The relationships among intra-individual vulnerability, stress, and adjustment were assessed within a sample of 621 young adolescents from a predominantly affluent suburban area. Also considered was the extent to which gender and family structure influenced the prevalence of these three conditions. Vulnerable teenagers were distinguished from their peers based on their inability to effectively manage the developmental task of individuation. The components of the individuation process considered included ego and cognitive autonomy, and parent and peer relatedness. Stress was measured based on self-reported exposure to conditions of threat, demand, or structural constraint. Indices of depression, problem behaviors, school performance, school absences, and teacher perceived risk were utilized to assess adjustment. Consonant with hypotheses that pronounced difficulty resolving a developmental task is characteristic of vulnerable individuals and that exposure to numerous psychosocial stressors puts individuals at-risk for maladjustment, adolescents who were either poorly individuated or highly stressed exhibited greater dysfunction than their peers. Also individuated or highly stressed exhibited greater dysfunction than their peers. Also consistent with expectations, the poorest overall adjustment was exhibited by vulnerable adolescents who were exposed to multiple stressors. Gender and family structure affected the incidence of vulnerability, elevated exposure to stress, and maladjustment. However, the impact of gender was inconsistent with hypotheses, as girls were found to be at lower risk for dysfunction than boys.

Rich-prospect browsers aid research tasks by providing a meaningful representation of every item in a collection and tools to manipulate the display (Ruecker 2003). A number of rich-prospect browsers have been developed for exploring collections of items that can be represented visually. Several disciplines have recently shown interest in interfaces that attempt to leverage metadata in order to offer superior browsing environments. This thesis examines the potential of applying rich-prospect browsing principles to the exploration of text collections by taking advantage of the metadata-rich text collections that are available through the World Wide Web. It also introduces and assesses the Texttiles browser, an implementation of rich-prospect browsing designed specifically for exploring text collections. Fourteen students participated in a qualitative usability study that evaluated the browser through two different testing approaches in a variety of research tasks: Human-Computer Pragmatics (Anvik 2007) and Affordance Strength Model (Ruecker 2006b). Participants found the Texttiles browser to be a useful tool to explore text collections, understood how rich prospect browsing principles help explore collection, and were satisfied with the browser’s implementation of those principles. Participants also suggested some improvements to the browsers. The results of this study uncovered two new ideas regarding the importance of order and direct manipulation of the data. This thesis reinforces the rich-prospect browsing principles of meaningful representation, display manipulation, and prospect, and provides directions for future research.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2010. / "Graduate Program in Literatures in English." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-196).

Th.--Lett.--Lyon 2, 1988.

abstract: ABSTRACT Many musicians, both amateur and professional alike, are continuously seeking to expand and explore their performance literature and repertory. Introducing new works into the standard repertory is an exciting endeavor for any active musician. Establishing connections, commissioning new works, and collaborating on performances can all work together toward the acceptance and success of a composer's music within an instrument community. For the flute, one such composer is Daniel Dorff (b. 1956). Dorff, a Philadelphia-based composer, has written for symphony orchestra, clarinet, contrabassoon, and others; however, his award-winning works for flute and piccolo are earning him much recognition. He has written works for such illustrious flutists as Mimi Stillman, Walfrid Kujala, and Gary Schocker; his flute works have been recorded by Laurel Zucker, Pamela Youngblood and Lois Bliss Herbine; and his pieces have been performed and premiered at each of the National Flute Association Conventions from 2004 to 2009. Despite this success, little has been written about Dorff's life, compositional style, and contributions to the flute repertory. In order to further promote the flute works of Daniel Dorff, the primary focus of this study is the creation of a compact disc recording of Dorff's most prominent works for flute: April Whirlwind, 9 Walks Down 7th Avenue, both for flute and piano, and Nocturne Caprice for solo flute. In support of this recording, the study also provides biographical information regarding Daniel Dorff, discusses his compositional methods and ideology, and presents background information, description, and performance notes for each piece. Interviews with Daniel Dorff regarding biographical and compositional details serve as the primary source for this document. Suggestions for the performance of the three flute works were gathered through interviews with prominent flutists who have studied and performed Dorff's pieces. Additional performance suggestions for Nocturne Caprice were gathered through a coaching session between the author and the composer. This project is meant to promote the flute works of Daniel Dorff and to help establish their role in the standard flute repertory. / Dissertation/Thesis / April Whirlwind by Daniel Dorff / Nocturne Caprice by Daniel Dorff / 9 Walks Down 7th Avenue by Daniel Dorff / D.M.A. Music 2010

