Psychological research suggests that, other things being equal, the desire for or exercise of control over consequences is advantageous to the individual. However, in the context of relationships where the needs and welfare of another person are salient, the preference and enactment of control may be more problematic. Furthermore, although considerable research attention has been devoted to issues of control in general, the more contextualized, relationship-specific conceptualization of control has remained relatively unexplored in the literature, and the relevant research that does exist is limited by measurement problems. The primary purpose of this project was to advance the study of control in relationships through the development and validation of a self-report instrument specifically designed to measure it. An initial pool of 82 items was written and subsequently refined using both Likert analysis and factor analysis in a study involving college student dating relationship participants (n = 240). The subsequent version of the Control in Relationships (CIR) measure consisted of 26 items, which showed good internal consistency and reliability over time. Furthermore, the factor structure of the 26 items was interpretable and suggested a coherent underlying structure of the CIR construct. Subsequently, the validity of the measure was assessed, indicating that CIR was significantly related to pertinent measures of control, and three separate measures of relationship satisfaction, as well as measures of partner trust and risk of intimacy. The validation portion of this study suggested the negative characteristics of the CIR construct that might be detrimental not only to the individual, but also to the relationship. Results supported the utility of CIR as a measure of control in relationships and also suggested several directions for future research.

Fecal specimens from 130 different mares were collected from an endemic farm for 2 consecutive years at 4 different times pre- and post-foaling (41 mares contributed data in both years). A modified NANAT agar medium was used to quantitatively culture 1-g aliquots of the mare feces without inhibition of growth of Rhodococcus equi. Once the R. equi in the mare feces were quantified and the total concentrations of R. equi determined, a colony immunoblot procedure was performed to detect the presence of the virulence-associated protein antigen on the isolates. This allowed for the proportion and concentration of virulent R. equi to be determined. Foals that were found to have ultrasonographic evidence of peripheral pulmonary abscessation or consolidation underwent aseptic trans-cutaneous tracheobronchial aspiration. Positive results of TBA were used to categorize foals as affected with R. equi pneumonia. R. equi pneumonia developed in 31% of the foals. Shedding of virulent R. equi was observed in at least 1 sampling period for every mare examined, and >33% were culture-positive during all sampling periods. However, significant differences were not observed in either the fecal concentrations of total or virulent R. equi from dams of affected foals compared to dams of unaffected foals. No significant temporal changes in the fecal concentrations of R. equi were observed. It was concluded that dams of affected foals do not shed more R. equi in feces than do dams of unaffected foals, indicating that heavier shedding by particular mares does not explain infection in their foals. However, the finding that virulent R. equi were excreted in the feces of all sampled mares indicates that mares are likely an important source of R. equi for their surrounding environment.

In this thesis, we provide several applications of Gram-Charlier expansions in derivative pricing. We first give an exposition on how to calculate swaption prices under the the CIR2 model. Then we extend this method to CIR2++ model. We also develop a procedure to calculate European call options under Heston’s model of stochastic volatility by Gram-Charlier Expansions.

We analyze the nature of sovereign credit risk for selected Asian and European countries through a set of sovereign CDS data for an eighty-year period that includes the episode of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Our principal component analysis results suggest that there is strong commonality in sovereign credit risk across countries after the crisis. The regression tests show that the commonality is linked to both local and global financial and economic variables. Besides, we also notice intriguing differences in the sovereign credit risk behavior of Asian and European countries. Specifically, we find that some variables, including foreign reserve, global stock market, and volatility risk premium, affect the of Asian and European sovereign credit risks in the opposite direction. Further, we assume that the arrival rates of credit events follow a square-root diffusion from which we build our pricing model. The resulting model is used to decompose credit spreads into risk premium and credit-event components.

Esophageal cancer is the eighth most common cancer in the world. Cancers of the esophagus account for 3.8% of all cases of cancers, with approximately 482,300 new cases reported in 2008 worldwide. In the United States alone, it is estimated that approximately 18,000 new cases will be diagnosed in 2013, and 15,210 deaths are expected. Despite advances in surgery and chemoradiation therapy, these advances have not led to a significant increase in survival rates, primarily because diagnosis often at an advanced and incurable stage when treatment is more difficult and less successful. Accurate, objective methods for early detection of esophageal neoplasia are needed. Here, quantitative classification algorithms for high resolution miscroendoscopic images were developed to distinguish between esophageal neoplastic and non-neoplastic tissue. A clinical study in 177 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) was performed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the classification algorithm in collaboration with the Mount Sinai Medical Center in the United States, the First Hospital of Jilin University in China, and the Cancer Institute and Hospital, the Chinese Academy of Medical Science in China. The study reported a sensitivity and specificity of 93% and 92%, respectively, in the training set, 87% and 97%, respectively, in the test set, and 84% and 95%, respectively, in an independent validation set. Another clinical study in 31 patients with Barrett’s esophagus resulted in a sensitivity of 84% and a specificity of 85%. Finally, a compact, portable version of the high resolution microendoscopy (HRME) device using a consumer-grade camera was developed and a series of biomedical experimental studies were carried out to assess the capability of the device.

