<p> Many advertising, marketing, and communication professionals look for ways to increase consumers&rsquo; engagements with their brands. In doing so many have begun to use social networking sites, such as Pinterest. Consumers can engage with brands through participation in these sites. Through this brand engagement, businesses can hope for positive customer satisfaction towards their specific brand, which can lead to the development of brand attachments. The purpose of this study was to show the association between brand engagement and the elements of uses and gratifications theory, specifically through the use of the virtual brand community of Pinterest. Statistical tests were conducted to determine the relationship between individual and multiple elements of the uses and gratifications theory and brand engagement.</p>

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This work investigates the applicability of fast detectors to the technique of microscope-mode imaging mass spectrometry. By ionising analyte from a large area of the sample, and projecting the desorbed ions by the use of ion optics through a time-of-flight mass spectrometer onto a two- dimensional detector, time- (and hence mass-) dependent distributions of ions may be imaged. To date, this method of imaging mass spectrometry has been limited by the ability to image only one mass window of interest per experimental cycle, limiting throughput and processing speed. Thus, the alternative microprobe-mode imaging mass spectrometry is currently the dominant method of analysis, with its superior mass resolution. The application of fast detectors to microscope-mode imaging lifts the restriction of the detection of a single mass window per experimental cycle, potentially decreasing acquisition time by a factor of the number of mass peaks of interest. Additional advantages include the reduction of sample damage by laser ablation, and the potential identification of coincident eo-fragments of different masses originating from the same parent molecule. Theoretical calculations and simulations have been performed confirming the suitability of conventional time-of-flight velocity-mapped ion imaging apparatus for imaging mass spectrometry. Only small modifications to the repeller plate and laser beam path, together with the adjustment of the accelerating potential field, were required to convert the apparatus to a wide (7 mm diameter) field-of-view ion microscope. Factors affecting the mass and spatial resolution were investigated with these theoretical calculations, with theoretical calculations predicting a spatial resolution of about 26μm and m/m of 93. Typical experimental data collected from velocity-mapped ion imaging experiments were collected, and characterised in order to provide specifications for a novel time-stamping detector, the Pixel Imaging Mass Spectrometry detector. From these data, the suitability of thresholding and centroiding on the new detector was determined. Initial experiments using desorptionjionisation on silicon and conventional charge-coupled device cameras confirmed the correct spatial-mapping of the apparatus. Matrix-assisted laser desorptionjionisation techniques (MALDI) were used in experiments to determine the spatial and mass resolutions attainable with the apparatus. Experimental spatial resolutions of 14.4 μm and m/m of 60 were found. The better experimental spatial resolution indicates a higher di- rectionality of initial velocities from MALDI desorption than used in the theoretical predictions, while the poorer mass resolution could be attributed to limitations imposed by the use of the phosphor screen. Proof-of-concept experiments using fast-framing cameras and the new time-stamping detectors confirmed the feasibility of multiple mass acquisition in time-of-flight microscope mode ion imaging. Mass-dependent distributions were acquired of different pigment distributions in each experimental cycle. Finally, spatial-mapped images of coronal mouse brain sections were acquired using both conventional and fast detectors. The apparatus was demonstrated to provide accurate spatial distributions with a wide field-of-view, and multiple mass distributions were acquired with each experimental cycle using the new time-stamping detector.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / This thesis analyzes the Weapons of Mass Destruction Initiative (WMDI) taken by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April 1999. The analysis considers the achievements of the WMDI as well as the obstacles and challenges the Alliance faces in countering WMD threats. For over a decade, the Alliance has been concerned about the threats posed by biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological weapons. In 1994, NATO established the Senior Political-Military Group on Proliferation and the Senior Defense Group on Proliferation to implement alliance policy on WMD proliferation. Through the WMDI, NATO enhanced its efforts to address these threats through the establishment of a WMD Center at NATO Headquarters in Brussels to facilitate dialogue and coordination relating to threat assessment, and to develop responses to such threats. At the Prague Summit in November 2002 the Allies made firmer commitments to develop capabilities to respond to WMD threats. The new measures include the Prague Capabilities Commitment and the NATO Response Force. / Civilian, Department of the Navy

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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1958 C35 / Master of Science

