Research in brief What's new and noteworthy in Rutgers research Archived article from Jan 26, 2001   Marketing on the Internet Think a strong corporate Web site is the only effective way to build business over the Internet? Think again. According to two researchers at the School of Business-Camden, Internet forums are an effective mechanism for generating consumer interest in a product or service. Barbara Bickart and Robert Schindler, both associate professors of marketing, studied how consumers acquire product information on the Web. The researchers found that Internet communities do a better job stimulating consumer interest in a product than the official corporate sites. Greater credibility, greater relevance and a greater ability to evoke empathy are all reasons why online discussion forums are more effective than marketer-generated Web sites, said Bickart, who noted that the findings suggest that word-of-mouth -- the oldest sales tool -- remains vital and relevant in the online world of the 21st century. In compiling their data, Schindler and Bickart turned to the experts on Internet business: their students. As part of a weekly class assignment, students were asked to look at either corporate Web pages or consumer forums on assigned product categories, such as nutritional supplements or biking. At the end of the semester, the students completed a questionnaire in which they were asked their interest in a number of product categories, including the assigned product categories. Interest was higher for those assigned to look at forums compared to those who looked at corporate Web pages. "The lesson here for marketers is that there may be real benefits to encouraging consumers to exchange online information and experiences about the company's products," said Schindler. -- Michael Sepanic Doctor and patient The growth of managed care during the past decade has not reduced the amount of time doctors spend with their patients, according to a new Rutgers study, "Are Patient-Physician Visits Getting Shorter?" published in the Jan. 18 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Lead study author David Mechanic, director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, found that between 1989 and 1998, the average duration of visits -- the actual time spent in face-to-face contact between doctor and patient -- increased between one and two minutes. The study debunks a popular misconception that managed care has pressured doctors to sacrifice time with patients in order to increase productivity and maintain profitability. "What makes this finding so dramatic is that it is contrary to what everyone expects, and it is echoed in two independent sources of data gathered in different ways," said Mechanic. "It is clear that the time doctors spend with patients has been going up over the decade, not down, and these findings are true for visits to primary-care doctors and specialists, for treatment of common and serious illness, for new and old patients, and for both prepaid (managed care) and nonprepaid visits." Results are based on two national annual surveys, the National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys of the National Center for Health Statistics and the American Medical Association's Socioeconomic Monitoring Systems, which interview or survey 1,200 to 4,000 doctors across the United States. According to the study, the amount of time doctors spent with patients increased from 15.4 to 17.9 minutes for prepaid visits, and from 16.4 to 18.5 minutes for nonprepaid visits, from 1989 to 1998. Another major finding of the study was an increase of 120 million visits to physicians' offices during the same period, with the number of prepaid visits more than doubling from 102 million in 1989 to 261 million in 1998. The proportion of prepaid versus nonprepaid visits grew from 15.4 percent of all visits in 1989 to 33.1 percent in 1998. The study also revealed a 21 percent growth in the number of office-based physicians during the past decade, with an 18 percent increase in primary care and a 22 percent increase in specialists. There also has been an increase in the number of female physicians from 12.9 percent in 1989 to 20.5 percent in 1998. Interestingly, the study found that female doctors spend about 1.2 minutes longer with patients than their male counterparts. -- Stacey B. Hersh Modeling the brain In a new book, two researchers on the Newark campus demonstrate how selected state-of-the-art computer models are helping scientists better understand brain functions and disorders, including the emerging role of the hippocampus in human learning and memory. The book, "Gateway to Memory: An Introduction to Neural Network Modeling of the Hippocampus and Learning" (MIT Press), is co-authored by Mark Gluck, associate professor of neuroscience, and Catherine Myers, assistant professor of psychology. The book integrates computer models and the latest neurobiological approaches to learning- and memory-based problems. The hippocampus is a brain structure critical to memory creation and retention. Damage to it is believed to be the basis of learning and memory problems found in early Alzheimer's disease, as well as epilepsy and other forms of brain injury that impair memory. The book focuses on how the hippocampus cooperates with other brain structures, how computer models relate to current brain and psychological theories, and how the models predict possible ramifications for specific memory functions and disorders. "This book tells the story of how models are built on prior experimental data and theoretical insights and then evolve toward a more comprehensive and coherent interpretation of a wide body of neurobiological and behavioral data," Gluck said, noting that the book is designed to help neuroscientists and psychologists understand the vocabulary of brain modeling without getting bogged down in details. "Many questions about hippocampal functioning in learning still remain unanswered," he added. "Our hope is that this book may excite a few of its readers to go on to become modelers themselves, or to incorporate computational modeling into their own research programs through collaboration with modelers." Gluck and Myers are co-directors of the Memory Disorders Project, a program that conducts research and outreach on memory loss. The project publishes a free newsletter, Memory Loss & the Brain, also available on the Web at www.memory.rutgers.edu/newsletter. -- Michael Olohan The value of nonprofits The number of nonprofit, charitable organizations has increased in this country to a size 50 times as great as it was in 1940, but is society that much better off thanks to the efforts of such groups? The answer is "no," says Jon Van Til, a Camden professor of urban studies and community planning, in his latest book, "Growing Civil Society: From Nonprofit Sector to Third Space" (Indiana University Press). A fair number of these organizations, Van Til argues, are doing little to serve the public good and could be more accurately described as tax-exempt businesses. For example, he said, most hospitals and nursing homes are acting as businesses, as are many private colleges and universities, and it's unfair that they continue to receive the privileges given to other nonprofit groups. Van Til's book is the result of 12 years of observing the role of nonprofits and voluntary organizations in society. In that time, he's also penned a regular column, titled "On the Boundary," for the Non-Profit Times, a major monthly trade magazine for the nonprofit sector. In his various roles, he has been involved in shaping an interdisciplinary academic field. Now a recognized public intellectual in the area of voluntary action research and third-sector studies, Van Til predicts