Prompting methods are common amongst animal trainers, both novice and experts. However, there is little empirical evidence to demonstrate the strengths or weaknesses of common prompting procedures. The current study assessed the strengths and weaknesses during behavior acquisition of two prompting methods, luring and targeting. Luring placed an edible directly in front of the animal which guided the animal through the desired behavior. Targeting, however used a target, an arbitrary object the animal has been trained to touch, guide behavior. A cat was trained, using each method, to walk around a flower. Walking around the right flower pot was trained using luring and walking around the left flower pot was trained using targeting. After both behaviors were acquired, a delay cue method was designed to transfer stimulus control. Later a combination of a delay cue and prompt fading was used. During acquisition the luring method acquired the behavior of walking around a pot more quickly with consistently fewer errors. During stimulus transfer the cat began independently initiating the behavior earlier with the target trained behavior and produced more correct behaviors after the verbal cue. Luring appeared to produce the faster behavior, but after stimulus transfer it could be concluded that …

Despite socioeconomic disadvantages, less acculturated Mexican Americans tend to exhibit better mental health than their more acculturated counterparts. However, in the case of older Mexican American adults, research has demonstrated the opposite to be true (Gonzalez, Haan, & Hinton, 2001). A variable of interest potentially responsible for this difference is social support. Thus, the current study proposed to investigate the mediation and moderation effects that social support has on the relationship between acculturation and depression in older Mexican American adults age 60 or older. Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was analyzed. Results showed that the mediating effect of contact with one’s children (-.109*) and the moderating effect of total social support and contact with one’s children (-.127*; -.103*) were statistically significant in the relationship between acculturation and depression. Although these effects are small they may still hold important implications for better understanding this population.

Training in sport environments that emphasize leanness and muscularity may damage athletes' body image and negatively influence male athletes' eating behaviors and attitudes. The Questionnaire for Eating Disorder Diagnosis and the Bulimia Test – Revised were completed anonymously online by 732 male intercollegiate athletes. Most male collegiate athletes were classified as asymptomatic (82.9%), followed by symptomatic (16%) and eating disordered (1.1%). The most common forms pathogenic behaviors were excessive exercise (51.6%), binge eating (21.4%), and dieting or fasting (20.5%). Results suggested that athletes who participate in weight class sports are at higher risk for developing these behaviors than endurance sport or ball game athletes. Counseling and other implications for professionals working with athletes are discussed.

Minimum quantity lubrication replaces the traditional method of flood cooling with small amounts of high-efficient lubrication. Limited studies have been performed to determine the characteristics of mist produced during MQL. This study investigated the mist concentration levels produced while drilling 1018 steel using a vegetable based lubricant. ANOVA was performed to determine whether speed and feed rates or their interactions have a significant effect on mist concentration levels and particle diameter. It was observed that the concentration levels obtained under all four speed and feed rate combinations studied exceeded the current OSHA and NIOSH standards.

The purpose of the present study was to experimentally investigate the effects of interspersing the opportunity to perform a fluent behavior during the acquisition of a new behavior. The experimenter trained left and right paw movements in domestic canines using a multiple treatment design. One paw movement was trained with a typical shaping procedure while the other was trained with an opportunity to perform a fluent behavior, touching the dog’s nose to a plastic disc, following each successive approximation in the shaping procedure. Two extinction phases were implemented during the experiment. The results showed that higher rates of reinforcement were achieved primarily following changes in criteria for reinforcement for the behavior in acquisition. There were no effects on rate of acquisition of the behavior, but adding an alternative fluent behavior may have slowed the differentiation between the reinforced behavior and alternative behaviors for one dog. The behavior trained with the addition of an alternative fluent behavior extinguished more quickly than in the control condition and extinguished at similar rates to the opposite leg movement. This suggests that the technique of offering an alternative fluent behavior may facilitate the chaining of the opposite behavior with the behavior targeted for reinforcement.

There is limited research pertaining to the effects of exercise on the behavior of children with autism. Previous researchers focused on exploring the dimensions of the exercise itself, leaving a functional account of the effects of exercise undetermined. There is recent evidence that exercise suppresses responses maintained by automatic reinforcement. The purpose of the present study was to better identify the relevant independent variable in such research and to assess if there were differential effects of exercise across functional response classes. The experimenter conducted a trial-based functional analysis and then implemented a sedentary or vigorous activity on alternating days to determine the impact of exercise on engagement, stereotypy, and challenging behavior. Results across functional response classes were variable as were data across individual sessions. There was a mean suppression of behavior maintained by nonsocial reinforcement during post-sedentary (4.3%) and post-exercise sessions (2.3%). A discussion of the role of matched stimulation and heart rate as a pertinent variable follows.

