Georgia State University

About: Georgia State University is a education organization based out in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 13988 authors who have published 35895 publications receiving 1164332 citations. The organization is also known as: GSU & Georgia State.

Commitment and employee behavior: comparison of affective commitment and continuance commitment with perceived organizational support.

Abstract: The social exchange view of commitment (R. Eisenberger, R. Huntington, S. Hutchison, & D. Sowa, 1986) suggests that employees' perceptions of the organization's commitment to them (perceived organizational support, or POS) creates feelings of obligation to the employer, which enhances employees' work behavior. The authors addressed the question of whether POS or the more traditional commitment concepts of affective commitment (AC) and continuance commitment (CC) were better predictors of employee behavior (organizational citizenship and impression management). Participants were 383 employees and their managers. Although results showed that both AC and POS were positively related to organizational citizenship and that CC was negatively related to organizationa l citizenship, POS was the best predictor. These findings support the social exchange view that POS creates feelings of obligation that contribute to citizenship behaviors. In addition, CC was unrelated, whereas AC and POS were positively correlated, with some impression management behaviors.

Dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome

Abstract: The intestinal tract is inhabited by a large and diverse community of microbes collectively referred to as the gut microbiota. While the gut microbiota provides important benefits to its host, especially in metabolism and immune development, disturbance of the microbiota-host relationship is associated with numerous chronic inflammatory diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease and the group of obesity-associated diseases collectively referred to as metabolic syndrome. A primary means by which the intestine is protected from its microbiota is via multi-layered mucus structures that cover the intestinal surface, thereby allowing the vast majority of gut bacteria to be kept at a safe distance from epithelial cells that line the intestine. Thus, agents that disrupt mucus-bacterial interactions might have the potential to promote diseases associated with gut inflammation. Consequently, it has been hypothesized that emulsifiers, detergent-like molecules that are a ubiquitous component of processed foods and that can increase bacterial translocation across epithelia in vitro, might be promoting the increase in inflammatory bowel disease observed since the mid-twentieth century. Here we report that, in mice, relatively low concentrations of two commonly used emulsifiers, namely carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate-80, induced low-grade inflammation and obesity/metabolic syndrome in wild-type hosts and promoted robust colitis in mice predisposed to this disorder. Emulsifier-induced metabolic syndrome was associated with microbiota encroachment, altered species composition and increased pro-inflammatory potential. Use of germ-free mice and faecal transplants indicated that such changes in microbiota were necessary and sufficient for both low-grade inflammation and metabolic syndrome. These results support the emerging concept that perturbed host-microbiota interactions resulting in low-grade inflammation can promote adiposity and its associated metabolic effects. Moreover, they suggest that the broad use of emulsifying agents might be contributing to an increased societal incidence of obesity/metabolic syndrome and other chronic inflammatory diseases.

Risks and Portfolio Decisions Involving Hedge Funds

Abstract: This article characterizes the systematic risk exposures of hedge funds using buy-and-hold and option-based strategies. Our results show that a large number of equity-oriented hedge fund strategies exhibit payoffs resembling a short position in a put option on the market index and therefore bear significant left-tail risk, risk that is ignored by the commonly used mean-variance framework. Using a mean-conditional value-at-risk framework, we demonstrate the extent to which the mean-variance framework underestimates the tail risk. Finally, working with the systematic risk exposures of hedge funds, we show that their recent performance appears significantly better than their long-run performance. It is well accepted that the world of financial securities is a multifactor world consisting of different risk factors, each associated with its own factor risk premium, and that no single investment strategy can span the entire ‘‘risk factor space.’’ Therefore investors wishing to earn risk premia associated with different risk factors need to employ different kinds of investment strategies. Sophisticated investors, like endowments and pension funds, seem to have recognized this fact as their portfolios consist

Brand Equity, Brand Preference, and Purchase Intent

Abstract: The issue of brand equity has emerged as one of the most critical areas for marketing management in the 1990s. Despite strong interest in the subject, however, there is little empirical evidence of how brand value is created and what its precise effects are. This study explores some of the consequences of brand equity. In particular, the authors examine the effect of brand equity on consumer preferences and purchase intentions. For comparative purposes, two sets of brands are tested, one from a service category characterized by fairly high financial and functional risk (hotels), and one from a generally lower risk product category (household cleansers). Each set includes two brands that are objectively similar (based on Consumer Reports ratings), but they have invested markedly different levels of advertising spending over the past decade. Across both categories, the brand with the higher advertising budget yielded substantially higher levels of brand equity. In turn, the brand with the higher eq...

Nanofocusing of Optical Energy in Tapered Plasmonic Waveguides

Abstract: We predict theoretically that surface plasmon polaritons propagating toward the tip of a tapered plasmonic waveguide are slowed down and asymptotically stopped when they tend to the tip, never actually reaching it (the travel time to the tip is logarithmically divergent). This phenomenon causes accumulation of energy and giant local fields at the tip. There are various prospective applications in nano-optics and nanotechnology.