Motivation is rarely used as a diversity management strategy, and as a result, little academic research explores the relationship between generational age differences and motivation in public sector management. Using Deci's intrinsic and extrinsic motivation theory as the foundation, the purpose of this correlational design study was to evaluate the relationship between generational age differences and employee motivation in a Maryland government agency. Data were collected through an online survey using the Work Preference Inventory from 35 of the agency's 5585 employees, born between 1946 and 2000. Data were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance with post-hoc tests to assess the relationship between the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. Findings of the ANOVA revealed that there were no statistically significant associations between the 3 generational cohorts regarding intrinsic or extrinsic motivations suggesting that there are no differences among the 3 generations in terms of preferences. However, an analysis of correlations between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for both Baby Boomers and Generation X were strongly positive at r = .862 and .602 respectively, but strongly negative for Generation Y at r = -0.856. One of the social change implications stemming from this study is the recommendation for public organizations to explore a blend of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to attract and enhance the longevity of members of each generational group in the public sector. This provides a more balanced and cost effective approach in sustaining generational diversity in the sector through employee motivation. This will benefit the general public because they could receive efficient services offered with minimal personnel cost.

Employee turnover has been responsible for the failure of many small businesses in the United States. Business leaders do not always understand the reasons employees choose to leave an organization. This correlational study, grounded in Herzberg's 2-factor theory, examined the relationship between intrinsic employee job satisfaction, extrinsic employee job satisfaction, and employee turnover intention among employees in small businesses. Participants included 129 employees of a small business in Western New York. The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire and Turnover Intention Survey were used to collect the data. The multiple regression analysis significantly predicted extrinsic employee turnover intentions, F(3, 103) = 25.687, p = .001, R2 = .428, and while extrinsic motivation was a predictor, intrinsic motivation was not. Recommendations for future research include focus on specific extrinsic and intrinsic categories in additional contexts. Implications for social change include small business owners understanding the motivation behind employee turnover, which may result in reduced costs to the company, keeping experienced employees, reduced errors made by inexperienced new hires, and increased productivity because there is not a learning curve for tenured employees.

The focus of the study was to investigate the nature of the apparent inconsistency reported in the literature on the relationship between personality variables and indices of religiosity. The literature indicates that indices of religiosity have been associated with labels both of "desirable" and "undesirable" personality traits to varying degrees, and no definitive conclusions have been thus far reached. The study suggested that the inconsistent evidence has been a result of a narrow definition of personality functioning and a broad definition of religiosity that has not allowed an adequate test of the relationship between personality and religiosity. The study developed the notion that a multidimensional personality measure (California Psychological Inventory -- CPI) paired with (1) a theoretically precise and psychometrically researched index of religiosity (i.e., Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale -- IRMS) and (2) a traditional index of religiosity (i.e., denominational membership) might provide new information relative to the relationship between religiosity and personality. The CPI and the IRMS were administered to 108 male and female Baptist, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day-Saints (LOS) and Presbyterian denominational members. CPI subscale scores and IRMS scores were analyzed by a Pearson product-moment correlational analysis, a univariate analysis of variance, and a step-wise multiple discriminate analysis. Significant correlations between IRMS scores and CPI subscale scores were found; however the variance explained was not sufficient to be of theoretical use. There were statistically significant mean differences among denominations (Baptists, LOS, Presbyterians) and between types of religious motivation (intrinsics and extrinsics defined by an IRMS score median split) on the CPI subscales. It was noted that all CPI subscale means fell within the normal range and were not clinically significant. Subjects characterized by denominational membership and religious motivation were characterized by normal personality functioning. Discriminant functions were computed which predicted group membership based on the CPI subscales at accuracy level s between 63.7% and 87.5%. It was argued that tests available to researchers do not allow an adequate test of the relationship between personality and religiosity. It was recommended that researchers study the relationship between religiosity and personality by directly examining subjects' behaviors in combination with utilizing test inventories.

