The principal nucleus of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNSTp) is an integral component of the mouse accessory olfactory system, and plays a key role in pheromonal processing. In males, this region is not only larger and contains more neurons than in females, but the cells are also larger. The present study examined the relationship between preference for opposite-sex odour and regional volume, cell number and cell size within the BNSTp of both male and female mice. No correlations were found between olfactory preferences and any of the three morphological BNSTp parameters. However, the olfactory preference task results were not congruent with previous research. Therefore, it remains inconclusive whether relationships exist between olfactory preference behaviour and morphology of the BNSTp.

Automated planning is a branch of AI that addresses the problem of generating a course of action to achieve a specified objective, given an initial state of the world. It is an area that is central to the development of intelligent agents and autonomous robots. In the last decade, automated planning has seen significant progress in terms of scalability, much of it achieved by the development of heuristic search approaches. Many of these advances, are only immediately applicable to so-called classical planning tasks. However, there are compelling applications of planning that are non-classical. An example is the problem of web service composition, in which the objective is to automatically compose web artifacts to achieve the objective of a human user. In doing so, not only the hard goals but also the \emph{preferences} of the user---which are usually not considered in the classical model---must be considered. % Also, the automated composition %should deal with abstract representations of the web %artifacts---which may also not adjust to the classical model. In this thesis we show that many of the most successful advances in classical planning can be leveraged for solving compelling non-classical problems. In particular, we focus on the following non-classical planning problems: planning with temporally extended goals; planning with rich, temporally extended preferences; planning with procedural control, and planning with procedural programs that can sense the environment. We show that to efficiently solve these problems we can use a common approach: reformulation. For each of these planning tasks, we propose a reformulation algorithm that generates another, arguably simpler instance. Then, if necessary, we adapt existing techniques to make the reformulated instance solvable efficiently. In particular, we show that both the problems of planning with temporally extended goals and with procedural control can be mapped into classical planning. Planning with rich user preferences, even after reformulation, cannot be mapped into classical planning and thus we develop specialized heuristics, based on existing heuristics, together with a branch-and-bound algorithm. Finally, for the problem of planning with programs that sense, we show that under certain conditions programs can be reduced to simple operators, enabling the use of a variety of existing planners. In all cases, we show experimentally that the reformulated problems can be solved effectively by either existing planners or by our adapted planners, outperforming previous approaches.

The United States is in an emerging period of transition, shifting to online multimedia campaigns. This research attempts to explore general knowledge of multimedia expansion, and through qualitative research methods provide a successful model for the development of an effective promotion tool. Findings from the heuristic study showed users preferences for varying forms of media, thus demonstrating the need to provide content in many different forms. The findings from this study aide in the development of multimedia, and illustrate the need for further studies in the use of multimedia as a promotion tool. / Department of Telecommunications

The thesis contains four chapters on the structure and predictability of individual differences Chapter 1. Re-analyses data from Holt and Laury's (2002) risk aversion experiments. Shows that big-stakes hypothetical payoffs are better than small-stakes real-money payoffs for predicting choices in big-stakes real-money gambles (in spite of the presence of hypothetical bias). Argues that hypothetical bias is a problem for calibration of mean preferences but not for prediction of the rank order of subjects' preferences. Chapter 2. Describes an experiment: Participants were given personality tests and played a series of dictator and response games over a two week period. It was found that social preferences are one-dimensional, stable across a two-week interval and significantly related to the Big Five personality traits. Suggestions are given about ways to modify existing theories of social preference to accommodate these findings. Chapter 3. Applies a novel statistical technique (spectral clustering) to a personality data set for the first time. Finds the HEXACO six-factor structure in an English-language five-factor questionnaire for the first time. Argues that the emphasis placed on weak relationships is critical to settling the dimensionality debate within personality theory, and that spectral clustering provides a more useful perspective on personality data than does traditional factor analysis. Chapter 4. Outlines the relevance of extraversion for economics, and sets up a model to argue that personality differences in extraversion may have evolved through something akin to a war of attrition. This model implies a positive relationship between extraversion and risk aversion, and a U-shaped relationship between extraversion and loss aversion.