Commonly viewed as the shortest cross sections of armchair carbon nanotubes (CNTs), cycloparaphenylenes (CPPs) represent a unique class of conjugated macrocycles with rigid backbones. In addition to their utility in seeding the growth of uniform CNTs, these strained nanohoops and their derivatives have unique optoelectronic and supramolecular properties for potential applications in materials science. Herein we present our efforts in designing novel nanohoop architectures and new types of strained macrocycles that serve as building blocks for functional materials. Chapter I briefly reviewed the under-represented reactivity studies of strained aromatic macrocycles. Chapter II describes our early efforts in probing the structure-property relationships of oligophenylene macrocycles focusing on the understanding of the influence of structural bending and cyclic conjugation on the optoelectronic properties. Chapter III reports the reactivity study of 1,4-anthracene-incorporated [12]CPP, a model substrate to examine the feasibility of using anthracene as the functional handle to crosslink nanohoops. Chapter IV presents the synthesis of a molecular propeller with three nanohoop blades and examines its unique hexagonal layered packing structure. In Chapter V, we disclose the synthesis of strained stilbene macrocycles suitable for ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) as well as the initial ROMP studies of this monomeric system. This dissertation contains previously published and unpublished coauthored materials.

Web crawlers visit internet applications, collect data, and learn about new web pages from visited pages. Web crawlers have a long and interesting history. Quick expansion of the web, and the complexity added to web applications have made the process of crawling a very challenging one. Different solutions have been proposed to reduce the time and cost of crawling. New generation of web applications, known as Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), pose major challenges to the web crawlers. RIAs shift a portion of the computation to the client side. Shifting a portion of the application to the client browser influences the web crawler in two ways: First, the one-to-one correlation between the URL and the state of the application, that exists in traditional web applications, is broken. Second, reaching a state of the application is no longer a simple operation of navigating to the target URL, but often means navigating to a seed URL and executing a chain of events from it. Due to these challenges, crawling a RIA can take a prohibitively long time. This thesis studies applying distributed computing and parallel processing principles to the field of RIA crawling to reduce the time. We propose different algorithms to concurrently crawl a RIA over several nodes. The proposed algorithms are used as a building block to construct a distributed crawler of RIAs. The different algorithms proposed represent different trade-offs between communication and computation. This thesis explores the effect of making different trade-offs and their effect on the time it takes to crawl RIAs. We study the cost of running a distributed RIA crawl with client-server architecture and compare it with a peer-to-peer architecture. We further study distribution of different crawling strategies, namely: Breath-First search, Depth-First search, Greedy algorithm, and Probabilistic algorithm. To measure the effect of different design decisions in practice, a prototype of each algorithm is implemented. The implemented prototypes are used to obtain empirical performance measurements and to refine the algorithms. The ultimate refined algorithm is used for experimentation with a wide range of applications under different circumstances. This thesis finally includes two theoretical studies of load balancing algorithms and distributed component-based crawling and sets the stage for future studies.

The RNA-binding protein HuR is involved in numerous aspects of the RNA life-cycle. It is known for its ability to stabilize AU-Rich Element (ARE)-containing transcripts in the cytoplasm. The transcript of cIAP1, an important protein involved both in the regulation of apoptosis and NF-κB signaling, contains four such AREs, raising the question of whether HuR can modulate the stability of cIAP1 mRNA. First, using C2C12 cells, we observed a positive correlation between cIAP1 mRNA levels and HuR cytoplasmic localization. We then show that knockdown of HuR in U2OS cells results in a decrease in steady-state cIAP1 mRNA levels through destabilization of the cIAP1 mRNA. Furthermore, we are able to show in vitro that HuR binds directly to the second of the four AREs in the 3’ UTR. The direct link between the binding of HuR to the second ARE and its effect on cIAP1 mRNA stability remains to be shown.

Some U.S. e-commerce retail organizations use inadequate visual product presentation strategies that are limited to static product images and uninspiring textual descriptions. E-store customers have a stake because they are the beneficiary of the higher quality online shopping experience produced when rich media is used. Viewed through richness media theory, the purpose of this summative program evaluation was to evaluate the effectiveness of using rich media in e-store product listings. The evaluation was performed for a partner organization 1 year after the organization implemented a rich media implementation program in its e-store product listings. The results of the first repeated measures t tests indicated using rich media in e-store product listings increased annual sales revenue by 14.2% and total profit dollars by 8.8%; however, the results of a weekly profit comparison between 2016 and 2017 were not statistically significant, t(52) = .768, p = .446. The results of the second repeated measures t test indicated customer retention increased by 7.4% annually after implementing the rich media implementation program; however, the results of a weekly customer retention comparison between 2016 and 2017 were not statistically significant, t(52) = 2.002, p =.051. The results of the thematic analysis revealed one theme: maintaining rich media must be cost effective. The implications for positive social change include the potential for increasing consumer trust in convenient, e-retail shopping practices and reducing consumer dependency on inefficient shopping practices at traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Consumers with more detailed product information can make more informed purchase decisions, resulting in a reduced number of product returns and a higher quality online shopping experience.