A 10 x 10 factorial mating design and a ‘common-garden’ rearing approach were employed to examine genetic effects and heritability of growth, carcass-quality traits, and disease resistance, important production traits in the aquaculture of hybrid striped bass (♀ white bass, Morone chrysops, crossed with ♂striped bass, Morone saxatilis). Genotypes at four to ten nuclear-encoded microsatellites were used for parentage assignment and a general, linear-mixed model and a Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) algorithm were used to estimate variance components associated with dam, sire, and dam x sire interaction effects. Dam and sire effect on juvenile growth (weight, length and growth rates) were significant, whereas dam by sire interaction effect was not. Estimates of broad-sense heritability for growth, based on family means (h2 f), in dams ranged from 0.60 ± 0.20 to 0.82 ± 0.10 and in sires ranged from 0.43 ± 0.20 to 0.75 ± 0.18. High correlations were found between growth rates measured at two time intervals. Estimates of general combining ability for growth rates differed significantly among dams and among sires, whereas estimates of specific combining ability for each dam × sire combination did not differ significantly from zero. These results suggest that additive-effect genes contributed to the differences in juvenile growth. Dam and sire effect on fillet weight were significant; dam effect on liver weight and sire effect on total viscera weight were also significant. Dam and sire effect on hepatosomatic index and viscerasomatic index were significant, as was dam and sire interaction effect on viscerasomatic index. Phenotypic and genetics correlations between body weight and carcass-quality traits were high (0.85 - 1.00). Phenotypic correlations between body weight and standardized carcass-quality traits were positive but low, ranging from 0.07 to 0.19. Resistance to S. iniae was assessed in a challenge experiment, using the 10 dam x 10 sire factorial mating design. A significant effect of sire on resistance to S. iniae was found, and offspring from one sire had a 2.4 times higher probability of dying than offspring from the ‘average’ sire. Genetic effects on the immune-response parameters and on stress-response parameters assessed were non-significant.

Fecal specimens from 130 different mares were collected from an endemic farm for 2 consecutive years at 4 different times pre- and post-foaling (41 mares contributed data in both years). A modified NANAT agar medium was used to quantitatively culture 1-g aliquots of the mare feces without inhibition of growth of Rhodococcus equi. Once the R. equi in the mare feces were quantified and the total concentrations of R. equi determined, a colony immunoblot procedure was performed to detect the presence of the virulence-associated protein antigen on the isolates. This allowed for the proportion and concentration of virulent R. equi to be determined. Foals that were found to have ultrasonographic evidence of peripheral pulmonary abscessation or consolidation underwent aseptic trans-cutaneous tracheobronchial aspiration. Positive results of TBA were used to categorize foals as affected with R. equi pneumonia. R. equi pneumonia developed in 31% of the foals. Shedding of virulent R. equi was observed in at least 1 sampling period for every mare examined, and >33% were culture-positive during all sampling periods. However, significant differences were not observed in either the fecal concentrations of total or virulent R. equi from dams of affected foals compared to dams of unaffected foals. No significant temporal changes in the fecal concentrations of R. equi were observed. It was concluded that dams of affected foals do not shed more R. equi in feces than do dams of unaffected foals, indicating that heavier shedding by particular mares does not explain infection in their foals. However, the finding that virulent R. equi were excreted in the feces of all sampled mares indicates that mares are likely an important source of R. equi for their surrounding environment.

Psychological research suggests that, other things being equal, the desire for or exercise of control over consequences is advantageous to the individual. However, in the context of relationships where the needs and welfare of another person are salient, the preference and enactment of control may be more problematic. Furthermore, although considerable research attention has been devoted to issues of control in general, the more contextualized, relationship-specific conceptualization of control has remained relatively unexplored in the literature, and the relevant research that does exist is limited by measurement problems. The primary purpose of this project was to advance the study of control in relationships through the development and validation of a self-report instrument specifically designed to measure it. An initial pool of 82 items was written and subsequently refined using both Likert analysis and factor analysis in a study involving college student dating relationship participants (n = 240). The subsequent version of the Control in Relationships (CIR) measure consisted of 26 items, which showed good internal consistency and reliability over time. Furthermore, the factor structure of the 26 items was interpretable and suggested a coherent underlying structure of the CIR construct. Subsequently, the validity of the measure was assessed, indicating that CIR was significantly related to pertinent measures of control, and three separate measures of relationship satisfaction, as well as measures of partner trust and risk of intimacy. The validation portion of this study suggested the negative characteristics of the CIR construct that might be detrimental not only to the individual, but also to the relationship. Results supported the utility of CIR as a measure of control in relationships and also suggested several directions for future research.

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