that the existing nonprofit sector will be replaced by a more positive "third space," where individuals and organizations come together to reflect and act to create the community and society they need. -- Caroline Yount Oceans, bacteria and climate change In a study that adds to our basic understanding of what is happening at the lowest biological levels in the ocean, Zbigniew S. Kolber, research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences (IMCS), has authored an article on bacterial photosynthesis in surface waters of the open ocean. The article appeared in Nature last fall. Kolber's co-authors are C.L. Van Dover of the College of William and Mary; Robert A. Niederman, professor of biochemistry at Rutgers; and Paul G. Falkowski, a professor at IMCS. The team identified, for the first time, biophysical evidence that clearly demonstrates that aerobic bacterial photosynthesis is widespread in the tropical surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean and in temperate coastal waters of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. Aerobic photosynthetic bacteria differ from their evolutionary predecessors, purple photosynthetic bacteria, in that they perform oxygen-based respiration and require oxygen for pigment (bacteriochlorophyll a) synthesis. Prior to this work, aerobic photosynthetic bacteria were found exclusively in nutrient-rich but geographically limited ecological niches, such as beach sands, cyanobacterial mats and hydrothermal vents. The distribution of these organisms in the world's open oceans, however, was not known. Kolber and his co-authors postulate that these organisms account for some 2 percent to 5 percent of the photosynthetic electron transport in the upper ocean. This research contributes to our knowledge of bacterial photosynthetic energy fluxes, with important implications for global carbon cycling that may ultimately improve our understanding of environmental climate change. -- Margaret Sullivan Global warming Humans have significantly altered the global carbon cycle, according to Paul G. Falkowski, lead author of an article on global warming published in Science last October. Falkowski, a professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences (IMCS) with a joint appointment to the geology department, and his co-authors wrote the article under the auspices of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which Falkowski co-chaired with fellow author R.J. Scholes of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa. The IGBP Carbon Working Group, established by the United Nations, met in Stockholm in November 1999 to study the impact of human activities on the rate of change in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). The group examined changes in biogeochemical and climatological processes along with alterations in international carbon and nutrient cycles. Comparing contemporary processes with the 420,000 years prior to the Industrial Revolution, the scientists determined that atmospheric CO2 levels have risen at a rate of some 10 to possibly 100 times faster than at any prior time in the Earth's history. "As we drift further away from the domain that characterized the pre-industrial Earth system, we severely test the limits of our understanding of how the Earth system will respond," write the article's authors. "We appear to be fated to continue the increase in CO2 in the biosphere unless governments come to terms with new technologies. Human beings are ultimately responsible for their own fate," said Falkowski. Yair Rosenthal, assistant research professor at IMCS, was also a member of the IGBP and a co-author of the article. -- Margaret Sullivan Fetal poisoning Male fetuses exposed to large-scale poisoning when their mothers ingested contaminated cooking oil more than 20 years ago in Taiwan have lower sperm quality than normal in young adulthood, according to a research letter published in the medical journal The Lancet. George Lambert, an associate professor with the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI) and the department of pediatrics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, is one of the investigators and the senior author who reported the results. The researchers analyzed semen from subjects and appropriate controls, which included 12 young men who were exposed prenatally to cooking oil accidentally contaminated during production with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) in central Taiwan during 1979. To determine whether in-utero exposure to these chemicals alters reproductive function, the scientists from the National Chung Kung University in Taiwan, EOHSI and the Center for Child and Reproductive Environmental Health obtained sperm samples in 1998. The researchers found that semen volume and sperm concentration were not different between exposed and control men, but the percentage of sperm with normal morphology and the percentage of motile sperm and rapidly motile sperm were all reduced in exposed men. EOHSI is a joint program of Rutgers and UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. -- Steve Manas Stock options When stock options are added to the mix of compensation for full-time workers in a company, the firm and its investors benefit, according to a study believed to be the first to look at the impact stock option plans have on corporate performance. Long granted to top executives but recently added to compensation packages at lower ranks, stock options appear to boost company productivity and shareholder returns, according to the study by researchers at Rutgers' School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) and the New York Institute of Technology. Stock options (the right to purchase a given stock at a set price) are the newest weapon in the war for talent at many organizations. Owning stock in a company, in theory, gives workers a stake in the success or failure of an organization. The plans are widely believed to improve company performance by aligning workers' and investors' interests more closely. But there has been little previous research to support the theory. "This is the fastest-growing form of variable pay in the United States," said James Sesil, co-investigator of the project and an assistant professor of human resource management with SMLR. Other researchers include Joseph Blasi and Doug Kruse, both professors of human resource management at SMLR; and Maya Kroumova, assistant professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Using data from the National Center for Employee Ownership, a private, nonprofit organization, researchers looked at 490 well-established public companies with broad-based stock option plans and compared them to similar companies without the plans. The study found: Companies with broad-based stock option plans were found to have 14.8 percent higher productivity than all public companies and 16.8 percent higher productivity than similar companies in their industry group. Total shareholder returns for companies that offer the plans were not significantly better or worse than their counterparts in industry. The ratio of the market value of assets to the replacement cost of those assets, known as Tobin's q, was higher for companies with broad-based stock options than for other publicly traded companies. The surveyed firms offered higher-than-average compensation packages both prior to and after the introduction of the broad-based stock option plans. The authors caution that much remains to be studied in the area, which to date has attracted little notice from either investors or researchers. "This is a huge phenomenon. I don't think we've scratched the surface yet," said Sesil. -- Pam Orel

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