This study examines the relationships between foreign language learning beliefs and preferences of 2 Vietnamese learners and beliefs and practices of 2 Native English speaking teachers in a private English school in Vietnam. The learners were not satisfied with learning English in public schools and had many expectations on the course and the teachers while the teachers had to make their learners pleased. Beliefs were reviewed as determinations of actions; beliefs entail knowledge, values, and attitude, and relate closely to identity and experience. The researcher adopted an interpretivist paradigm and three qualitative methods: Repgrid interview, Stimulated recall interview, and The COLT as an observation schedule. The interview data was coded inductively with content analysis method to build up the subjects’ beliefs and belief systems. Then, the systems were compared to find the relationships between their beliefs. To see how their beliefs related with learning preferences and teaching practices, the researcher analysed what they said and made use of the video record of their classroom activities; besides, the teachers’ beliefs were compared with the timing calculation of the activities in their classes. The results showed that beliefs about language learning affected strongly the participants’ preferred ways of teaching and learning and there were tight matches between the teachers’ beliefs and actions in class. There were influences of beliefs of the teachers and learners on each other, they were not direct influences but through their interpretations of the classroom events. However, the influences from the teacher were much clearer. After the course, the learners’ preferences and beliefs about some learning activities were changed and became more reflective. They also started to recognize the benefits of different ways of learning English. Meanwhile, the teachers’ interpretation of their learners’ expectations, learning preferences, and levels strongly affected what and how they taught.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether coaching behavior preferences of interscholastic athletes differ as a function of gender and type of sport. The Coaching Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Martin & Barnes, 1999) was administered to 372 interscholastic athletes. The mean scores of the participants' responses to each subscale on the CBQ were the dependent variables and gender and type of sport were the independent variables. Descriptive statistics revealed that female and male interscholastic athletes who perform on coactive, mixed, and interactive sport teams preferred coaches who engage in supportive and instructional behaviors, as opposed to non-responses or negative responses. A 2 (Gender) X 3 (Type of Sport) MANOVA and discriminant function analyses indicated that gender and the degree of interdependency between group members affects preferred coaching behavior. Thus, coaches should consider situational factors and personal characteristics when working with interscholastic athletes.

The study’s aim was to determine how consumers relate to specific factors that affect the way in which fruit is marketed in supermarkets. This might have an influence on effective commercialization of new intellectual property in the global avocado industry.

The exclusionary nature of colorism and how it affects personal awareness of self- identity behooves us to explore the socio-psychological interplay of life choices and racial socialization. This exploratory research is positioned within the context of black males’ relationship preferences and sought comprehension of how and why their perceptions inform their choices and inclination for lighter skin tones. The manifestations of colorism in these men’s experiences influence their interactions with women and how they perceive themselves. Findings of this phenomenological study informed the researcher of various dynamics that shape interactions of race, gender and colorism and utilized Black Feminist Thought as an epistemological framework. Purposeful sampling was used for recruitment and narrative interview methods highlighted perspectives and experiences of twenty, Atlanta black males, aged 21 and older for an overall essence of their phenomenon. Hopefully, this work will prompt analytical conversations to extend research of colorism within similar group dynamics.

The challenges of developing the information systems (IS) that support modern enterprises are becoming less about engineering and more about people. Many of the technical issues of the past, such as hardware size and power, connectivity, and robust software, are engineering problems that have largely been solved. In the next stage of computing, the human factor will be far more important than it has been in the past: the colors of an interface or the shape of an icon are the engineering problems of the past, and the availability and usefulness of such basic solutions is rapidly coming to a close. A new paradigm is needed that provides a roadmap of higher level conceptions and values, one about humane computing. A part of this older, mechanistic approach are quantitative, economic values whose impact on IS are readily visible and acknowledged within software engineering. However, qualitative values, and in particular consumer preferences, have been researched to a lesser degree, and there has been very little direct application.  To create the next-generation information systems, requirements engineers and systems developers need new methods to capture the real preferences of consumers, conceptualize these abstract concepts, and then relate such preferences to concrete requirements for information systems. To address this problem, this thesis establishes a conceptual link between the preferences of consumers and system requirements by accommodating the variations between them and expressing them via a conceptual model. Modeling such preferences and values so that they can be used as requirements for IS development is the primary contribution of this work. This is accomplished via a design science research paradigm to support the creation of the works’ primary artifact—the Consumer Preference-aware Meta-Model (CPMM). CPMM is intended to improve the alignment between business and information systems by capturing and concretizing the real preferences of consumers and then expressing such preferences via the requirements engineering process, with the eventual output being information systems. CPMM’s development relies on theoretical research contributions within three areas in information systems—Business Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Requirements Engineering—whose relationships to consumer values have been under-researched and under-applied. The case studies included in this thesis each demonstrate the significance of consumer preferences to each of these three areas.  In the first, a set of logical mappings between CPMM and a common approach to business strategy (strategy maps/balanced scorecards) is produced. In the second, CPMM provides the conceptual undergirding to process a massive amount of unstructured consumer-generated text to generate system requirements for the airline industry. In the concluding case, an investigation of foreign and domestic students at Swedish universities is structured through CPMM, one that first discovers the requirements for a consumer preference-based online education and then produces feature models for such a software product line-based system. The significance of CPMM as a lens for discovering new concepts and highlighting important information within consumer preference data is clearly seen, and the usefulness of the meta-model is demonstrated by its broad and beneficial applicability within information systems practice and research.

The purpose of this study was to search for relationships of certain personal characteristics (authoritarianism, philosophy of social education, and instructional preferences) of a representative group of social studies student teachers to measures respectively of a) their classroom behavioral traits, b) their classroom teaching activities, and c) their pupils' classroom behavior.