Infidelity is one of the most prevalent presenting problems in relational therapy. There are many conceptualizations of the healing process following infidelity and suggested interventions and treatment plans. Forgiveness is an essential part of relationship growth and healing interpersonal hurts. Reconciliation is relationship repair that can accompany forgiveness. In addition, restoring trust is essential to reconciliation. Means to accomplish rebuilding trust must be established. This study seeks to expand understanding of the treatment of infidelity specifically on the topics of forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration of trust through disclosure. The Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation and Trust Scale (FvRTS) was developed as a measure for therapists' views and perception concerning these three topics. Through statistical analysis of the FvRTS, which was administered to relational therapists, this study investigates the views and opinions held by therapists concerning the relationship between reconciliation and forgiveness and the role of disclosure, both initial and ongoing, in restoring trust following infidelity. Therapists conveyed the view that reconciliation is not required for forgiveness. However, in their practice they encourage reconciliation following an affair. Results indicated that therapists perceive initial disclosure as having immediate negative impacts. But overall, therapists expressed a strong view that both initial and ongoing disclosure have a positive long term impact on relational healing.

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The PCAOB inspection reports for large audit firms are primarily anecdotal in nature, providing only a list of deficiencies found without any statistical context (e.g., the inspection sample size). This is problematic when trying to determine the extent of a firm's audit weaknesses. However, simply adding statistical data to the reports, as currently provided in the PCAOB reports of small firms, may not solve the problem. Prior research suggests that statistical data are often ignored or underweighted when anecdotal data are present. This study investigates whether a bias for anecdotal data overwhelms the statistical data as currently presented in small firm reports, and whether any anecdotal bias can be overcome by possible decision aids. I first demonstrate that the anecdotal data presented in PCAOB reports can lead to incorrect perceptions of audit firms. I then find that the PCAOB's practice of providing statistical context in small firm reports is ineffective; that is, users continue to focus on anecdotal data even in the presence of informative statistical data. Finally, I provide evidence to indicate that two easily implemented decision aids can successfully help incorporate statistical data into perceptions of audit firms, resulting in more informed audit engagement decisions.

The tremendous spreading of multimedia via Internet motivates the watermarking as a new promising technology for copyright protection. This work is concerned with the design and development of novel algorithms in the spatial and transform domains for robust and secure watermarking of coloured images. These algorithms are adaptive, content-dependent and compatible with the Human Visual System (HVS). The host channels have the ability to host a large information payload. Furthermore, it has enough capacity to accept multiple watermarks. Abstract This work achieves several contributions in the area of coloured images watermarking. The most challenging problem is to get a robust algorithm that can overcome geometric attacks, which is solved in this work. Also, the search for a very secure algorithm has been achieved via using double secret keys. In addition, the problem of multiple claims of ownership is solved here using an unusual approach. Furthermore, this work differentiates between terms, which are usually confusing the researchers and lead to misunderstanding in most of the previous algorithms. One of the drawbacks in most of the previous algorithms is that the watermark consists of a small numbers of bits without strict meaning. This work overcomes this weakness III in using meaningful images and text with large amounts of data. Contrary to what is found in literature, this work shows that the green-channel is better than the blue-channel to host the watermarks. A more general and comprehensive test bed besides a broad band of performance evaluation is used to fairly judge the algorithms.

The relative importance of abiotic versus biotic top-down factors on structuring tundra plant communities is debated. With climate change already strongly affecting the tundra ecosystem, understanding which factors will prevail is vital. Tundra plant communities are presumed to be predominantly structured by their abiotic conditions yet grazing by reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) has a major effect on composition and diversity. It is increasingly recognized, however, that these factors cannot be considered in isolation. Here, I aim to test the relative and interactive effect of abiotic and top- down factors on vegetation structure in the Swedish mountain tundra. Using direct measurements of reindeer grazing via tri-axial accelerometers (from two summers, 2019 and 2020) coupled with remotely-gathered data on landscape features, I examine how species richness and coverage of vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens (sampled in 2022) are driven by grazing duration and abiotic conditions. Abiotic factors, specifically aspect and soil wetness, prevailed as the dominant drivers of local vegetation patterns. Clear interactions between factors were also observed. Reindeer grazing duration had predictable but weak effects on richness, with responses predominantly observed on south-facing slopes. Additionally, soil wetness interacted with grazing duration, with wetter areas grazed far less. These results demonstrate the importance of considering interactions between abiotic and biotic factors, providing a better understanding of how tundra plant communities in northern Sweden might change under future climate change or different grazing regimes. The observed interactions imply divergence in vulnerability between slopes and the potential for effects of herbivory to be altered under future hydrological conditions. I emphasize that future studies should continue to disentangle these relationships.

Svärm-AI är en variant av artificiell intelligens (AI) som används för att simulera ett bettende liknande det man kan se i svärmar, flockar eller stim. Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka ifall man kan använda svärm-AI för att förbättra en AI i ett top down shooter spel där två lag slåss mot varandra. Ett program skapades för att testa detta där de två lagen båda var datorstyrda enheter och fick slåss mot varandra för att samla mätvärden. Resultaten visar att svärm-AI presterade bättre i labyrintliknande banor utan stora tomma områden. De visade även att svärm-AI använde betydligt mycket mer prestanda. / <p>Det finns övrigt digitalt material (t.ex. film-, bild- eller ljudfiler) eller modeller/artefakter tillhörande examensarbetet som ska skickas till arkivet.</p><p>There are other digital material (eg film, image or audio files) or models/artifacts that belongs to the thesis and need to be archived.</p>

This document only includes an excerpt of the corresponding thesis or dissertation. To request a digital scan of the full text, please contact the Ruth Lilly Medical Library's Interlibrary Loan Department (rlmlill@iu.edu).

Retention of engineering students to graduation and career is important business for both United States (U.S.) industries and engineering education institutions alike. Industries need competent engineers dedicated to working in the field of engineering beyond graduation in order to achieve business success and national economic growth, while engineering education institutions need retention to graduation to achieve their own business goals. This dissertation took a three-pronged approach to identifying relationships between depth and specificity of engineering and response factors related to graduation and career retention of engineers. Occupational alignment, graduate school decisions, and engineering identity were evaluated for relationships with specificity or depth of discipline within engineering degrees to evaluate if increasing the depth or specificity increased the response factors. Using historical data analysis, occupational alignment and graduate school decisions were both found to be influenced by specificity of discipline. Traditional engineering disciplines were found to report the most occupational alignment after graduation, while specific engineering disciplines were more likely to attend graduate school after graduation. Additionally, for all students reporting graduate school attendance, all specificities were most likely to align their graduate degree discipline to their undergraduate degree discipline. A national survey of undergraduate engineering students revealed that engineering identity is related to depth of discipline. Students enrolled in more specific engineering curriculum, in the form of a discipline-specific major with a concentration, reported higher engineering identity. However, the discipline-specific depth of discipline followed closely behind, indicating the impact of depth of discipline is small. The largest difference in scores between the two depths of discipline was found in students' reports of a construct termed "interest". Ultimately, this dissertation found statistically significant relationships between depth and specificity of discipline and occupational alignment, graduate school decisions, and engineering identity. Though these findings are statistically significant, they were incremental, meaning depth and specificity of discipline should not be considered the main factor of influence.

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