<p>Forskning har visat att arbetssökandes motivation till att söka arbete påverkar deras hälsa och sociala liv. Tre motivationsteorier som utvecklats inom området och som ligger till grund i studien är</p><p><em>Förväntning- och värdeteorin, Målsättningsteorin och <em>Självbestämmandeteorin. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur positivt psykologiskt kapital, inskrivningstid på arbetsförmedling samt tillgång till jobbcoach eller inte inverkar på arbetssökandes inre motivation. En enkätstudie genomfördes där 154 arbetssökande, 83 män och 70 kvinnor deltog. De fick ta ställning till 50 påståenden gällande tron på den egna förmågan, hopp, hantering av motgång och inre motivation. Resultatet visade att den främsta variabeln som förklarar inre motivation hos arbetssökande är hopp, som innebär hopp om framtiden. Det visade sig att tiden som individen är arbetssökande och tillgång till jobbcoach, inte hade någon betydelse för inre motivationen. Slutsatsen är att trots att det råder lågkonjunktur så finns hopp om framtiden. <em><p>Key words:</p>length of unemployment, hope, intrinsic motivation </em></em></em></p>

För att organisationer ska klara av att möta nutidens stora omställningar samt den ökandeglobala konkurrensen bör de eftersträva en kontinuerlig utveckling och ett systematisktarbete med innovation. Idag talas det om att den kreativa kapaciteten hos individen ochorganisationen utgör grunden för innovation och att organisationer idag är mer beroende avsina kreativa förmågor än sina materiella tillgångar. För att utveckla individens kreativitetkrävs stimulering av expertis, kreativ förmåga och motivation.Syftet med denna studie var att ta reda på hur Volvo CE industriarbetare kanstimuleras för att uppnå en ihållande kreativ idégenerering. Vi har försökt besvara fyraforskningsfrågor för att kunna uppfylla syftet. För att kunna besvara dessa har vi gjortdatainsamlingar genom enkät och gruppintervju. Vi fann att industriarbetarna med fördelkan stimuleras genom inre motivation, att de bör erbjudas utbildning för att utveckla denkreativa förmågan samt att erbjuda ett större utrymme för explorativt arbete.Industriarbetarna bör även tillåtas generera kreativa idéer som har ett högre nyhetsvärde.

Human APOBEC3 proteins are host-encoded intrinsic restriction factors that can prevent the replication of a broad range of human and animal retroviruses such as HIV, SIV, FIV, MLVs and XMRV. The main pathway of the restriction is believed to occur as a result of the cytidine deaminase activity of these proteins that converts cytidines into uridines in single-stranded DNA retroviral replication intermediates. Uridines in these DNA intermediates disrupt the viral replication cycle and also alter retrovirus infectivity because of the C-to-T transition mutations generated as a result of the deaminase activity on the minus strand DNA. In addition, human APOBEC3 proteins also exhibit a deamination-independent pathway to restrict retroviruses that is not currently well understood. Although the restriction of retroviruses by human APOBEC3 proteins has been intensely studied in vitro, our understanding of how the murine APOBEC3 (mA3) protein restricts retroviruses and/or prevents zoonotic infections in vivo is very limited. In contrast to humans and primates that have 7 APOBEC3 genes, mice have but a single copy. My study of the function and structure of mA3 revealed that it has an inverted functional organization for cytidine deamination in comparison to the human A3G catalytic sites. I have also found that disruption of the integrity of either of these catalytic sites substantially impedes restriction of HIV and MLV. Interestingly, our data shows that mA3 induces a significant decrease in retroviral activity of HIV and MLVs by exploiting both deamination-dependent and -independent pathways. However, the deaminase activity of mA3 is essential to confer long-term restriction of retroviral infection. My observations suggest that mA3 has dual activities, both deamination-dependent and -independent, that work cooperatively to restrict a broad range of human and animal retroviral pathogens. In the context of the intrinsic immune system, APOBEC3 proteins provide a powerful block to the transmission of retroviral pathogens that very few have found ways to evade.

Online communities thrive on their members participation and contributions. Continuous encouragement of participation of these members is vital for an online community. Social visualizations are one of the methods to make members explicitly aware of their connections and relationships. There are numerous ways to visually represent information, current-status, power, and acceptance of members in an online community. In this thesis I present a design of a visualization representing the evolving reciprocity of relationships among users based on the comments they give to each others posts. The purpose of the visualization is to emphasize and hopefully trigger a common bond in the community and thereby increase their participation. We developed and deployed the visualization in an online community called WISETales where women in science and engineering share personal stories. We also deployed modified and improved versions of the visualization in two other communities, I-Help class discussion forums and the Vegatopia discussion forum for vegetarians. In this thesis we present the results of the evaluation in these three communities. The results unfortunately, were negative. Even though separate explanations for the lack of motivational effect can be found in each of the experiments, it seems that the chosen motivational approach was too gentle to encourage participation. It seems for reciprocation to take place, the users need to be committed to the community and already have some other underlying motivation to participate actively. The visualization also should provide some new information that they werent aware of previously. This was not the case with the users in the three chosen communities. WISETales was too new and can barely be called a community. I-Help was not a community, but a place for student to post questions for the teacher to answer. Vegatopia, in contrast, is well established, active community, where people know each other, and engage in conversations with each other. The visualization did not provide any new information for them that they didnt know and only served as a brief attraction for a day (novelty effect). We are still optimistic, however, that the visualization may be useful for active and too dynamic communities where people are unaware of their social relationships because they are too many, for example, social network sites like Twitter.

