Most corals worldwide are broadcast spawners that rely on synchronous gamete release for successful fertilization. Spawning synchrony may also decrease the probability of heterospecific fertilization that may produce maladaptive hybrids. Despite the importance of reproductive timing, researchers have only recently begun to collect spawning data across coral species in the Caribbean, but these data remain to be analyzed. This study investigates interannual, seasonal, and environmental patterns that may influence Caribbean scleractinian spawning times. The number of spawning observations varies widely among location and species. Most spawning observations were collected in Florida, Curaçao, and Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Acropora palmata, A. cervicornis, and Orbicella species were the most documented. The Orbicella spp. were very consistent for spawning day annually, while the acroporids were less reliable. However, the acroporids were more consistent for spawning time in minutes after sunset between years. Season and moon cycles were obvious proximate cues for spawning, but a strong influence from wind and tides was absent. Acropora cervicornis was the only species in this study which spawning was significantly affected by water temperature. For some scleractinians, the day of spawning was significantly affected by mass bleaching events; spawning could occur on earlier days than in previous years for up to two years after the event. This study highlights existing data gaps for Pseudodiploria clivosa, A. prolifera and Siderastrea siderea. Documenting spawning patterns is crucial to better understand the potential impacts of future threats on the already imperiled Caribbean corals at risk from reproductive failure.

The first step in this process is to define what is implied by the term "Uses and Gratifications" and to elaborate on current perspectives of the uses and gratifications paradigm in order to understand the need for the present research. As the second step in this process. a discussion of the variable of audience personality will be explored in order to describe why some of the people exhibit different preferences for different television program content. The end result of this discussion on personality and program preference will be a contribution to the body or heuristic knowledge surrounding the reasons for specific television behaviors by the audience.

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This thesis investigates the relationship between educational television content and children‘s play behaviors immediately after viewing. Children ages 41-43 months of age were randomly assigned to view a television program with predominantly object-constructive or social dramatic content. All children participated in a period of video viewing, approximately 25 minutes in length, followed by a 30-minute play session. Each participant was subsequently administered a brief card sorting task to assess categorical knowledge of constructive and social activities. Each child‘s session was coded for looking at the television, toy choice, and play content (constructive or social-narrative). Video viewing condition and the interaction between categorical knowledge and condition significantly predicted children‘s subsequent play content. Taken as a whole, these findings imply that short-term priming effects of educational video viewing on children‘s play are present in 42-month old children but that these effects are moderated by children‘s categorical understanding of TV content.

Researchers conducted a content analysis to measure framing of the public relations industry in 354 English language broadcast transcripts from the United States, Canada, and Australia from Sept. 1, 2009 to Aug. 31, 2010. The overall tone toward public relations was strongly negative. Mentions reflected one-way forms of communication and mentions of the pejorative term "PR" appeared more frequently than mentions of "public relations". The profession was almost always mentioned within the body of the broadcast, as opposed to the headline or the lead paragraph. Exploratory research showed 15 shows that included negative mentions 100% of the time. Additionally, 27 shows included zero positive mentions of either term. Of 251 speakers recorded during data analysis, 126 spoke of the industry negatively 100% of the time. American shows were most often negative. Stories about the public relations industry were most likely to reflect public relations as a two-way form of communication.

Recent studies have shown that a number of researchers have turned to the concept of the interpretive community to explain how audiences interpret the media within the context of their everyday experiences (Biocca, 1989; Gunter, 1989; Lindlof, 1989, 1992; Radway, 1984; Schrøder, 1994). D. A. Stout (1993) conducted a study that discovered three interpretive communities among LDS women who watch television, establishing that interpretive communities do exist among religious media audiences.In 1994, K. Schrøder showed that the interpretive community can be further understood by taking a "social semiotic" approach to analyzing interpretive community members' social interaction with other communities. This study explored the nature of the interpretive community by using qualitative methodology and a social semiotic approach to analyze the social interaction patterns of Stout's (1993) interpretive communities of LDS women who watch television.

In a society greatly influenced by the electronic media, research indicates there is a need to effectively communicate religious programming to broadcast audiences. The establishment of guides lines between the programs' audiences, the producers' objectives, and the methods of presentation used to accomplish the objectives could better insure program effectiveness.

