Chapter 1 introduces the notions of multisensory integration (the binding of information coming from different modalities into a unitary percept) and multisensory response enhancement (the improvement of the response to multisensory stimuli, relative to the response to the most efficient unisensory stimulus), as well as the general goal of the present thesis, which is to investigate different aspects of the multisensory integration of auditory and visual stimuli in manual and saccadic responses. The subsequent chapters report experimental evidence of different factors affecting the multisensory response: spatial discrepancy, stimulus salience, congruency between cross-modal attributes, and the inhibitory influence of concurring distractors. Chapter 2 reports three experiments on the role of the superior colliculus (SC) in multisensory integration. In order to achieve this, the absence of S-cone input to the SC has been exploited, following the method introduced by Sumner, Adamjee, and Mollon (2002). I found evidence that the spatial rule of multisensory integration (Meredith & Stein, 1983) applies only to SC-effective (luminance-channel) stimuli, and does not apply to SC-ineffective (S-cone) stimuli. The same results were obtained with an alternative method for the creation of S-cone stimuli: the tritanopic technique (Cavanagh, MacLeod, & Anstis, 1987; Stiles, 1959; Wald, 1966). In both cases significant multisensory response enhancements were obtained using a focused attention paradigm, in which the participants had to focus their attention on the visual modality and to inhibit responses to auditory stimuli. Chapter 3 reports two experiments showing the influence of shape congruency between auditory and visual stimuli on multisensory integration; i.e. the correspondence between structural aspects of visual and auditory stimuli (e.g., spiky shape and “spiky” sounds). Detection of audio-visual events was faster for congruent than incongruent pairs, and this congruency effect occurred also in a focused attention task, where participants were required to respond only to visual targets and could ignore irrelevant auditory stimuli. This particular type of cross-modal congruency was been evaluated in relation to the inverse effectiveness rule of multisensory integration (Meredith & Stein, 1983). In Chapter 4, the locus of the cross-modal shape congruency was evaluated applying the race model analysis (Miller, 1982). The results showed that the violation of the model is stronger for some congruent pairings in comparison to incongruent pairings. Evidence of multisensory depression was found for some pairs of incongruent stimuli. These data imply a perceptual locus for the cross-modal shape congruency effect. Moreover, it is evident that multisensoriality does not always induce an enhancement, and in some cases, when the attributes of the stimuli are particularly incompatible, a unisensory response may be more effective that the multisensory one. Chapter 5 reports experiments centred on saccadic generation mechanisms. Specifically, the multisensoriality of the saccadic inhibition (SI; Reingold&Stampe, 2002) phenomenon is investigated. Saccadic inhibition refers to a characteristic inhibitory dip in saccadic frequency beginning 60-70 ms after onset of a distractor. The very short latency of SI suggests that the distractor interferes directly with subcortical target selection processes in the SC. The impact of multisensory stimulation on SI was studied in four experiments. In Experiments 7 and 8, a visual target was presented with a concurrent audio, visual or audio-visual distractor. Multisensory audio-visual distractors induced stronger SI than did unisensory distractors, but there was no evidence of multisensory integration (as assessed by a race model analysis). In Experiments 9 and 10, visual, auditory or audio-visual targets were accompanied by a visual distractor. When there was no distractor, multisensory integration was observed for multisensory targets. However, this multisensory integration effect disappeared in the presence of a visual distractor. As a general conclusion, the results from Chapter 5 results indicate that multisensory integration occurs for target stimuli, but not for distracting stimuli, and that the process of audio-visual integration is itself sensitive to disruption by distractors.

