An analysis of folktales of the lenge,Portuguese East Africa*

This article discusses a Japanese advertising agency's attempt to win a prestigious European car manufacturer's account by means of a competitive presentation. It outlines the difficulties facing the agency with regard to competing accounts, the import car market in Japan, coordination of a campaign and strategies to be adopted in preparing the presentation, as well as showing how the ‘social’ side of the advertising world has an important bearing on what is, or is not, include din any advertising campaign. In calling for an approach that focusses on the similarities, rather than differences, between Japan and other (western) advanced industrialized societies, the author analyzes the Japanese advertising industry and argues that competitive presentations are one form of what Appadurai (1986) has termed ‘tournaments of value’.     

Risk knowledge,product knowledge,and brand benefits for purchase intentions: Experiences with air purifiers against city smog in China

The present study is based on the theoretical framework of protective action decision model. This study aims to explain the relationship among the risk knowledge, product knowledge, risk perception, and brand benefits and the consumers’ purchase intentions of a specific air purifier compared with alternative brands. The research context is city smog. Results show that consumers’ risk knowledge and product knowledge significantly affect their purchase of an air purifier brand as well as play a considerable role in predicting their risk perception and in foreseeing their purchase intentions under the influence of the manufacturer's advertising strategies. Furthermore, consumers’ risk perception is a critical psychological factor that has a significantly positive influence on brand's experiential benefits, instead of functional and symbolic benefits. In particular, when comparing with brand's functional and symbolic benefits, the brand's experiential benefits is more attractive to consumers and has a stronger effect on consumers’ air purifier purchase intentions in the context of city smog.     

Measuring the efficacy of advertising communication with neuroscience methods: an experiment performed by Telecom Italia

Recently, there has been a concentrated effort by companies to better understand the needs and desires of their consumers. Such efforts usually employ different and sophisticated analysis techniques for monitoring the consumers preferences and how such consumers perceive the advertising communication campaign from a specific company.     

Can Neural Activation in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Predict Responsiveness to Information? An Application to Egg Production Systems and Campaign Advertising

Consumers prefer to pay low prices and increase animal welfare; however consumers are typically forced to make tradeoffs between price and animal welfare. Campaign advertising (i.e., advertising used during the 2008 vote on Proposition 2 in California) may affect how consumers make tradeoffs between price and animal welfare. Neuroimaging data was used to determine the effects of brain activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) on choices making a tradeoff between price and animal welfare and responsiveness to campaign advertising. Results indicated that activation in the dlPFC was greater when making choices that forced a tradeoff between price and animal welfare, compared to choices that varied only by price or animal welfare. Furthermore, greater activation differences in right dlPFC between choices that forced a tradeoff and choices that did not, indicated greater responsiveness to campaign advertising.     

The Ups and Downs of Frogs

Vocabulary is the essential element of comprehending concepts in content areas. Many words used in science content-area materials are used to define concepts and to increase the conceptual development of the content area. Conceptual development is a major goal of content-area instruction. Without a clear understanding of the language of the science content, students will certainly experience difficulty and a lack of interest with their science content-area material. Providing students with inquiry strategic vocabulary strategies can significantly support their understanding and interest concerning the language of science. As a result of using engaged vocabulary strategies, teachers can help students bridge the gap between the language of the science content and the language and background knowledge that students bring to the class. This article is easily adaptable for grades 6-12, and it is applicable to all science areas. It provides the middle and high school science teacher with five engaged learning vocabulary strategies that will help students become active participants in the learning process as they master their content area material. In addition, the article offers a pre- and postevaluation Science Vocabulary Questionnaire.     

