Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE CONTRIBUTION OF PARTNER INVESTMENTS TO ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP COMMITMENT

THE CONTRIBUTION OF PARTNER INVESTMENTS TO ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP COMMITMENT Anthony Coy, M.S., B.S. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2013 Directors: Dr. Jody L. Davis and Dr. Jeffrey D. Green Associate Professors of Psychology Interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978), one of the most widely used theories in the literature on interpersonal relationships, posits that both partners in a romantic relationships play integral roles in maintaining their relationship. Based in interdependence theory, research on the investment model of commitment (Rusbult, 1980) has revealed that individuals’ greater satisfaction and investments and lower alternatives predict greater commitment to their relationships, and commitment in turn promotes a variety of relationship-maintenance behaviors. However, no past research had examined the role of partners. Across three studies, I examined the notion that partner investments would predict individuals’ commitment above and beyond their own satisfaction, investments, and alternatives. Study 1 found that higher levels of partner investments predicted higher levels of commitment within ongoing marriages. Study 2 provided experimental support by manipulating the degree to which individuals thought their romantic partners would sacrifice for their relationship. Specifically, participants told their partners would sacrifice a great deal reported higher levels of commitment than did those told their partner would sacrifice very little. Further, the perception of partner investments mediated the relationship between the partner investments prime and commitment. Study 3 was a couples study designed to examine both actual and perceived partner investments. Despite failing to provide additional support, the findings can inform designs for future dyadic research. Studies 1 and 2 provided the first evidence of partner effects in the investment model and advance the understanding of relationship functioning by demonstrating how both partners can work to strengthen each others’ commitment.
AKARI's infrared view on nearby stars : Using AKARI Infrared Camera All-Sky Survey, 2MASS, and Hipparcos catalog

Results: We found that the (B-V) v.s. (V-S9W) color-color diagram is useful to identify the stars with infrared excess emerged from circumstellar envelopes/disks. Be stars with infrared excess are well separated from other types of stars in this diagram. Whereas (J-L18W) v.s. (S9W-L18W) diagram is a powerful tool to classify several object-types. Carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and OH/IR stars form distinct sequences in this color-color diagram. Young stellar objects (YSOs), pre-main sequence (PMS) stars, post-AGB stars and planetary nebulae (PNe) have largest mid-infrared color-excess, and can be identified in infrared catalog. Finally, we plot L18W v.s. (S9W-L18W) color-magnitude diagram, using the AKARI data together with Hipparcos parallaxes. This diagram can be used to identify low-mass YSOs, as well as AGB stars. We found that this diagram is comparable to the [24] vs ([8.0]-[24]) diagram of Large Magellanic Cloud sources using the Spitzer Space Telescope data. Our understanding of Galactic objects will be used to interpret color-magnitude diagram of stellar populations in nearby galaxies which Spitzer Space Telescope has observed. Conclusions: Our study of the AKARI color-color and color-magnitude will be used to explore properties of unknown objects in future. In addition, our analysis highlights a future key project to understand stellar evolution with circumstellar envelope, once the forthcoming astronometrical data with GAIA are available.
Analytical Controlled Losses of Potassium from Straw Ashes

Accurate knowledge of the concentrations of potassium and other elements is critical for evaluating the effects of straw and other high-fouling biomass fuels in combustion boilers and other thermal systems. Development of accurate and precise analytical procedures is therefore essential for utilization of biomass fuels in energy production and high-temperature applications. By comparing the results of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyses with similar analyses done using instrumental neutron activation (INA), it is observed that 20−25% of the original K2O content of straw ashes and slag can be lost during sample preparation for analyses. The loss occurs during heating of the ashes to determine loss on ignition probably as a result of the breakdown of sylvite (KCl). This loss can be significantly reduced, but not completely eliminated, if the analyses are performed on ashes that have not previously been heat-treated. The study poses the cautionary note that similar losses may occur during XRF analyses of other.
Determining material suitability for Low-Rise housing in the Philippines: Physical and mechanical properties of the bamboo species Bambusa blumeana

The use of cellulosic materials in the construction of low-rise housing in tropical climates has great potential. Bambusa blumeana (B. blumeana, J.A. and J.H. Schultes), the most abundantly available bamboo species in the Philippines, is a promising alternative material for the construction of cost-efficient buildings. However, to comply with municipal rules and regulations for construction, a comprehensive understanding of the organic raw material is needed to permit its application as a load-bearing structural member. In this study, the physical and mechanical properties of B. blumeana bamboo from a typical growth region of the Philippines were tested according to ISO 22157-1 (2004) and ISO 22157-2 (2004). The characteristic strength values of B. blumeana were as follows: compressive and tensile strengths parallel to the grain of 20 and 95 MPa, respectively; shear strength of 5 MPa, bending strength of 34.6 MPa, and the mean and fifth percentile modulus of elasticity of 13100 and 8600 MPa, respectively. Based on these results, a recommendation for permissible stresses for structural design was made in line with ISO 22156 (2004).
Synchronous motion in the Kinoshita problem - Application to satellites and binary asteroids

