The Convenience Orientation of Services Consumers: An Empirical Examination

The growth of the convenience industry suggests that time-scarce consumers represent an important potential target market for firms that offer time and/or effort saving attributes in their product offerings. The research contained herein addresses a gap in the marketing literature by examining a proposed series of relationships involving household expenditures for convenient services. These proposed relationships were captured in a Conceptual Framework of Convenient Services Consumption which synthesized the various existing theoretical conceptualizations relating to convenience consumption and the number of factors said to influence consumers\u27 convenience orientation. Specifically, this study sought to profile the convenience oriented services consumer by examining the relationship between nine demographic, lifestyle and price-convenience tradeoff variables and the consumers\u27 convenient service orientation, or CSO, as it is reflected by the dollar amount paid for convenient services (from an inventory of convenient services) over a six month period. For the purposes of this research, convenient services are those services which possess time-saving and/or effort-reducing attributes that represent an alternative to the consumers\u27 own time and effort. Data were gathered via a mail questionnaire distributed to a consumer panel. Reliability of the scales used in this research was assessed by calculating Coefficient Alphas. Confirmatory factor analysis and hypothesis tests were used to assess validity of these scales. The data collected were then examined for assumption violations. Hypotheses were investigated using regression analyses. The profile of the convenience oriented services consumer which emerged in this study is that married, home-owning households with higher expenditures on convenient services (higher levels of LOGCSO) had older husbands; a greater leisure activity level of the household head; a lower value-consciousness score of the household head; and a greater total household pre-tax 1995 income. Expenditures on convenient services were not significantly associated with the number of hours worked per year by the wife; the number of hours worked per year by the husband; the number of persons in the household aged six years and over; the number of persons in the household aged five and younger; the role overload score of the household head; or the individual statements of credit behavior and credit attitude

The Energetic Cost of Walking: A Comparison of Predictive Methods

<p>Background: The energy that animals devote to locomotion has been of intense interest to biologists for decades and two basic methodologies have emerged to predict locomotor energy expenditure: those based on metabolic and those based on mechanical energy. Metabolic energy approaches share the perspective that prediction of locomotor energy expenditure should be based on statistically significant proxies of metabolic function, while mechanical energy approaches, which derive from many different perspectives, focus on quantifying the energy of movement. Some controversy exists as to which mechanical perspective is “best”, but from first principles all mechanical methods should be equivalent if the inputs to the simulation are of similar quality. Our goals in this paper are 1) to establish the degree to which the various methods of calculating mechanical energy are correlated, and 2) to investigate to what degree the prediction methods explain the variation in energy expenditure.</p> <p>Methodology/Principal Findings: We use modern humans as the model organism in this experiment because their data are readily attainable, but the methodology is appropriate for use in other species. Volumetric oxygen consumption and kinematic and kinetic data were collected on 8 adults while walking at their self-selected slow, normal and fast velocities. Using hierarchical statistical modeling via ordinary least squares and maximum likelihood techniques, the predictive ability of several metabolic and mechanical approaches were assessed. We found that all approaches are correlated and that the mechanical approaches explain similar amounts of the variation in metabolic energy expenditure. Most methods predict the variation within an individual well, but are poor at accounting for variation between individuals.</p> <p>Conclusion: Our results indicate that the choice of predictive method is dependent on the question(s) of interest and the data available for use as inputs. Although we used modern humans as our model organism, these results can be extended to other species.</p&gt

Structures and Practices Enabling Staff Nurses to Control Their Practice

This mixed-methods study uses interviews, participant observations, and the CWEQII empowerment tool to identify structures and attributes of structures that promote control over nursing practice (CNP). Nearly 3,000 staff nurses completed the Essentials of Magnetism (EOM), an instrument that measures CNP, one of the eight staff nurse-identified essential attributes of a productive work environment. Strategic sampling is used to identify 101 high CNP-scoring clinical units in 8 high-EOM scoring magnet hospitals. In addition to 446 staff nurses, managers, and physicians on these high-scoring units, chief nursing officers, chief operating officers, and representatives from other professional departments are interviewed; participant observations are made of all unit/departmental/hospital council and interdisciplinary meetings held during a 4 to 6 day site visit. Structures and components of viable shared governance structures that enabled CNP are identified through constant comparative analysis of interviews and observations, and through analysis of quantitative measures