The Influence of Antismoking Television Advertisements on Cessation by Race/Ethnicity,Socioeconomic Status,and Mental Health Status

Disparities in tobacco use and smoking cessation by race/ethnicity, education, income, and mental health status remain despite recent successes in reducing tobacco use. It is unclear to what extent media campaigns promote cessation within these population groups. This study aims to (1) assess whether exposure to antitobacco advertising is associated with making a quit attempt within a number of population subgroups, and (2) determine whether advertisement type differentialy affects cessation behavior across subgroups. We used data from the New York Adult Tobacco Survey (NY-ATS), a cross-sectional, random-digit-dial telephone survey of adults aged 18 or older in New York State conducted quarterly from 2003 through 2011 (N = 53,706). The sample for this study consists of 9,408 current smokers from the total NY-ATS sample. Regression methods were used to examine the effect of New York State’s antismoking advertising, overall and by advertisement type (graphic and/or emotional), on making a quit attempt in the past 12 months. Exposure to antismoking advertising was measured in two ways: gross rating points (a measure of potential exposure) and self-reported confirmed recall of advertisements. This study yields three important findings. First, antismoking advertising promotes quit attempts among racial/ethnic minority smokers and smokers of lower education and income. Second, advertising effectiveness is attributable in part to advertisements with strong graphic imagery or negative emotion. Third, smokers with poor mental health do not appear to benefit from exposure to antismoking advertising of any type. This study contributes to the evidence about how cessation media campaigns can be used most effectively to increase quit attempts within vulnerable subgroups. In particular, it suggests that a general campaign can promote cessation among a range of sociodemographic groups. More research is needed to understand what message strategies might work for those with poor mental health.     

Citizen science in schools: Engaging students in research on urban habitat for pollinators

Citizen science can play an important role in school science education. Citizen science is particularly relevant to addressing current societal environmental sustainability challenges, as it engages the students directly with environmental science and gives students an understanding of the scientific process. In addition, it allows students to observe local representations of global challenges. Here, we report a citizen science programme designed to engage school‐age children in real‐world scientific research. The programme used standardized methods deployed across multiple schools through scientist–school partnerships to engage students with an important conservation problem: habitat for pollinator insects in urban environments. Citizen science programmes such as the programme presented here can be used to enhance scientific literacy and skills. Provided key challenges to maintain data quality are met, this approach is a powerful way to contribute valuable citizen science data for understudied, but ecologically important study systems, particularly in urban environments across broad geographical areas.     

Butterflies & wild bees: biology teachers’ PCK development through citizen science*

Citizen science is a rapidly growing emerging field in science and it is gaining importance in education. Therefore, this study was conducted to document the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of biology teachers who participated in a citizen science project involving observation of wild bees and identification of butterflies. In this paper, knowledge about how these biological methods can be taught to students is presented. After two years in the project, four teachers were interviewed and their PCK was captured in the form of content representations (CoRes) and Pedagogical and Professional-Experience Repertoires (PaP-eRs). These results can help future citizen science projects to link their activities to the school curriculum. But not only success can be reported: although one of the project team’s aims was to make the Nature of Science accessible to the teachers and students in the course of the project, the teachers did not take this aspect into account. This paper discusses the possible reasons and proposes various strategies for improving citizen science in the context of school biology learning.     

Enhancing Elementary Students’ Experiences Learning about Circuits Using an Exploration–Explanation Instructional Sequence

Using an exploration–explanation sequence of science instruction helps teachers unveil students’ prior knowledge about circuits and engage them in minds-on science learning. In these lessons, fourth grade students make predictions and test their ideas about circuits in series through hands-on investigations. The teacher helps students make connections between their hands-on experiences collecting data and new terms. This lesson shows how teachers can incorporate formative assessments such as checkpoints, self tests, and exit slips into the explanation phase of instruction so students can evaluate and self-monitor their understanding of circuits in series. These activities meet the National Science Education Standards for active, student-center learning environments that cultivate the critical thinking skills necessary to learn science.     

Fostering critical thinking, reasoning, and argumentation skills through bioethics education

