The performances of the marketing communication with consumers depend on the appropriate selection of “traditional” (press, radio, television, outdoor) and/or direct media (mail, telephony, mobile telephony, and the internet), capable to draw the attention of the consumer, generate his/her interest, stimulate the desire for, and determine the buying of the promoted products, services, and brands. In the process of selecting these media, several privacy-related aspects should also be taken into consideration. The paper explores some of these aspects – preferences for searching or receiving information, preferences for receiving marketing messages in terms of the media employed as sources of information, attitudes towards disclosing, capturing, processing and employment of the personal data, assessment of the aggressiveness of the media employed in the direct communication, and the attitudes toward buying products and/or services after being directly approached – and presents the results obtained at the level of a sample including Romanian consumers.
The process of segmenting the object present in the foreground of an image from the background is a challenging task. An improved methodology using the concept of Gaussian filtration, Gabor filtration, DB Scan Clustering, Region Growing reads the given input image and performs filtering, smoothing and edge detection operation and finally separates the object from the background of the image.. The proposed method is tested on standard images taken from Caltech datasets; Corel Photo CD\'s and Weizmann horse datasets show considerably better results.
Arylamine N-acetyltransferase1 (NAT1) is a phase II enzyme that acetylates a wide range of arylamine, hydrazine substrates and catalyze the detoxification of arylamines by N-acetylation. Polymorphic NAT1 status varies widely between individuals and ethnic groups. The gene is polymorphic with most mutations identified that characterize human population into fast acetylators and slow acetylators. The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency distribution of acetylator phenotypes of the Pakistani population by NAT1 and compare it between male and female healthy volunteers. The polymorphic acetylation of sulfamethoxazole has been investigated in male (n=52) and female (n=60) volunteers of Pakistani population. Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) was administered orally in capsule form as 500 mg to each healthy male and female volunteer. Drug and its acetyl metabolite concentrations were determined by high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC). The acetylation of sulfamethoxazole by arylamine N-acetyltransferase1 (NAT1) showed bimodal population frequency distribution. Comparison of male and female parameters was carried out by using Chi square test and level of significance was assumed to be 5%. Almost 67% of the male volunteers were found to be fast and 33% to be slow acetylators while female volunteers were 68% fast and 32% slow acetylators.
This study examines previous literature on housing satisfaction, with the specific aim of identifying the factors that play the dominant role in determining occupants housing satisfaction. This is because the concept of residential satisfaction has attracted much attention in recent years and that researchers and research bodies, be it corporate or government that try to develop housing policies should begin with an understanding of the determinants of housing satisfaction. The study is conducted with reference to existing theoretical literature, published and unpublished research. The study is mainly a literature review/survey on the determinants of housing satisfaction. One of the primary findings emanating from the study reveals that empirical studies have identified a number of important determinants of residential satisfaction, such as income, tenure, life cycle stages, house size, and housing quality. For instance, being older, having higher income, having a smaller family have been related to more housing satisfaction. The study explores the determinants of housing satisfaction. The study presents a robust background on the determinants and theories of housing satisfaction and interpretation.
Background: Pain and anxiety is associated with hysterosalpingography and had been the greatest source of drawback in its application for the investigation of infertility.\nObjective: To assess the impact of preparatory information and clarification of Hysterosalpingography (HSG) procedure on the anxiety level and pain experienced by patients during the examination. Method: A cross sectional multicenter study was undertaken to determine the impact of preparatory information and clarification on the anxiety level and pain experienced by patients during HSG procedure. One hundred and thirty five infertile patients randomly allocated to two groups were recruited into the study. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory form was used to measure patients’ anxiety level while Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) was used to evaluate pain experience. Result: Patients who received preparatory information reported less anxiety than patients who received no information (P<0.05).There was mild reduction in pain score recorded by patients with preparatory information though not statistically significant. Conclusion: Preparatory information and clarification of HSG can significantly reduce anxiety among patients presenting for the procedure. It will also reduce the level of pain experienced by the patients during the procedure. The result of this work can be applied in other invasive diagnostic medical procedures to reduce anxiety and pain in patients.
This paper deals with speed control of motor using two soft computing techniques. PMSM widely used in high performance motion control applications. The field-oriented or vector control is used in the design of PMSM to achieve smooth starting and acceleration. In practical application lead to degradation of the performance due to electromechanical parameter variations and external load disturbances. To improve performance of the PMSM, Fuzzy-PID with ACO and PSO based advanced control technique with methods are proposed. The proposed approach is to enhance the control effort of PMSM using soft computing techniques. Artificial intelligence techniques have been incorporated in the controller architecture to overcome the maximum settling time and rise time problems.