Video-On-Demand (VOD) has appeared as an important technology for many multimedia applications such as news on demand, digital libraries, home entertainment, and distance learning. In its simplest form, delivery of a video stream requires a dedicated channel for each video session. This scheme is very expensive and non-scalable. To preserve server bandwidth, many users can share a channel using multicast. Two types of multicast have been considered. In a non-periodic multicast setting, users make video requests to the server; and it serves them according to some scheduling policy. In a periodic broadcast environment, the server does not wait for service requests. It broadcasts a video cyclically, e.g., a new stream of the same video is started every t seconds. Although, this type of approach does not guarantee true VOD, the worst service latency experienced by any client is less than t seconds. A distinct advantage of this approach is that it can serve a very large community of users using minimal server bandwidth. In VOD System it is desirable to provide the user with the video-cassette-recorder-like (VCR) capabilities such as fast-forwarding a video or jumping to a specific frame. This issue in the broadcast framework is addressed, where each video and its interactive version are broadcast repeatedly on the network. Existing techniques rely on data prefetching as the mechanism to provide this functionality. This approach provides limited usability since the prefetching rate cannot keep up with typical fast-forward speeds. In the same environment, end users might have access to different bandwidth capabilities at different times. Current periodic broadcast schemes, do not take advantage of high-bandwidth capabilities, nor do they adapt to the low-bandwidth limitation of the receivers. A heterogeneous technique is presented that can adapt to a range of receiving bandwidth capability. Given a server bandwidth and a range of different client bandwidths, users employing the proposed technique will choose either to use their full reception bandwidth capability and therefore accessing the video at a very short time, or using part or enough reception bandwidth at the expense of a longer access latency.

Recruitment, the addition of new individuals to a population, must be understood to make predictions about population growth of marine invertebrates. Red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) represent a former important commercial fishery in California, and until recently, supported a major recreational fishery. However, there have been statewide declines since the 1960s due to overfishing, disease, and climatic factors. Thus, understanding population dynamics to inform management and population restoration is critical. Recruitment dynamics of red abalone are poorly understood, with no prior knowledge of seasonal trends. To address this knowledge gap, I assessed monthly (July 2016-June 2017) and annual (2012-2016) settlement rates of red abalone in the Monterey Bay, which has low density abalone populations due to sea otter predation. I evaluated associations between abalone recruitment and oceanographic factors (temperature, wave forces, and upwelling index) and food availability (kelp density) to understand potential predictors of recruitment. Abalone recruitment occurred year round, with generally higher recruitment in late summer to early fall (July-October) and peaks in August and October. This is the first demonstration of year-round abalone recruitment in the field. On a monthly basis, there were no statistically significant relationships between recruitment and oceanographic factors or food availability. Annual abalone recruitment was consistent in all years, with the exception of 2015 when recruitment majorly decreased during the second year of the North Pacific marine heatwave (i.e., warm blob and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events). The failure of recruitment during only the second year of warm temperature suggests that prolonged extreme temperatures lead to reproductive failure. The consistent annual recruitment in the Monterey Bay contrasts with sporadic recruitment observed in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties in northern California. This finding was unexpected because red abalone in northern California were twice as dense as those in Monterey Bay at the time of the study. Possible hypotheses behind the observed consistent recruitment in Monterey Bay despite low densities include that: sheltered embayments retain larvae and promote recruitment, predation by sea otters aggregates abalone in crevices and promotes fertilization success, and the perennially present Macrocystis pyrifera kelp forests better support abalone growth and fecundity than northern California forests dominated by annual Nereocystis leutkeana.

This study examines how professional storytellers negotiated a new storytelling stage—the videoconference platform—as they pivoted their careers during mandated shutdowns due to COVID-19. An examination of the literature reveals extremely limited research involving either professional storytellers or live virtual storytelling. After interviewing five professional storytellers, I analyzed their stories through narrative inquiry. Analysis revealed that the storytellers negotiated the limitations and affordances of Zoom and adapted their storytelling to successfully connect with their audiences. Through crafting a narrative of their stories, I was able to represent their emotions, unique experiences, and abilities to adapt to the online environment. Their stories document significant changes in the art of storytelling during a historic era. This research reveals how storytellers can master the techniques of online storytelling and effectively tell stories to synchronous virtual audiences.