While successful goal pursuit is associated with well-being for individuals, new work has begun exploring the role of goals in satisfaction with romantic relationships. The present work examines the effects of spousal involvement in goal pursuit on personal and marital outcomes. One hundred twenty married couples completed measures of perceived spousal facilitation (i.e., perceiving one's spouse as being encouraging and helpful) and hindrance (i.e., perceiving one's spouse as hindering) of goals, individual well-being, and marital satisfaction over 3 points in time, starting as newlyweds. Mediation analyses tested various models in which enhanced goal progress mediates the influence of perceived spousal facilitation and hindrance of goals on personal and marital outcomes. Results showed some support for the idea that spousal involvement in goal pursuit can be related to concurrent as well as later personal and marital outcomes. Specifically, perceiving one's spouse as facilitating and hindering one's goals predicted personal and marital outcomes in both cross-sectional and longitudinal models, depending on whether the goals represented personal or relationship-focused aspirations. Furthermore, reports of goal progress mediated both within-individual and cross-partner effects in some longitudinal models. Findings from this study offer implications for further understanding the role of a spouse in goal pursuit and in personal as well as marital outcomes over time.

The Transtheoretical Model of Change is intended to be a general model of change that can be applied to many populations and domains of change. However, most of the studies that have investigated this model have focused on addiction-related topics or on individual psychotherapy. The current study explored whether this model's predictions applied to couples and their readiness to change their relationship. Data from two samples were collected. The first sample consisted of 65 volunteer couples recruited from the community. The second sample consisted of 55 couples that participated in a 9-week relationship enhancement seminar. Factor analyses of questionnaires designed to measure the stages of change and processes of change predicted by the Transtheoretical Model of Change did not produce the hypothesized factors. In general, use of change processes did not predict change in relationship satisfaction. However, there was some evidence that wives' use of change processes had more impact on relationship satisfaction than did husbands' use of change processes. Couples at higher stages of change tended to experience greater improvements in marital satisfaction than did couples at lower stages of change. Couples with partners at similar levels of readiness to change did not experience greater improvements in marital satisfaction than did couples at dissimilar levels of readiness to change. In general, couples using the processes of change that matched their stage of change did not experience greater changes in marital satisfaction. However, as predicted by the Transtheoretical Model of Change, use of consciousness raising processes was less helpful for couples at higher stages of change than for couples at lower stages of change. Reasons for the failure to support many of the claims of the Transtheoretical Model of Change are explored and suggestions for future research are provided.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att få en fördjupad förståelse för vilka faktorer som kan innebära huruvida en relation kommer hålla eller inte. Semi-strukturerade intervjuer genomfördes. Urvalet bestod av sex personer, tre män och tre kvinnor. Tre av dessa personer befinner sig idag i en relation och tre av dessa har tidigare haft relation men inte för närvarande. Intervjuteman för studien var kommunikation, tidigare bakgrund, intressen samt nätverk. Resultatet visade att kommunikation var en betydande faktor för en relations välmående, och det var en av de viktigaste beståndsdelarna för att en relation ska hålla på sikt. I studien framkom också att tidigare uppväxtförhållanden påverkar personen i det vuxna livet på olika sätt, genom att forma personerna till dem de är idag. Intressen och nätverk belystes också för att få en så övergripande bild som möjligt. I diskussionen berördes aspekterna av skillnader mellan upplevd kommunikation mellan män och kvinnor, vikten av att jobba med sitt förhållande samt personernas upplevelser av hur ett förhållande ska vara. / The aim of the present study was to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that can mean whether a relationship will last or not. Semi-structured interviews were carried out. The sample consisted of six people, three men and three women. Three of them are currently in a relationship, and three of these have previously had relationships but not currently. Interview subjects for the study were communication, previous background, interests and networks. The results showed that communication was a significant factor in a relational well-being, and it was one of the most important elements of a relationship to maintain in the long run. The study also revealed that earlier childhood conditions affect the person in adult life in various ways, by shaping individuals to those they are today. Interests and networks also highlighted to obtain as comprehensive a picture as possible. The discussion touched aspects of differences between perceived communication between men and women, need to work on their relationship and the subjects' experiences of how a relationship should be.

When we observe or use something, its property seems to change because of the way we establish relationships with it. Inspired by the Uncertainty Principle – a physical theory published by Heisenberg in the year of 1927 – I take both people and objects as something always in an uncertain status. We cannot fully define objects, but only try to understand and live with it in a complex and constantly changing context.Three pieces of furniture are created to visualize the idea about how the relationships between people and objects could be from this viewpoint, exploring how far away people could accept the imperfect but surprising experience of the world.

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This paper refers to Chen and Zhang (2006), placing the¡§interpersonal relationship¡¨ into the decision-making function of user enterprise and dispatched workers. Simultaneously, we revise the dispatched workers¡¦ restrictions and eliminate the shortcomings which contrary to the facts, in order to let the setting of the model much more reasonable. Furthermore, we provide an equilibrium analysis of a decision-making model from the aspects of supply and demand, and completely analyze the dispatched work which is rapidly expansive.

As a part of a larger effort towards the fundamental understanding of structureproperty relationship in nanoplatelet-reinforced polymer nanocomposites, a set of model epoxy systems containing α-Zirconium Phosphate (α-ZrP) have been prepared and studied in this dissertation. A new surface modification approach, i.e., the porous pathway approach, for improving intercalation efficiency and exfoliation of layered nanoplatelets has been proposed and the effectiveness has been demonstrated. In order to clearly understand the roles of nanofillers and the effects of their geometric factors on the physical and mechanical properties of nanocomposites, variables such as nanoplatelet loading level, degree of exfoliation, and aspect ratio have been carefully controlled in the epoxy matrices. Morphological information of the prepared nanocomposites was unambiguously confirmed by carrying out X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Tensile and thermo-mechanical properties of the model epoxy/α-ZrP nanocomposites have been investigated. Furthermore, fracture behavior of the model nanocomposites is examined in this study. This work has enhanced the understanding of the effects of nanoplatelet, i.e., loading level, degree of exfoliation, aspect ratio, and the type of surface modifiers, on the mechanical properties and fracture behavior of polymer nanocomposites.

As to a private enterprise, the leaving of outstanding staff is undoubtedly the losses of a kind of intangible assets to the company. For a company which has encountered the merged and acquisition¡]M¡®A¡^, a reorganization of the company is definitely needed . How to avoid the leaving of outstanding staffs and how to keep them? This question has turned into an major concern for the been-merged company. In Chinese society, the interpersonal relation is crucial in one¡¦s life , therefore, it has become unavoidable to concern about the impact of some staff¡¦s leaving. This research probes into the issue that how the employees in the been-merged company been influenced when making a decision to leave or stay in the company concerning the personal relationship in Chinese society. Find in the result of the research, the factors which account for the staying or leaving of the merged company staffs could be concluded as the following four points: 1¡BWhen after enterprise is merged, a staff could have the idea of keep staying contributed to a sense of fellowship among co-workers and vice versa. 2¡BWhen after enterprise is merged, in the bad contact relationship among the colleagues, a person among them could have the idea of keep staying because of the leaving of other colleagues in the office and vice versa. 3¡BWhen after enterprise is merged, in the good fellowship among the colleagues, a person among them could have the idea of leaving owing to not be accompanied by other remaining friends in the office and vice versa. 4¡BWhen after enterprise is merged, in the bad relationship among the colleagues, a person among them could have the idea of leaving owing to the staying of other colleagues in the office and vice versa.

Many researches have proved that mentoring relationship has positive effects on individuals and organizations. In past, the mentoring relationship in organization is informal, but more firms take mentoring into formal system. This research want to understand how the formal mentoring system be implemented in Taiwan and it bring about what effects for human resources development in order to find the general methods for other firm to refer to. In this research, we use a case study approach and employ the in-depth interview technique which includes five firms which implement formal mentoring system as the research samples. Moreover, by using domestic and international references, we can draw out the methods and effects. This research concludes the following results by interview materials and literary: the goal of formal mentoring system is not only for training new employees but also the assistant system for more important strategic goals; managers take the responsibilities of selecting appropriate mentors for new employees; although managers interfere with the matching process, with the organizational culture, there is no negative mood exert; organizations don¡¦t play a role in the communication process, but filter in the process of selecting and matching to control the interact between mentor and protégé, even develop long-term friendship; mentors will monitor protégés by document records and report anytime; organization will evaluate mentor and mentoring relationship to adjust the problem; otherwise, reward system won¡¦t influence the mentors¡¦ involvement. The effects of mentoring to human resources development include mentors¡¦ career development and psychological satisfaction but without covering promoting. For protégé, mentoring system is helpful for career development, problems solving and building communication network. At last, for organization, there are plenty of researches for it, including delivering information, making employees¡¦ psychology stable, proving the employee¡¦s ability and moreover raising the organizational competitive power.

The objective of the present work is to propose a novel method to extract a stable feature set representative of image content. Each image is represented by a linear combination of fractal orthonormal basis vectors. The mapping coefficients of an image projected onto each orthonormal basis constitute the feature vector. The set of orthonormal basis vectors are generated by utilizing fractal iterative function through target and domain blocks mapping. The distance measure remains consistent, i.e., isometric embedded, between any image pairs before and after the projection onto orthonormal axes. Not only similar images generate points close to each other in the feature space, but also dissimilar ones produce feature points far apart. The above statements are logically equivalent to that distant feature points are guaranteed to map to images with dissimilar contents, while close feature points correspond to similar images. Therefore, utilizing coefficients derived from the proposed linear combination of fractal orthonormal basis as key to search image database will retrieve similar images, while at the same time exclude dissimilar ones. The coefficients associated with each image can be later used to reconstruct the original. The content-based query is performed in the compressed domain. This approach is efficient for content-based query. Scaling, rotational, translation, mirroring and horizontal/vertical flipping variations of a query image are also supported. A symbolic image database system is a system in which a large amount of image data and their related information are represented by both symbolic images and physical images. How to perceive spatial relationships among the components in a symbolic image is an important criterion to find a match between the symbolic image of the scene object and the one being store as a modal in the symbolic image database. Spatial reasoning techniques have been applied to pictorial database, in particular those using 2D strings as an index representation have been successful. In most of the previous approaches for iconic indexing, for simplifying the concerns, they apply the MBR (Minimum bounding rectangle) of two objects to define the spatial relationship between them. Multiple instance learning algorithms provide ways for computer program to improve automatically with experience. Most images are inherently ambiguous disseminators of information. Unfortunately, interfaces to image databases normally involve the user giving the system ambiguous queries. By treating each query as a Multiple-Instance example, we make the ambiguity in each image explicit. In addition, by receiving several positive and negative examples, the system can learn what the user desires. Using the learned concept, the system returns images from the database that are close to that concept. In this project, we propose to apply the Multiple-Instance learning model by deriving the projection vector of fractal orthonormal bases for a small number of training images to learn what images from database are of interest to the user.