In December of 2002, an organization called Clonaid released the news that the first human clone had been born. This company is the offspring of an emerging religious movement, the Raelian movement. Whether the story is true or not, the emergence and growth of this movement suggest that people are looking beyond major world religions, creating a religious outlook (which is a hybrid of dominant religions) with the tenets of extraterrestrial intelligent design, human consciousness, and scientific and technological development. It is a new spin on science as religion, with components of science fiction.<p>To better understand the significance of this movement in contemporary North American culture, the following research is based upon a narrative analysis of the accounts of five members of the movement. The thesis will elaborate on such topics as the sociology of religion, science, biotechnology, social movements and cults, science fiction, and the role of stories in shaping meaning of our place and relationships in the world. The reason for this study is to ascertain characteristics of those participating in the movement: who is joining, why they are joining, and what they are getting out of it. The research uses narrative analysis to focus on the stories of individual members, to provide the best view of the movement, from the inside-out. What emerges is an elaborate depiction of the significance of the Raelian movement in the world through individual members interpretations.

Abstract When the Swedish Centre Party, Centerpartiet, just before Christmas 2012 released a draft for new program of ideas a powerful "winter storm" broke out. Ideas that Centerpartiet would abolish compulsory schooling and the right to inheritance and allow polygamy are just a few of the things that cause alarm. It's not the first time during the last years the Centre Party is associated with neo-liberal elements in their party’s ideology. In 2007 Erik Ullenhag criticized Centerpartiet for their new neo-liberalism was a danger to the alliance. The aim of this study is to investigate whether it is possible to see a change in Centerpartiets ideology and how deep it is. From an idea analytical approach based on ideal types, created for social liberalism, neoliberalism and ecohumanism, the party programs from 2001 and 2013 are studied. The eight components studied are: the view on human nature, most important unit in society, the vision of freedom, methods of social change, political governance, society's economic organization, the vision of prosperity and utopia - the good society. In examining the causes of the potential changes a secondary analysis, where existing material was used, has been implemented. The result shows that there has been a change in ideology in Centerpartiet between 2001 and 2013. The probable causes for this are the bad result in the general election 2010 and the election of a new leadership for the party in 2013. Keywords: Swedish Centre Party, analysis of ideas, ideologies, ideal types, change,

Children with psychologically vulnerable caregivers may be at risk for being labeled as having behavior problems when typical behaviors are viewed by their caregivers as problematic. Research examining the accuracy of the caregivers’ perceptions of children’s behaviors is limited. The purpose of this study was to use the Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation to explore family and female caregiver factors associated with appraisals of children’s behaviors, the extent to which these appraisals may be distorted and children’s level of risk of having behavioral problems. A cross-sectional, correlational design was used. Data were collected from female caregivers of preschoolers. Reliable and valid instruments measured family factors, demographic characteristics, comfort in parenting, appraisal of behaviors, daily stress, parenting stress, depressive symptoms, social support, ratings of children’s behaviors, and distortion in the ratings. Analyses included ANOVA, ANCOVA, Chi-square, simultaneous and hierarchical linear regressions. Results indicated that family typology was not associated with the female caregivers’ appraisals of children’s behaviors or distortion of caregivers’ ratings of behaviors; however, it was associated with risk of having children with behavioral problems. In the simultaneous regressions models, greater discomfort with parenting and greater perceived daily stress were associated with more negative appraisals of children’s behaviors by the female caregivers and Caucasian race and higher distortion in behavioral ratings were associated with higher risk of behavioral problems in children. Social support did not buffer the effects of caregiver depression on appraisals of children’s behaviors or level of risk of children having behavioral problems.

