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The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) goal to end the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic as a public health threat by 2030 emphasises the importance of leaving no one behind. To determine progress towards the elimination goal in Ghana, an in-depth understanding of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care from the perspective of vulnerable populations such as persons living with HIV in incarceration is necessary. This study aims to explore the experiences of incarcerated individuals living with HIV (ILHIV) and on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in selected Ghanaian prisons to help inform policy.

The study adopted a qualitative approach involving in-depth interviews with 16 purposively selected ILHIV on ART from purposively selected prisons. Interviews were conducted between October and December 2022. Thematic analysis was performed using the ATLAS.Ti software.

Three themes were generated from the analysis: waking up to a positive HIV status; living with HIV a day at a time; and being my brother’s keeper: preventing HIV transmission. All participants underwent HIV screening at the various prisons. ILHIV also had access to ART although those on remand had challenges with refills. Stigma perpetuated by incarcerated individuals against those with HIV existed, and experiences of inadequate nutrition among incarcerated individuals on ART were reported. Opportunities to improve the experiences of the ILHIV are required to improve care and reduce morbidity and mortality.

Through first-hand experiences from ILHIV in prisons, this study provides the perception of incarcerated individuals on HIV care in prisons. The insights gained from this study can contribute to the development of targeted interventions and strategies to improve HIV care and support for incarcerated individuals.

The objective of this research is to explore integration and transition activities in large industrial projects. The purpose is to (a) obtain a better understanding of the integration and transition activities between the project front-end (FE) and project initiation phases (PIPs), (b) explore what, how and when these integrations and transitions occur, and (c) explore what the integration and transition activities mean to project practitioners.

A qualitative research design methodology is followed, based on interviews using open-ended questions. An expert panel is used to provide responses to questions pertaining to the integration and transition between the project FE and PIP. The research is focused on managing large projects in the South African electrical engineering industrial projects industry. A literature review combined with empirical analysis reflects the importance of integrating and transitioning in project business.

The findings provide guidance to researchers and practitioners on integration and transition mechanisms, how and when these occur. It highlights the benefits of integration and transition activities. Important lessons for researchers and practitioners are provided together with areas for future research.

This is an interpretative analysis of expert opinion. Expert panel members are experienced at senior decision-making level, and their expertise was accessed based on experience, education and knowledge. This extensive experience is shared in this paper providing insights into their opinions, experiences, success and failures. These inputs together with the literature review provide interesting implications for both a theoretical foundation as well as practical implications for practitioners.

First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

Digital influencers, besides being a personal branding phenomenon, constitute, nowadays, important partners for brands in the digital environment. Despite the benefits for both parties, the brand and the endorser, there is a risk when the individuals or the brand take part in some scandal or questionable activity, which causes a loss of credibility and reputation. The contagious effect of personal or corporate brand crisis with the partners is well reported in the literature. However, there are no studies about such occurrence in the digital environment, considering that the phenomenon of digital influence has some particularities differing from traditional celebrity endorsement. This chapter focuses on the research of the consequences of a change in the credibility of influencers or brands, after the occurrence of a negative situation, and the way in which this change affects the two parties involved, the brand and the influencer. We conducted a netnographic study of the social media pages of three digital influencers and the social media pages of a recognized fast fashion brand recognized in the digital world. We analyzed 1500 social media comments from their audiences and found that influencers suffer from a loss in sympathy and credibility by scandals while crisis communication strategies in corporate brands can prevent such damages. Strategic implications for brand managers and digital influencers managing their endorsements are addressed in the discussion.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how sustainability was operationalized in the Spanish universities through plans and actions that contribute actively to the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

A systematic search and content analysis served to examine information available on websites belonging to the 76 universities listed in the Conference of Rectors of the Spanish Universities (CRUE).

The participation of Spanish universities on initiatives focused on sustainability is very limited, highlighting the negligible role of private institutions in which topics like sustainability and the 2030 Agenda/SDGs were scarcely addressed.

The study outlines the actual extent of the inclusion of sustainability in particular co-curricular actions toward the SDGs in the CRUE. The findings enable to define a long-term sustainability road map for the Spanish university system.

