailers as well. The convenience factor can be increased appreciably in a retail area which is planned or partially redeveloped to increase the degree of retail land use compatibility. Similarly, the tax base of the municipality would be improved because of the increased viability due to greater retail compatibility in the central business district. The central business districts of the three municipalities of Duncan, Grand Forks, and Castlegar in British Columbia are investigated in the study. It is shown that the degrees of retail compatibility in the central business districts of the three municipalities are poor. The main objectives of the study are to identify and analyze certain planning measures which could be implemented to improve the degree of retail compatibility. The reclassification of the widely-permissive general business type of zoning category is desirable in order to improve retail compatibility. The objective of reclassification is to direct the grouping together of compatible retail land uses, as well as other commercial uses commonly found in central business districts. On the basis of analysis of the attitudes of the three municipal councils, it is concluded that reclassification is politically feasible and it is strongly recommended that reclassification to be seriously considered by planning agencies for recommendation to their respective councils. The elimination of nonconforming uses that constitute "dead spots" in the retail areas of central business districts is urged strongly. It is revealed that this problem has been neglected to date by the selected municipal councils as reflected by the lack of enforcement of the statutes of the British Columbia Municipal Act to control or eliminate nonconforming uses. It is suggested that amortization approach to eliminate nonconforming uses which is used in parts of the United States should be added to the British Columbia Municipal Act. It is suggested that it is necessary for the municipal councils to review their policies in relation to reclassification of general commercial zones and in relation to the elimination of "dead spots"' within a comprehensive central business district planning program. The use of Federal Urban Renewal Legislation to improve commercial areas is a distinct possibility to achieve a higher degree of retail compatibility. It is recommended that the objectives of a central business district urban renewal scheme should coincide with the objectives of a comprehensive central business district planning program. The inclusion of a scheme to improve retail compatibility within a central business district renewal scheme appears to be politically acceptable. Also, the potentially affected retailers appear to be in favor of schemes to improve retail compatibility. It is concluded that planning measures can and could be taken to improve the low degree of retail land use compatibility existing in the central business districts of municipalities in British Columbia. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate