This study provides a content analysis of television families portrayed in family-focused programs aired between 2004 and 2013. The analysis focuses on family configuration type, parent type and marital status, and the frequency and gender of children characters, as well as each program's genre, channel type, and target audience. The study uses cultivation theory as the basis of understanding and aims to anticipate television's potential effects and raise important questions that should be addressed in future studies. Results indicate that the traditional nuclear family configuration held the largest portion of the television family landscape. The study found an increase in single-parent families and a decrease in reconstituted families portrayed on television. Significantly, the content analysis revealed a new family configuration type that had not been identified in previous studies: nuclear with same-sex parents. The study found more single mothers than single fathers and discovered that single mothers had significantly fewer male children, pointing out a potential issue in terms of single-parent gender. The content analysis found more male children than female children; however, four years of data included more females than males, indicating possible movement toward equal representation of both genders. This study calls out the importance of educating young television audiences regarding the increasing complexity of the modern-day television family. The potential cultivation effect of family-related television programming could affect society's views of the importance of family—an issue that should be explored in future research. Other areas for future studies include trends related to television families with same-sex parents and extended family member dynamics as portrayed on television.

Research has shown that sexual content is prevalent in television programming and that this content can have an effect on the viewer's attitudes about sex. This study examined this relationship within the theoretical framework of cultivation and social cognitive theories. This study used a survey to examine these relationships in young students at a large southeastern university. The researchers targeted freshmen, many in their first semester, for this study to get the best measure of attitudes, before they were influenced by college life. In addition to examining the effects of television viewing, the researcher looked at the effects of exposure to other media that may contain sexual content, such as magazines, Internet, DVD's, video games, and music. The study did not find significant relationships between television viewing and students' sexual attitudes and behaviors, but it did find several strong relationships among sexual attitudes and behaviors and students' exposure to other forms of media that may contain sexual content, including music, films, video games, and DVDs.

This study examined the relationship between different media and expectations about romantic relationships and marriage. Participants were asked to complete a survey that measured different romantic constructs and the types of media exposures on a daily and weekly basis. The variables were measured to determine the effect the media play in a person's perceptions on romantic relationships and marriage. The results of the study concluded that although general television viewing does not predict perceptions about romance and marriage, the romantic genre of television programs as well as magazines do have a role in predicting romantic perceptions.

Wastewater contaminated with heavy metal ions (HMIs), stemming from human activities and natural disasters, poses substantial threats to both the environment and human health. The unchecked release of untreated wastewater into natural water bodies leads to severe pollution, upsetting ecological balance. To address this pressing challenge, microalgae-based biosorption technology has emerged as a promising solution for the efficient removal of HMIs from wastewater. Microalgae, with their extensive surface area and intricate cell wall structures, exhibit remarkable efficacy in HMIs biosorption. This thesis aims at elucidating the fundamental principles governing the interactions between HMI and microalgal cells to help enhance the biosorption capacity of HMI by microalgae from two perspectives: 1) conditioning of biomass by either optimizing the cultivation conditions or downstream processing; and 2) conditioning of the biosorption process for optimal performance of given algal biomass. It was demonstrated that among the tested cultivation conditions, i.e., culture pH, phosphate concentration, nitrate concentration, and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) conditions, which all have significant impacts on cell surface structure and therefore biosorption of HMI, DIC is the most significant factor. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that downstream processing of biomass such as lipid extraction with sonication for cell disruption could help enhance specific surface area and removal of lipids from cell wall surfaces, resulting in remarkably elevated HMI biosorption capacities. As for research on biosorption mechanisms, a correlation between HMI properties, i.e., ionic radius and electronegativity, and their biosorption capacities onto certain microalgal biomass, was established, which was validated with both experimental data and literature data. Furthermore, systematic studies on biosorption kinetics, isotherm, and thermodynamics, as well as cell surface characterization, and determination of HMI intracellular and extracellular contents of cells after biosorption were carried out, which converged on the conclusion that biosorption was predominantly monolayer surface adsorption. A mathematical model was proposed and validated, which is a rigid model accounting for the effects of cell size and HMI radius only. Analysis of model differentiation from experimental data led to the hypothesis that the nanostructures on cells, mostly like pili, were the major locations where binding sites for HMI were housed. This research represents a significant step towards ensuring the responsible and sustainable use of microalgae for environmental engineering, promising a cleaner and healthier future.

Cultivation theory, which is the theoretical foundation for many studies examining media effects, asserts that prolonged exposure to problematic attitudes cultivates acceptance of said attitudes (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Signorielli & Shanahan, 2002). Beyond the cultivation of attitudes through lyrical and visual content, common explanations for the association between substance use references in media and perceived substance use risk include sensation-seeking (Arnett, 1991; Weisskirch & Murphy, 2004; Oberle & Garcia, 2015), peer substance use (Mulder et al., 2010), and the effects of mainstream and non-mainstream music genres (ter Bogt et al., 2012; Mulder et al., 2009). This study utilized an experimental design which examined the effect of substance use references in mainstream (pop) music compared to three proposed non-mainstream genres (reggae, electronic dance music [EDM], and psytrance [psychedelic-trance]) on participants' perceived substance use risk (PSUR). Higher levels of reported recent substance use were moderately and significantly associated with lower levels of PSUR (r (836) = -.36, p < .001). Recent substance use, group, substance use priming, age, race, and sex significantly impacted PSUR (F (5, 799) = 25.04, p < .05), explaining roughly 12% more of the variance (R2 = .135) than models not including recent substance use as a predictor. While exposure to mainstream and nonmainstream genres did not result in significant differences in participants' PSUR, there was a statistically significant difference in substance use priming between groups. Liking particular music genres was also still associated with higher levels of recent substance use, as previous studies have shown (Chen, Miller, Grube & Waiters, 2006; Mulder et al., 2009; ter Bogt et al., 2012; Forsyth, Barnard & McKeganey, 1997).

