National Swedish environmental objectives and detailed development plans A good built environment - a change of perspectives The aim of this paper is to analyze if the environmental quality objectives ‘a good built environment’ can be implemented in the municipal detailed plans and/or how it is done today. In addition to a number of interviews with people within the academy and government, a document analysis of detailed development plans has been done. As of today, you can not completely do planning based entirely on the environmental objectives and it is perhaps not desirable. In the study it emerges that there are uncertainties in what the environmental quality objectives really are and how they should be used, therefore, is also the implementation of the objectives to some extent different in the detailed development plans (if they are used at all). Within the environmental objective ‘a good built environment’ and its sub-goals one can find both concrete and more unsolid goals, as part of this, goal conflicts arise and problems with implementing the various goals within detailed development plans. Some conclusions are that short-term economic goals stands in the way for a change in perspectives that is needed, if goal achievement should be reached.

In this dissertation I seek to answer the research question of who are those people that have the ability and motivation to facilitate other people’s creative thinking. Actors who are in the creator’s social environment, such as her coworkers and family members, can potentially enhance the creator’s level of creativity. Although these contacts can be active collaborators of the creator’s thinking processes and can eventually have a significant impact on organizational creativity, so far their role in organizational life has been overlooked by researchers. Consequently, in my dissertation I develop a theory of “creativity catalysts”, and define a creativity catalyst as an employee who helps to improve the usefulness and novelty (i.e. creativity) of the ideas and products produced by another employee (i.e. the creator) through direct interpersonal interaction with the creator. I examine two aspects of serving as a catalyst to another’s creativity: the intensity of a creativity catalyst’s contribution and the span of a creativity catalyst’s contribution. Intensity of contribution is conceptualized as the extent to which the creativity catalyst can improve the output generated by the creators to be more novel and useful. Span on the other hand, is the number of people that perceive an individual as a catalyst for her own creative performance. To answer the research question, I develop and empirically test a theory of creativity catalysts by integrating a social capital theory lens (i.e. structural social capital and relational social capital) with a stable motivational orientation (i.e., learning goal orientation). First, I argue that a catalyst’s relational social capital (i.e., quality of relationships with her coworkers) in the organizational communication network determines her motivation to take the role of a creativity catalyst. Second, I argue that the catalyst’s structural social capital (i.e., the extent to which she can connect with the disconnected others in her network structure) underlines her ability to contribute to others’ creativity. Integrating these two arguments, I hypothesize that the catalyst’s relational social capital (i.e., the motivation to become a creativity catalyst) interacts with her structural social capital (i.e., the ability of a creativity catalyst) in predicting both the intensity and span of the catalyst’s contribution to her coworkers’ creativity. Second, I hypothesized that learning goal orientation, a stable motivational orientation, interacts with the situational motivational characteristic of relational social capital in predicting both the span and intensity of a catalyst’s contribution to her coworkers’ creativity. To test my hypotheses, I first ran a pilot study on a sample of full-time MBA students in order to validate the creativity catalyst measure; and then tested my hypothesized model on employees from two companies, using multiple data sources over multiple phases of data collection. Consequently, I found support for both of these interaction hypotheses on the intensity and span of a creativity catalyst’s contribution to her coworkers’ creativity. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings, and future research directions are discussed.

Obesity is a problem of vast social concern in the United States. One factor that has been linked to reduction in body fat and the health problems associated with obesity is increasing physical activity. Although in-person behavioral interventions have been shown effective at increasing physical activity, attention is now being placed on disseminating these interventions through the use of technology. Several internet-based interventions have been developed and are readily available. The purpose of this study was to evaluate "Fitbit," a web-based behavioral intervention for increasing physical activity and losing weight. Additionally, this study examined if the addition of contact from a behavioral coach through videoconference and email enhanced the effectiveness of this program. Through a multiple-baseline design across seven participants this research project evaluated the effectiveness of the "Fitbit" program with and without a behavioral coach. Step counts were recorded by a Fitbit sensor as a measure of physical activity. The Fitbit program alone increased physical activity for some of the participants, and the addition of the behavioral coach resulted in further increases in mean step counts.

