A wealth of studies indicates that good corporate governance has a positive impact on company performance. However, it is not always understood how this positive relationship is achieved. In firms where shareholders and management are misaligned and agency costs are high, cash and cash equivalents can be used in ways that lead to poor company performance and to the destruction of shareholder value. In addition to this problem, very few studies on corporate governance focus on emerging markets: “most studies of corporate governance focus on one or a few wealthy economies” (La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes, Shleifer & Vishny, 1998, p.1117). Therefore, the focus of this study was to address these two main issues. The author of this report set out to understand the impact of corporate governance on corporate cash holdings by focusing on emerging markets. This was first done by reviewing the extensive literature on agency theory, firm-level corporate governance, cash holdings and the three hypotheses for reasons why firms hold cash. Firm-level corporate governance, corporate cash holdings and total assets data was collected for 620 firms in 17 emerging market economies using Thomson Reuters DataStream for the period 2009 to 2012. The data was then used to determine whether firm-level corporate governance, board characteristics, shareholder rights and vision and strategy are associated with corporate cash holdings. The study found that for the selected sample, firm-level corporate governance is negatively correlated to corporate cash holdings in emerging markets. This implies that the flexibility hypothesis is the dominant reason why firms hold cash in emerging markets. Emerging market firms tend to hoard cash because it provides the flexibility for these firms to take advantage of profitable opportunities as they present themselves. This outcome is contrary to the results obtained in prior studies done on firms in developed economies: these firms tend to spend cash quickly on acquisitions and capital projects (spending hypothesis) or they keep cash to avoid under-investing in case they cannot access external credit lines.(shareholder power hypothesis). / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / pagibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / Unrestricted

Adults enrolled in basic education exhibit poor academic performance, often reading at elementary and middle-school levels. The current study investigated the similarities and differences of reading skills and eye movement behavior between a sample of low-skilled adult readers and first grade students matched on word reading skill. T-tests for matched pairs found no significant differences on language comprehension, reading comprehension, or eye movement variables. Regression analyses revealed that language comprehension made greater contributions to reading comprehension for adults (verses children) in the simple view of reading model. Processing time (gaze duration) was found to account for unique variance in both passage reading comprehension and sentence comprehension efficiency after controlling for word reading and language skills for adults. For children, processing time was only a significant predictor for sentence comprehension efficiency. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Teacher Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / June 3, 2015. / Adult Basic Education, Component Skills, Eye Movements, Fluency, Reading Comprehension / Includes bibliographical references. / Young-Suk Kim, Professor Directing Dissertation; Carla Wood, University Representative; Barbara Foorman, Committee Member; Jeannie Wanzek, Committee Member.

Decreases in overall well-being and daily functioning result from unpleasant and uncomfortable symptoms associated with physical health and mental health disorders. Neurofeedback training, rooted in the theory of operant conditioning, presents the possibility of increasing brain wave regulation, decreasing symptoms experienced from abnormal brain wave activity, and increasing overall well-being and daily functioning. The efficacy of neurofeedback for physical and mental health outcomes is unclear, contributing to confusion about the treatment and any potential benefits. In order to assess the efficacy of neurofeedback in the alleviation of physical health and mental health symptoms, a systematic review and meta-analysis of neurofeedback using a random effects model to generate the effect sizes was conducted on 21 studies with 22 comparisons that used neurofeedback to treat patients. The results showed that neurofeedback can be effective for physical and mental health outcomes, including for autism with an effect size of 0.29, tinnitus with an effect size of 0.77, schizophrenia with an effect size of 0.76, depression with an effect size of 0.28, insomnia with an effect size of 0.52, obesity with an effect size of 0.40, intellectual disability with an effect size of 0.73, and pain with an effect size of 0.30. Well-being and daily functioning for those with physical and mental health disorders can be improved. These findings have implications for clinical practice to help patients in treatment for physical and mental health problems, and also for social change by providing evidence for alternative health care options.

