Natural populations exhibit a non-random mating behavior and it is assumed that mate preferences causing the non-random mating behavior play a role in sympatric speciation. In my thesis, I have proposed a new model of a mate preference that is based on ecological performance and I have named it fitness-based mating. Individuals that express this mate preference choose primarily fit partners. Fitness-based mating is modelled for haploid, diallelic populations. Individuals are distributed across two niches, and genomes are simplified to two loci. The first locus is subject to natural selection, and the second-locus genotype gives the strength of the mate preference. The population is separated into females and males, among which only females exhibit the mate preference. Ecological selection acts on both sexes alike. With the model I have investigated how female choosiness based on direct advantages offered by their partners can cause and maintain a polymorphic population. Fitness-based mating is an evolutionary successful mating strategy. It spreads in a population due to its amplifying effect on the reproductive success and on the attractiveness of its carriers. A polymorphism arises naturally in the model. The emergence of a stable polymorphism of traits underlying ecological selection is of special interest, because a polymorphism can be a precursor of speciation.

The attribution of incentive salience to cues that become associated with drugs of abuse is a critical characteristic of individuals who may be vulnerable to drug addiction. Rodents with the propensity to sign track are thought to be vulnerable to drug abuse. The goal of the current work was to investigate whether sign trackers (STs) would acquire cocaine conditioned place preference (CPP) to a discrete cue using an avian species. In Experiment 1, sign and goal trackers (GTs) were first identified using a one third rank order split. Following identification, cocaine-CPP was conducted with a discrete cue in each end chamber. Contrary to previous research, results showed that GTs showed a CPP to the discrete cue but STs did not. Experiment 2 was conducted to determine whether sign and GTs had been misclassified with the rank order split. Experiment 2 compared the rank order method with a t-test method (absolute criterion). Misclassification of both sign and GTs occurred using the rank order split. The findings indicated that use of a more accurate method to identify sign and GTs may have led to different results for Experiment 1. The t-test method may be useful for models that require identification of STs.

Abstract This experiment evaluated the effects of noncontingent and contingent access on relative preference for items identified through a series of preference assessments. Four typically developing children participated in multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessments to establish a relative hierarchy of preferred activities. Following the MSWO, the participants were exposed to contingent access or noncontingent access conditions that were separated by preference assessments to assess stability of the preference hierarchy. Results were discussed in terms of preference, preference shifts, and the response deprivation hypothesis.

This dissertation aims to explore the nature of early social preferences by testing attention to a cue that might have evolved as a reliable signal of shared group membership – shared cultural knowledge. Part 1 shows that children attend to this cue when making social choices: Children both prefer others who know songs they themselves know, and avoid others who know songs they do not know, while other cues such as shared preferences for songs are not as powerful drivers of social preferences. Part 2 shows that this cue affects how five-months-old infants allocate attention to human singers. After listening to two individuals singing different songs, infants look longer at singers of familiar songs than at singers of unfamiliar songs. When both songs are unfamiliar, infants do not show preferences for singers of songs that follow or violate Western melodic structure, although they are sensitive to these differences. In focusing on familiar songs but not musical styles, infants may selectively attend to information that might mark group membership later in life, namely shared knowledge of specific songs. Part 3 investigates whether children are selective in the properties they use to infer that two individuals belong to the same group, targeting two potentially important social cues: race and gender. Specifically, Part 3 asks if children attribute shared musical knowledge to individuals of the same race or gender. Four-year-olds attribute shared knowledge to individuals of the same gender, but not of the same race. Five-year-olds attribute shared knowledge to individuals of the same race, but not of the same gender. In contrast, a control unrelated to group-membership – attributions of shared musical preferences – do not yield any dissociation between attributions based on race or gender. Thus, as they gain experience, children seem to adaptively update the social cues they use to infer shared group-membership. Together these results begin to elucidate the mechanisms underlying early social preferences by showing that children might selectively attend to the most reliable cues to shared group-membership, which, in turn, might allow them later in life to participate in the complex social organization that is unique to human societies. / Psychology

The amount of force or power when applied can move one object from one position to another or the capacity of a system to do work is called energy. It exists in everybody whether they are human beings or animals or non-living things. There are many forms of energy such as: kinetic, potential, light, sound, gravitational, elastic, electromagnetic or nuclear. According to the law of conservation of energy, any form of energy can be converted into another form and the total energy will remain the same. Energy can be broadly classified into two main groups’ i.e. renewable and nonrenewable resources. Many of the renewable energy a technology have been around for years, and as the time go by, are increasing in efficiency. Keywords: solar panel improvement, motor control, energy –efficient Solarplatten, Motosteuerung, Energieeffizenz