In December of 2002, an organization called Clonaid released the news that the first human clone had been born. This company is the offspring of an emerging religious movement, the Raelian movement. Whether the story is true or not, the emergence and growth of this movement suggest that people are looking beyond major world religions, creating a religious outlook (which is a hybrid of dominant religions) with the tenets of extraterrestrial intelligent design, human consciousness, and scientific and technological development. It is a new spin on science as religion, with components of science fiction.<p>To better understand the significance of this movement in contemporary North American culture, the following research is based upon a narrative analysis of the accounts of five members of the movement. The thesis will elaborate on such topics as the sociology of religion, science, biotechnology, social movements and cults, science fiction, and the role of stories in shaping meaning of our place and relationships in the world. The reason for this study is to ascertain characteristics of those participating in the movement: who is joining, why they are joining, and what they are getting out of it. The research uses narrative analysis to focus on the stories of individual members, to provide the best view of the movement, from the inside-out. What emerges is an elaborate depiction of the significance of the Raelian movement in the world through individual members interpretations.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate eighth-grade students¡¦ understanding of the equal sign and analyzed error types of quadratic equation in one variable. To achieve this purpose, the investigator did a survey and development instruments. Participants were 215 eighth-grade students who formed a convenient sample. There are three results. First, participants with a relational definition of the equal sign added to about 80% of the sample. Second, the performance of students with relational definitions is higher than the performance of students with operational definitions. Third, students¡¦ understanding of the equal sign was related to their respective problem-solving performance on quadratic equation in one variable. In this study, participants with an operational definition of the equal sign tended to guess randomly or leave a blank. Problem-solving performance of participants with a relational definition of the equal sign involved multiple strategies. The researcher suggested that teachers should strengthen students¡¦ understanding of equal sign and related students¡¦ prior algebraic knowledge.

The media environment have changed constantly in the nowadays. Even though audiences can use a variety of the media, the ratings of watching programs by TV is still the mainstream, and the classification of the drama is the highest of program types in average audience rating. Recently, the concept of brand marketing is more and more important in the company, however, with the brand concept exploring audience viewing behavior is still rarely in the media research. This study used questionnaires, and structural equation modeling (SEM) as a data analysis. The research focus on drama programs and channels to investigate in Taiwan so that we can understand how the brand equity affect audience viewing behavior. The research focuses on drama programs and channels, and explores the audience viewing behavior in the perspective of customer-based brand equity. The research not only explores the brand equity of the drama programs, but also investigates the relation with the brand equity of drama programs, channels and audience viewing behavior. Even more, adding two factors in model including the types of audience and the drama types of audiences¡¦ preference, and explore the impact with among the three. The results showed that brand awareness of programs affect audience viewing behavior on a positive significantly, however, the brand image of programs can¡¦t affect the audiences viewing behavior. The brand equity of drama programs can affect the brand equity of the channels and the brand equity of the channels can affect the audiences viewing behavior. In addition, because of the difference between of the types of audience and the types of drama, the brand equity of drama programs has an impact on the viewing behavior.

Generics has recently been adopted to many mainstream object oriented languages, such as C# and Java. As a particular design choice, generics in C# and Java use a sub-typing relation to constraint type parameters. Failing to encapsulate type parameters within generic interfaces and inability to encapsulate type constraints as part of an interface definition have been identified as deficiencies in the way this design choice has been implemented in these languages. These deficiencies can lead to verbose and redundant code. In particular, they have been reported to affect the development of highly generic libraries. To address these issues, extending object oriented interfaces and sub-typing with associated types and constraint propagation has been proposed and studied in an idealized small-scale formal setting. This thesis builds on this previous work and provides a design and implementation of the extensions in full C#. We also present a proof of soundness of the Featherweight Generic Java (FGJ) formalism extended with interfaces. This property was assumed in a proof of type safety of associated types and constraint propagation, but no proof for the property was provided.