The purposes of this study were to evaluate the effect of different rest interval activities in distributed practice (DP) upon the rate of learning a PA task, to evaluate the effectiveness of different rest interval activities in controlling rehearsal, and to investigate the role of rehearsal in DP performance. Three experiments compared three different pairs of rest interval activities. One pair of activities, color naming (CN) and sequential addition (SA), was machine paced (MFA). A second pair, cartoon reading (CR) and symbol cancellation (SC), was self-paced (SPA). The third pair required no formal activity (NFA), Ss were instructed to rehearse (R) or not to rehearse (NR). Besides different rest interval activities two other independent variables were manipulated. The length of the intertrial period was set at either 30 or 60 seconds. Two lists differed in items but were constructed to be comparable. The dependent variables were the number of trials required to learn the list to a criterion of one perfect trial and the responses of Ss to a questionnaire on the amount and method of rehearsal. Ss were 240 college students. Data from the three experiments were analyzed separately by analysis of variance and then combined to make an overall comparison with analysis of variance with tasks considered as nested factors. After completing the paired associates (PA) task, each S was administered a questionnaire to determine if he had rehearsed and if so the amount, time, and method of rehearsal. Analysis of the data showed the ON, SA, CR, and SO produced no significant difference in rate of learning, nor did NR and R differ. Overall comparison showed that NR and R produced faster learning than the OR and SO. The analysis of the questionnaire showed that the different tasks varied in amount of control of rehearsal, but there were no differences in rate of learning related to amount of rehearsal reported. The conclusions drawn were that the facilitative affect of rehearsal is unproven, that requiring formal activity produces slower learning than having no formal rest interval task and that the SA should be used to nearly eliminate rehearsal.

The claustrum (Cl) is a subcortical gray-matter structure housed between the external capsule medially and the extreme capsule laterally. Due to its extensive reciprocal connections throughout the brain, it has been implicated in consciousness and other higher order functions including linking behavior and emotion. Such linkage may be important in understanding the neurobiology of autism since other cortical and subcortical regions including the spatially and ontologically related basal ganglia, as well as limbic structures, have been implicated in the disorder. Participants were males with autism (n=16) and typically developing (TD; n=14) matched for head circumference and age. The Cl and other structures were identified in 3-Tesla MRI scans using ANALYZE®, then segmented and volume quantified. Four Cl volumes were traced (i.e., right, left, right ventral, left ventral) first in axial plane then in coronal plane for entire Cl visualization. Two-tailed single sample t-tests revealed significant differences in the right claustrum (p=.014), left claustrum (p = .041), right total claustrum (p = .018) and left total claustrum (p=.044). Right Cl volume was found to be significantly larger than left within each of the groups (Autism, p=.021; TD, p=.033). These preliminary results demonstrate that the Cl can be consistently identified in vivo using ROI tracing with apparent right-versus-left asymmetry documented. Smaller claustral volumes in autism support theories of a disconnect in long-range circuitry associated with autism.

Laser speckle imaging, often referred to as laser speckle contrast analysis (LASCA), has been sought after as a quasi-real-time, full-field, flow visualization method. It has been proven to be a valid and reliable qualitative method, but there has yet to be any definitive consensus on its ability to be used as a quantitative tool. The biggest impediment to the process of quantifying speckle measurements is the introduction of additional non dynamic speckle patterns from the surroundings. The dynamic speckle pattern under investigation is often obscured by noise caused by background static speckle patterns. One proposed solution to this problem is known as dynamic laser speckle imaging (dLSI). dLSI attempts to isolate the dynamic speckle signal from the previously mentioned background and provide a consistent dynamic measurement. This paper will investigate the use of this method over a range of experimental and simulated conditions. While it is believable that dLSI could be used quantitatively, there were inconsistencies that arose during analysis. Simulated data showed that if the mixed dynamic and static speckle patterns were modeled as the sum of two independent speckle patterns, increasing static contributions led to decreasing dynamic contrast contributions, something not expected by theory. Experimentation also showed that there were scenarios where scattering from the dynamic media obscured scattering from the static medium, resulting in poor estimates of the velocities causing the dynamic scattering. In light of these observations, steps were proposed and outlined to further investigate into this method. With more research it should be possible to create a set of conditions where dLSI is known be accurate and quantitative.