This thesis examines recommendation dialogue, in the context of dialogue strategy design for conversational recommender systems. The purpose of a recommender system is to produce personalized recommendations of potentially useful items from a large space of possible options. In a conversational recommender system, this task is approached by utilizing natural language recommendation dialogue for detecting user preferences, as well as for providing recommendations. The fundamental idea of a conversational recommender system is that it relies on dialogue sessions to detect, continuously update, and utilize the user's preferences in order to predict potential interest in domain items modeled in a system. Designing the dialogue strategy management is thus one of the most important tasks for such systems. Based on empirical studies as well as design and implementation of conversational recommender systems, a behavior-based dialogue model called bcorn is presented. bcorn is based on three constructs, which are presented in the thesis. It utilizes a user preference modeling framework (preflets) that supports and utilizes natural language dialogue, and allows for descriptive, comparative, and superlative preference statements, in various situations. Another component of bcorn is its message-passing formalism, pcql, which is a notation used when describing preferential and factual statements and requests. bcorn is designed to be a generic recommendation dialogue strategy with conventional, information-providing, and recommendation capabilities, that each describes a natural chunk of a recommender agent's dialogue strategy, modeled in dialogue behavior diagrams that are run in parallel to give rise to coherent, flexible, and effective dialogue in conversational recommender systems. Three empirical studies have been carried out in order to explore the problem space of recommendation dialogue, and to verify the solutions put forward in this work. Study I is a corpus study in the domain of movie recommendations. The result of the study is a characterization of recommendation dialogue, and forms a base for a first prototype implementation of a human-computer recommendation dialogue control strategy. Study II is an end-user evaluation of the acorn system that implements the dialogue control strategy and results in a verification of the effectiveness and usability of the dialogue strategy. There are also implications that influence the refinement of the model that are used in the bcorn dialogue strategy model. Study III is an overhearer evaluation of a functional conversational recommender system called CoreSong, which implements the bcorn model. The result of the study is indicative of the soundness of the behavior-based approach to conversational recommender system design, as well as the informativeness, naturalness, and coherence of the individual bcorn dialogue behaviors. / I denna avhandling undersöks rekommendationsdialog med avseende på utformningen av dialogstrategier f¨or konverserande rekommendationssystem. Syftet med ett rekommendationssystem är att generera personaliserade rekommendationer utifrån potentiellt användbara domänobjekt i stora informationsrymder. I ett konverserande rekommendationssystem angrips detta problem genom att utnyttja naturligt språkk och dialog för att modellera användarpreferenser, liksom för att ge rekommendationer. Grundidén med konverserande rekommendationssystem är att utnyttja dialogsessioner för att upptäcka, uppdatera och utnyttja en användares preferenser för att förutsäga användarens intresse för domänobjekten som modelleras i ett system. Utformningen av dialogstrategihantering är därför en av de viktigaste uppgifterna för sådana system. Baserat på empiriska studier, liksom på utformning och implementering av konverserande rekommendationssystem, presenteras en beteendebaserad dialogmodell som kallas bcorn. bcorns bas utgörs av tre konstruktioner, vilka alla presenteras i denna avhandling. bcorn utnyttjar ett preferensmodelleringsramverk (preflets) som stöder och anv¨ander sig av naturligt språk i dialog och tillåter deskriptiva, komparativa och superlativa preferensuttryck i olika situationer. Den andra komponenten i bcorn är dess interna meddelande-formalism pcql, som är en notation som kan beskriva preferens- och faktiska påståenden och frågor. bcorn är utformat som en generell rekommendationshanteringsstrategi med konventionella, informationsgivande och rekommenderande förmågor, som var och en beskriver naturliga delar av en rekommendationsagents dialogstrategi. Dessa delar modelleras i dialogbeteendediagram som exekveras parallellt för att ge upphov till koherent, flexibel och effektiv dialog i konverserande rekommendationssystem. Tre empiriska studier har utförts för att utforska problemkomplexet som utgör rekommendationsdialog och för att verifiera de lösningar som tagits fram inom ramen för detta arbete. Studie I är en korpusstudie i filmrekommendationsdomänen. Studien resulterar i en karakteristik av rekommendationsdialog, och utgör basen för en första prototyp av dialoghanteringsstrategi för rekommendationsdialog mellan människa och dator. Studie II är en slutanvändarutvärdering av systemet acorn som implementerar denna dialoghanteringsstrategi och resulterar i en verifiering av effektivitet och användbarhet av strategin. Studien resulterar också i implikationer som påverkar utformningen av den modell som används i bcorn. Studie III är en medhörningsutvärdering av det funktionella konverserande rekommendationssystemet CoreSong, som implementerar bcorn-modellen. Resultatet av studien indikerar att det beteendebaserade angreppssättet är funktionellt och att de olika dialogbeteendena i bcorn ger upphov till h¨og informationskvalitet, naturlighet och koherens i rekommendationsdialog.

