Individuals are motivated to consume brands that allow them to express their self-concept and signal a unique identity to others. However, consumers may not always be able to purchase these brands. Aspirational brands are currently unaffordable “dream brands” that an individual desires to purchase at some point in the future after reaching a higher status or income level. Through aspirational access, an emerging form of access-based consumption, consumers can now temporarily experience their ideal lifestyle for a membership fee. Researchers have begun to explore access-based consumption as an alternative to traditional ownership since consumers are increasingly choosing to access products and benefit from the use, rather than buying and owning them. Most research focuses on utilitarian access-based consumption, such as car sharing. Yet more consumers are using access-based services to facilitate an idealized lifestyle. In the past, these consumers would have to wait to acquire aspirational brands after saving up to purchase, but aspirational access now provides the benefits of these brands in the present allowing aspirational access-based consumers to forego the patience and work of saving long-term for the brand. Four studies are conducted to holistically explore the psychological consequences of aspirational access. Specifically, the following research questions are addressed by employing a multi-method approach in a series of four studies —What do owners of aspirational brands think about aspirational access-based services? How does aspirational access participation influence an accessor’s self- and brand-related perceptions? How can the outcomes of aspirational access be enhanced for accessors through brand curation? Can accessors temporarily using aspirational brands obtain the same level as self- and brand-related outcomes as owners? By exploring these questions, this research aims to understand the nature of aspirational brand consumption and the psychological consequences of accessing versus owning aspirational brands.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Angela Kim Harkins / Thesis advisor: John F. Baldovin / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

The current pressure on water bodies is a structural problem that may compromise the satisfaction of future water demand and the good status of the natural environment. Activities such as wastewater reuse or desalination provide an additional source of water resources to meet demand without the need to increase natural water abstractions. In addition, reuse also contributes to improving water quality by limiting abstractions and reducing discharges. However, reuse has not been widespread as a source of supply in resource-rich contexts. In resource-abundant areas, the high cost of reusing water is a strong disincentive to its use, which puts the focus on reducing pollution through discharge without assessing the potential of reuse as an additional source of resources. The use of reclaimed water has a great margin for development that should be exploited in the coming years to obtain a guarantee of supply and an improvement in the environmental quality of water in the current context of increasing scarcity. However, the financial and environmental situation of reuse requires the involvement of the public sector. In this work, two instruments with the potential to facilitate the development of reuse have been studied. The first of these is photovoltaic self-consumption, in order to reduce the cost of energy consumption of wastewater treatment plants, given that this is their main financial operating cost. This possibility, however, has shown little capacity to reduce these costs since, except in the case of the floating photovoltaic installation, the cost of electricity from self-consumption is higher or similar to the market price. If we consider the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions derived from self-consumption, this alternative is much more competitive. The situation is, once again, of an activity that presents financial losses and environmental benefits derived from the current excess of emissions. The responsibility lies with the public sector in the same way as in the case of reuse. Water tariffs, as one of the main revenues from water treatment, is an instrument that can be evaluated with a view to increasing revenues through an increase in the price of water. The results obtained show large differences in the impact of such an increase depending on the region but make it clear that the potential for additional revenue from this possibility is small. This analysis has also shown that there is a problem in the current tariffs that reduces their effectiveness by not valuing the type of household. The problem lies not in the structure of the tariff or the number of household members, but in the characteristics of the household. By not taking these into account and calculating the bill without these details, the tariffs are not fully effective. In conclusion, both reuse and photovoltaic self-consumption are beneficial activities for society, but the financial costs involved in their implementation require the involvement of a public sector with a reduced capacity to increase current revenues.

No description available.

This research addresses the paradoxical beliefs and conceptualizations about money and stewardship among young adult Mormons and its consequences for the Mormon identity. The findings for this paper are based on 12 in-depth interviews with Brigham Young University students, recently graduated students, and, when applicable, their spouses, totaling 20 interviewees between the ages of 20 and 31. The data suggest that unique beliefs surrounding money have emerged from the Mormon culture as remnants of their early Mormon values still lingering in contemporary Mormon culture clash with the individualistic and consumer culture surrounding the interviewees. Interviewees demonstrate cognitive dissonance as they attempt to combine the contradictory concepts of stewardship and consumerism into their financial attitudes and behaviors. The connection between money and their Mormon identity was articulated often as a need to stay out of debt and avoid extravagance.

This thesis is a part of the master's in data science course at LTU. The core objective would be to build models that can do a short-term prediction of electricity energy consumption based on historical consumption data. With the increasing demand for electricity, forecasting electricity consumption is important and must be more accurate and closer to the actual values. As a part of this thesis, three different time series forecasting models are studied and experimented. The first model is based on an ensemble of Facebook prophet and XGBoost models together, the second model is based on deep learning neural network using Long short-term memory a Recurrent Neural Network, the third model is based on Convolution neural network. The performance of these three models is discussed and improvements needed, are also mentioned.These three models are trained with data from 2014-2019 and predictions are evaluated with 2020. As 2020 is the core of the COVID-19 pandemic season, offices were closed and this has impact on the model performance and evaluations. These impacts are also highlighted. Cross Industry standard process for Data mining methodology is followed in this thesis.