No description available.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(農学) / 甲第22896号 / 農博第2439号 / 新制||農||1083(附属図書館) / 学位論文||R3||N5316(農学部図書室) / 京都大学大学院農学研究科森林科学専攻 / (主査)教授 德地 直子, 教授 神﨑 護, 教授 吉岡 崇仁 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Agricultural Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

The main objective of this dissertation was to assess whether cultivated area in Iraq, as estimated using satellite remote sensing, changed during and as a result of war and sanctions. The first study used MODIS NDVI data during OIF and the end of UN sanctions to study changes in cultivated area for Iraq as a whole and to identify spatial patterns. The results revealed significant changes in cultivated area for Iraq as a whole, with cultivated area decreasing over 35,000 ha per year. Regionally, there was little change in cultivated area in northern governorates in the Kurdish Autonomous Region, significant decreases in governorates in central Iraq, and initial increases in governorates containing the southern marshlands followed by decreases related to drought. The second study used Landsat images converted to NDVI to study changes in cultivated area in central Iraq for four periods of conflict, and relates those changes to effects on food security. The results indicated that cultivated area changed little between the Iran-Iraq War (1980 to 1988) and the Gulf War (1990 to 1991), increased by 20 percent (from 1.72 to 2.04 Mha) during the period of United Nations sanctions (1990 to 2003), and dropped to below pre-sanction levels (1.40 Mha) during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003 to 2011). Finally, the third study builds on findings from the second study to address patterns of agricultural land abandonment in central Iraq. The largest areas of abandoned land were those cultivated during the Late Sanctions period (2000-2003). Further, the results indicate that proximity to surface water and roads are strong indicators of continuity of agricultural land use, and that abandoned lands are positioned in peripheral regions more distant from surface water and the transportation grid. We also found that surface soil salinity is increasing in the cultivated lands of central Iraq, regardless of whether it was cultivated during every period or during only a single period. The overall findings indicate that the UN sanctions had the greatest impact on cultivated area, which increased during sanctions, when food imports all but ceased, and then decreased after sanctions ended and food imports resumed. / Ph. D.

Annual bluegrass is a winter annual grass that is problematic on golf putting greens due to its light green color, prolific seedhead production and intolerance to stress. On creeping bentgrass putting greens, herbicides for annual bluegrass control are limited. A new herbicide, methiozolin, developed by Moghu Research Center, LLC, in Daejeon, South Korea, safely and selectively controls annual bluegrass in creeping bentgrass and several other turfgrass species. Methiozolin typically controls annual bluegrass over several weeks, allowing desirable turfgrass time to grow into areas previously infested by annual bluegrass with little surface disruption. The mode of action of methiozolin is unknown, but has been proposed to act as either a cell wall biosynthesis inhibitor (CBI) or an inhibitor of tyrosine aminotransferase (TAT). Field studies were conducted at Virginia Tech to investigate strategies promoting surface recovery on putting greens following atypically rapid annual bluegrass loss resulting from methiozolin application, intensive core-cultivation as well as potential interactions with plant growth regulators (PGR's), like ethephon. In the rapid annual bluegrass removal study, all treatments receiving additional fertility via synthetic fertilizer with or without trinexapac-ethyl or biostimulant recovered 1 to 3 weeks more quickly than treatments that did not include additional fertility. Addition of the PGR trinexapac-ethyl inconsistently regulated speed of canopy recovery, both increasing and decreasing recovery speed. Under normal maintenance conditions, methiozolin does not negatively influence putting green recovery, however, if the putting green is exposed to droughty conditions, methiozolin can reduce recovery time by several weeks. Core-cultivation should be avoided in conjunction with methiozolin and ethephon applications because when this procedure was conducted on the same day as herbicide application it significantly damaged creeping bentgrass, reducing cover to 19% at 2000 g ai ha⁻¹, compared to the non-treated at 62%. Regarding the question of methiozoling mode of action, laboratory studies supported the claim that addition of exogenous 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate (4-HPP) alleviates symptoms of methiozolin exposure in lesser duckweed, a model monocot species, but feeding various turfgrass species and annual bluegrass exogenous 4-HPP did not alleviate symptoms. Creeping bentgrass secondary root length and density was not affected by methiozolin, although annual bluegrass, Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass secondary root lengths were reduced. Based on these data, it does not appear that TAT inhibition is a primary mode of action of methiozolin in turfgrass. Studies were conducted to determine if methiozolin inhibited cell wall biosynthesis in desirable turfgrass species and annual bluegrass. All species exhibited decreased enrichment of ¹³C in cell-wall sugars form ¹³C-glucose in response to methiozolin and a known cell wall biosynthesis inhibitor, indaziflam. Indaziflam and methiozolin at 0.01 µM inhibited ¹³C enrichment of all sugars less than methiozolin at 1.0 µM, for xylose, arabinose and glucose, but not galactose. Addition of 4-HPP increased incorporation of ¹³C into xylose, but had no other influence on ¹³C incorporation into other cell wall sugars. Lack of species specific response indicates that cell wall biosynthesis inhibition is probably not the source of interspecific species responses observed in the field. / Ph. D.

No / The agricultural ¿revolution¿ in Iron Age Orkney is the subject of Julie Bond¿s paper. Focusing on Pool in Sanday, she outlines the perceived changes in animal husbandry and cultivation over the lifetime of the settlement ¿ changes she describes as ¿innovations and intensification in the agricultural economy of Orkney before the arrival of the Vikings.¿ The apparent success of these Iron Age farming settlements may well be, she adds, the reason they may have been early targets for Scandinavian settlers.