Europos Sąjungos sudaryti preferenciniai susitarimai su trečiosiomis šalimis importuojant atitinkamos kilmės šalies prekes, leidžia joms taikyti sumažintą, ar net 0 proc. importo muito tarifą. Taip skatinamas Susitariančių šalių ekonomikos augimas. Preferencijos taikomos prekėms, kurios numatytos atitinkamuose susitarimuose ir atitinka preferencinės prekybos prekių kilmės taisykles. Kadangi Lietuva yra Europos Sąjungos narė, mūsų šaliai yra aktualūs preferencinių susitarimų taikymo ypatumai, sąlygos ir perspektyvos. Magistro baigiamojo darbo tikslas yra kompleksiškai išanalizuoti teisinius ir organizacinius prekių kilmės kontrolės reglamentavimo principus, teorinius bei praktinius aspektus ir atskleisti praktines jų įgyvendinimo spragas bei problemas. Darbe keliami uždaviniai: išnagrinėti ES preferencinių prekybos susitarimų teisinio reglamentavimo sistemą, jų įtaką prekių importui ir eksportui, atskleisti prekių kilmės esmę ir jos nustatymo metodus bei kontrolės formas, atlikti prekių kilmės tikrinimo ir kontrolės analizę Lietuvos muitinėje ir nustatyti trūkumus taikant prekių kilmės kontrolę bei apibendrinti taikomus prekių kilmės kontrolės teisinius ir organizacinius aspektus ir numatyti jų tobulinimo kryptis. Darbe naudojami teorinės medžiagos analizės ir sintezės, grafinio vaizdavimo, statistikos duomenų analizės ir sintezės metodai. Remiamasi tiek oficialiais, tiek antriniais informacijos šaltiniais. Teiginiai iliustruojami statistiniais duomenimis, sudaromos diagramos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The work was produced in Vilnius, in 2007. Scope of this conclusive work is 80 pages. The work consists of introduction, tree parts and is concluded by giving conclusions and proposals. The report of work are 17 pictures, 3 tables in this work, as well as list of literature, summary and 9 annexes. Preferential arrangements of EU with the third countries importing some products with origin, allow to use reduced tariff or 0 ℅ rate of duty of import. So it is the prime to pump the developing of economy of contracting parties. The preferences are applied to products which are covered by respective agreements and adequate the rules of origin in preferential trade. Lithuania is the member of EU so it is actual for our country the use of general peculiarity of preferential origin, conditions and perspectives. Goal of this conclusive work is the integrated analyse of juriducal and organizational control of proof of origin, theoretical and practical aspects and the point is to show the practical breaches and problems of their realization. Tasks are raised in this work is to study the preferential agreements of trade of EU, the systems of regulation, their influence for import and export, to show the substantiality of origin, methods, forms of control and evolution of control in Lithuanian customs and to establish directions of their perfection. The aim of this work was reached by the analysis and synthesis on theoretical, repository and statistical material. In conclusion work were... [to full text]

This thesis is an investigation of dietary alterations, including the addition of fibre and an appetite suppressant (alternative diet) and the use of a skip-a-day (SAD) feeding regime, which may reduce hunger. Broiler breeders are severely feed restricted to limit growth, leading to symptoms of chronic hunger. We used behavioural indices, feather condition scoring and preference tests were used to compare satiating properties of the diets. Alternative diets reduced symptoms of hunger such as feather, object and aggressive pecking and resulted in better feather condition. Although SAD birds feather pecked more during feeding bouts, SAD birds still had better feather condition than daily birds. Preference testing revealed no differences in dietary preference, implying a lack of preference, or a methodological flaw. However, no aversion to the alternative diet was evident. Alternative diets, regardless of feeding frequency, may be the best option for bettering the welfare of growing broiler breeders. / Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, OMAFRA, Canadian Poultry Research Council

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