Former researches provide evidence that invasive species could alter ecosystem’s components, threaten native species and cause economic losses in southern forest lands. The objective of the project is to explore significant driving factors and develop geospatial models for monitoring, predicting and mapping the extent and conditions of major invasive species. In the study area, 16 invasive species were classified into four groups: regionally spreading species, regionally establishing species, locally spreading species and regionally colonizing species by population size and spatial characteristics. According to local Moran’s I, spatial autocorrelation existed in 16 invasive species. Autologistic model and simultaneous autoregressive model were employed to explore the relationships between spatial distribution and a set of indentified variables for Chinese privet, kudzu, Nepalese browntop and tallow tree at plot and county levels. The project showed that human-caused disturbances and forest types were significantly related to the spatial distribution of four invasive species in different scales.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Student retention is a problem that continues to plaque higher education institutions whose ultimate goal is to graduate students. The reported national student retention average in 2006 was between 58 and 71.6 percent, depending on to which statistics you refer. The importance for the academic community is that “the loss of students returning to campus for another year usually results in greater financial loss and a lower graduation rate for the institution, and might also affect the way that stakeholders, legislators, parents, and students view the institution” (Lau, 2003). In order to combat low student retention rates, many have initiated a variety of programs and strategic measures to increase students’ likelihood to complete their education. These initiatives can be found in the form of committees designated to conduct research and subsequently implement programs, colleges hiring outside consultants to assist with retention strategies, and the implementation of “student success” courses into the existing curriculum. Additional measures at the campus level may include: retention merit initiatives, student satisfaction and instructor surveys, and re-entry campaigns to target withdrawn students. According to Tinto (2002), “Most institutions, in my view, have not taken student retention seriously. They have done little to change the way they organize their activities, done little to alter the student experience, and therefore done little to address the deeper roots of student attrition”. The author faults the institutions that attempt to combat the issue by simply adding a course that is “marginal to the academic life of the institution”. While he does not directly address using personality or learning styles as a tool to combat student attrition, he states that, “Institutions that are successful in building settings that educate their students, all students, not just some, are institutions that are successful in retaining their students”. This research will provide an in depth look at existing personality type and retention data, an examination of communication incidents as reported by both “graduates” and “withdrawn” students, and recommendations for implementing personality-based communication techniques in the classroom in an effort to enhance overall student satisfaction. Considering the explosive growth of web-based distance education courses and program offerings, additional considerations will be made to address the online learning environment and its unique communicative needs. It is my assertion that both student retention and overall satisfaction can be enhanced with knowledge of existing personality and learning types of both students and teachers and a modification of the communication processes to fit students’ varying styles and communicative needs. By conducting a very basic level of research on personality types, one can find an abundance of information, each assessment claiming to be more effective than the others. Several textbooks, websites, and employer profiling systems guide users to various paper or web based tests which solicit descriptors of one’s own behavior, characteristics, and tendencies. First published in 1962, one widely recognized psychometric questionnaire used frequently in career counseling is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Respondents are asked to answer 93 forced-choice questions based on their preference of two words or short statements. The results are given in the form of a four letter abbreviation, each letter representing one of their four type preferences based on four dichotomies. The four dichotomies are Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving. “The MBTI suggests general areas of life, or careers, in which persons are most apt to be interested, motivated, and successful” (Van, 1992, p. 20). As described by John (1990), “The five-factor model is a descriptive framework within which all the important individual differences in personality are subsumed under five global traits” (as quoted in Wolfe & Johnson, 1995, p. 178). The Five Factor Model identifies the “Big Five” personality traits of its respondents and presents them as percentile scores. Measures are comprised of either self-descriptive sentences or adjectives. The Big Five factors are as follows: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. “A personality taxonomy such as the “16-factor model developed by Cattell (1965), posits that there are 16 primary personality factors” (Lidy & Kahn, 2006, p. 124). Through extensive research on the subject, and self assessing with a variety of these tests, the model I have chosen to highlight here is the DiSC personality assessment. The tool measures personality types based on a word association that offers a number of descriptors and asks participants to select the one that is “most like” and “least like” them. The in-depth profile then provides a bar graph measure of each of the four dimensions and a “classical pattern” to the participants. The four dimensions of the assessment are as follows: D (Dominant), i (Influencer), S (Steadiness), C (Conscientiousness).