A Lie-Poisson integrator with Wisdom-Holman type splitting is constructed for the problem of a rigid body and a sphere (the Kinoshita problem). The algorithm propagates not only the position, momentum and angular momentum vector of the system, but also the tangent vector of "infinitesimal displacements". The latter allow to evaluate the maximum Lyapunov exponent or the MEGNO indicator of Cincotta and Simo. Three exemplary cases are studied: the motion of Hyperion, a fictitious binary asteroid with Hyperion as one of the components, and the binary asteroid 90 Antiope. In all cases the attitude instability of the rotation state with spin vector normal to an equatorial orbit influences stability of the system at lower rotation rates. The MEGNO maps with variations restricted to the orbital plane for position and momentum, and to the orbit normal direction for the angular momentum resemble usual Poincare sections. But if no restriction is imposed on the variations, some stable zones turn into highly chaotic regions, often retaining the shape of their boundaries.
IS JANANI SURAKSHA YOJANA'S (JSY) AWARENESS A REFLECTION OF HEALTHY PREGNANCY OUTCOME? DIFFERENCES IN RURAL AREAS AND URBAN SLUMS

Context: Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), launched on 12 th April,2005 under the umbrella of NRHM has shown it’s impact in terms of increase in number of institutional deliveries and decrease in maternal and neonatal mortality rates but still the awareness about the scheme is low in women from rural areas and urban slums, especially in low performing states. Aims:To assess the differences in awareness of married women from rural areas and urban slums regarding JSY and to study the effect of socio-demographic factors on the level of awareness. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional study was carried out in the rural areas and urban slums of field practice areas of Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences, Dehradun, for a period of one year. Methods and Material: all the married women (15-49 years) of reproductive age group were included in the study. After taking informed consent from the head of the families and targets, the study subjects were interviewed by a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire. Statistical analysis used: SPSS 10 and Epi Info software (with Yate’s correction). Results: Awareness was more among women belonging to rural areas i.e 79%. Age, educational status, occupation, socio-economic status and place of residence showed a significant statistical association with the level of awareness. Conclusions: There is an urgent need to strengthen IEC campaigns and monitoring strategies.
Factors affecting audit fees in Europe: France, Germany, and the UK

We examine a sample of 300 publicly listed companies in three European countries (France, Germany and the UK) during the period 2003-2008 to investigate the relations between audit fees and several auditor and company attributes. These include quantitative and qualitative variables. The presence of Big Four and non Big Four firms in charge of the audit of a company’s financial statements is also considered. The overall evidence indicates that the presence of the Big Four, clients’ specific characteristics in terms of industry, size and complexity of operations have inevitably a significant impact on audit fees. However, the contrasting results we observe in our cross-country analysis lead to the conclusion that the environmental factors specific to each country, such as the size of professional accounting body and audit market as well as the regulations in place in the area of auditing, may play an important role in this type of research.
Using HIV Risk Prediction Tools to Identify Candidates for Pre-exposure Prophylaxis: Perspectives from Patients and Primary Care Providers.

Clinical guidelines for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) include risk prediction tools to identify appropriate candidates. We conducted a qualitative interview study to explore the potential acceptability, interpretation, and anticipated impact of such tools from the perspectives of men who have sex with men (MSM) and primary care providers (PCPs). Our purposive sample of English-speaking participants included: (1) MSM reporting HIV risk behaviors (n = 32; median age = 38 years; 53% non-Hispanic white; 22% high school degree or less education); (2) PCPs specializing in health care for MSM (n = 12); and (3) PCPs in general practice (n = 19). MSM participants questioned the ability of risk tools to predict HIV acquisition, and their perceptions of what might constitute a high HIV risk score varied widely. Many MSM participants believed that receiving a high score would prompt them to consider PrEP or other risk reduction strategies. Some believed that the data would be useful, particularly if discussed with their providers, whereas others anticipated feeling fear, anxiety, or mistrust. PCPs expressed more confidence in HIV risk prediction and imagined integrating tools with medical histories and their clinical judgment to assess risk. PCPs were most enthusiastic about adopting HIV risk prediction as a teaching tool to help patients visualize and reduce risk, their concerns about time constraints notwithstanding. In conclusion, our findings suggest that PCPs' views of HIV risk prediction tools are generally positive, whereas MSM participants' are more mixed. Given that both groups emphasized the value of contextualizing risk, shared decision making may be needed to implement HIV risk prediction tools effectively.
On the role of the North Equatorial Counter Current during a strong El Niño

