Couples Who Laugh Together A Coorientation Approach to Positive Humor Use in Relationships

This investigation of public and private positive humor use in long-term relationships suggests that the value of humor depends upon where it is used and who uses it. For men, relational satisfaction is positively associated with positive humor use in private, but negatively associated with positive humor use in public. For women, humor use is unrelated to relational satisfaction. For men and women, greater perceived use of positive humor in private by one’s partner is positively related to humor’s importance. For women, greater perceived use of humor in public is negatively related to humor’s importance

Offensive jokes: How do they impact long-term relationships?

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/humr.2010.23.issue-3/humr.2010.016/humr.2010.016.xml.This article explores the impact of the use of negative humor on relational satisfaction and the importance of humor in long-term relationships from a coorientation perspective. Dyadic data from 123 couples were gathered using a survey measuring positive and negative humor use. These data were analyzed using structural equations modeling and the Actor-Partner Independence Model (Kenny et al., Dyadic data analysis, The Guilford Press, 2006: 144). Negative humor weakly predicted relational outcomes, but was valuable when partners saw themselves as possessing a shared sense of humor. Men acknowledge that their own public negative humor use negatively impacts the importance of humor in their relationship. Perceived similarity in negative humor use positively predicts relational satisfaction for both partners, and positively predicts the importance of humor for men, regardless of how much positive humor the couple uses. Accurately knowing a partner's negative humor use, or having greater understanding, negatively predicted relational outcomes

A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters

SmeltCam: underwater video codend for trawled nets with an application to the distribution of the imperiled delta smelt.

Studying rare and sensitive species is a challenge in conservation biology. The problem is exemplified by the case of the imperiled delta smelt Hypomesus transpacificus, a small delicate fish species endemic to the San Francisco Estuary, California. Persistent record-low levels of abundance and relatively high sensitivity to handling stress pose considerable challenges to studying delta smelt in the wild. To attempt to overcome these and other challenges we have developed the SmeltCam, an underwater video camera codend for trawled nets. The SmeltCam functions as an open-ended codend that automatically collects information on the number and species of fishes that pass freely through a trawled net without handling. We applied the SmeltCam to study the fine-scale distribution of juvenile delta smelt in the water column in the upper San Francisco Estuary. We learned that during flood tides delta smelt were relatively abundant throughout the water column and that during ebb tides delta smelt were significantly less abundant and occurred only in the lower half and sides of the water column. The results suggest that delta smelt manipulate their position in the water column to facilitate retention in favorable habitats. With the application of the SmeltCam we increased the survival of individual delta smelt by 72% compared to using a traditional codend, where all of the fish would have likely died due to handling stress. The SmeltCam improves upon similar previously developed silhouette photography or video recording devices and demonstrates how new technology can be developed to address important questions in conservation biology as well as lessen the negative effects associated with traditional sampling methods on imperiled species

Frequency histograms of the count of delta smelt collected per sample for individuals that were correctly identified to species on SmeltCam images with (A) 100%, (B) ≥90%, (C) ≥80%, and (D) ≥4% confidence.

<p>Frequency histograms of the count of delta smelt collected per sample for individuals that were correctly identified to species on SmeltCam images with (A) 100%, (B) ≥90%, (C) ≥80%, and (D) ≥4% confidence.</p

Time series of delta smelt abundance indices (unitless) from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey.

<p>No sampling was conducted in 1974 or 1979. Inset is a photograph of a delta smelt collected during the study. Rule increments are millimeters.</p