Media Effects and Effectors A Study on the Possible Effects of Media and the Intent of Future Media Effectors to Use Media to Influence Others

Almost everyone watches or listens to various forms of media every day, whether this comes in the form of television, radio, print, or movies. Not only is mostly everyone exposed to media, but also the typical American spends at least several hours a day in exposure to some kind of media. All this time Americans spend watching or listening to media raises the question: “If someone spends hours each day watching television or watching some other sort of media, is this going to have some sort of effect?” This study begins with a literature review of research which investigates the influence media has in the areas of violence, alcohol, sex, and body image. The study then documents and analyzes responses of Liberty University Communication students who are likely to be involved in the production of media in the future. The survey asks them questions regarding their beliefs on media influence and their intentions based on these beliefs to try to exert influence on media consumers

Castor Beans in Texas.

12 p

What Happened to Gray Whales during the Pleistocene? The Ecological Impact of Sea-Level Change on Benthic Feeding Areas in the North Pacific Ocean

Gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) undertake long migrations, from Baja California to Alaska, to feed on seasonally productive benthos of the Bering and Chukchi seas. The invertebrates that form their primary prey are restricted to shallow water environments, but global sea-level changes during the Pleistocene eliminated or reduced this critical habitat multiple times. Because the fossil record of gray whales is coincident with the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation, gray whales survived these massive changes to their feeding habitat, but it is unclear how.We reconstructed gray whale carrying capacity fluctuations during the past 120,000 years by quantifying gray whale feeding habitat availability using bathymetric data for the North Pacific Ocean, constrained by their maximum diving depth. We calculated carrying capacity based on modern estimates of metabolic demand, prey availability, and feeding duration; we also constrained our estimates to reflect current population size and account for glaciated and non-glaciated areas in the North Pacific. Our results show that key feeding areas eliminated by sea-level lowstands were not replaced by commensurate areas. Our reconstructions show that such reductions affected carrying capacity, and harmonic means of these fluctuations do not differ dramatically from genetic estimates of carrying capacity.Assuming current carrying capacity estimates, Pleistocene glacial maxima may have created multiple, weak genetic bottlenecks, although the current temporal resolution of genetic datasets does not test for such signals. Our results do not, however, falsify molecular estimates of pre-whaling population size because those abundances would have been sufficient to survive the loss of major benthic feeding areas (i.e., the majority of the Bering Shelf) during glacial maxima. We propose that gray whales survived the disappearance of their primary feeding ground by employing generalist filter-feeding modes, similar to the resident gray whales found between northern Washington State and Vancouver Island

Freshwater Seepage Into Sediments of the Shelf, Shelf Edge, and Continental Slope of the Canadian Beaufort Sea

Long‐term warming of the continental shelf of the Canadian Beaufort Sea caused by the transgression associated with the last deglaciation may be causing decomposition of relict offshore subsea permafrost and gas hydrates. To evaluate this possibility, pore waters from 118 sediment cores up to 7.3‐m long were taken on the shelf and slope and analyzed for chloride concentrations and δ180 and δD composition. We observed downcore decreases in pore waters Cl− concentration in sediments from all sites from the inner shelf (<20‐m water depth), from the shelf edge, from the outer slope (down to 1,000‐m water depths), and from localized shelf features such as midshelf pingo‐like features and inner shelf pockmarks. In contrast, pore water freshening is absent from all investigated cores of the Mackenzie Trough. Downcore pore waters Cl− concentration decreases indicate regional widespread freshwater seepage. Extrapolations to zero Cl− of pore water Cl− versus δ180 regression lines indicate that freshwaters in these environments carry different isotope signatures and thus are sourced from different reservoirs. These isotopic signatures indicate that freshening of shelf sediments pore waters is a result of downward infiltration of Mackenzie River water, freshening of shelf edge sediments is due to relict submarine permafrost degradation or gas hydrate decomposition under the shelf, and freshening of slope sediments is consistent with regional groundwater flow and submarine groundwater discharge as far as 150 km from shore. These results confirm ongoing decomposition of offshore permafrost and suggest extensive current groundwater discharge far from the coast

Dasar-Dasar Manajemen Keuangan : Buku 2 Edisi 14

xviii, 406 hlm., 28 c