Laminar natural convection heat transfer from the vertical surface of a cylinder is a classical subject, which has been studied extensively. Furthermore, this subject has generated some recent interest in the literature. In the present investigation, numerical experiments were performed to determine average Nusselt numbers for isothermal vertical cylinders (103 < RaL < 109, 0.5 < L/D <10, and Pr = 0.7) with and without an adiabatic top in a quiescent ambient environment which will allow for plume growth. Results were compared with commonly used correlations and new average Nusselt number correlations are presented. Furthermore, the limit for which the heat transfer results for a vertical flat plate may be used as an approximation for the heat transfer from a vertical cylinder was investigated.

Renewable energy studies are becoming increasingly important as world energy demand rises and current energy sources are increasingly questioned. Solar photovoltaics (PV) are the focus of this study as a renewable industry still in its infancy. This research examines the geography of solar panel installation and manufacturing from 2007 to 2010 in California and New York. California is the larger of the two markets and has implemented more policy support; programs that appear to have increased the pace of installations, reduce the size of the subsidy, and help lower total costs. Similar trends are observable in New York. US based companies are still making solar panels, but foreign competitors, most notably from China and Mexico, are capturing an increasing share of the market.

While a significant amount of research illustrates the positive effects of therapists’ use of mindfulness, few studies have addressed whether therapists’ mindfulness actually improves psychotherapy outcomes. Additionally, no existing research has examined whether therapists’ use of a mindfulness exercise immediately before meeting with a client could also have a positive impact on the following session. The purpose of this study was to test whether engaging in a centering exercise 5-10 minutes before a session could have a positive impact on therapy, in particular on the therapists’ ability to remain present in session. Results indicated that the trainee therapists did not report changes in mindfulness after the brief mindfulness training program. Results also indicated that completing the centering exercise before a session did not appear to impact client ratings of therapeutic presence and session outcomes. The results suggest that more intensive training in mindfulness may be necessary to impact psychotherapy outcomes.

One in four adults over the age of 60 suffers from diabetes. Around 85%-90% of individuals who have diabetes suffer from Type II diabetes. The prevalence of individuals with diabetes is expected to increase. This paper addresses the influence spousal support, friend support, and religion all have on diabetes mellitus. Gender difference in relation to spousal support benefits has also received limited attention. The limited amount of studies that have examined gender differences in relation to spousal support and diabetes management indicate that diabetic men benefit the most from spousal support due to their wives active involvement in meal preparation and grocery shopping. The results showed that neither spousal support nor religious salience was significantly related to diabetes management. There were observed gender differences in religious salience (males = 4.84, females = 5.36, p < .001) and positive spousal support (males = 3.19, females = 3.02, p <.001), but none of the major hypotheses were supported.

Online shopping has rapidly expanded in the last decade. Online shopping necessarily imposes delays on all transactions. Behavior analysis has long studied the effects of delay on choice. Additionally, a number of researchers are beginning to study consumer behavior using a behavior-analytic approach. The current study attempted to extend research focusing on consumer behavior in online contexts. The experimenters attempted to evaluate whether goods acquire functional properties and whether these properties influence consumer choice. The researchers were specifically interested in studying acquisition costs and durability and in simulating a natural online shopping environment. Results from the current study extend the findings showing that delay and price influence choice. The data from the current study provide mixed evidence for control by item durability.

Functional assessment procedures have proven effective in identifying the operant contingencies that maintain problem behavior. Typically, the evaluation of responding during functional analyses is conducted at the condition level. However, some variables affecting occurrences of behavior cannot be evaluated solely through the use of a cross-session analysis. Evaluating within-session patterns of responding may provide information about variables such as extinction bursts, discriminative stimuli, and motivating operations such as deprivation and satiation. The current study was designed to identify some typical response patterns that are generated when data are displayed across and within sessions of functional analyses, discuss some variables that may cause these trends, and evaluate the utility of within-session analyses. Results revealed that several specific patterns of responding were identified for both across- and within-session analyses, which may be useful in clarifying the function of behavior.

