The problem that this thesis deals with is that the intense competition and increasing consumer power in the health industry calls for the operating companies to take consumers’ considerations into account when advertising their products. It is further suggested that consumers will be extra careful before buying health-related products due to their direct effect on their personal health. Thus, companies selling health-related products must gain an understanding of how consumers form their judgments of the advertisements for the same in order to be able to create persuasive and thus effective advertisements. The purpose of this thesis is to understand consumers’ views of different persuasion strategies used for advertising health-related products and how these affect their willingness to purchase the advertised product. This will be done as a means to provide the concerned companies with a basis for how to create positively perceived, yet effective, advertisements. In order to fulfill the purpose of this thesis a qualitative study was conducted through the use of focus groups. During the focus groups the participants were, among other things, encouraged to discuss their views of three different advertisements for health-related products. Each advertisement represented one persuasion strategy used in the advertising of health-related products. The gathered data was interpreted and analyzed by comparing it with theories from previous research. The study shows that consumers require extensive information and strong evidence behind the arguments provided in advertisements for health-related products. Advertisements that communicate consequences that correspond to consumers’ existing beliefs are likely to be positively perceived. Conversely, if the communicated consequences contradict consumers’ beliefs their responses are likely to be negative. Consumers that are more informed in regards to the products are more likely to critically judge the advertisements for the same. The likelihood that consumers’ attitudes will be reflected in their behavior increases along with the strength of their attitudes.

This work is aimed to analyze enterprise knowledge management system integration assumptions, problems and their solutions at different complexity and quality levels. In the beginning, brief description of application classification is provided. Assuming large number of specialized applications usage enterprise-wide, we come up with the need to integrate data, contained by those applications, as well as applications themselves. Data level, message level and process level integration principles and their application analysis is made. Enterprise application integration refers to the plans, methods, and tools aimed at modernizing, consolidating, and coordinating the computer applications in an enterprise. Portals presented as tools for federating information in different sources and providing commonly used services (search engine or directory, news, email, forums and options for customization). Portal frameworks from different vendors was observed. SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) integration capabilities were analyzed. Human Capital Resource Management information system is intended to store and process data, related to human capital across organization. Three layer logical implementation and web service interface usage makes integration possible at data, message and process levels.

Socialinė reklama, apimdama platų spektrą aktualių šiandieninės visuomenės problemų tiek moksliniame lygmenyje, tiek norminiuose dokumentuose, tikslingai įvardijama kaip kultūrinė, socialinė ir šviečiamoji informacija. Tokia informacija, pateikta per viešosios komunikacijos priemones miesto erdvėse, turi aiškų ir konkretų tikslą – kurti naujas socialines vertybes ir taip paveikti žmogaus jausmus, priversti susimąstyti dėl egzistuojančių problemų ir ilgalaikėje perspektyvoje jas spręsti. Tokiam tikslui pasiekti socialinė reklama visuomenei atlieka svarbias, besiintegruojančias, persipynusias funkcijas: informuoja, įtikinėja, skatina bei primena. Vadinasi, socialinė reklama, turėdama tikslą provokuoti, šokiruoti, emociškai sukrėsti, yra skirta šviesti, mokyti, auklėti ar motyvuoti auditoriją, į kurią reklama yra nukreipiama, imtis socialiai tinkamų poelgių ar veiksmų. Tokia reklama neskatina pirkti prekių ar paslaugų, nes jos tikslas yra paveikti žmogaus moralę, suvokimą, įtakoti jausmus, keisti netinkamą elgesį ar požiūrį. Pasitaiko socialinių reklamų, kuriose naudojama paslėpta reklama – kuomet siuntėjas sąmoningai siunčia dviprasmiškos reikšmės informaciją gavėjui, padeda kalbėtojui siekti komercinių tikslų. Šiame darbe į socialinę reklamą žvelgiama kaip į viešąją komunikaciją. Jame stengiamasi patvirtinti arba paneigti išsikeltas dvi hipotezes. Pirmoji, išorinė socialinė reklama apima didelį spektrą socialinių problemų, o daugiausia dėmesio skiria tokiems neigiamiems... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Social advertising, encompassing a wide range of topical problems of the modern society is both at scientific level and in regulatory documents purposefully described as cultural, social and educational information. Such information, presented in urban spaces via the public communication tools, has a clear and specific purpose – to create new social values and thus affect human feelings, to make a person think about the existing problems and to solve them in the long-term perspective. In order to accomplish this purpose, social advertising in the society performs the following important integrating and intertwining functions: it informs, persuades, encourages and reminds. Consequently, social advertising, possessing the aim to provoke, to shock, to inflict emotional distress is intended to educate, teach, foster and motivate the audience, which is the advertising’s target group, to behave in a proper way and to take socially appropriate actions. Such advertising does not promote purchasing goods or services, since its aim is to affect a person’s morality, perception, to influence feelings, to change undue behaviour or opinion. Sometimes one can come across social advertisements which employ hidden advertising – when an addresser is deliberately sending ambiguous information to the addressee, helps the speaker in seeking commercial aims. In this work social advertising is treated as public communication. The author is trying to prove or to reject the two hypotheses which... [to full text]