When an individual interacts socially with a conspecific, their behavioural phenotype is affected directly by their genotype (‘direct genetic effect’, DGE), but may also be affected indirectly by the genotype of the opposing individual (‘indirect genetic effect’, IGE). While there is no doubt that IGEs occur in various organisms and contexts, it is unknown how properties of the environment may influence the relative magnitude of DGEs, IGEs, and their covariance. To gain insight into this, I examined territorial interactions in Drosophila melanogaster. Due to their short generation time and relatively simple care requirements, D. melanogaster has been used extensively in quantitative genetic research. Using offspring from a half-sib breeding design, I constructed an arena for documenting multiple dyadic territoriality assays with two sizes of a food resource. With this apparatus, 618 territoriality contests between 1,236 individuals were recorded and scored for four key aggressive behaviours. The results revealed significant genetic variation in how opponent effects on focal individuals changed between environments (i.e., genetic variation in the plasticity of IGEs). In addition, changes in DGEs and IGEs between environments were strongly and positively correlated (i.e., there was a DGE × IGE × environment interaction), although confirmation of this result in further studies is warranted because it was non-significant (P = 0.10), likely due to large uncertainties arising in part from some small variance component estimates. As a high throughput system for quantify IGEs in territoriality in Drosophila, my approach holds promise but there are issues to resolve, including automating phenotyping behaviors in place of manual scoring to enable many more trials. Additionally, modifications to increase humidity during trials might result in increased expression of certain territorial behaviours.

Introduction: How individuals deal with outcomes under unknown risks (I.e. ambiguity) can be important for understanding decisions in the real world. One commonly applied model for ambiguous decisions, maxmin expected utility (MMEU), suggests that people only focus on the range of probabilities. However, other models, including subjective recursive expected utility (SREU), suggest that instead of thinking about the range, people construct a belief about the probabilities as a distribution, based on their experiences or intuition. MMEU has been used to relate ambiguity preferences to clinical disorders, including autism spectrum disorder. However, if SREU models are a better reflection of decisions under ambiguity, these differences may be related to beliefs instead of preferences. Methods: To investigate the role of beliefs in ambiguous decisions, we collected choice and personality data from an online sample (N=298) utilizing a novel task. In our task, participants make decisions under ambiguity after learning about the distribution of probabilities during a previous decision task. We test if variance in beliefs influences decisions under ambiguity, interacts with reward feedback, and accounts for individual differences related to a clinical variable, the Autism Quotient (AQ) to explore the bounds of the MMEU model. Results: Participants preferred ambiguous stimuli associated with high variance distributions and made larger changes in response to feedback information when applied to high variance distributions. We did not replicate results showing that ambiguity aversion decreased with AQ but did find AQ decreased with the believed variance of probabilities. Conclusions: Our results provide experimental evidence that decisions under ambiguity are influenced by beliefs, violating a key axiom of MMEU, suggesting previous results should be revisited by incorporating beliefs to better understand the mechanisms of ambiguous choice. / Psychology

Cotton is a very important economical crop in the U.S. and throughout the world. The developments in molecular biology offer new and innovative approaches toward evaluating and understanding genetic mechanisms of important agronomical traits. Bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries have rapidly become the preferred choice for physical mapping. BAC-derived microsatellite or simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers facilitate the integration of physical and genetic recombination maps. The first objective in this research was to identify chromosome locations of a set of BAC-derived SSR markers in tetraploid cotton. A total of 192 SSR primer pairs were derived from BAC clones of an Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) genetic standard line TM-1. Using deletion analysis method, we assigned 39 markers out of the 192 primer pairs to 18 different chromosomes or chromosome arms. Chromosomal assignment of these markers will help to improve the current cotton genetic linkage maps and facilitate positional candidate gene cloning, comparative genome analysis, and the coordination of chromosome-based genome sequencing projects. Wild race stocks (Gossypium spp.) represent valuable resources for genetic improvement. Most primitive accessions are photoperiod sensitive; they do not flower under the long days of the U.S. cotton belt. Molecular markers were used to locate quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for node of first fruiting branch (NFB), node of first open boll (NOB), and fruiting score (FS). An F2 population consisted of 251 plants from the cross of a day neutral cultivar Deltapine 61, and a photoperiod sensitive accession Texas 701, were used in this study. For each trait, three major QTLs were mapped to chromosome 16, 21, and 25. QTL analysis was also conducted in two F2 populations generated from the cross between Deltapine 61 and two photoperiod sensitive accessions (T1107, PI 607174; T1354, PI 530082) of Upland cotton (G. hirsutum L.). QTL analysis indicated that NFB differed between the two F2 populations. Two major QTLs (q-NFB-c21-1 and q-NFB-c25-1) were found in population 1107; whereas, only one (q-NFB-c25-1) was important in population 1354. Discovering QTLs associated with flowering time may have the potential to facilitate day neutral conversion of wild photoperiod sensitive accessions.

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