Sale Price, Marketing Time, and Limited Service Listings: The Influence of Home Value and Market Conditions

Local markets for real estate brokerage services typically exhibit fairly strict pricing. Increased popularity of limited service brokerages provides an opportunity to study any loss in utility by sellers using these firms. Anecdotal evidence suggests that sellers experience a decreased selling price or an increased marketing time when utilizing limited service brokers, but there has been little prior empirical work. This study finds that limited service listings sell for significantly more and spend significantly less time on the market than traditional listings. The price and marketing time impacts vary by home value and local market conditions.

Investigation into the Formation and Adhesion of Cyclopentane Hydrates on Mechanically Robust Vapor-Deposited Polymeric Coatings

Blockage of pipelines by formation and accumulation of clathrate hydrates of natural gases (also called gas hydrates) can compromise project safety and economics in oil and gas operations, particularly at high pressures and low temperatures such as those found in subsea or arctic environments. Cyclopentane (CyC5) hydrate has attracted interest as a model system for studying natural gas hydrates, because CyC5, like typical natural gas hydrate formers, is almost fully immiscible in water; and thus CyC5 hydrate formation is governed not only by thermodynamic phase considerations but also kinetic factors such as the hydrocarbon/water interfacial area, as well as mass and heat transfer constraints, as for natural gas hydrates. We present a macroscale investigation of the formation and adhesion strength of CyC5 hydrate deposits on bilayer polymer coatings with a range of wettabilities. The polymeric bilayer coatings are developed using initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) of a mechanically robust and densely cross-linked polymeric base layer (polydivinylbenzene or pDVB) that is capped with a covalently attached thin hydrate-phobic fluorine-rich top layer (poly(perfluorodecyl acrylate) or pPFDA). The CyC5 hydrates are formed from CyC5-in-water emulsions, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is used to confirm the thermal dissociation properties of the solid hydrate deposits. We also investigate the adhesion of the CyC5 hydrate deposits on bare and bilayer polymer-coated silicon and steel substrates. Goniometric measurements with drops of CyC5-in-water emulsions on the coated steel substrates exhibit advancing contact angles of 148.3 ± 4.5° and receding contact angles of 142.5 ± 9.8°, indicating the strongly emulsion-repelling nature of the iCVD coatings. The adhesion strength of the CyC5 hydrate deposits is reduced from 220 ± 45 kPa on rough steel substrates to 20 ± 17 kPa on the polymer-coated steel substrates. The measured strength of CyC5 hydrate adhesion is found to correlate very well with the work of adhesion between the emulsion droplets used to form the CyC5 hydrate and the underlying substrates

The Self Cohesion Scale: A Measure of the Kohutian Concept of Self Cohesion

This dissertation is about the development of a measure of self cohesion a concept introduced by Heinz Kohut in his works about self psychology. A literature search revealed few assessment instruments grounded in self psychological theory. Silverstein (1999) has developed self psychological projective techniques. Robbins and Patton (1985) have developed the most widely used instruments, the Goal Instability and Superiority Scales (GIS and SS). Other means of measuring self psychological instruments were developed by Connor (1981), Hahn (1994), and Kowal (2000). The items for the Self Cohesion Scale (SCS) were developed from the works of Kohut (1971; 1977; 1984) and Wolf (1976; 1988). The scale was then administered to undergraduate students along with the GIS, SS, Personal Reaction Inventory (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960), the Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI; Frisch, 1994), and the Tennessee Inventory (TI; Eskra & Handler, 1995). A principal components analysis was used to determine the number of factors in the SCS and alpha reliabilities were used to determine the final items in each factor. The GIS and SS were used to investigate construct validity while the QOLI and TI were used to investigate concurrent validity. The study resulted in two factors which measure different forms of selfobject relations as well as producing three factors as a foundation for further research. This research suggests self cohesion might be better measured by assessing the components which comprise self cohesion