The market for philanthropic donations in America has been thriving since the 1950s. 89 percent of U.S. households make annual monetary donations to charitable organizations, contributing to 20 percent of all revenues in the nonprofit sector. Majority of the factors contributing to this growth in donations can be divided into three general categories: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and marketing influence tactics. My thesis examines a plethora of past research to develop a comprehensive guide on the current theories of human behaviors as they pertain to charitable giving.

The HIV-1 transactivator of transcription (Tat) is a protein essential for both viral gene expression and virus replication. Tat is an RNA-binding protein that, in cooperation with host cell factors cyclin T1 and cyclin-dependent kinase 9, regulates transcription at the level of elongation. Tat also interacts with numerous other intracellular and extracellular proteins, and is implicated in a number of pathogenic processes. The Tat protein is encoded by two exons and is 101 residues in length. The first exon encodes a 72-residue molecule that activates transcription with the same proficiency as the full-length protein. The physico-chemical properties of Tat make it a particularly challenging target for structural studies: Tat contains seven cysteine residues, six of which are essential for transactivation, and is highly susceptible to oxidative cross-linking and aggregation. In addition, a basic segment (residues 48-57) gives the protein a high net positive charge of +12 at pH 7, endowing it with a high affinity for anionic polymers and surfaces. In order to study the structure of Tat, both alone and in complex with partner molecules, we have developed a system for the bacterial expression and purification of polyhistidine-tagged and isotopically enriched (in 15N and 15N /13C) recombinant HIV-1 Tat1-72 (BH10 isolate) that yields large amounts of protein. These preparations have facilitated the assignment of 95% of the non-proline backbone resonances using heteronuclear 3-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Analysis by mass spectrometry and NMR demonstrate that the cysteine-rich Tat protein is unambiguously reduced and monomeric in aqueous solution at pH 4. NMR chemical shifts and coupling constants suggest that it exists in a disordered conformation. Line broadening and multiple peaks in the cysteine-rich and core regions suggest that transient folding occurs in two of the five sequence domains. NMR relaxation parameters were measured and analysed by spectral density and model-free approaches both confirming the lack of structure throughout the length of the molecule. The absence of a fixed conformation and the observation of fast dynamics are consistent with the ability of the Tat protein to interact with a wide variety of proteins and nucleic acid lending further support to the concept that Tat exists as an intrinsically disordered protein. / October 2007

Human APOBEC3 proteins are host-encoded intrinsic restriction factors that can prevent the replication of a broad range of human and animal retroviruses such as HIV, SIV, FIV, MLVs and XMRV. The main pathway of the restriction is believed to occur as a result of the cytidine deaminase activity of these proteins that converts cytidines into uridines in single-stranded DNA retroviral replication intermediates. Uridines in these DNA intermediates disrupt the viral replication cycle and also alter retrovirus infectivity because of the C-to-T transition mutations generated as a result of the deaminase activity on the minus strand DNA. In addition, human APOBEC3 proteins also exhibit a deamination-independent pathway to restrict retroviruses that is not currently well understood. Although the restriction of retroviruses by human APOBEC3 proteins has been intensely studied in vitro, our understanding of how the murine APOBEC3 (mA3) protein restricts retroviruses and/or prevents zoonotic infections in vivo is very limited. In contrast to humans and primates that have 7 APOBEC3 genes, mice have but a single copy. My study of the function and structure of mA3 revealed that it has an inverted functional organization for cytidine deamination in comparison to the human A3G catalytic sites. I have also found that disruption of the integrity of either of these catalytic sites substantially impedes restriction of HIV and MLV. Interestingly, our data shows that mA3 induces a significant decrease in retroviral activity of HIV and MLVs by exploiting both deamination-dependent and -independent pathways. However, the deaminase activity of mA3 is essential to confer long-term restriction of retroviral infection. My observations suggest that mA3 has dual activities, both deamination-dependent and -independent, that work cooperatively to restrict a broad range of human and animal retroviral pathogens. In the context of the intrinsic immune system, APOBEC3 proteins provide a powerful block to the transmission of retroviral pathogens that very few have found ways to evade.