Building on Message Framing Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this study examined how message frame impacts viewer attention to and cognitive processing of osteoporosis prevention print ads. Attention was measured with eye tracking technology, which calculated participants’ number of fixations and dwell time. Cognitive processing was assessed through a textual masked-recall exercise. Sixty women, with a mean age of 21.25+/-2.61 years, viewed the same 36 ads; however, the message frame changed on a randomized, rotating basis, resulting in each group viewing 12 gain-, 12 loss-, and 12 neutrally-framed ads. One-way repeated measures analyses of variance revealed that message frame significantly impacted viewers’ number of fixations, F(2,118)=8.18, p<.01, η2= .12 dwell time, F(2,118)=9.84, p<.01, η2= .14 and masked-recall results, F(2,118)=22.28, p<.01, η2 = .27. Viewers’ number of fixations, dwell time and recall of gain-framed osteoporosis prevention ads was significantly higher than to loss- or neutrally-framed ads, p<.01. Message frame was also positively correlated with number of fixations, r=.29, p<.02 and dwell time, r=.42, p<.01. Findings may help expand theory related to message framing and the ELM, while contributing to advancements in eye tracking literature and health communications practice. / Thesis (Master, Kinesiology & Health Studies) -- Queen's University, 2009-08-27 16:13:32.848

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This work endeavours to achieve technology transfer between established best-practice in academic high-performance computing and current techniques in commercial high-productivity computing. It shows that a credible high-performance message-passing communication library, with semantics and syntax following the Message-Passing Interface (MPI) Standard, can be built in pure C# (one of the .Net suite of computer languages). Message-passing has been the dominant paradigm in high-performance parallel programming of distributed-memory computer architectures for three decades. The MPI Standard originally distilled architecture-independent and language-agnostic ideas from existing specialised communication libraries and has since been enhanced and extended. Object-oriented languages can increase programmer productivity, for example by allowing complexity to be managed through encapsulation. Both the C# computer language and the .Net common language runtime (CLR) were originally developed by Microsoft Corporation but have since been standardised by the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) and the International Standards Organisation (ISO), which facilitates portability of source-code and compiled binary programs to a variety of operating systems and hardware. Combining these two open and mature technologies enables mainstream programmers to write tightly-coupled parallel programs in a popular standardised object-oriented language that is portable to most modern operating systems and hardware architectures. This work also establishes that a thread-to-thread delivery option increases shared-memory communication performance between MPI ranks on the same node. This suggests that the thread-as-rank threading model should be explicitly specified in future versions of the MPI Standard and then added to existing MPI libraries for use by thread-safe parallel codes. This work also ascertains that the C# socket object suffers from undesirable characteristics that are critical to communication performance and proposes ways of improving the implementation of this object.

