The current study examined middle childhood aged Romanian childrens representations of parenting behaviors, basic negative emotions, and negative self-conscious emotions in the Narrative Story Stem Technique (NSST; Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990). More specifically, the research objectives of the study were a) to identify the frequency of the representations that were reflected in childrens narratives, b) to identify the specific stories that elicited the greatest number of representations, c) to identify possible relationships among childrens representations, their age, and amount of time that parents spend with their children, d) to identify gender differences in representations, and e) to evaluate the usefulness of the NSST to assess children's representations. Data were collected from 52 Romanian children aged between 6 and 11-years old. Assessments were made using the NSST, a parent consent form,and a general questionnaire. The findings showed that the frequency of representations was identified. The stories varied widely in their power to elicit childrens representations. Correlations among the variables of interest showed some statistically significant relationships in the expected directions. Gender differences in representations of parenting behaviors and narrative coherence were identified. At last, the findings showed that the NSST could be a useful instrument to identify and assess childrens representations.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the application of a social psychological theoretical framework to the study of creativity in apparel design, with a focus on technological engagement and motivational factors. A sample of 32 apparel design students from two major southeastern universities were selected to complete a self-report instruments regarding motivation and technological engagement. Students completed the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) as well as a design brief. Design illustrations were evaluated by a panel of expert judges in the field of apparel design using a consensual assessment technique (CAT). Results indicate levels of technology and internet usage and enjoyment do not relate to product output. Additionally, non-significant results indicate that previously theorized relationships between motivation and product output specific to apparel designers do not support earlier studies of literary and visual artists. Internet and technology engagement is largely based in information collection and redistribution as opposed to idea creation. This theory may explain the limited effect of internet and technology engagement on product output. While motivations across visual arts fields are key components of product output, apparel design is independent of visual arts due to its largely commercial-based enterprise. Our results support this idea and also highlight the need to create an apparel design specific theory of creativity.

Research on religion and family in the United States has increased in the last two decades. With the increasing immigrant population, studies on minorities including Chinese immigrant families are also important. Religious faith has significant influences on some Chinese immigrant families. The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between Christianity and Chinese immigrant families. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-two highly religious Chinese Christian couples in the Southern United States. Twenty-two open-ended questions were asked to understand their conversion processes and how the Christian faith influenced the participants marriage and family life. Most of the participants held advanced graduate degrees. Their ages ranged from 28 to 66, and the number of children ranged from one to four. Grounded theory methods including open coding and axial coding were applied to analyze the data. Three major themes emerged and were identified in the interview data: 1) Conversion to Christianity, 2) Faith practice: to learn and to change, and 3) Faith and parenting. Several subthemes are also addressed, and supporting qualitative data is presented in connection with each theme. Implications for theory, practice, and research related to Chinese immigrant families in the United States are discussed.

As technology continues to grow, new marketing opportunities arise. Facebook is an online social network that allows companies to understand their consumer base (Shih, 2011). Little research has been conducted to understand how Facebook is used as a marketing tool. Word of mouth advertising is created on Facebook fan-pages, business pages that allow consumers to interact with each other with User-Generated Content (UGC). Identifying opinion leaders on these fan-pages can help businesses understand their customers and help them build relationships with them on Facebook. The current research presents a qualitative approach to profiling users of a Facebook fan-page wall, identifying opinion leaders, and analyzing the documented messages on the wall. The Facebook fan-page used was from Tru Colors Apparel a local apparel business targeting college football fans in the South East region of the United States. The profile identified thirty-three opinion leaders, whose comments were analyzed for themes. Eighteen themes were identified from the fan comments and opinion leader comments. The themes identified were brand/line, styles, excitement, purchase intention, purchase, team spirit, suggestions, pricing, sizing, photos, store/location, website, gratitude, emails, blog referral, recommendations, winners, and articles. The comments were analyzed over a three season period. The three seasons are defined based on the football season from June to February. Each comment from all the fans and from the opinion leaders were compared to identify relationships between themes and to support the identification process of opinion leaders. Purchase intention, Team Spirit, and the Brand/Line were consistently more prevalent when comparing the opinion leader comments to the other fans comments. Implications are presented for small apparel companies with narrow niche markets.

Assessing the impacts of Lepidium latifoliumon food web structure for Suisun song sparrows in a brackish marsh

Effects of a chronic increase in plasma corticosterone on the brooding behavior of the prairie skink, Plestiodon septentrionalis

Nearly all plants have developed symbiotic associations with microbes above- and belowground. These symbionts often alter the ecology of their hosts by enhancing nutrient uptake, increasing stress tolerance, or providing protection from host enemies. Understanding the dynamics of symbiosis requires testing how ecological factors alter not only the fitness consequences of the symbiosis, but also the rate of symbiont transmission. Here we asked how changes in the biotic and abiotic context alter both the costs and benefits of interactions between grass hosts and symbiotic fungal endophytes and rates of symbiont transmission. First, we assessed how shade and the presence of endophyte symbiosis affected host plant growth across six grass species. Our results demonstrate a novel benefit of endophyte symbiosis via the amelioration of shade stress. Second, we examine how interactions between a fungal endophyte and its grass host change along a gradient of water availability and in the presence versus absence of soil microbes. We show that benefits of the symbiosis were strongest when water was limiting. Together, our results highlight the context dependent nature of grass endophyte symbioses.