Customer retention has been shown by academic researchers to be more profitable than customer acquisition. However, its implementation in the business environment has not been so successful. One of the reasons for this is that customer retention can be achieved in several ways (i.e. loyalty programs, affinity cards and switching costs) and that the translation from the concept of “retaining customers” to the actions and strategies to retain them is not always easy. One of the most attractive strategies to ensure that customers remain within the organisation is through cross-selling and up-selling. In short, the objective is to increase the number (or the value) of the products that a customer buys from a company to make it more difficult for him/her to leave. Whilst academic research has deeply investigated the concepts of loyalty, retention programs and trust, amongst others, cross-selling has not received the same level of attention. Moreover, existing research on cross-selling has been focused on products rather than on services. Finally, this research has mostly been conceptual in nature, with limited attempts to model or design practical cross-selling and up-selling strategies. In order for crossselling and up-selling to be effective retention strategies, they need to be tailored to the needs of the customer. The offer must be adequate in terms of the target (who is going to buy the product), the content (what is going to be purchased) and a time (when is the right moment to offer the new product). This thesis investigates customer retention and cross-selling and up-selling from a practical point of view in the financial services industry. Firstly, it assesses the importance of the concepts of customer retention and cross-selling and up-selling through several interviews conducted with financial services providers (insurance companies, building societies and independent financial industry bodies). Having established the relevance of these concepts in the industry, the next step developed and applied a framework to design cross-selling and up-selling strategies. This framework, named the “Who-What-When” framework, was applied to the transactional and customer data bases of two financial services providers (a Spanish insurance company and a UK building society). The “Who-What-When” method ii begins by segmenting the customer base in order to understand the characteristics and potential of each customer. It then, moves to modelling purchase propensity models, understanding the relationships between products in order to determine what product should be offered to each segment, according to their characteristics and their consumption history. Finally, it analyses the time sequence of the purchases in order to determine the right time (when the purchase is more likely to occur) to approach each customer, bearing in mind how they behave and the maturity of the products already held. The contribution of this thesis is twofold. From an academic point of view, the research demonstrates the importance of customer retention and cross-selling in the financial services industry, being both recognised as key strategic and tactical approaches for the future of the industry. Secondly, from a practical point of view, it contributes by developing an analytical framework to discover and design crossselling and up-selling strategies, aimed at retaining customers. This is achieved through the ‘Who-What-When’ framework which takes into account customer characteristics, consumption patterns and acquisition sequence to model cross-selling activities. Therefore, it refutes the traditional approach that ‘one size fits all’, advocating tailored strategies. Finally, this research highlights, from the empirical analysis, how repurchase decision is highly influenced by the length of the relationship with the provider and the type of products already purchased. Understanding these factors is key to successfully retaining customers via crossselling.

No description available.

The 1990s saw a growing awareness of the relationship between aid and conflict, which included a better understanding of the potential impact of aid in terms of ameliorating or exacerbating conflict. Recognizing that aid, at a minimum, should 'do no harm', the challenge now exists for humanitarian aid organizations to apply and mainstream this understanding. This thesis presents a case study of the implementation phase of such a Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) methodology, the Better Programming Initiative (BPI), as applied by the Honduran Red Cross in a situation of high social violence in the community of Ciudad Espafia. Several months were spent in Honduras in order to develop an understanding of the implementation of BPI through participating in and assisting with the facilitation of BPI training and a program analysis of the project. The study was based on individual interviews, participant feedback from written workshop evaluations, participant observation, and participation in NGO training and evaluation activities as well as secondary data sources including research and project reports. Lessons learned during the implementation process are outlined, as well as suggestions for enhancing the BPI training and program analysis process are provided. Areas for further research are also identified.

No description available.

