No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Complexes made by hosts that completely surround their guests provide a mean to stabilize reactive chemical intermediates, transfer biologically active cargo to a diseased cell, and construct molecular scale devices. By the virtue of inorganic host-guest self-assembly, the nucleation processes in the cavity of a {P8W48}-archetype phosphotungstate has afforded a nanoscale 16-GaIII-32-oxo cluster that contain the largest number of GaIII ions yet found in polyoxometalate chemistry. Catalytic activity via thus “Metal-Oxo Cluster within Cluster” Assembly has been preliminarily investigated. Besides, the hybrid aggregates composed of the inorganic {P8W48} and orgainc cyclic moiety has been studied.

This thesis first investigates within-host HIV models for the acute stage. These models incorporate the immune responses and helper T cells produced from the activation of naive CD4 T cells. Because both naive CD4 T cells and helper T cells are susceptible classes, backward bifurcation and bistability may occur. We start with a simple model that ignores the CD8 T cell dynamics, then extend it to include this dynamics. We also extend our model to consider the latent infection of naive CD4 T cells. Backward bifurcation occurs in all these models. We numerically investigate the stability of viral equilibria, and show the bistability caused by backward bifurcation. Increasing the inflow of CTLs prevents the backward bifurcation. With a large homeostatic source of healthy naive CD4 T cells, the disease is easier to establish when the basic reproduction number is less than one. Reducing the reproduction number below one is not sufficient to control the infection of HIV. Secondly, this thesis investigates the development of AIDS caused by viral diversity, as proposed by Wodarz et al. using a model that does not include the details of immune responses. We extend their model to include density dependence, and show that the viral load increases with viral diversity. To study if this result still holds with more realistic HIV dynamics, we incorporate viral diversity into our first model. We conclude theoretically that the total viral load is positively correlated with the number of viral strains, and viral diversity can drive the development of AIDS. We also find that the total CD4 T cell count does not always decrease with viral diversity. Thus further investigation is needed to fully understand the development of AIDS. / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to determine the various value levels that may be affecting communication in the church and to discover the predominant levels of psychological existence. Data was collected using the Value for Religion test. A total of 288 college and seminary students were tested. Comparisons of the differing scores of demographic variables formed the bases of the conclusions drawn in the study. Significant relationships were found between one's personal value cluster and sex, career intention, and type of college attended. Much research is still needed in the area of value levels in religion. Hopefully, this research will contribute to the success of religion in the future.

My dissertation challenges the dominant situational theory developed by Deutsch (1949) that conceptualizes cooperation and competition as situational factors equally shape all team members’ behaviors. Based on interdependence theory and social network techniques, I offer a configural theory that accounts for the complex, nonlinear patterns of within team cooperation and competition. Acknowledging the tension between team setting and conventional competition, I argue that within team competition is a restrained form of competition as its participants are bonded together by the team membership. Instead of competing for limited prizes or ranks that place individuals against each other, in typical team settings, team members compete for within team status. It has three dimensions, including demonstrating superiority over each team member on competence, participation and connection. I also argue that within team cooperation has three dimensions – sharing, helping and voicing that are directed towards each team member. I developed and validated social network-based measures of within team cooperation and competition based on a student sample in Study 1. The theoretical factor structure was supported. I then tested the overall research model in a field sample in Study 2. Utilizing quadratic assignment procedures, I found that characteristics of each dyad, including dependence, similarity and liking, are able to influence the cooperative behaviors within the dyad. However, why within team competition is differentiated was less consistent with what I expected. The overall pattern of within team cooperation and competition, captured by three network indices, density (i.e., overall connectedness), centralization (i.e., tie distribution), and subgrouping (i.e., disconnection), did not predict team performance. Future research directions are discussed.