Thesis advisor: Gorica Petrovich / Thesis advisor: John Christianson / The influence of novelty on feeding behavior is significant and can override both homeostatic and hedonic drives due to the uncertainty of danger. The potential risks associated with consuming novel foods or consuming foods in a novel environment can lead to avoidance. While it is established that both novel foods and novel feeding environments can reduce or suppress feeding, it remains unclear how these two factors interact with each other to impact consumption and whether there are sex differences. Additionally, the neural mechanisms that underlie the impact of novelty on consumption are not well understood. This dissertation aimed to investigate the behavioral and neural mechanisms of the impact of novelty during food consumption in male and female rats. We first examined the consumption of novel and familiar foods in novel or familiar contexts for male and female rats (Chapter 2). Acutely food deprived rats were tested in either their familiar or novel context and were given two foods, one familiar and one novel. They underwent repeated consumption tests to allow us to track habituation to novelty overtime. Results indicated a robust behavioral sex difference in consumption during habituation. Males habituated to novel foods faster than females who showed suppressed consumption throughout testing. Next, we aimed to determine the neural circuitry mediating consumption of novel foods and feeding in novel environments (Chapter 3). Male and female rats were tested for consumption in either a familiar or in a novel context and were given either a familiar or novel food. Rats were perfused after testing to determine Fos induction. Results revealed increased activation in the novel context condition within several key areas: the central (CEA) and basolateral complex nuclei of the amygdala, the thalamic paraventricular (PVT) and reuniens nuclei, the nucleus accumbens (ACB), and the medial prefrontal cortex prelimbic and infralimbic areas. Additionally, novel food condition increased activation within the CEA, anterior basomedial nucleus of the amygdala, and anterior PVT. Sex differences in activation patterns were also observed within specific regions. The capsular and lateral CEA had greater activation for male groups and the anterior PVT, ACBv core, and ACB ventral shell had greater activation for female groups. We also investigated different patterns of related regions and the nature of those relationships and found that the CEA is a pivotal hub in our network. Therefore, we investigated the recruitment of specific inputs to the CEA in male and female rats during consumption of a novel food in a novel context (Chapter 4). We used a combination of retrograde tract tracing and Fos induction to determine whether PVTp, ILA, and AId neurons that send direct projections to the CEA were specifically recruited during the consumption test under novelty and whether that activation was sex specific. Results indicated that during consumption of a novel food in a novel context, connections from the PVTp to the CEA were recruited more heavily compared to rats that were consuming familiar food in a familiar context. These results suggest that projections from the PVTp to CEA may be driving the inhibition of feeding during novelty processing. Overall, this dissertation provides valuable insights into the behavioral and neural mechanisms of consumption under novelty and allows us to begin building the circuitry that underlies feeding inhibition during novelty processing. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.

From the earliest and simplest scalar computation engines to modern superscalar out-oforder processors, the evolution of computational machinery during the past century has largely been driven by a single goal: performance. In today’s world of cheap, billion-plus transistor count processors and with an exploding market in mobile computing, a design landscape has emerged where energy efficiency, arguably more than any other single metric, determines the viability of a processor for a given application. The historical emphasis on performance has left modern processors bloated and over provisioned for everyday tasks in the hope that during computationally intensive periods some performance improvement will be observed. This work explores an energy-efficient processor design technique that ensures even a highly over provisioned out-of-order processor has only as many of its computational resources active as it requires for efficient computation at any given time. Specifically, this paper examines the feasibility of a dynamically banked register file and reorder buffer with variable banking policies that enable unused rename registers or reorder buffer entries to be voltage gated (turned off) during execution to save power. The impact of bank placement, turn-off and turn-on policies as well as rail stabilization latencies for this approach are explored for high-performance desktop and server designs as well as low-power mobile processors

Water is essential to life, but it is becoming inadequate, even in Europe. In central, western, and a few parts of northern and northeastern Europe, water availability is facing challenges due to the impacts of climate change. These impacts further cause strains on water abstractions needed for agriculture, industries, energy, and public water supply, as well as causing extreme weather conditions like droughts during the summer. One possibility is to reduce these issues by raising awareness among individuals of their direct and indirect water consumption. However, this study implies that people cannot visualize their water consumption due to not possessing or conveniently accessing their water meter. Thus, this thesis explores the implementation of gamification and its features using a prototype to observe if this can create motivation to educate individuals in reducing their water consumption. This study uses research through design approach centered around the mid-fidelity mobile application prototype, named SAVR, developed in the iterative design process. The iterative process consists of three phases where the participants are involved in evaluating the prototype containing gamification features. The results suggest that specific game features such as points, progress and feedback successfully engaged participants in using the prototype, consequently changing their attitude, and stimulating some awareness raised on their water consumption. Overall, this opens a scope for municipalities to adopt a gamified mobile application to communicate the importance of sustainable water use as well as educating the citizens of the awareness in a playful way.