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A record type is a data type consisting of a collection of named fields that combines the flexibility of associative arrays in some dynamically typed languages with the safety guarantees and possible runtime performance of static typing. The structural typing of records is especially suitable for handling semi-structured data such as JSON and XML making efficient records an attractive choice for high-performance computing and large- scale data analytics. It has proven difficult to implement record types in Scala however. Existing libraries suffer from either severe compile-time penalties, large runtime over- head, or other restrictions in usability such as poor IDE integration and hard-to-compre- hend error-messages. This thesis provides a systematic description and comparison of both existing and possible new approaches to records in Scala and Dotty, a new compiler for the Scala 3 language. A novel benchmarking suite is presented, built on top of the Java Microbench- mark Harness (JMH), for measuring runtime and compile-time performance of records running on the Java Virtual Machine and currently supporting Scala, Dotty, Java and Whiteoak. To achieve field access times comparable to nominally typed classes, it is conjectured that width subtyping has to be restricted to explicit coercion and a compilation scheme for such record types is sketched. For unordered record types with width and depth sub- typing however, hashmap-based approaches are found to have the most attractive run- time performance characteristics. In particular, Dotty provides native support for such an implementation using structural refinement types that might strike a good balance be- tween flexibility and runtime performance for records in the future. / En record-typ är en datatyp som består av en en uppsättning namngivna fält som kombinerarflexibiliteten hos associativa arrayer i vissa dynamiskt typade programmeringsspråkmed säkerhetsgarantierna och den potentiella exekveringshastigheten som fås av statisk typning. Records strukturella typning är särskilt väl lämpad för att hantera semistruktureraddata såsom JSON och XML vilket gör beräkningseffektiva records ett attraktivt val för högprestandaberäkningar och storskalig dataanalys. Att implementera records i programmeringsspråket Scala har dock visat sig svårt. Existerande bibliotek lider antingenav långa kompileringstider, långsam exekveringshastighet, eller andra problem med användbarheten såsom dålig integration med olika utvecklingsmiljöer och svårförståddafelmeddelanden. Den här uppsatsen ger en systematisk beskrivning och jämförelse av både existerandeoch nya lösningar för records i Scala och Dotty, en ny kompilator för Scala 3. Ett nyttbenchmarkingverktyg för att mäta exekveringshastigheten och kompileringstiden av recordssom körs på den virtuella Java maskinen presenteras. Benchmarkingverktyget ärbyggt på Java Microbenchmark Harness (JMH) och stöder i nuläget Scala, Dotty, Java ochWhiteoak. För att åstadkomma körtider som är jämförbara med nominellt typade klasser antasatt subtypning på bredden måste begränsas till explicita konverteringsanrop och enskiss till en kompileringsstrategi för sådana records presenteras.  För record-typer med ickeordnade fält och subtypning på bredden och djupet visar sig istället records baseradepå hashtabeller ha de mest attraktiva exekveringstiderna. Dotty tillhandahåller stöd fören sådan implementation med strukturella förfiningstyper som kan komma att träffa enbra balans mellan flexibilitet och exekveringshastighet för records i framtiden.

Boreal forests in Europe are intensively managed for timber and pulp production, resulting in decreased biodiversity, and in the long-term leading to a reduced number of functioning ecosystem services. To develop a more sustainable forest management it is important to investigate what features and habitat types are needed to preserve a high diversity of species within the forestry landscapes. Birds are a suitable study taxon since their ecology is well known and their diversity often mirrors the diversity of other taxa. This study investigated how different habitat types, for example, forest stand composition and age of forest etc., influence the diversity, species richness and abundance of forest bird species in boreal forestry landscapes in Sweden. I expected that the percentage of deciduous forests and older forests would increase the diversity and richness of forest birds, while spruce forests and young forests would have negative effects. Further, I expected mixed forest stands to be more diverse regarding forest birds than pure forest stands. The sites for this study consisted of fiveforestry landscapes in south Sweden, with both active forestry and multifunctional forestry areas. The results showed positive effects of the percentage of deciduous forests, wetlands, older forests, mixed coniferous forests, and pine forests on species richness, abundance, and diversity of forest bird species. However, deciduous forests and older forests had the strongestpositive influence on species richness and diversity. Furthermore, I did not find evidence that mixed forest stands have a higher diversity or species richness than monocultures of only spruce and pine respectively.

This research delves into the intricate dynamics of customer incentivization in company outreach, exploring the impact of incentives on consumer behavior. The study reveals a compelling connection between consumer opinions on monetary incentives and their actual responsiveness, emphasizing the need for strategic incentive-based programs. Theoretical frameworks, including regression analysis and Spearman's rank coefficient, are introduced for statistical analysis. Hypotheses posit a correlation between incentives and customer response, and the superior influence of altruistic motivations. The study employs a cross-sectional design utilizing Amazon MTurk workers,  Results indicate positive responses to company outreach, supporting the positive impact of incentives. Altruistic motivations significantly correlate with consistent engagement, but so does extrinsic motivations.

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