<p> While some have speculated there has been an increase in the public scrutiny of police over the last few years, little is actually known about the magnitude and scope of changes. This thesis investigates changes in the frequency of front-page articles, and the frequency of all articles, in <i>The New York Times</i> since 2010. Guided by Beck and Tolnay's (1995) Racial Violence Model, seven events were identified as potential threshold events for changes in media reports about the police. Findings indicate policing stories became more common after the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, while the remaining threshold events had no significant impact. This research provides a context for future quantitative and qualitative studies regarding media attention on police following specific events</p>

<p> In recent years, concerns over video game addiction have increased. Both individual factors (such as impulsivity and reward sensitivity) and content features in video games (such as reward and punishment features) play a role in the development of video game addiction. In the current study, a content analysis coding procedure is developed in order to categorize the reinforcement schedules of three existing commercial video games from three different genres. Our findings indicate that the reward features in the game <i>The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot</i> resembles a partial reinforcement schedule while the reward features in the games <i>Team Fortress 2</i> and <i> Destination Sol</i> resemble a continuous reinforcement schedule. This key finding demonstrates that the reward content features in commercial video games can be classified along a theoretically meaningful dimensions put forth by Operant Conditioning Theory. Furthermore, in this study we pilot tested several outcome measures related to video game addiction that will be crucial to our conceptualization of video game addiction in the future including a measure of playing time, game enjoyment, trait impulsivity, a measure of behavioral impulsivity, and the game addiction scale. We found that the video game with a partial reinforcement schedule was significantly more enjoyable than the video games with a continuous reinforcement schedule. </p>

Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / In the wake of decades of growth in the American prison system, unprecedented numbers of people flow out of penal institutions each year: 750,000 are released from state and federal prison, and 7 million more from local jails. Reentry on this scale creates a host of new policy challenges and important openings for social science research. I study the problems of reentry ethnographically. Based on nine months living in a halfway house for men leaving prison and jail, I examine how the prison experience follows people after they leave, the forces and processes that push people back toward prison, and the strategies of former prisoners confronting often extreme forms of social exclusion. My reentry research doubles as a ground-up account of the American prison boom: a window on the world of a small group of men and women rebuilding their lives under the long shadow of mass incarceration. I present the research in three articles: Reentry within the Carceral: Foucault, Race and Prisoner Reentry uses concepts from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to re-frame the way we think about reentry, while also taking account of the deep racial inequalities that stamp the American prison system. I argue that people leaving prison are branded delinquent in a society infused with technologies of surveillance and control. In this context, reentry is best conceptualized not as a move from confinement to freedom, but along a carceral continuum of graded intensity. Further, the racialized features of social control in the United States often leave black and brown bodies in themselves marked delinquent. An individual need not commit a crime or spend time inside to become enclosed in social spaces characterized by exclusion and close surveillance. In the case of many black prisoners, formal processing by police and prisons only intensifies a process already underway, and the experience of reentry is best understood as a particular moment in long-term process that begins before imprisonment. The Social Logic of Recidivism: Cultural Capital from Prison to the Street develops a conceptual framework for explaining the cycles of incarceration that so often enveloped the lives of participants. I argue that the growth of incarceration, concentrated geographically along race and class lines, establishes the structural context in which the choice to enter street culture makes sense for large numbers of former prisoners. In high incarceration neighborhoods where street culture is predominant, large-scale movements in and out of prison create networks of relationships that traverse and blur carceral boundaries. Prison and street cultures become partially fused – at different times they are populated by many of the same people - and because of this overlap, the skills and knowledges people learn while incarcerated are also valuable in the street. That is, incarceration involves an accumulation of cultural capital that increases the potential rewards of street crime. Rather than providing roads toward a new life, incarceration creates a structure of constraints and opportunities that pushes people back toward the street. Free But Still Walking the Yard: Prisonization and the Problems of Reentry examines the deep and lasting changes that people carry with them after leaving prison. I argue that prisonization transforms the habitus, as penal institutions are deposited within individuals as lasting dispositions, motor schemes and bodily automatisms. This prisonization of the habitus can be observed in the everyday practices of former prisoners: the experience of physical space, the rituals of cleaning and bodily care, and the practices of consuming food. While some of these habits and dispositions may seem innocuous, they express an underlying adaptation of the convict body to the rules and rhythms of prison life that can have powerfully disruptive effects during reentry: creating feelings of stress and anxiety, making it difficult to function in routine social situations, amplifying exclusion from the labor market and other institutions, and encouraging return to street cultures shared with other former prisoners. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.