Public Announcements Research Articles

Article: The ECB’s Decarbonization Plan for Corporate Bonds

This article explores the European Central Bank’s (ECB) pioneering approach to incorporating climate considerations into its monetary policy operations, using a climate scoring model. The ECB aims to reduce climate-related financial risks and encourage greener practices. The background section discusses the post-2015 Paris Agreement context and the ECB’s Climate Agenda, while highlighting the controversies surrounding its quantitative easing programs.The core of the article examines the ECB’s decarbonization strategy for corporate bonds, which involves a scoring model based on three sub-scores: backward-looking emissions, forward-looking targets, and climate reporting/disclosure. This model is expected to incentivize companies to reduce their carbon footprint and improve disclosures.The article concludes by emphasizing the ECB’s commitment to climate change mitigation but suggests a broader need for a reevaluation of the monetary system to prioritize public interest and address pressing global issues more effectively. Bonds, ECB, decarbonization, Climate Agenda, Eurosystem, climate scoring, monetary policy

Slum Health in Ghana: a Case of Old Fadama in The Accra

The study sought to assess the effect of slum on the health of its’ dwellers in Sodom and Gomorrah. The study adopted the explanatory design of the quantitative approach to examine the effect of slums on the quality of life of the slums inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. With the aid of Krejcie and Morgan‘s (1970) sample size table, 306 respondents were selected and through convenience sampling, questionnaire were administered to the respondents. Moreover, the data were analyzed with the help of statistical software known as Statistical Product for Service Solution (SPSS version 25.0) by using frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation as well as linear regression and presented by using tables, and charts. It was evident from the reviews that the emergence of slums and its growth are offshoots of urbanisation. The search for greener pastures in the city centers and the improvement of the livelihood of slum dwellers were the major driving force for slum dwellers to migrate to the city centers. It was obvious from the study that migrants do not have life easy and promising as anticipated before embarking on their journeys. They become exposed to all kinds of risks, ranging from environmental to health. Within this context they device several means to survive. It is the argument of this thesis that government should engage private partnership to stem the tide down. Therefore, it is recommended that the government and private institutions and individuals provide intensive education support programs for the community. Education could be done through Community Publics Address systems (PA Systems), schools, workshops, seminars, and others.

Neurometric and biometric measurement of the effectiveness of covid-19-related public service announcements

Neurometric and biometric measurement of the effectiveness of covid-19-related public service announcements

Adolescents' perceptions of substance use messaging in the age of social media: resolving cognitive dissonance.

This study interviewed adolescents about their exposure to and perceptions of substance-related social media content and substance use prevention messages. Participants (analytic sample N = 30, age 14-18 years, in CA, USA, 40% male) were recruited from Instagram and Facebook for online semi-structured interviews. An interview transcript coding guide was developed based on the interview questions and emerging themes. Most (27/30) participants reported exposure to peers using substances on social media through posts made on personal accounts. All peer posts portrayed substance use in a positive light. Most participants reported exposure to formal prevention messages on social media (i.e. public service announcements) (19/30) and in schools (i.e. drug education) (21/30; 70.0%) teaching the negative consequences of substance use. Responses to the differences between peer posts and prevention messages included dismissing prevention messages (7/30), believing that their peers were more credible (4/30), desiring comprehensive substance information (3/30) and believing that the no-use message was ineffective for at-risk youth (4/30). Messages shared by peers online significantly contrasted with prevention messages (i.e. public service announcements and drug education). This difference appeared to undermine prevention message credibility. Balanced prevention messages acknowledging the spectrum of risk and reward when using different substances may reduce dissonance and increase engagement.