Depression is heterogeneous, however, depression measures conceptualize it as homogeneous. To help fulfill NIMH's strategic plan to focus on components of depression, this study analyzed the psychometrics of factor-based subscales in the BDI-II, CES-D, IDAS, and IDS. CCA was also used to explore redundancy across measures. Using a diverse sample of symptomatic undergraduates, this study found the IDAS to be the best measure, with complete DSM-IV symptom coverage and psychometrically sound subscales. The other measures did not have consistent subscales or coverage of symptoms. Furthermore, CCA revealed low levels of redundancy across measures. These results serve to disabuse the field of a perception that different measures of equivalently measure depression. Conversion tables were provided to empirically compare scores from different measures.

This study partially replicated the research of Cook, Kwak, Hoffman, & Loftus where they examined post-event activities that induces subjects to pick a wrong person in a forced choice identification procedure. The goal was to investigate if providing a neither option to a match to sample task increases the accuracy of responding. Subjects were asked to study three faces for 10 seconds, after which they were asked to pick out the faces in a forced choice setting where two other faces were presented. Later the subjects were asked to pick out faces in a setting in which they could use a neither option. Results indicated that a generalization effect occurs when identifying faces and the effect is seen as subjects choosing the wrong face. This suggests that when using faces with some similar features in a lineup setting the procedure may cause the subject to pick the wrong person.

Recent scholarship has revealed that the representation of Karnatic music as a “classical” art form in South Indian society was a complicated process bound to the agendas of larger early twentieth-century nationalist projects in India. This thesis explores the notions of classicalness as they are enacted in Karnatic music society through the oral transmission process from guru to shishya, or disciple. Still considered one of the most important emblems of the “classical,” the gurukula (lit. “guru-family”) system has been transformed to accommodate more contemporary lifestyles and reinscribed within many other social and musical processes in South Indian classical music society. This thesis examines the everyday interactions between members of Karnatic music society, particularly the clapping of t?la during a Karnatic music concert and the musical exchanges between percussionists onstage during the tani ?vartanam (Karnatic percussion solo), as public performances reminiscent of the relationship between guru and shishya.

During the War of the First Coalition, the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, commanded by Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, played the decisive role against Coalition forces in the Low Countries. Created in June 1794, the army defeated the Allies at the battle of Second Fleurus on 26 June 1794 and commenced the Coalition’s retreat to the Rhine River. At the end of the year, Jourdan led the army to winter quarters along the left bank of the Rhine and achieved France’s historically momentous “natural frontier.” Despite its historical significance, the Army of the Sambre and Meuse has suffered from scant historical attention. Based largely on archival research, this thesis provides a detailed examination of the army’s performance during the Fleurus campaign. In addition, this thesis pursues several broader themes. A detailed study of the Sambre and Meuse Army provides insight into institutional military change during the late eighteenth century. While historians traditionally argue that the French Revolution inaugurated an attendant “revolution in military affairs,” this thesis presents evidence of evolutionary changes and continuities. Another important theme is the question of the combat effectiveness of French field armies during the Revolutionary epoch. Although historians typically present the French armies as unique and …

In this article, I introduce a novel airborne network mobility model, called the Smooth Turn Mobility Model, that captures the correlation of acceleration for airborne vehicles across time and spatial coordinates. E?ective routing in airborne networks (ANs) relies on suitable mobility models that capture the random movement pattern of airborne vehicles. As airborne vehicles cannot make sharp turns as easily as ground vehicles do, the widely used mobility models for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks such as Random Waypoint and Random Direction models fail. Our model is realistic in capturing the tendency of airborne vehicles toward making straight trajectory and smooth turns with large radius, and whereas is simple enough for tractable connectivity analysis and routing design.

Twenty four percent of all HIV infections in the United States occur among adults aged 50 and older (mature adults), yet little is understood of the dynamics of HIV infection among this group in Texas. Data from 1999 to 2009 examined the relationship between HIV spatial and temporal patterns affecting socio-economic and demographic variables including poverty, gender, race/ethnicity and mode of exposure. Results revealed highest HIV infection rates among White homosexual men, Black males engaged in IV-drug use, Black female heterosexuals and minorities in poverty. Concentrations of HIV infection among mature adults were located primarily in urban centers of Houston and Dallas and indicated increasing HIV infection rates from 1999 to 2009. These results will assist future allocation of resources by zip code in urban areas for this understudied population.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the factor structure of the Spouse Observation Checklist-Revised using attachment theory as an organizational framework. The study used archival data from a community sample of 92 heterosexual childless couples married 1-5 years and 4 lesbian couples (N = 192). Separate exploratory factor analysis on the Perception of Self-Behavior and Perception of Partner-Behavior items revealed symmetrical 4-factor structures with factors reflecting emotional support, physical intimacy, instrumental support, and disengagement. Separate analyses examined associations of the four identified factors with the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale to begin to place the SOC-R within a nomological network.

