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No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Direct response, and more specifically direct mail, is frequently positioned as the vehicle of the 90's for media targeting and individual level micro-marketing. The efficiency of direct mail however, faced with increased competition and mail box clutter, as well as escalating postage, printing and paper costs, is in serious jeopardy. The ability to better target individual prospects (current non-customers) who have both interest in a product and the propensity to purchase through the mail has seen little refinement beyond subjective or experientially based judgements. Perhaps the richest source of data on individual consumers has traditionally come from projectable sample surveys. Yet, surveys, by definition, provide information on only a small sample (often 1500 people or less) of prospects and, therefore, have not been utilized for purposes of list selection. On the other hand, increased availability of commercial databases, with both extensive population coverage and exponentially accumulating data, is seen as an under realized opportunity for targeting guidance. Coupling these databases with sample surveys presents a unique and potentially powerful solution to the dilemma of declining direct mail efficiency. A successful linkage of such attitudinal and behavioral intention information, from sample based survey research to readily available national databases, allows for the quantitative assessment and subsequent ranking of direct mail prospects. The obvious benefits of such ranking includes both increased efficiency and effectiveness of direct marketing efforts, with ultimate benefits to bottom line profitability. With applications for a variety of marketing efforts, testing environments include target group membership identification, direct response purchase propensity and alternate positioning affinities. The project outlines a systematic approach to the mathematical linkage of survey results to available demographic databases, and the subsequent development of procedures for individual level identification and evaluation of direct mail prospects for specific marketing objectives. Alternative analytic procedures for both model selection and strategies for overcoming the limits and problems associated with missing values are explored.

The goal of this research was to examine how the One organization's web site either supports or rejects established literature that concludes that U.S. media contains negative representations of the developing world.

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In this work, a microplasma-based ionization source for ambient mass spectrometry (AMS) has been developed. Optical emission spectroscopy, optical microscopy, and electrical measurements have been used to characterize the discharge. The discharge was used in a direct exposure mode in AMS experiments, and was found to behave as a small Penning ionization source capable of ionizing a range of biomolecules via proton transfer. In order to broaden the effectiveness of the microplasma ionization source, admixtures of hydrogen in neon gas were used to produce vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light. The 121.6 nm Lyman-? (10.23 eV) photons produced are effective soft (non-destructive), single-photon ionization sources. Since this photon energy exceeds the ionization potential of many biomolecules, this source is useful for analysis of a wide range of organic samples. The microplasma source, in both VUV-generating and direct-exposure modes, is proposed as a method by which to study the damage effects on biomolecules, and preliminary results are presented. Finally, a collaborative work investigating the role of ionizing radiation in the DNA damage process is presented. Using a synchrotron radiation source, the photolysis of DNA monolayers on gold substrates in a vacuum environment were studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) experiments.

<p> In recent years there has been a marked shift from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication. This shift has also led to changes in the way families communicate as, more often than ever, social media sites are becoming a primary means of communication for a number of groups. The relationship between family communication patterns and offline interaction has long been studied. However, there is a marked scarcity in research examining the relationship between family communication patterns and online interaction. Data collected from a group-administered survey of 246 undergraduate students was used to examine eleven hypotheses related to family communication patterns, self-esteem, social media use, and online/offline family interaction. Family communication patterns were labeled as either high conversation-orientation or high conformity-orientation. Existing research suggests that these communication patterns are inversely related and a correlation analysis in this study supports this notion. The results indicate that there is a positive correlation between high conversation-orientation families and both online and offline family interaction as well as measures of self-esteem. Additionally, the results indicate that there is a negative correlation between high conformity-orientation families and offline family interaction. No significant correlations were found between high conformity-orientation families and either self-esteem or online family interaction. Future research should consider motivations behind actions as this may significantly impact how respondents view and evaluate their interaction patterns.</p>