Systematic Literature Review On Recycling Waste Cooking Oil Using Public Service Announcement

Cooking oil has attained significant importance and is regularly consumed on a global scale, encompassing both beneficial as well as negative practices. Nevertheless, the management of waste cooking oil (WCO) has been implemented through various methods that have resulted in significant environmental concerns. This article undertakes an analysis of the public service announcement (PSA) campaign aimed at promoting the management of waste cooking oil. This study employs a qualitative methodology and utilises a systematic literature review (SLR) approach to identify relevant scholarly articles pertaining to waste cooking oil. The acquired data is subjected to analysis through the use of a document analysis methodology in order to elucidate the significant information derived from the journal. The screening methodology has identified a total of four (4) articles published between 2019 and 2023 that are relevant to the investigation of the utilisation of public service announcements in the promotion of waste cooking oil. The findings indicate a significant dearth of prior scholarly investigations concerning public service announcements related to the recycling of waste cooking oil. It is strongly advised that future research be conducted to investigate the influence of public service announcements (PSAs) on waste cooking oil, particularly in the context of Malaysia.

UTILIZATION OF TRADITIONAL MODES OF COMMUNICATION BY COMMUNITY BASED INSTITUTIONS IN BENDE LGA, ABIA STATE, NIGERIA

The study investigated Utilization of Traditional Modes of Communication by Community Based Institutions in Bende Local Government Area of Abia State, Nigeria. The research sought to investigate the utilization of the six major traditional modes of communication mainly used in rural areas such as the gong, drama presentation, folktales/proverbs and storytelling, dances and songs, town crier and talking drum and how these traditional modes of communication are jointly utilized in dissemination of information to rural populace in the communities under study. The exploratory survey research design was adopted because of the nature of the research. The instrument for data collection was a modified likert form questionnaire with twenty six (29) question items divided into sections A and B. A total of 450 copies of questionnaire were distributed three communities studied, which are Igbere community (150), Item Community (150) and Alayi Community (150). Four hundred and twenty (420) copies were returned; however, three hundred and ninety-six (396) were duly completed and found to be usable for this study, and thus, this amounted to 85.8% response rate. Data analysis was done with mean scores drawn from Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) with 2.5 mean score as the significant level. The study reveals that traditional modes of communication are positively used by community based institutions as they find it very appeasing, mostly for the fact that it enables them in the delivery of fast and efficient communication. It is also easy to understand. The research recommends among other things that the traditional modes of communication need to be maintained as they are part of our identity in rural information service delivery, other ways of communication might be introduced, such as using public address system, this culture needs to be maintained as it is necessary for so many cultural orientations of the rural communities, town criers should be trained to be able to use modern techniques of information delivery for effective rural information service delivery.

The role of clinical breast examination and fine needle aspiration cytology in early detection of breast cancer: A cross-sectional study nested in a cohort in a low-resource setting.

Breast cancer is prevalent worldwide, with disparities in screening, diagnosis, treatment outcomes, and survival. In Africa, the majority of women are diagnosed at advanced stages, affecting treatment outcomes. Screening is one of the best strategies to reduce mortality rates caused by this cancer. Yet in a resource-constrained setting, there is limited access to screening and early detection services, which are available only at a few referral hospitals. We aimed to evaluate the prevalence and screening results of breast cancer using clinical breast examination coupled with fine needle aspiration cytology in a resource-constraint setting. A combined cross-sectional and cohort study. Women at risk of developing breast cancer in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania were invited, through public announcements, to their primary healthcare facilities. A questionnaire was used to assess the participants' characteristics. The women received a clinical breast examination, and detectable lesions were subjected to a confirmatory fine needle aspiration cytology or an excisional biopsy. Preliminary data from this ongoing breast cancer control program were extracted and analyzed for this study. A total of 3577 women were screened for breast cancer; their mean age was 47 ± 7.53 years. About a third of them (1145, 32%) were practicing self-breast examination at least once a month. Of 200 (5.6%) with abnormal clinical breast examination, 18 (9%) were confirmed to be breast cancer, making the prevalence to be 0.5%. The vast majority of participants with breast cancer (13, 72.2%) had early disease stages, and infiltrating ductal carcinoma, no special type, was the most common (15, 83.3%) histopathology subtype. Hormonal receptor status determination results indicated that 11 (61.1%), 7 (38.9%), and 5 (27.8%) of the tumors overexpressed estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal receptor-2, respectively. Our study demonstrates 5.6% of Tanzanian women have abnormal clinical breast examination findings, with 9% having breast cancer. Nearly three-quarters (72.2%) of breast cancer screened for early disease were detected in the early disease stages. This finding suggests that organized screening with clinical breast examination coupled with fine needle aspiration cytology, which is a simple and cost-effective screening method, has the potential to improve early detection and outcomes for breast cancer patients in a resource-constraint setting.