To determine the relationship between vegetation and environmental parameters in the middle and upper watershed of Nan-Tze-Shian stream, the first comprehensive multivariate statistical analysis of the woody vegetation data obtained from field survey, is presented. According to physiognomy and plant composition, 70 homogenous stands were sampled in the area. Each plot is composed of twenty 5 ¡Ñ 5 m2 quadrates. Five environmental factors including plot location, altitude, slope, aspect and microtopography were recorded. All woody plants in each plot species with dbh ≥ 1cm present in the quadrates were identified, and their dbh were measured. In addition, ground layer species were identified and evaluated by their coverage. The vascular plants inventory recorded a total of 118 families, 321 genera and 563 species. Among the 203 woody plants, the families are rich in species including Lauraceae, Fagaceae, Theaceae, Symploaceae and Moraceae. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) was applied to the ordination analysis, to clarify the spatial variation of the 70 plots and search for relationship of the variation with 5 environmental variables. Classification of the vegetation types was conducted by the cluster analysis (CA), two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN) and tabular comparison method. The results obtained from the analysis are that the distribution of vegetation types and flora are obvious and sensitive to the elevation and whole light sky space (WLS) and the floristic classification distinguished 9 forest types: Neolitsea acuminatissima - Cyclobalanopsis morii, Vaccinium randaiense - Castanopsis cuspidata, Pasania kawakamii - Cyclobalanopsis stenophylloides, Beilschmiedia erythrophloia, Engelhardtia roxburghiana - Cyclobalanopsis longinux, Helicia formosana - Machilus konishii kusanoi, Castanopsis formosana, Machilus zuihoensis - Schefflera octophylla and Ficus irisana - Machilus kusanoi associations. The associations were re-arranged by tabular comparison method for developing a hierachy of forest vegetation system. This hierachical system consists of Three alliances, characterized by Cyclobalanopsis stenophylloides, Beilschmiedia erythrophloia and Machilus kusanoi, respectively. Finally, I ascribed the vertical vegetation spectrum along with altitude gradient. The altitudinal boundaries between upper Quercus, lower Quercus and Machilus-Castanopsis zones are ca. 1800 m and 1200 m, respectively. The results might help us to understand the habitat diversity and plant diversity in the area, and those are expected to apply to vegetation mapping and environment monitoring.

Abstract The fundamental purpose of this research is to discuss the solution strategies and error types when seventh-grade students in middle school solved simple equations with one unknown and application problems; we hope results can provide reference for teachers in remedial teaching and in improving instructional. The items in the examination paper used in this research were taken from 12 past papers of basic competency test in Taiwan (2001 to 2006, twice a year). The subjects were students from Kaohsiung City Y Middle School (City region), Kaohsiung County T Middle School (Ordinary town) and Pingtung County Z Middle School (Near seacoast) forming a convenience sample. The investigators selected 2 classes from each school by random, with a total of 188 students. The main results of this research are as follows: 1. There are ten questions and the average proportion of correct answers is 49.10%; it shows that, at least 51% students have difficulties in solving symbolic operation and linear equations with one unknown. 2. The solution strategy student used most frequently is Removal of Term. Equal Axiom and Enumeration Evaluation Method were used occasionally. No student used Substitution method, Reduction method and Hidden method. 3. The main error types are: missing knowledge of using symbol; do not understand meanings of symbols; combine dissimilar terms freely; do not understand the meaning of bracket; cannot do calculation involving bracket; and, cannot simplify equation etc. 4. The main reasons for failures are: do not understand the meaning of equation; do not understand combination rules of like terms, position of symbol, unknown variables; whether containing fractions in reducing equation will also cause an error. Keywords: linear equations with one unknown, solution strategies, error types.

With the emergence of urban shopping mall in Taiwan, the general commodity marketers created a new retailing business model. Several stores of the same product category convene together in the mall to take advantage of the congregation of a consumer crowd. The current study conducted a questionnaires survey at Dream Mall of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, studying consumer behavior regarding the same-product category store: purchase readiness, information search, and store choice. The three testing same-category-stores in the mall are Daiso, Nitori and the Working House, which all are selling household wares. Another two major topics of the current research are shopper types and evaluation of shopping mall. The 468 valid consumer subjects for the study were randomly solicited to participate the questionnaires survey at the door fronts of each above stores.The result of indicates there exist different types of shopper in the mall., There are significant differences in terms of purchase readiness and in information search. Moreover, purchase readiness and attribute consideration on products significantly affect their store choice.