Abstract. An analysis of archived data from the NEMO 1∕12th degree global ocean model shows the importance of the North Equatorial Counter Current (NECC) in the development of the strong 1982–1983 and 1997–1998 El Niños. The model results indicate that in a normal year the core of warm water in the NECC is diluted by the surface Ekman transport, by geostrophic inflow and by tropical instability waves. During the development of the 1982–1983 and 1997–1998 El Niños, these processes had reduced effect at the longitudes of warmest equatorial temperatures and to the west. During the autumns of 1982 and 1997, the speed of the NECC was also increased by a stronger-than-normal annual Rossby wave. The increased transport of warm water by the NECC due to these changes resulted in warm water reaching the far eastern Pacific and appears to have been a major factor in moving the centre of deep atmospheric convection eastwards across the Pacific.
Quality Cost and Its Relationship to Revenue Sharing in Supply Chain

Quality cost is one of the best ways to determine clearly the costs and returns of quality improvement efforts. This paper discusses the impact of the quality cost on revenue sharing as a most important incentive to configure business networks. This paper develops the quality cost approach to measure quality costs which might enable firms to manage revenue sharing in a supply chain. The developed model includes five categories; besides the well-known four categories (namely prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and external failure costs), a new category has been developed in this study as a new vision of the relationship between quality costs and innovations in industry. This new category is herein after referred to Recycle Cost. This research also examines whether such quality costs in supply chains influence the revenue sharing between partners. Using the author's quality cost model, the relationship between quality costs and revenue sharing among partners is examined using a case study in a company which is a part of a supply chain. This paper argues that the revenue-sharing proportion allocated to supplier increases as the recycle cost of supplier increases, and the revenue-sharing proportion allocated to manufacturer increases as the prevention and appraisal costs increase. The revenue-sharing proportion allocated to manufacturer increases as the failure costs, the recycle costs of manufacturer, and the recycle costs of suppliers decrease. However, the results present surprising findings. The present study contributes to theory and practice by explaining how the cost of recycling can be combined in quality cost model to better understanding the revenue sharing among partners in supply chains.
Consumers’ Subjective and Objective Knowledge Levels About Genetically Modified Foods: Case Study of Hatay City

The relationship between an individual’s actual knowledge and their self assessed knowledge about an issue is an important factor on consumer’s behaviour. The effect of the knowledge factor on consumer decision making is evaluated by two approaches which are objective (real knowledge) and subjective (self assessed) knowledge. In certain studies it was found that in some situations consumers believe they know more than they actually do about a topic; and they may make their decisions based upon the knowledge they assume is correct, whether it is true or not. This study aimed at determining the relationship between the objective and subjective knowledge about GM foods of consumers who live in the Hatay city centre. According to the research results; even though around 70% of the consumers thought that their knowledge about GM foods were ‘’enough, or relatively enough’’, correct response ratios of the four questions that were based on specific knowledge were quite low. In other words, consumers were overconfident about their knowledge of GM foods. Also, there was no correlation found between consumer’s purchase intention and knowledge level.
Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography # 16 . 09 Not too close , not too far : testing the Goldilocks principle of ‘ optimal ’ distance in innovation networks

This paper analyses how the formation of collaboration networks affects firm-level innovation by applying the ‘Goldilocks principle’. The ‘Goldilocks principle’ of optimal distance in innovation networks postulates that the best firm-level innovation results are achieved when the partners involved in the network are located at the ‘right’ distance, i.e. ‘not too close and not too far’ from one another, across non-geographical proximity dimensions. This principle is tested on a survey of 542 Norwegian firms conducted in 2013, containing information about firm-level innovation activities and key innovation partners. The results of the ordinal logit regression analysis substantiate the Goldilocks principle, as the most innovative firms are found amongst those that collaborate with partners at medium levels of proximity for all non-geographical dimensions. The analysis also underscores the importance of the presence of a substitution-innovation mechanism, with geographical distance problems being compensated by proximity in other dimensions as a driver of innovation, whilst there is no support for a potential overlap-innovation mechanism.
Language as a Power Positioning Tool: National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) English Course Materials as Genderised Examples.