Cesium tungsten oxide-carbon nanotube-hydroxypropyl cellulose thermoresponsive display.

Among different heat-responsive polymers, hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) is biodegradable and is widely used in products that are harmless to the human body, such as food and pharmaceuticals. When the temperature of the hydrogel-type HPC increases, the hydrophilic bonds between the HPC molecules break, and the HPC molecules aggregate owing to the hydrophobic bonds. Therefore, light transmittance may vary because the aggregated HPC molecules scatter light. This study investigated the implementation of a display using the thermoreversible phase transition of HPC. Herein, a near-infrared (NIR) laser was irradiated only to a local area to control the surface temperature and enable the effective operation of the thermoreversible phase transition of HPC. For this, cesium tungsten oxide (CTO), which absorbs NIR light and generates heat, was mixed with the HPC hydrogel to improve the photothermal effect. Moreover, by additionally mixing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with high thermal conductivity, the heat generated from the CTO is quickly transferred to the HPC hydrogel, and the heat of the HPC hydrogel is quickly cooled through the CNTs after stopping the NIR laser irradiation. The produced NIR-writing CTO-CNT-HPC (CCH) thermoresponsive display exhibited a fast thermoresponsive time. The CCH thermoresponsive display developed in this study can be applied in situations that require fast display response times, such as interactive advertising, property exhibitions, navigation systems for car, schedule information, event information, and public announcements.

Cameroon Pidgin English as a Language of the Media.

The stigmatisation of Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) has contributed immensely to its slow recognition and acceptance in the media. Contrary to the situation in the 50s and 60s which limited the use of CPE to occasional slots in local newspaper columns (Schneider 1966: 111), it has been gaining grounds in its function as the language of the media from the 80s till date. CPE is now confidently used in newspapers, television, and radio broadcasts, advertisements etc. As such, CPE has been given the name ‘a crowd pulling’ language especially when used in the media. This paper substantiates Kelly’s (1978: 293) statement that “popular language is used to popularise a supposedly popular medium.” It describes the extent to which CPE is used as a tool for spreading publicity information over the radio and Television in Cameroon. This paper shows that five media structures were used for the study, namely: CRTV Buea, FM Mount Cameroon, CBS Radio and Equinox TV in Douala. The results revealed that CPE is used in a wide range of media programmes: news broadcasts, advertisements, Public announcements and talk shows. So, Neba, Chibaka, and Atindogbe have a point when they say that “This language, then, may not be the curse that it has been made to appear in the past, but rather a blessing in disguise”, 2006: 58.

Health Education: The Power of the Podcast

Various strategies have been utilized by nurses to bring health education to community members. Role play, radio, and television (public service announcements), face to face meetings, printed literature and focus group are some of the strategies that have been used with varying degrees of success.Advances in technology have increased the types of tools available to offer health education. Social media has been used to bring information to a variety of types of community members. Zoom, GoToMeeting, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are some of the newest technological and social media platforms employed to communicate health education and information. The Podcast in various formats is one of the newest techniques to bring accessible education to communities of interest.

The potential of speech impact of the lexical system of language in public service announcement of the People's Republic of China

The potential of speech impact of the lexical system of language in public service announcement of the People's Republic of China

Unsafe at any Bandwidth: Towards Understanding Risk Factors for Ransomware in Higher Education

United States higher education institutions host an assortment of services that are accessible via public IP addresses. The wide variety of network services and the important personal and institutional data stored on such services make higher education institutions particularly desirable targets for attackers. This study analyses the vulnerabilities found through Shodan scans on these networks, in conjunction with institutional characteristics data taken from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), to examine correlations between an institution’s characteristics and the vulnerabilities found on its networks. By exploring this data, the study aims to bring awareness to the current state of higher education institution network security and determine vulnerability trends between certain institutions. Our analysis reveals that most institutions have many medium impacts but highly exploitable vulnerabilities, with most being on Apache HTTP servers. We also present that the most significant indicators of an institution’s vulnerability are its enrolment and yearly total expenses. We investigate how smaller institutions have lower numbers of vulnerabilities, but their vulnerabilities have the potential for higher impact. We conclude that there is a significant chance of ransomware risk in US higher educational institutions.