Developing a position on a socio-scientific issue and defending it using a well-reasoned justification involves complex cognitive skills that are challenging to both teach and assess. Our work centers on instructional strategies for fostering critical thinking skills in high school students using bioethical case studies, decision-making frameworks, and structured analysis tools to scaffold student argumentation. In this study, we examined the effects of our teacher professional development and curricular materials on the ability of high school students to analyze a bioethical case study and develop a strong position. We focused on student ability to identify an ethical question, consider stakeholders and their values, incorporate relevant scientific facts and content, address ethical principles, and consider the strengths and weaknesses of alternate solutions. 431 students and 12 teachers participated in a research study using teacher cohorts for comparison purposes. The first cohort received professional development and used the curriculum with their students; the second did not receive professional development until after their participation in the study and did not use the curriculum. In order to assess the acquisition of higher-order justification skills, students were asked to analyze a case study and develop a well-reasoned written position. We evaluated statements using a scoring rubric and found highly significant differences (p<0.001) between students exposed to the curriculum strategies and those who were not. Students also showed highly significant gains (p<0.001) in self-reported interest in science content, ability to analyze socio-scientific issues, awareness of ethical issues, ability to listen to and discuss viewpoints different from their own, and understanding of the relationship between science and society. Our results demonstrate that incorporating ethical dilemmas into the classroom is one strategy for increasing student motivation and engagement with science content, while promoting reasoning and justification skills that help prepare an informed citizenry.     

"Be ready against cancer, now": direct-to-consumer advertising for genetic testing

A recent addition to the debate about the benefits and harms of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of medicines and pharmaceuticals is a growing critique of DTC marketing and sale of genetic tests. Academic and policy literatures exploring this issue have, however, tended to focus on the sale of genetic tests, paying rather less attention to the particular implications of advertising. The globalization of broadcast media and ever increasing access to the Internet mean that public exposure to advertising for medical technologies is a reality that national regulatory bodies will be hard pressed to constrain. Working through a case study detailing Myriad Genetics' 2002 pilot advertising campaign for their BRACAnalysis genetic susceptibility test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, this paper highlights some of the diverse and often overlooked and unregulated approaches to DTC advertising, and the associated social, ethical and policy implications.     

A Likelihood-Based Approach to Identifying Contaminated Food Products Using Sales Data: Performance and Challenges

Foodborne disease outbreaks of recent years demonstrate that due to increasingly interconnected supply chains these type of crisis situations have the potential to affect thousands of people, leading to significant healthcare costs, loss of revenue for food companies, and—in the worst cases—death. When a disease outbreak is detected, identifying the contaminated food quickly is vital to minimize suffering and limit economic losses. Here we present a likelihood-based approach that has the potential to accelerate the time needed to identify possibly contaminated food products, which is based on exploitation of food products sales data and the distribution of foodborne illness case reports. Using a real world food sales data set and artificially generated outbreak scenarios, we show that this method performs very well for contamination scenarios originating from a single “guilty” food product. As it is neither always possible nor necessary to identify the single offending product, the method has been extended such that it can be used as a binary classifier. With this extension it is possible to generate a set of potentially “guilty” products that contains the real outbreak source with very high accuracy. Furthermore we explore the patterns of food distributions that lead to “hard-to-identify” foods, the possibility of identifying these food groups a priori, and the extent to which the likelihood-based method can be used to quantify uncertainty. We find that high spatial correlation of sales data between products may be a useful indicator for “hard-to-identify” products.     

On the limitations of life cycle assessment and environmental systems analysis tools in general

The potential and limitations of life cycle assessment and environmental systems analysis tools in general are evaluated. More specifically this is done by exploring the limits of what can be shown by LCA and other tools. This is done from several perspectives. First, experiences from current LCAs and methodology discussions are used including a discussion on the type of impacts typically included, quality of inventory data, methodological choices in relation to time aspects, allocation, characterisation and weighting methods and uncertainties in describing the real world. Second, conclusions from the theory of science are practised. It is concluded that it can in general not be shown that one product is environmentally preferable to another one, even if this happens to be the case. This conclusion has important policy implications. If policy changes require that it must be shown that one product is more (or less) environmentally preferable before any action can be taken, then it is likely that no action is ever going to take place. If we want changes to be made, decisions must be taken on a less rigid basis. It is expected that in this decision making process, LCA can be a useful input. Since it is the only tool that can be used for product comparisons over the whole life cycle, it can not be replaced by any other tool and should be used. Increased harmonisation of LCA methodology may increase the acceptability of chosen methods and increase the usefulness of the tool.     