Language is a means of identity formation, definition and construction. This study investigates the language of NOUN course materials for gender neutrality. The English course materials randomly selected across subject areas in the English programme are used as data source. The theoretical base of corpus linguistics within the frame work of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used to investigate the phenomenon of gender based choices of NOUN course writers to the end of determining their unconscious political stance in the gender politics. Frequency count of the occurrences of the gender pronouns ‘he, she and they’ are analysed in twenty-three course materials. Line graph and pie charts are constructed based on the collected data. It was found that the gender pronoun ‘she’ is subsumed to the gender pronoun ‘he’ in terms of frequency of usage. Even where it appears that attempts have been made to employ gender sensitivity through a wide usage of the gender neutral ‘they’, it is found that many of the writers that seem to do this are also those that used the male pronoun the most, thus leaving a state of identity indeterminateness in terms of power positioning. It is recommended that NOUN needs to enforce the actualisation of its policy statement on the issue in order to undermine the hegemonic tendencies through determined inclusiveness.
Thermal biology, activity, and population parameters of Cnemidophorus vacariensis (Squamata, Teiidae), a lizard endemic to southern Brazil

We investigated the following aspects of the biology of a population of Cnemidophorus vacariensis Feltrim & Lema, 2000 during the four seasons: thermal biology, relationship with the thermal environment, daily and seasonal activity, population structure and growth rate. Cnemidophorus vacariensis is restricted to rocky outcrops of the "campos de cima da serra" grasslands on the Araucaria Plateau, southern Brazil, and is currently listed as regionally and nationally threatened with extinction. Data were collected from October 2004 through September 2007 in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Sampling was conducted randomly from 08:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The capture-mark-recapture method was employed. The lizards were captured by hand, and their cloacal temperature, sex, snout-ventral length (SVL), mass, and the temperature of their microhabitat (substrate temperature and air temperature) were recorded. Individuals were then marked by toe-clipping and released at the site of capture. Body temperatures were obtained for 175 individuals, activity data for 96 individuals, and data on population structure and growth for 59 individuals. All data were obtained monthly, at different times of the day. Cnemidophorus vacariensis average body temperature was 23.84oC, ranging between 9.6 and 38.2oC. Temperatures ranged between 21 and 29oC. The correlation between external heat sources, substrate and air were positive and significant and there was a greater correlation between lizard's temperature and the temperature of the substrate (tigmothermic species). The relatively low body temperatures of individuals are associated with the climate of their environment (altitude up to 1,400 m), with large variations in temperature throughout the day and the year, and low temperatures in winter. The average body temperature observed for C. vacariensis was low when compared with that of phylogenetically related species, suggesting that the thermal biology of this species reflects adaptations to the temperate region where it lives. The monthly rates of activity of lizards were related to monthly variations in the ambient temperatures. Our data suggest that the daily and seasonal activity of C. vacariensis result from the interaction between two factors: changes in the environment temperature and the relationship between individuals and their thermal environment. The population structure of C. vacariensis varied throughout the study period, with maximum biomass in January and maximum density in February (recruitment period). The sex ratio diverged from the expected 1:1. The growth analysis showed a negative relationship between the growth rate of individuals and the SVL, revealing that young individuals grow faster than adults, a typical pattern for short-lived species. The population studied showed a seasonal and cyclical variation associated with the reproductive cycle. The life strategy of C. vacariensis seems to include adaptations to the seasonal variations in temperature, typical of its environment.
Planning Time, Strategy Use, and Written Task Production in a Pedagogic vs. a Testing Context

As there has been little attempt to delve into performance differentials occasioned as a function of planning time in pedagogic versus testing contexts, the present study, taking up a mixed methods approach, addressed the effects of pre-task planning on the written output of intermediate EFL learners under four conditions: 1) no planning in a pedagogic context, 2) pre-task planning in a pedagogic context, 3) no planning in a testing context, and 4) pre-task planning in a testing context. Results showed that provision of pre-task planning time fostered accuracy, syntactic complexity, and fluency in the pedagogic context. In the testing context, also, more accurate, syntactically complex, and fluent output was generated by planners compared to no-planners. Finally, the data gleaned through the interviews showed that metacognitive and cognitive strategies were the most used strategies and that no significant difference existed between planners in the two contexts in terms of strategy use.
FLORA OF NATURAL PASTURES IN THE BOCAR AREA (BANAT, SERBIA) AS A BIOINDICATOR OF HABITAT ECOLOGICAL CONDITIONS

LJEVNAIC-MASIC, B. , A. KNEZEVIC, D. DZIGURSKI and V. CIRIC, 2014. Flora of natural pastures in the Bocar area (Banat, Serbia) as a bioindicator of habitat ecological conditions. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 20: 795-806