Harnessing education to combat chronic and fatal diseases: A comprehensive empirical study of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and respiratory illnesses in MENA countries

This study explored the transformative potential of education in lowering mortality rates associated with chronic and fatal diseases. By analyzing empirical data from MENA countries over an 18-year period (2000–2018) using a robust panel econometric model, we reveal compelling evidence of the protective effects of education against cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases. Employing fixed effects, Robust Weighted Least Squares (RWLS), and Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS) techniques, this study showed a significant negative correlation between education level and mortality rate. These findings emphasize that education is a crucial determinant of health outcomes and advocate for increased investment in educational infrastructure. Policymakers and stakeholders are urged to prioritize education as a strategic tool to enhance public health and address health disparities across the region.

COVID-19-Related School Closures, United States, July 27, 2020-June 30, 2022.

As part of a multiyear project that monitored illness-related school closures, we conducted systematic daily online searches during July 27, 2020-June 30, 2022, to identify public announcements of COVID-19-related school closures (COVID-SCs) in the United States lasting >1 day. We explored the temporospatial patterns of COVID-SCs and analyzed associations between COVID-SCs and national COVID-19 surveillance data. COVID-SCs reflected national surveillance data: correlation was highest between COVID-SCs and both new PCR test positivity (correlation coefficient [r] = 0.73, 95% CI 0.56-0.84) and new cases (r= 0.72, 95% CI 0.54-0.83) during 2020-21 and with hospitalization rates among all ages (r=0.81, 95% CI 0.67-0.89) during 2021-22. The numbers of reactive COVID-SCs during 2020-21 and 2021-22 greatly exceeded previously observed numbers of illness-related reactive school closures in the United States, notably being nearly 5-fold greater than reactive closures observed during the 2009 influenza (H1N1) pandemic.

A Broader Antitrust Grey Zone: From Cartel and Information Sharing to Autonomous Information Sharing, Benchmarking and Unilateral Public Announcements as The Targets of Antitrust Enforcement

A Broader Antitrust Grey Zone: From Cartel and Information Sharing to Autonomous Information Sharing, Benchmarking and Unilateral Public Announcements as The Targets of Antitrust Enforcement

Exploring Nuances in American Republican Discourse: A SFL-driven Basic Content Analysis of G. Bush and D. Trump as Case Studies

This exploratory study uses a Functional-Semantic approach to language with the aim to foreground the contrasting ideological, discursive, thematic and political discourse features that mark D. Trump and George Bush's nationalistic discourse. Using a Nvivo12-facilitated CDA-oriented Basic Content Analysis (BCA), I examine 5 purposively sampled public addresses delivered by George W. Bush and Donald Trump (5 for each case) during their respective presidencies. The key findings of this lexicometric analysis disclosed subtle variations and significant intertextual connections in these two nationalistic discourse genre chains. Both discourse makers deployed certain socio-cognitive elements consistent with their discursive purposes and addressee mental models. George Bush’s sample attests to a ‘conservative Jeffersonian internationalist discourse’ that is marked by a call for Americans to think of themselves as one people, whose members are equal, rather than being in conflict with an out-group America-internally. Indeed, Donald Trump's discourse subscribes to hardline Jacksonian stream, introducing an ideological and political nationalism, characterized by heightened polarization, conspiracy theories and group essentialization. This research has broader implications for political communication, informing discussions on how language shapes political ideologies and societies. The revealed intertextual links support previous research on the intertextuality and ideological encoding of nationalistic narratives in American political discourse.