Youth's Awareness of and Reactions to The Real Cost National Tobacco Public Education Campaign

In 2014, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched its first tobacco-focused public education campaign, The Real Cost, aimed at reducing tobacco use among 12- to 17-year-olds in the United States. This study describes The Real Cost message strategy, implementation, and initial evaluation findings. The campaign was designed to encourage youth who had never smoked but are susceptible to trying cigarettes (susceptible nonsmokers) and youth who have previously experimented with smoking (experimenters) to reassess what they know about the “costs” of tobacco use to their body and mind. The Real Cost aired on national television, online, radio, and other media channels, resulting in high awareness levels. Overall, 89.0% of U.S. youth were aware of at least one advertisement 6 to 8 months after campaign launch, and high levels of awareness were attained within the campaign’s two targeted audiences: susceptible nonsmokers (90.5%) and experimenters (94.6%). Most youth consider The Real Cost advertising to be effective, based on assessments of ad perceived effectiveness (mean = 4.0 on a scale from 1.0 to 5.0). High levels of awareness and positive ad reactions are requisite proximal indicators of health behavioral change. Additional research is being conducted to assess whether potential shifts in population-level cognitions and/or behaviors are attributable to this campaign. Current findings demonstrate that The Real Cost has attained high levels of ad awareness which is a critical first step in achieving positive changes in tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors. These data can also be used to inform ongoing message and media strategies for The Real Cost and other U.S. youth tobacco prevention campaigns.     

The Monkey and the Hunter

Learning about the water situation in other regions of the world and the devastating effects of floods on drinking water helps students study science while learning about global water quality. This article provides science activities focused on developing cultural awareness and understanding how local water resources are integrally linked to the quality of the world's water supply. After reading and discussing a case study highlighting one water situation facing the people of Kenya, students explore water sanitation and testing methods, including solar pasteurization and the Colilert test for total coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli. These investigations are relevant to inquiry-based water quality labs for high school biology, chemistry, and environmental science.     

Gaming as a Platform for Developing Science Practices

Gaming, an integral part of many students’ lives outside school, can provide an engaging platform for focusing students on important disciplinary core concepts as an entry into developing students’ understanding of these concepts through science practices. This article highlights how S’cape can be used to support student learning aligned with the most recent standards documents. Through combining students’ initial engagement in a motivating gaming experience with a two-experiment scaffolded inquiry sequence enhanced with information literacy-targeted homework, this article reveals how support can be offered for asking questions, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations, and engaging in argument from evidence to refine understandings of core concepts. We believe that as science teachers strive to explore important concepts with students through allowing them to actually practice science, games such as S’cape strategically leveraged and sequenced with scaffolded inquiry experiences can support these efforts.     

Gregor Mendel's classic paper and the nature of science in genetics courses

The discoveries of Gregor Mendel, as described by Mendel in his 1866 paper Versuche uber Pflanzen-Hybriden (Experiments on plant hybrids), can be used in undergraduate genetics and biology courses to engage students about specific nature of science characteristics and their relationship to four of his major contributions to genetics. The use of primary source literature as an instructional tool to enhance genetics students' understanding of the nature of science helps students more clearly understand how scientists work and how the science of genetics has evolved as a discipline. We offer a historical background of how the nature of science developed as a concept and show how Mendel's investigations of heredity can enrich biology and genetics courses by exemplifying the nature of science.     

Evaluation of quality in adult cardiac surgery: let us speak the same language

Over the last years, measurements of quality of care have become more and more a public product, used by providers, purchasers and consumers, and patients. This information serves as an important guide for improvement, as well as a decision support tool for everybody taking part in medical treatment. This evolution can be compared with advertising and as in commercials it is important to use the right information. In this report we focus on the quality of adult cardiac surgery. Honest information is of course essential, but in this article attention is asked for the variables used to evaluate the quality of cardiac surgery. (Neth Heart J 2010;18:365-9.)     

Health of nations: lessons from Victoria,Australia.

In its white paper The Health of the Nation the government has announced its intention to give more priority to preventive health care. Two examples from Victoria, Australia, show how coordinated legislative and voluntary sector action can have a substantial impact on public behaviour. The introduction and enforcement of strict drink-driving laws and speed limits backed up by forceful television advertisements produced a large reduction in deaths from road traffic accidents, the death rate in relation to the number of vehicles in 1991 being among the lowest in the world. Smoking has also declined in parallel with a phased ban on advertising and use of taxes from tobacco sales to replace tobacco sponsorship of sports and arts and fund health promotion.