Early adolescence (e.g., 10-14 years old) is a time during which health habits and behaviors first develop that carry over into adulthood. This age range is also a time when changes are often first observed in typical sleep patterns, such as a delay in bedtimes, decreased total sleep times, and increased sleep problems. Electronic media and social networking have become essential to adolescent interpersonal communication and are negatively associated with adolescent sleep. Room and/or bed sharing practices and having a parent-set bedtime are still common in this age range, though no study has examined the relationship between these culturally influenced practices and the sleep of racially/ethnically diverse early adolescents. The current study examined if differences exist between 1272 Caucasian, Hispanic/Latino, and African American early adolescents (ages 10-14 years) on self-reported bedtime, SOL, TST, and sleep efficiency, and whether these differences persist when taking into account presence of electronic media in the bedroom (i.e., TV, videogame console, computer, cellphone), media use at bedtime (i.e., watching TV, playing video/computer games, social networking, texting), room sharing, and parent-set bedtimes. Preliminary results showed that females reported worse sleep than males (i.e., longer sleep onset latency, shorter TST, and lower sleep efficiency, with a trend for having a later bedtime), and that African Americans and Hispanics reported later bedtimes than Caucasians, Hispanics reported shorter sleep onset latency and longer sleep efficiency than Caucasians, and African Americans reported shorter total sleep time than Caucasians. Presence of any type of media in the bedroom or use of any type of electronic media at bedtime was associated with later bedtimes and shorter total sleep times, but not with SOL or sleep efficiency. Parent-set bedtimes were associated with earlier bedtimes, longer sleep onset latency, longer TST, and lower sleep efficiency. After controlling for significant bedtime factors, only the main effects for TST became non-significant, while the interaction became significant. Hispanic females reported shorter TST than Hispanic males, African American females reported shorter TST compared to Caucasian females, and Caucasian males reported shorter TST compared to Hispanic males. Intervention strategies such as parent education and sleep education in schools targeting the bedtime behaviors and sleeping habits of adolescents are discussed.

First Online: 21 March 2016. 12 month embargo. / This paper presents cross-domain evidence that natural language makes use of (at least) two ways of individuating collective entities that differ in terms of how they cohere. The first kind, which I call swarm reference, picks out higher-order collective entities defined in terms of the spatial and temporal configuration of their constituent individuals. The second, which corresponds to canonical cases of group reference (e.g. committee, team, etc.), makes use of non-spatiotemporal notions. To motivate this distinction, I present systematic differences in how these two types of collective reference behave linguistically, both in the individual and event domains. These differences support two primary results. First, they are used as tests to isolate a new class of collective nouns that denote swarm individuals, both in English, as well as other languages like Romanian. I then consider a crosslinguistically common type of pluractionality, called event-internal in the previous literature (Cusic 1981, Wood 2007), and show that its properties are best explained if the relevant verbs denote swarm events. By reducing event-internal pluractionality to a type of collective reference also available for nouns, this work generates a new strong argument that pluractionality involves the same varieties of plural reference in the event domain that are seen in the individual domain.

Visual deprivation in early life causes widespread changes to the visual pathway. Structures normally dedicated to vision can be recruited for processing of the remaining senses (i.e. audition). This thesis used magnetic resonance imaging to explore how the 'visual' pathway reorganises in congenital bilateral anophthalmia, a condition where individuals are born without eyes. Anophthalmia provides a unique model of complete deprivation, since the ‘visual’ pathway has not experienced pre- or post-natal visual input. Firstly, this thesis explored reorganisation of the anophthalmic 'visual' pathway for auditory processing, from subcortical structures responding to basic sounds (Chapters 3 and 4), to higher-order occipital areas extracting meaning from speech sounds (Chapter 7). Secondly, this thesis looked to better understand the neurochemical, neuroanatomical and behavioural changes that accompany reorganisation in anophthalmia (Chapters 5 and 6). Finally, this thesis investigated whether similar changes can take place in the sighted brain after a short period of visual deprivation (Chapter 8). The experiments in this thesis provide some evidence that the lack of pre-natal visual experiences affects cross-modal reorganisation. Chapter 4 describes a unique subcortico-cortical route for auditory input in anophthalmia. Furthermore, Chapter 7 suggests that hierarchical processing of sensory information in the occipital cortex is maintained in anophthalmia, which may not be the case in congenital or early-onset blindness. However, this thesis also suggests that some reorganisation thought to be limited to anophthalmia can be found in early-onset blindness, for example with the subcortical functional changes described in Chapter 3. In addition, neurochemical, neuroanatomical and behavioural changes described in Chapters 5 and 6 are comparable to those reported in early-onset blindness, therefore demonstrating important similarities between these populations. Finally, this thesis describes how some of these functional and behavioural changes can also take place in sighted subjects after a short period of blindfolding, although this effect is extremely variable across subjects (Chapter 8). The thesis concludes by highlighting the considerable contribution of individual differences in studies of cross-modal reorganisation, and emphasises the need for larger more homogenous groups when investigating subcortical and cortical plasticity in the absence of visual input.