Loop invariants have traditionally been used in proofs of correctness (e.g. program verification) and program derivation. Given that a loop invariant is all that is required to derive a provably correct program, the loop invariant can be thought of as being the essence of a loop. Being the essence of a loop, we ask the question “What other information is embedded within a loop invariant?” This dissertation provides evidence that in the domain of dense linear algebra, loop invariants can be used to determine the behavior of the loops. This dissertation demonstrates that by understanding how the loop invariant describes the behavior of the loop, a goal-oriented approach can be used to derive loops that are not only provably correct, but also have the desired performance behavior. / text

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<p>The current study assessed the relationship between licensing and self-control maintenance. Previous research on licensing has found mixed results for the effect of perceived progress on goal pursuit. Some studies find evidence that progress increases commitment and motivation to a goal, making licensing less likely, whereas other studies have found that progress leads to coasting and feelings of earned licensing. Previous work on managing food consumption has demonstrated that using a mental budget in tandem with a salient avoidance goal is an effective means of monitoring and limiting overindulgence. The current study used a mixed event-contingent and fixed-interval experience sampling design to examine the role of licensing in the eating domain and its effect on goal pursuit. Participants in the experimental condition were prompted with personalized commitment devices each day to assess if they promoted goal pursuit and appropriate licensing. We found that licensing occurs infrequently, but when it does occur, goal progress and goal commitment increase. The use of commitment device has little impact on licensing or goal pursuit.</p> / Dissertation

Dance is a universal and ancient human behavior; however, our understanding of the basis of this behavior is surprisingly weak. In this dissertation, I explore the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of human dance, providing evidence of two ways in which the production and perception of dance actions are rooted in the functions of more general cognitive systems.In doing so, I aim to both inform our understanding of dance, and use the study of dance to elucidate broader issues in cognition. Chapter 1 demonstrates that the ability to entrain, or move in time with an auditory beat, is not unique to humans. In addition, across hundreds of species, I find that all animals able to entrain can also vocally imitate sound. This supports the hypothesis that entrainment relies on cognitive machinery that originally evolved to support vocal imitation. Chapter 2 investigates the perception of dance-like actions. Previous work shows that we infer the goals of observed actions by calculating their efficiency as a means to external effects, like reaching an object or location. However, dance actions typically lack an external effect or external goal. In two experiments, I show that for dance-like actions, adults infer that the agents’ goal is simply to produce the movements themselves. Furthermore, this inference is driven by the actions’ inefficiency as a means to external goals. This inefficiency effectively rules out external goals, making movement-based goals the best explanation. Thus, perception of both dance and non-dance actions appears to rely the same type of efficiency-based goal inference. Chapter 3 builds on these findings, showing that the inference that the movements are the goal is closely related to our concept of dance. First, I find that participants view movement-based goals as more consistent with dance than with other activities. Second, I find that simply construing actions as having movement-based goals leads participants to view the actions as more dancelike, even when all participants have seen the exact same actions. Thus, even our categorization of actions as dance versus non-dance is rooted in the same cognitive processes as support our understanding of other intentional actions. / Psychology

Promoting student self-determination has been identified as best practice in special education as an effective way to promote goal attainment and successful post school outcomes for students with disabilities. There have been, however, limited evaluations of the effects of interventions to promote self-determination with students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. This study reports finding from a quasi-experimental switching replication study examining the impact of intervention using the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction on student self-determination and goal attainment for students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Findings within this study using the current research design and limited sample do not support the efficacy of the model for differential goal attainment and goal attainment facilitation by Group assignment but students who are classified as DHH were able to set goals and attain these at a better than expected level of progress. Measures of self-determination used in this study proved to have good internal reliability with students who have various levels of hearing loss and who use various modes of communication.

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The use of goal programming in various real-world areas - including resource allocation, engineering, agriculture and other applications - has increased a lot in the past few years. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate goal programming approaches in determining prices. Various aspects of price determination - such as cosls, existing prices, competitors' prices, volume change due to price change and other aspects are incorporated in the model in order to suggest reasonable and realistic prices. Taking just these factors into account will not completely solve the problem, as there are usually certain goals that the decision maker would like to achieve. For example, the decision maker would probably like to attain an acceptable pre-specified minimum profit level without adjusting current prices too much whilst keeping prices competitive to insure that customers are not lost in the process of change. In this study, a goal programming model is developed for the determining of products' prices with consideration of these goals. The model makes provision for the change in demand due to the change in prices. / Mini-dissertation (M.Com. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.