This paper aims to investigate how emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) are integrating and expanding into other emerging market host countries, focusing on Chinese mining companies in Peru.

Adopting a qualitative approach, an in-depth analysis of two Chinese state-owned enterprises’ strategies was conducted, building on stakeholder theory and the business ecosystem perspective.

This study reveals a reliance on high-level political lobbying rather than localized engagement strategies. However, findings point to increasing grassroots resistance among local stakeholders, undermining EMNEs’ bargaining power.

This paper argues for a paradigm shift toward inclusive, cooperative “translocal governance” approaches as empowered communities gain voice. Key contributions include advancing theoretical understanding of changing stakeholder relationships and power configurations in emerging countries, underscoring the rising significance of microlevel sociocultural embeddedness for MNE success and highlighting practical imperatives for EMNEs to embark on rapid localization strategies in Latin America. By elucidating multilayered integration realities in Peru, this interdisciplinary study yields contextualized insights and enriches perspective on the conditions and pathways for EMNEs to build sustainability in Global South emerging market environments.

This study aims to examine adolescents’ social media environment connected to unhealthy food marketing. As social media have become a ubiquitous part of young people’s everyday lives, marketers have also shifted their focus to these channels. Literature on this phenomenon is still scarce and often takes a quite narrow view of the role of marketing in social media. Furthermore, the experiences of the adolescents are seldom considered.

Using a sociocultural approach and netnographic methodology, this study presents findings from a research project conducted in Finland. The data consist of both social media material and focus group interviews with adolescents.

The findings elaborate on unhealthy food marketing to adolescents in social media from two perspectives: sociocultural representations of unhealthy foods in social media marketing and social media influencers connecting with adolescents.

The study broadens and deepens the current understanding of unhealthy food marketing to adolescents taking place in social media. The study introduces a novel perspective to the topic by looking at it as a sociocultural phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prospect of using neurophenomenology to understand, design and test phygital consumer experiences. It aims to clarify interpretivist approaches to consumer neuroscience, wherein theoretical models of individual phenomenology can be combined with modern neuroimaging techniques to detect and interpret the first-person accounts of phygital experiences.

The argument is conceptual in nature, building its position through synthesizing insights from phenomenology, phygital marketing, theoretical neuroscience and other related fields.

Ultimately, the paper presents the argument that interpretivist neuroscience in general, and neurophenomenology specifically, provides a valuable new perspective on phygital marketing experiences. In particular, we argue that the approach to studying first-personal experiences within the phygital domain can be significantly refined by adopting this perspective.

One of the primary goals of this paper is to stimulate a novel approach to interpretivist phygital research, and in doing so, provide a foundation by which the impact of phygital interventions can be empirically tested through neuroscience, and through which future research into this topic can be developed. As such, the success of such an approach is yet untested.

Phygital marketing is distinguished by its focus on the quality of subjective first-personal consumer experiences, but few papers to date have explored how neuroscience can be used as a tool for exploring these inner landscapes. This paper addresses this lacuna by providing a novel perspective on “interpretivist neuroscience” and proposes ways that current neuroscientific models can be used as a practical methodology for addressing these questions.

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the most common type of gynecologic cancer in the world with a high rate of mortality. Due to manifestation of generic symptoms and absence of specific biomarkers, OC is usually diagnosed at a late stage. Machine learning models can be employed to predict driver genes implicated in causative mutations.

In the present study, a comprehensive next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis of whole exome sequences of 47 OC patients was carried out to identify clinically significant mutations. Nine functional features of 708 mutations identified were input into a machine learning classification model by employing the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifier method for prediction of OC driver genes.

The XGBoost classifier model yielded a classification accuracy of 0.946, which was superior to that obtained by other classifiers such as decision tree, Naive Bayes, random forest and support vector machine. Further, an interaction network was generated to identify and establish correlations with cancer-associated pathways and gene ontology data.

The final results revealed 12 putative candidate cancer driver genes, namely LAMA3, LAMC3, COL6A1, COL5A1, COL2A1, UGT1A1, BDNF, ANK1, WNT10A, FZD4, PLEKHG5 and CYP2C9, that may have implications in clinical diagnosis.