Analyzing the Moderating Effect of Perceived Brand Image in Creating Customer Loyalty: A Case of Indian Telecom Industry

Service providers in Indian telecommunication industry are now facing lots of challenges for their sustainability in tough competition because of varying wants of customers. Provision of quality service, initiatives of public relationship programmes, and generation of timely customer satisfaction are now of major concerns. In addition to these, positioning a proper brand image in customers’ mindset is equally important. The present study investigates all these factors of service business concerns to know the key determinants of achieving appropriate customer loyalty. Around 214 numbers of cell phone users were surveyed through a structured tested questionnaire in the state of Odisha, India and then all collected responses were analyzed through structural equation models. Study results showed that perception on public relation moderated by brand image has no role in creating customer loyalty. Again, after introduction of brand image as moderator, the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction becomes insignificant. However, customer satisfaction plays a major role in the variation of customer loyalty.

Parental Mediation of Cell Phone Use and Adolescent Autonomy

Adolescents’ cell phone use occurs during significant developmental shifts in parent–adolescent relationships, as adolescents’ drives for independence can conflict with parents’ desires for connection. This study examines parental mediation of cell phone use within an interpersonal and family communication framework. Previous mediation research has not examined connections with social penetration theory, uncertainty reduction theory, relational dialectics theory, and communication privacy management, each of which has conceptual links to parental mediation. Cell phone mediation reflects the broader phenomenon of disclosure in interpersonal relationships. The extent to which individuals disclose information is influenced by personal desires for autonomy and connection, privacy and intimacy, which are components of interpersonal and family communication theories. This study explores the notion that families develop norms and expectations about cell phones that might influence parental mediation. Results indicate that perceptions of parent–child relationships and family expectations for cell phone use both significantly influence mediation.

Engineering Protein Activity into Off-the-Shelf DNA Devices

DNA-based devices are relatively straightforward to design by virtue of their predictable folding, but they lack biological activity. Conversely, protein-based devices offer a myriad of biological functions but are much more difficult to design due to their complex folding. This study bridges the fields of DNA engineering and protein engineering to generate a protein switch that is activated by a specific DNA sequence. A single protein switch, engineered from nanoluciferase using the alternate frame folding mechanism and herein called nLuc-AFF, is paired with different DNA technologies to create a biosensor for a DNA or RNA sequence of choice, sensors for serotonin and ATP, and a computational device that processes two DNA inputs. nLuc-AFF is a genetically-encoded, ratiometric, blue/green-luminescent biosensor whose output can be quantified by cell phone camera. nLuc-AFF is not falsely activated by decoy DNA and it retains full ratiometric readout in 100 % serum. The design approach can be applied to other proteins and enzymes to convert them into DNA-activated switches.

An Exploratory Study on Personal Finance in the Context of COVID-19

The world is currently experiencing a dramatic crisis that has not yet reached bottom. In Mexico, in the second quarter of 2020, there was a drop in the gross domestic product of 18.9% compared to the same quarter of 2019. In this context, the objective is to identify types of personal expenses in households located in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico as of July 15, 2020. The main results were that most of the respondents' budgets spend according to their income, have had no problem paying their bank loans on time, would consider a fund for future contingencies, have not purchased health insurance, have not bought a computer or cell phone, among other issues analyzed. The main findings are oriented to the fact that the studied population has not acquired additional medical insurance despite the pandemic. It is also concluded that the population under study has become aware of having savings for contingency funds and that digital life still shows resistance in making personal financial decisions.

Analysis of Cell Phone Biometric Sensors and Security Risk of the Sensors

Biometric sensors are becoming more commonplace in today's world. These biometric sensors are especially common in today's smartphones. Billions of smartphones use these sensors for security purposes, and these are slowly but surely replacing traditional forms of password authentication. Biometrics are commonly used to unlock devices and also for purchases. In this chapter, the focus will be on the most common types of biometrics featured in phones along with the sensors associated with them. Next, an analysis of the security risk of these sensors along with common attacks to exploit these risks are discussed. Lastly, various ways to patch and combat these various risks will be discussed.

ASSOCIATION BETWEEN CELL PHONE USAGE AND MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS IN SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN

The adverse effects of excessive mobile phone (MP) use on children include deprivation from sleep, increased risk of lack of concentration, depression, anxiety and obesity. No such study has been conducted in children from Pakistan. Objectives: To assess the association of MP usage and musculoskeletal disorders in school going children. Methods: This was a cross sectional survey. Data were collected from different private schools of Karachi, Pakistan. Convenient non probability sampling technique was used. A sample size of 385 students was taken keeping a confidence interval of 95% with 5% margin of error. Results: A total of 385 subjects participated. It was also noticed that 75.6% (291) students have smart phone and 5.2% (20) have conventional phone and remaining 19.2% (74) have camera phone. It was noticed that the participants 306 (79.5%) said they slept for 1–2[Formula: see text]h daily and 30 (7.8%) had sleep for 3–4[Formula: see text]h daily. One hundred and four 104 (27%) had noticed pain in neck. Conclusion: The use of MP for any activity was associated with sleep deprivation and pain in wrist/hands followed by neck and upper back pain. The usage of MP should be limited to avoid the stress on musculoskeletal parts of the body.

A model based on a high-resolution flux matrix explains the spread of diseases in a spatial network and the effect of mitigation strategies

Propagation of an epidemic across a spatial network of communities is described by a variant of the SIR model accompanied by an intercommunity infectivity matrix. This matrix is estimated from fluxes between communities, obtained from cell-phone tracking data recorded in the USA between March 2020 and February 2021. We have applied this model to the 2020 dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We find that the numbers of susceptible and infected individuals predicted by the model agree with the reported cases in each community by fitting just one global parameter representing the frequency of interaction between individuals. The effect of "shelter-in-place" policies introduced across the USA at the onset of the pandemic is clearly seen in our results. We then consider the effect that alternative policies would have had, namely restricting long-range travel. We find that this policy is successful in decreasing the epidemic size and slowing down the spread, at the expense of a substantial restriction on mobility as a function of distance. When long-distance mobility is suppressed, this policy results in a traveling wave of infections, which we characterize analytically. In particular, we show the dependence of the wave velocity and profile on the transmission parameters. Finally, we discuss a policy of selectively constraining travel based on an edge-betweenness criterion.

The Relationship between Cellphone Usage and Sleep Quality among Hospital Staff

Purpose: Despite the two decades of using cell phones, there are still considerable controversies about the biological effects of the Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) produced by cell phones. Sleep disorder among hospital staff is an important issue for the health care system not only due to the health of its employees but also to the reduction of the staff performance quality and the increase in medical errors. This study aimed to explore factors that may affect the sleep quality of hospital staff and to examine the association between sleep quality and cell phone usage. Materials and Methods: In this study, participants consisted of 288 employees (35.51 ± 8.42 years old) of two hospitals, and their sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh sleep quality index. Results: Sixty-six percent of participants had good sleep quality and nearly 68% of the employees worked in shifts. The cell phone use among participants averaged 10.74 ± 3.03 years, and less than half of the staff stated that call durations of their cell phones were less than 5 h/day. More than 90% of the staff mentioned no use of hands-free. There were no statistically significant differences between job characteristics, sleep quality, and items related to cell phones, except the use of hands-free. Conclusion: In our study, using hands-free during phone calls was associated with poor quality sleep. Different factors, such as decreased levels of electromagnetic fields reaching the brain, can be involved in this effect. These results must be interpreted with caution due to the low number of subjects and the limitations of our study.