Twelve blocks of Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) were built, tested and simulated. Three types of blocks with different laminate directions in the middle/second layers were used: 0/30/0, 0/45/0 and 0/90/0. Simulations with three-dimensional quadratic orthotropic linear elastic finite elements were conducted. The goal was to compare tested in-plane shear stiffnesses for CLT blocks made from Norway Spruce (Picea abies) boards of C24 quality with a finite element (FEM) simulated block stiffness. Three-layer CLT were studied with block dimensions of 600 x 600 x 45 mm. The first and last layer laminate directions were assumed to be 0○. The middle layer laminate directions were 30○, 45○ and 90○. A 1 mm gap was assumed between the side edges. The glued contact surfaces were assumed to be perfectly glued with rigid glue in the simulations. In the practically tested blocks a PVAc D2 classified glue was used. All blocks were simulated and tested in the same loading arrangement as the practical test set-up. The blocks were compressed in the diagonal direction. Blocks of 0/30/0 and 0/45/0 were compressed twice, once over each diagonal. The 0/90/0 blocks were compressed over one diagonal. A total of 19 practical compression tests was performed; in all cases, the displacements were measured in the force- and orthogonal direction. The stiffest loading case, measured in the force direction, was the loading arrangement 0/45/0-A. The weakest loading case, measured in the force direction, was the loading arrangement 0/30/0-B. The same result could be concluded from the FEM simulations. The calculated stiffness in the loading direction was between 1.21 – 1.87 times larger than the measured stiffness. The models pressed in the “weakest” direction gave the largest difference between the simulated and measured stiffness.

Making computers automatically find the appropriate meaning of words in context is an interesting problem that has proven to be one of the most challenging tasks in natural language processing (NLP). Widespread potential applications of a possible solution to the problem could be envisaged in several NLP tasks such as text simplification, language learning, machine translation, query expansion, information retrieval and text summarization. Ambiguity of words has always been a challenge in these applications, and the traditional endeavor to solve the problem of this ambiguity, namely doing word sense disambiguation using resources like WordNet, has been fraught with debate about the feasibility of the granularity that exists in WordNet senses. The recent trend has therefore been to move away from enforcing any given lexical resource upon automated systems from which to pick potential candidate senses,and to instead encourage them to pick and choose their own resources. Given a sentence with a target ambiguous word, an alternative solution consists of picking potential candidate substitutes for the target, filtering the list of the candidates to a much shorter list using various heuristics, and trying to match these system predictions against a human generated gold standard, with a view to ensuring that the meaning of the sentence does not change after the substitutions. This solution has manifested itself in the SemEval 2007 task of lexical substitution and the more recent SemEval 2010 task of cross-lingual lexical substitution (which I helped organize), where given an English context and a target word within that context, the systems are required to provide between one and ten appropriate substitutes (in English) or translations (in Spanish) for the target word. In this dissertation, I present a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art research and describe new experiments to tackle the tasks of lexical substitution and cross-lingual lexical substitution. In particular I attempt to answer some research questions pertinent to the tasks, mostly focusing on completely unsupervised approaches. I present a new framework for unsupervised lexical substitution using graphs and centrality algorithms. An additional novelty in this approach is the use of directional similarity rather than the traditional, symmetric word similarity. Additionally, the thesis also explores the extension of the monolingual framework into a cross-lingual one, and examines how well this cross-lingual framework can work for the monolingual lexical substitution and cross-lingual lexical substitution tasks. A comprehensive set of comparative investigations are presented amongst supervised and unsupervised methods, several graph based methods, and the use of monolingual and multilingual information.