The overall aim of this study was to examine how the characteristics of two salient stimuli -music and message- of an audio advertisement influence the psychological state of consumers and how such a state subsequently determines their cognitive and affective responses to the advertisement. In achieving this aim, this study was guided by a combination of two cognitive resource utilisation theories, Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (Lang, 2000) and Resource-Matching Hypothesis (Anand & Sternthal, 1989). In particular building upon inconsistency and load theories, this study proposed that certain stimulus characteristics prompted certain states of a consumer’s cognition. These two stimulus characteristics were the congruence of musical stimulus and the complexity of the message stimulus. The model then predicted the potential effect of these characteristics on certain psychological states (Psychological Discomfort and Cognitive Load) leading to affective (Attitude towards Advertisement) and cognitive (encoding, storage, and retention) responses. To empirically examine this model, an online experiment (using a 2 x 2 between-subject x 2 with-in subject mix design) was conducted, in which a mixed sample of 284 subjects was exposed to a set of audio advertisements especially designed for this study. Unfamiliar music in conjunction with a fictitious brand was used and the exposure level was maintained at low. ANCOVA, MANCOVA, two-stage hierarchical regression analysis, and Repeated-measures MANCOVA were administered to test the hypotheses presented in the conceptual model. Among major findings were that the multiple informational structures in a complex message positively influenced cognitive load, while congruent music was capable of attenuating the level of cognitive load. Incongruent music, on the other hand, was capable of generating a dissonance state experienced as psychological discomfort that in turn increased the level of cognitive load as a result of listener’s trying to resolve such a state. Both dissonance and cognitive load negatively influenced attitude towards advertisements, and the affect primacy of attitude formation appeared to be more applicable. Though high cognitive load clearly undermines encoding, storage, and retrieval processes, no evidence was found to support the Resource-matching Hypothesis. Furthermore, the findings suggested that the cognitive load offset by the congruent music would increase advertisement effectiveness by enabling its message to carry more information and by generating more favourable attitudes.

Over the past few years, the rate of elective interventions in pregnancy in the United States, including elective inductions of labor and elective cesarean deliveries, has increased dramatically. While scholars attribute some of the increase in elective interventions to the female patients who request elective procedures from obstetricians, some literature contradicts that notion and suggests physicians are actually the primary perpetuators of the growth in elective procedures. Although pregnant women may seek elective interventions because of desired convenience, physicians can also claim the benefit of convenience in scheduling deliveries. In addition, elective procedures provide physicians greater monetary compensation than labor and deliveries which evolve without intervention. The current dissertation investigates the communicative role of obstetricians in women’s delivery decisions through in-depth interviews with obstetricians practicing in the state of Kentucky (N=28). Guided by the framework of Message Convergence, the study assesses how obstetricians manage uncertainty surrounding patient care and make clinical decisions in the midst of either unclear evidence or competing messages. The study also reveals the ways that physicians utilize their medical expertise to engage in decision-making with patients. In addition, specific scenarios of decision-making regarding delivery are discussed, including patients’ requests and physicians’ provisions of requests; patients’ requests and physicians’ refusals of requests; and physicians’ recommendations for treatment and patients’ refusals of recommendations for treatment. Finally, the internal tensions and conflicts experienced by physicians in the decision-making process with patients are also examined.

The experience of a pelvic exam or Pap smear is something that, while necessary to maintain reproductive health, can be fraught with difficulty for women. Ouj, Igberase, Exe, and Ejikeme (2011) note that “[m]ost women feel a level of discomfort or pain and for some it is embarrassing, dehumanizing, degrading and associated with fear, anxiety and apprehension” (p. 637). However, little recent research has focused on the specific communication surrounding reproductive care for young women. The Internet is a common place for young people to seek health information, understand their own health risks, and seek social support from others. The current study utilizes information gleaned from the archives of an internet message board and sexual education website to examine the way that young women communicate about reproductive health care, risk, and social support with experts and peers in the online community. Results indicate that young women request, seek, and receive several different types of social support in the online community. Further, themes illuminate the complex nature of women’s concerns about potential risk and reproductive care.

Fault tolerant and distributed embedded systems are research areas that have the interest of such entities as NASA, the Department of Defense, and various other government agencies, corporations, and universities. Taking a system and designing it to work in the presence of faults is appealing to these entities as it inherently increases the reliability of the deployed system. There are a few different fault tolerant techniques that can be implemented in a system design to handle faults as they occur. One such technique is the reconfiguration of a portion of the system to a redundant resource. This is a difficult task to manage within a distributed embedded system because of the distributed, directly addressed data producer and consumer dependencies that exist in common network infrastructures. It is the goal of this thesis work to develop a novel message routing layer for the communication management of distributed embedded systems that reduces the complexity of this problem. The resulting product of this thesis provides a robust approach to the design, implementation, integration, and deployment of a distributed embedded system.