THE HASHTAG SYLLABUS AS CLASS ASSIGNMENT: FROM CRITICAL INFORMATION LITERACY TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 murder of 18-year Michael Brown in Missouri, hashtags like #ferguson, #justiceformikebrown, and #handsupdontshoot begin trending on Twitter. At the same time, Marcia Chatelain, Georgetown University Professor of History and American Studies, began crowdsourcing materials for educators trying to address what happened in their classrooms using the hashtag #fergusonsyllabus. What resulted was a list of highly interdisciplinary and multimedia sources including scholarly texts, news stories, songs, poems, films, public addresses, and children’s books. Chatelain’s call spoke both to the present crisis, the murder of a Black teenager by police, and to the historical and cultural context in which this shooting happened. The efforts of Chatelain and the community that came together around this hashtag expanded our understanding of information production and curation and the function of a syllabus beyond the college classroom. In introducing our undergraduate classes to the idea of the hashtag syllabus, we attempt to engage our students in practices of information literacy with the hope of providing them tools to look critically at the inequities that permeate academic and non-academic spaces. Here, we explore the ways in which this format operates in interdisciplinary social science programs and the ways in which it supports unique learning objectives in both introductory and upper-level courses. In doing so, we hope to engage in pedagogical praxis that connects our fields and our students with questions of social justice and to do so in a way that prepares them for meaningful civic engagement.

후쿠시마 처리오염수와 비판지정학

The discharge of Fukushima contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean began in the summer of August 2023. This paper proposes the concept of “treated (but still contaminated) water” from the perspective of critical geopolitics to address the issue of Fukushima contaminated water discharge to the sea. First, it revisits the scientific debates surrounding contaminated water and the process of demarcating contaminated areas in Chernobyl (soil contamination) and Fukushima (marine discharge). Second, it analyzes the Japanese government’s public service announcements and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry(METI)’s public opinion polls and promotion of agricultural and fishery products as a public ascription of biological citizenship. It also examines the conservatization of the media, even those critical of nuclear power, following China’s suspension of imports of Japanese seafood. Third, it analyzes Japanese Consumers’ Co-operative Union and public comment that raised issues of national, regional, community, and procedural democracy in decision-making. Finally, we analyzed the implications of the treated (contaminated) water lawsuit, which raised the issue of violations of the London Convention. Through these analyses, we examined the causes and development of the Fukushima contaminated water problem and the search for alternatives in the medium and long term.

The role of situation in individual style

Abstract The study adopts a cross-register approach to style, examining style with relation to the situation of use. While register tends to be avoided by style research as a confounding variable, this investigation of the styles of four American presidents in memoirs, official letters, and public addresses illustrates that adding a register dimension leads to a more accurate, nuanced analysis. The study identifies linguistic features associated with register vs. style variation in the corpus and analyzes intraspeaker differences across registers with regard to the following functional categories: information density, oral style, situation-dependent discourse, and narration vs. immediacy. The results indicate that even authors with a well-defined individual style consistently adjust their language to the demands of the situation, with the most noticeable differences lying between strictly regimented literate registers and the more oral, less conventionalized ones.

Do reconciliation events serve as a conciliatory signal?

AbstractA set of four vignette studies (total N = 1600) examined whether voluntariness, novelty, vulnerability and irrevocability of reconciliation events serve as conciliatory signals that communicate serious intentions for improved relations. Studies 1 and 2 manipulated the presence of the four factors in the reconciliation event initiated by the political leader of a country in a relatively disadvantageous (Study 1) or advantageous (Study 2) position. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that the presence of substantial concession (‘public announcement of abandonment of disputed region’ in Study 1 and ‘demolition of a military facility in the disputed region’ in Study 2) enhanced signal effectiveness (participants perceived these concessions reflecting the political leader's serious conciliatory intention). Follow‐up studies (Studies 3A and 3B), which manipulated the level of concession (high vs. intermediate vs. low), confirmed the main result: High and intermediate levels of concession enhanced signal effectiveness compared to low concession.