<p>Customer relations are of great concern for companies, even more today than before since the business environment is more competitive due to the increasing number of actors in the market. Regarding service firms, the relations are of even greater importance due to that services are more complex than products and also more correlated to the actual firm than a physical product. Firms within this business therefore have to concentrate even more on their customer relations. With this in mind, strategies about customer relations are discussed in this thesis as well as customers’ needs, satisfaction and loyalty. If a company does not fulfill the customer’s needs and expectations it will be difficult to get satisfied and loyal customers. It can be the small details that can make the difference between a satisfied and a dissatisfied customer. This can be; listen to the customers, observe them and try to find similarities between the customers, their businesses and the consultants business, to find synergies between these. In addition, to help the customers to develop and change, let them give feedback and complain, so the company can identify how the company performs. This will hopefully end up in loyal and satisfied customers.</p><p>To see how a company manages its customer relations, interviews with a specific company and its customers will be conducted. The company’s view will thereafter be compared with their customers’ view as well as the theory, to try to find similarities and differences between them. Conclusions are drawn from aspects where the company and its customers have unlike opinions as well as where the opinions are similar. It can also be concluded that the chosen company’s customer relations and how these are retained differs from the theory in some approaches.</p>

Thesis advisor: Stephen C. Bold / Hagiography, or accounts of saints' lives, persists in literature through the ages. It accompanies historical movements and moments, serves as a memorial and remembrance, and often sends a message, explicit or implicit, relevant to the reader's contemporary world. In the early 17th century, hagiographic plays were a brief vogue on the recently renewed Parisian secular stage. In recent years, there has been a reawakening to this dramatic corpus, to its value and its challenges. The current work continues the effort to shed light upon the genre, which is often seen as mediocre when compared to its counterparts that resulted from the classical renaissance of the Grand Siècle in France. I limit my corpus to hagiographic tales of Christian martyrs (some of whom were not yet canonized in this period). The protagonists typically follow a life of pilgrimage. A secular period is followed by conversion, ascetic life, and finally death at the hands of detractors. These are often political, religious or emotional tyrant figures. Most of the saintly heroes in the corpus live at the time of Roman persecutions; others come from a more recent past, such as Thomas More and Joan of Arc. My objective is two-fold: on the one hand, I strive to establish the corpus's relationship to 17th-century religion, by exploring the Jesuit influence on dramatists and reflecting on the seeds of the "querelle de la moralité du théâtre"; on the other hand, I attempt to establish the corpus's relationship to the art of theater, at a time when classical secular theater was emerging in France. Moreover, I aim to affirm the compatibility between church and theater through their successful conciliation in the corpus. This compatibility is further justified by drawing a metatheatrical discourse from the texts, relevant to the time in which they are produced and by the plays' employment of the topos of theatrum mundi. The two objectives intersect in the ultimate goal of including and interpreting this genre as an essential part of a milestone in French intellectual, religious and cultural history. The first chapter focuses on the aesthetic background of the period, with an emphasis on the Baroque spiritualizing impulse in the arts, stemming from the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent. I also provide the foundations of theater within theater as a mode of dramatic expression common in the 17th-century repertoire, which becomes necessary for a better understanding of the metatheatrical discourse perceived in the hagiographic corpus. The second, third and fourth chapters focus on the individual plays, with a close reading and analysis of their form and content. After addressing the history of religious theater and its underlying message, I turn to the characteristics of the corpus and analyze strategies used by dramatists to adapt to (or skirt) the progressively more restrained regulations of classical secular theater. I then reflect upon the performativity and theatricality of the plays and discern the metatheatrical discourse in specific dramas. Finally, the fifth chapter is a holistic embodiment of the previous chapters, with an in-depth study and interpretation of Jean Rotrou's Le Véritable saint Genest. From my interpretations and reinterpretations, I conclude that this corpus, short-lived on the Paris professional stage, informed the debate surrounding theater in the 17th century in France, as well as in the polemic regarding its relation to the church. The decline of the genre, occurring around 1650, reflects and symbolizes the progression from a literature of the Counter-Reformation, of the European Baroque, to a literature with an independent French identity, rooted in neo-classical and Aristotelian reinterpretations. Following Lionel Abel's definition of metatheater, I support the idea that this corpus contributed positively to an aesthetic and cultural transformation nascent in French society at this particular historical moment. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Romance Languages and Literatures.