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Studies of response to advertising images follow parallel streams: one treats visuals as sensory data; the other, operating under rhetorical theory, presumes that images are communicative artifacts. By revisiting a seminal article by Mitchell and Olson, we empirically demonstrate an alternative explanation for results under the sensory approach, while also establishing the basis for complex statements like tropes. We argue that consumers read product attributes from pictures based on an emergent writing system made possible by recent communication technologies. Our theory is consistent with the historical record of communication technology and with the trajectory of research in fields that study writing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer research on advertising response has gradually separated the act of reading an ad from the acquisition of brand information. Because the advertising text is the pathway through which brand information is accessed, current models truncate the process that leads to response in a way that distorts our view of both advertising and the mind that reads it. This author proposes that reader-response theory would help researchers study the process of reading as an essential link between advertising text and consumer response. Reader-response theory is a movement within literary criticism that emphasizes the study of reading over formal textual analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, past consumer research dealing with advertising images is analyzed and critiqued for its underlying assumption: that pictures are reflections of reality. The case against this assumption is presented, and an alternative view, in which visuals are a convention-based symbolic system, is formulated. In this alternative view, pictures must be cognitively processed, rather than absorbed peripherally or automatically. The author argues that current conceptualizations of advertising images are incommensurate with what ads are really like, and that many images currently dismissed as affect laden or information devoid are, in fact, complex figurative arguments. A new theoretical framework for the study of images is advanced in which advertising images are a sophisticated form of visual rhetoric. The process of consumer response implied by the new framework differs radically from past concepts in many ways, but also suggests new ways to approach questions currently open in the literature on the nature and processing of imagery. A pluralistic program for studying advertising pictures as persuasion is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of music in advertising have tended to characterized music as an nonsemantic, affective stimulus working independently of meaning or context. This implicit theory is reflected in methodology and procedures that separate music from its syntax verbal and visual elements. Consequently, the consumer's ability to judge and interpret music as part of an overall rhetorical intention is overlooked. This article proposes an alternative theory--that music is meaningful, language-like--and calls for both interpretive and empirical research as ways of exploring a richer, potentially more explanatory concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of next-generation sequencing technologies to interrogate the genome of human hematologic malignancies is providing promising insights into their molecular etiology and into the pathogenesis of seemingly unrelated malignancies. Among the somatic mutations identified by this approach are ones that target components of the spliceosome, a ribonucleoprotein complex responsible for the posttranscriptional processing of primary transcripts to form mature messenger RNA species. These mutations were initially detected in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia or a myelodysplastic syndrome, but can also occur at relatively high frequency in some solid tumors, including uveal malignant melanoma, adenocarcinoma of the lung, and estrogen receptor–positive breast cancers. Their presence in a variety of malignancies suggests that the spliceosomal mutations may play a fundamental role in defining the malignant phenotype. The development and testing of drugs that eliminate cells bearing a spliceosomal mutation, or normalize their altered transcript splicing patterns, are therefore a priority. Here, we summarize the effects of spliceosome-associated mutations on transcript processing in vitro and in vivo, and their impact on disease initiation and/or progression and patient outcome. Moreover, we discuss the therapeutic potential of compounds already known to target splicing factor 3B subunit 1 (SF3B1), an essential component of the spliceosome that is frequently mutated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The epidemiology of B virus infection in a large (n = 157) cohort of rhesus macaques at the California Regional Primate Research Center was evaluated prospectively from September 1989 through January 1991 by serial physical examinations, a behavioral substudy (n = 51), and repeated diagnostic testing. Half were B virus antibody-positive at baseline; subsequently, incident cases of infection were documented through serology alone (42) or with virus isolation (5). Eight recurrent infections and a single symptomatic (primary) case were observed. Risk of Bvirus infection increased as monkeys aged, with few >3 years old remaining uninfected. Postpubertal monkeys and those entering sexual adolescence (2–3 years) were at greatest risk, although wounding by cagemates and breeding history (for females) were both significant predictors of time to infection. B virus was isolated from oral or conjunctival and genital tissues in equal proportions. Transmission occurred only during the breeding season, possibly coinciding with an elevation in social stressors in the population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]