Previous research on college students has found that cooperation in iterated prisoner's dilemma game is correlated with preference for delayed rewards in studies of temporal discounting. The present study attempted to replicate this finding in a drug-dependent population. Thirty-one individuals who intranasally abuse prescription opioids participated in temporal discounting and iterated prisoner's dilemma game procedures during intake for a treatment study. Rate of temporal discounting was determined for each participant at two hypothetical reward magnitudes, as well as proportion of cooperation in a 60-trial iterated prisoner's dilemma game versus a tit-for-tat strategy. Cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game and temporal discounting rates were significantly correlated in the predicted direction: individuals who preferred delayed rewards in the temporal discounting task were more likely to cooperate in the prisoner's dilemma game.

This independent thesis project has been the development of a methodology of working which is anchored in dependence on one another and collectivist ideals within art and design work. I have taken my community, the Design + Change BA program student body, as a stakeholder throughout this process. The methods are actions and practices which I have been gathering with fellow classmates in conversation. I am using the medium of a conversation which I define not as an exact moment in time but rather a continuous long-term dwelling-with, while also iterating on appropriate tools in facilitating this conversation, in order to take the idea of living and working as a dependent collective and run it through with people, addressing their concerns (and mine) along the way. The methods are simple, yet their simplicity depends on a mindset which many are fearful of, the group mindset. To learn, live and work as a group with the belief that a group is as strong as its weakest link, points to a certain letting go. It directly touches on one of the biggest individualistic insecurities, that of having to depend on anything but yourself. I see an orientation toward dependence necessary for a + Change-oriented collectivist mindset. However, the task that I have set for myself with this project is not to convince that this is the new, better story we should believe, I am working with our ability to temporarily adopt this mindset, to shift between paradigms. There is one thing that unites us when we first arrive in the + Change classroom, and that is the faith that a society of fairness is possible. We soon understand that together we are stronger than individually, yet, we find it hard to work with someone who does not share our vision, our utopia, our mindset. So, we drift toward those who do, unintentionally creating a space of division (and oppression), the very thing we are trying to + Change globally. This is the gap that I want this project to bridge, through the assumption that the biggest influence in our + Change system is the individualist paradigm.

In the United States, cigarette smoking is the main contributor to preventable death in all populations; and, among the mentally ill, the prevalence of smoking is a clinical practice concern. Nearly half of all smokers also have a diagnosis of mental illness compared with 23% of the general population. In an effort to reduce the problem of tobacco use within mentally ill populations, this project sought to create an educational module on smoking cessation for staff in a mental health clinic. The theory of planned behavior was used to guide the project that focused on implementation of a behavior change approach to counter smoking dependence. With evidence obtained from a comprehensive literature search of medical databases and textbooks, the education module was developed for teaching staff in a 30-bed outpatient mental health facility. Staff were taught to administer the education module on smoking cessation and to evaluate the plan. Evaluation of the project effectiveness on the knowledge of clinical staff was determined through the use of questions directed toward understanding professionals' perceptions of the module development and implementation, and the evidence-based educational materials developed for the program. Post tests administered after the staff education showed an increase in knowledge. The full education program was provided to the unit and will be used for staff training and for working with patients in the future. Positive social change is expected to occur because of the increased knowledge among clinical staff who care for mentally ill individuals who smoke. The result should be a safer, healthier setting for both smoking and nonsmoking patients in mental health clinics.

The partial specific Gibbs1 free energy or the chemical potential has been shown to be the most desirable thermodynamic function for describing soil-water systems. The absolute value of the chemical potential of soil water cannot be determined. If pure water at standard temperature and pressure is taken as the reference, the difference between the chemical potential of soil water and that of the reference can be measured and is called "soil water potential," which has the dimension of energy per unit mass. The barometric pressure at the sea level has been accepted as the standard reference pressure. Thus, any device that measures a certain property with respect to local barometric pressure should be standardized to the pressure at sea level. In case of a tensiometer, a device for measuring soil water potential operating at different locations with varying altitudes, the reference pressure changes from place to place and time to time. In pressure plate or pressure membrane apparatus, on the other hand, the soil water potential, there would be a problem with respect to pressure in evaluation of water potential. The effect of external pressure on soil water potential has been neglected by most workers in the past. That is, they have assumed that soil water behaves the same way toward pressure as pure free water. The main objective of this investigation is to evaluate the validity of this assumption and to determine the nature of the pressure dependence of soil water potential.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Introduction: Externalizing disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder (CD), and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) have a high prevalence rate in both children of alcoholics and in those with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE). These disorders are also predictors of alcohol dependence (alcdep), heritable, and share an underlying genetic liability with alcdep. Furthermore, a mother who drinks while pregnant is likely to be alcohol dependent (AD), and vice-versa. This study incorporated these factors into one model, including as well as a measure of broad genetic risk for ADHD and alcdep to test for the contributions of these effects simultaneously. An independent sample was used to confirm the results for PAE and broad genetic risk. The hypothesis is that PAE will increase the risk to ADHD but not to CD or ODD. Methods: Each of these factors was evaluated independently to test if that effect on its own, significantly contributed to each disorder. Another model included several demographic covariates, to determine which of these environmental effects also contributed to the disorder. The final model for each disorder included environmental effects along with the primary effects of interest. Results: PAE resulted in increased risk for the inattentive (INATT) sub-type of ADHD and conduct disorder (CD) in the discovery sample and for the hyperactive-impulsive (HYPIMP), INATT and CD in the replication sample. PAE and the PAE*maternal alcohol dependence interaction increased the risk for ADHD and INATT. A broad genetic risk for ADHD was associated with all disorders except HYPIMP in the replication sample. Conclusion: This study further supports the trending evidence of a unique etiology of ADHD in those with PAE, and more specifically, that INATT and HYPIMP are affected according to two different mechanisms of action, independent of a genetic contribution due to either ADHD or alcohol dependence, both of which also were associated with a risk for INATT. The contribution of PAE to INATT and CD were the only consistent results across all definitions of alcohol exposure and in both datasets, indicating that PAE is a veritable risk for INATT and CD.