It is impossible to determine the amount of money that is spent every replacing products damaged from wear, but it is safe to assume that it is in the millions of dollars. With metallic materials, liquid lubricants are often used to prevent wear from materials rubbing against one another. However, with polymeric materials, liquid lubricants cause swelling, creating an increase in friction and therefore increasing the wear. Therefore, a different method or methods to mitigate wear in polymers should be developed. For better understanding of the phenomenon of wear, scratch resistance testing can be used. For this project, classic molecular dynamics is used to study the mechanics of nanometer scale scratching on amorphous polymeric materials. As a first approach, a model was created for polyethylene, considering intramolecular and intermolecular interactions as well as mass and volume of the CH2 monomers in a polymer chain. The obtained results include analysis of penetration depth and recovery percentage related to indenter force and size.

Globally distributed software teams are widespread throughout industry. But finding reliable methods that can properly assess a team's activities is a real challenge. Methods such as surveys and manual coding of activities are too time consuming and are often unreliable. Recent advances in information retrieval and linguistics, however, suggest that automated and/or semi-automated text classification algorithms could be an effective way of finding differences in the communication patterns among individuals and groups. Communication among group members is frequent and generates a significant amount of data. Thus having a web-based tool that can automatically analyze the communication patterns among global software teams could lead to a better understanding of group performance. The goal of this thesis, therefore, is to compare automatic and semi-automatic measures of communication and evaluate their effectiveness in classifying different types of group activities that occur within a global software development project. In order to achieve this goal, we developed a web-based component that can be used to help clean and classify communication activities. The component was then used to compare different automated text classification techniques on various group activities to determine their effectiveness in correctly classifying data from a global software development team project.

The British entered the War of the First Coalition against Revolutionary France in 1793 diplomatically isolated and militarily unprepared for a major war. Nonetheless, a French attack on the Dutch Republic in February 1793 forced the British to dispatch a small expeditionary force to defend their ally. Throughout the Flanders campaign of 1793, the British expeditionary force served London as a tool to end British isolation and enlist Austrian commitment to securing British war objectives. The 1793 Flanders campaign and the Allied war effort in general have received little attention from historians, and they generally receive dismissive condemnation in general histories of the French Revolutionary Wars. This thesis examines the British participation in the 1793 Flanders campaign a broader diplomatic context through the published correspondence of relevant Allied military and political leaders. Traditional accounts of this campaign present a narrative of defeat and condemn the Allies for their failure to achieve in 1793 the accomplishments of the sixth coalition twenty years later. Such a perspective obscures a clear understanding of the reasons for Allied actions. This thesis seeks to correct this distortion by critically analyzing the relationship between British diplomacy within the Coalition and operations in Flanders. Unable to achieve …

Environmental controls are becoming more and more expensive to implement, so environmental management is becoming more technologically advanced and efficient through the adoption of new techniques and models. This paper reviews the potential for storm water runoff for the city of Denton, Texas and with the main objective to perform storm water runoff analyses for three different land use datasets; each landuse dataset created with a different methodology. Also analyzed was the difference between two North Central Texas Council of Governments land use datasets and my own land use dataset as a part of evaluating new and emerging remote sensing techniques. The results showed that new remote sensing techniques can help to continually monitor changes within watersheds by providing more accurate data.

Despite strong evidence supporting the existence of posttraumatic growth (PTG), some investigators question whether the construct measured by the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) is that of perceived growth or “actual” growth. In a replication of a recent investigation, the present study sought to refine the methodology used by employing the construct of event centrality. Due to its limited sample size, the results of this analysis did not provide strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that limiting analyses to individuals rating their trauma as high in event centrality improves the ability of the PTGI to reflect “actual” growth. However, results did support the idea that investigations of PTG conducted immediately following a trauma may be more reflective of a coping process, rather than growth. Further research is warranted to investigate the role of event centrality in posttraumatic growth, and the effect of time on the progression of growth following trauma.