Despite facing threat of extirpation in the eastern Pacific, the critically endangered leatherback turtle (<em>Dermochelys coriacea</em>) appears to be thriving in the Atlantic. The purpose of my dissertation was to establish a baseline of biological data for the leatherback at the northern limit of its nesting range in the northwestern Atlantic (Florida) to inform management. From six years of empirical field data collected on nesting female leatherbacks, I addressed four major objectives of the Federal (US) Recovery Plan for the east coast of Florida. 1) I determined the rate of increase in observed nest numbers since standardized nest surveys began in 1979. From these data collected at 70 beaches and using a multilevel modeling approach, I found a dramatic increase of 11.3 ± 1.9% each year in the number of nests. 2) By tagging and recapturing individual females as well as marking nests for inventories at one high-density nesting beach, I determined several critical population parameters. The annual survival rate was 95.6% for nesting females and the yearly nesting population size was 71 ± 23 turtles at my Juno Beach study site (19.4 km); statewide the estimate will be higher. The average remigration interval was 2.2 +/- 0.5 years, clutch frequency was 4.1 +/- 0.9 nests/season, and the average clutch size was 69.0 +/- 18.2 eggs/female. 3) I used novel GPS tags and conventional tag returns to discover the full nesting range and true clutch frequency of individual turtles. Leatherbacks in Florida exhibit weak nest site fidelity by nesting at broad spatial scales, distributing at least five nests within a single season up to 139.8 km from first encounter. 4) Finally, I used microsatellites and mtDNA to determine the relatedness of leatherbacks in Florida and found few family groupings, indicating that this rookery has been established through immigration and not through a founding event, as there is no evidence of a genetic bottleneck. Although the Florida population is relatively small compared to other Caribbean mainland rookeries, it has the potential to contribute to further increases of leatherbacks in the Atlantic as well as contributing genetic variation, thereby achieving objectives of the US Recovery Plan. / Dissertation

<p>This thesis examines the dynamics of cloud forest bird communities along an altitudinal gradient on the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes. Specifically, I examined the seasonality of breeding, investigated a novel tool for documenting altitudinal migrations, and compared diets among groups of hummingbirds. In Chapter 2, I compared the prevalence of breeding condition in mist-netted birds among elevations and months. Overall, birds breed less seasonally at lower latitudes, but there is substantial variation in the timing of breeding, which varies with both abiotic conditions like precipitation (Hau 2004; Tye 1992), photoperiod (Hau et al. 1998) and temperature (Wikelski et al. 2000), and the biotic variation in plant phenology (Komdeur 1996), and insect abundance (Poulin et al. 1992). Several of these biotic (e.g. canopy height, biological diversity) and abiotic (e.g. temperature, pressure) factors vary along elevational gradients. I compared the percentage of birds captured in breeding condition along an altitudinal transect in eastern Ecuador, and found that breeding is more seasonal at higher altitudes. There was a marked increase in breeding birds during Sept-Nov at higher elevations, but I found no such "breeding season" at lower elevations. </p><p>I also examined a novel methodology for tracing annual altitudinal migrations which takes advantage of the natural variation in deuterium abundance from the base to the peaks of the Andes (Chapter 3). Local migrations by birds in the tropics pose conservation problems, in part because the movements themselves are difficult to document. There is a theoretical relationship between Deuterium (or 18O) signature and elevation, because of fractionation during precipitation events and evapotranspiration. A previous study had suggested that if a bird had more or less deuterium in its tissues than theory would suggest, such discrepancy might be used to identify altitudinal migrants. Unfortunately, when I refined the methodology, I found that the variation within species and sites was too great to allow such applications. </p><p>In Chapter 4 I shifted my focus to comparing diet among hummingbirds. Hummingbirds rely on the sugars in nectar to meet their high metabolic requirements, but most nectars are extremely low in nitrogen. As a result, the birds must also consume arthropods to meet their protein requirements. In many hummingbird species, males use nectar resources differently from females. I hypothesized that the different genders might also differ in their intake of arthropods, because females have higher nitrogen requirements for breeding. I used stable nitrogen isotopic analysis of feathers and blood to demonstrate that females feed at higher trophic levels than males and adults at higher levels than juveniles, respectively. Feathers from female Coeligena torquata (Collared Inca) showed significantly higher 15N levels (one-tailed t20=1.73, p<.05) than males. The difference between genders in Heliodoxa leadbeateri (Violet-fronted brilliant) was smaller (one-tailed t16=1.63, p=.06). δ15N was significantly lower for juveniles (mean = 6.34, SD = 2.10) than for adults (mean = 7.53, SD = 1.24). It appears that females captured during the breeding season were also feeding at higher trophic levels than those captured outside of the breeding season, although the sample sizes were small. Finally, I also found a slight but unanticipated effect of elevation on δ15N values in feathers.</p> / Dissertation

The fashion system has historically looked to art for inspiration. For the greater part of history, this inspiration has been purely visual. However, with the advent of Modern Art, the formal qualities of art are often merely visual representations of some underlying theoretical position. As the fashion system seeks inspiration from this new art, an examination of what aspects, if any, of these underlying theoretical positions are carried into fashion becomes necessary. To not do so, is to forego a complete reading of the fashion objects being currently produced. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of preexisting clothing in current high fashion. This examination entailed a comparison of this act to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp, the combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, and the appropriations of Sherry Levine. This comparison was followed by a symbolic interactionist interpretation of the act. The ready-to-wear collections appearing on Style.com from Spring 2000 to Spring 2002 served as the dataset. A complete reading of the verbal descriptions that accompanied each collection within the dataset served as the primary indicator of a use of preexisting clothing. A supporting visual analysis of each collection within the dataset was also conducted. Among this dataset of 161 fashion labels, four were found to have engaged in the use of preexisting clothing. Those labels were: Miguel Adrover, John Galliano, Imitation of Christ, and Russel Sage. Interpretations of the found instances of clothing were based upon comparisons with the selected artworks. Symbolic interactionist theory allowed for a perspective in which the use of preexisting clothing by a fashion designer served as a mediation of his/her identity amongst peers. The theory also allowed limited inferences to be made about the eventual adopters of such clothing.