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Environmental variation, an important source of phenotypic variation, can influence phenotypes, fitness and even rates of evolution. My thesis explores the effects of evolutionary change on the response to different types of environmental variation. In the first study, I examined the evolution of environmental canalization in adaptively diverged populations of Drosophila melanogaster that vary in degree of genetic canalization. I use these populations to test the congruence hypothesis which predicts that genetic canalization is a co-product of the evolution of environmental canalization and thus should be correlated. My results show that, despite adaptive evolutionary changes in morphology and genetic canalization, these populations have similar degree of variability due to environmental variation. In the second study, I explore how both variation in temperature and food quality during development influence patterns of sexual dimorphism in wing morphology in adaptively diverged populations of Drosophila melanogaster. I compare the relative contributions of adaptation, food availability and temperature on sexual size and shape dimorphism of the Drosophila wing. In particular, I focus on how these factors influence size-shape allometry both in general and in a sex-specific manner. My results show that despite the large adaptive divergence and a strong influence of environmental manipulation on wing size and shape, sex-specific patterns of condition dependence remain relatively consistent between the two populations. In the third study, I explore the evolutionary patterns of condition-dependent sexual size dimorphism among 27 different species from the melanogaster species group with varying degrees of sexual size dimorphism. Using food availability manipulations during development, I examine how sexual size dimorphism changes in response to condition at both the intra-specific and the inter-specific level. The results of this study suggest that, although we see a correlation between sexual size dimorphism and condition dependence among traits within most species, sexual dimorphism and condition dependence do not seem to have a correlated evolution among species of the melanogaster species group. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Magister Curationis - MCur / Research reported that it is very challenging for mental health care users to quit smoking and the risk of relapsing after quitting is high. However, tobacco dependence treatment is possible and potentially lifesaving for people. The delivery of tobacco dependence treatment by nurses is influenced by a variety of factors, including lack of knowledge and skills, limited professional leadership, and smoking within the profession. There is a strong link between mental illness and smoking-related diseases, including cancer, respiratory diseases and heart diseases that are linked with depression. There is a high incidence of cancer in people with bipolar mood disorder and schizophrenia due to smoking. In spite of this, smoking is regarded as part of the culture of psychiatric institutions and tobacco is seen as “necessary self- medication for the mentally ill”. Historically, cigarettes have been used for behavioural reinforcement within the psychiatric setting. Mental health nurses also have the highest rate of smoking behaviour, which is coupled with permissive attitudes towards smoking among Mental health care users. It is also reported that nurses lack knowledge regarding the interaction of tobacco dependence with treatment of mental disorders. Nurses are also regarded as role models and therefore, nurses’ beliefs and attitudes regarding the smoking behaviour of mental health care users have an influence on any smoking cessation interventions. The psychiatric institution where the researcher was employed had recently implemented a smoke-free policy in the wards. The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge, attitude and practices of mental health nurses related to tobacco dependence among MHCUs in a psychiatric institution in the Western Cape. The researcher used a descriptive survey design to carry out this study at a selected government-funded tertiary psychiatric hospital in theWestern Cape, South Africa. The target population comprised all mental health nurses permanently employed at this institution (169) and all-inclusive sampling was used. Data was analysed using SPSS Statistics version 24. The findings of the study reveal mental health nurses had good knowledge on tobacco dependence among MHCUs and that they had positive attitudes regarding the need to combat tobacco dependence among MHCUs. This is revealed through their knowledge on the dangers of smoking to MHCUs. The quality of training influences knowledge, which in turn cultivates a positive attitude regarding the need to combat tobacco and smoking addiction among MHCUs. There is also difference between the attitudes of non-smokers and those of smokers regarding the treatment of nicotine and tobacco dependence in MHCUs. For instance, mental health nurses who smoke perceive smoking as a necessary element for creating relationships with their patients, and therefore they tend to have a relaxed attitude towards treating smoking addiction among patients. Those who do not smoke tend to perceive combating nicotine dependence as essential. A recommendation is that some form of training for mental health nurses is needed to cultivate positive attitudes towards strategies meant to curb smoking addiction.

The dependence between multiple lines of business has an important impact on determining loss reserves and risk capital, which are crucial elements of risk management for an insurance portfolio. In this work, we show that the Sarmanov family of multivariate distribution can be used for dependent lines of business using a rank-based method estimation. In fact, an inadequate choice of the dependence structure may negatively impact the estimation of the marginals, which might lead to an undesirable effect on reserve computation. Thus, we propose a two-stage inference strategy in this thesis. We show that this strategy leads to robust estimation and better capture the dependence between the risks. We also show that it leads to smaller risk capital and a better diversification benefit. We introduce the two-stage inference using the Sarmanov distribution. First, we fit the marginals with generalized linear models (GLMs) and obtain the corresponding residuals. Secondly, the Sarmanov family of bivariate distributions links these marginals through the rank of residuals. We also show that this can be extended to a multivariate case. To illustrate this method, we analyzed two sets of data. For the bivariate case, we considered an insurance portfolio consisting of personal and commercial auto lines provided by a major US property-casualty insurer. We also used the data from three lines of business of a large Canadian insurance company for the multivariate dependence case. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)