Pediatric calcaneal fractures

Although operative treatment of displaced, intra-articular fractures of the calcaneus in adults is generally accepted as standard practice, operative treatment for the same fractures in the skeletally immature remains controversial, potentially because the outcome for fracture types (intra- vs. extra-articular) and severity (displaced vs. nondisplaced) have been confounded in studies of children. We review herein the results of 21 displaced, intra-articular fractures in 18 skeletally immature patients, who were treated with open reduction and internal fixation using a standard surgical approach and protocol developed for adults. The average pre-operative Böhler's angle on the injured side was −5° (range: −35 – +35) compared to 31° (range: +22 – +47) on the uninjured side, indicating substantial displacement. There were no post-operative infections or wound healing problems, and all but one patient was followed to union (average follow-up: 1.5 years; range: 0.30–4.3 years). Maintenance of reduction was confirmed on follow-up radiographs with an average Böhler's angle of 31° (range: +22 – +49). We demonstrate that results for operative fixation of displaced, intra-articular calcaneal fractures in the skeletally immature are comparable to those in adults when the treatment protocol is the same

The history, form and context of the 19th century corbelled buildings of the Great Karoo

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The major objective of this thesis was to record, document and describe the corbelled buildings of the Great Karoo, a form of 19th century vernacular architecture. The thesis builds on the pioneering descriptive work of James Walton in the 1960s. Description of these structures lays the foundation for a more contextual interpretation of them. This focuses on the 19th century trekboer small stock farmers who occupied these buildings, and whose cultural history dates back to their 18th century movement onto the VOC Cape frontier that resulted in ongoing interaction with indigenous people and the Karoo habitat. The thesis specifically suggests that these corbelled buildings were an outcome of these cultural exchanges and interactions with Khoe and southern Sotho-speaking farmers. The research examines evidence for the chronology of these structures between the 1820s and 1870s, reasons for their discrete distribution in the Karoo and the engineering of construction

2015 Report Card for the Mesoamerican Reef

In 2013 and 2014, HRI and partners systematically measured the health of 248 reef sites across 1,000 km of the four countries. This 2015 Report Card represents the first year that HRI has calculated and presented more detailed maps of coral reef condition on a variety of spatial scales -- from regional to local. Regional scale data provide insight on larger scale reef health patterns that can help identify transboundary issues, while subregional and local data help detect finer-scale patterns of reef condition. The country-focused maps provide individual indicator scores at the site level. These new data maps provide guidance for partners on where to focus conservation actions at the most appropriate, effective management scale.The overall 2015 Reef Health Index score is 'fair', with encouraging improvements at both the regional level and of individual indicators. Corals -- the architects of the reef -- have improved since 2006, increasing from 10%-16% cover. Fleshy macroalgae, the main competitors with corals for open reef space, have increased. Key herbivorous fish continue to increase in numbers and are needed to reduce this macroalgae. Commercial fish have also increased in biomass, which is an encouraging sign, although large groupers are rare and mainly found in fully protected zones of MPAs

Mapping functional transcription factor networks from gene expression data

A critical step in understanding how a genome functions is determining which transcription factors (TFs) regulate each gene. Accordingly, extensive effort has been devoted to mapping TF networks. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, protein–DNA interactions have been identified for most TFs by ChIP-chip, and expression profiling has been done on strains deleted for most TFs. These studies revealed that there is little overlap between the genes whose promoters are bound by a TF and those whose expression changes when the TF is deleted, leaving us without a definitive TF network for any eukaryote and without an efficient method for mapping functional TF networks. This paper describes NetProphet, a novel algorithm that improves the efficiency of network mapping from gene expression data. NetProphet exploits a fundamental observation about the nature of TF networks: The response to disrupting or overexpressing a TF is strongest on its direct targets and dissipates rapidly as it propagates through the network. Using S. cerevisiae data, we show that NetProphet can predict thousands of direct, functional regulatory interactions, using only gene expression data. The targets that NetProphet predicts for a TF are at least as likely to have sites matching the TF's binding specificity as the targets implicated by ChIP. Unlike most ChIP targets, the NetProphet targets also show evidence of functional regulation. This suggests a surprising conclusion: The best way to begin mapping direct, functional TF-promoter interactions may not be by measuring binding. We also show that NetProphet yields new insights into the functions of several yeast TFs, including a well-studied TF, Cbf1, and a completely unstudied TF, Eds1

Advancing Learning in the Communication BA through ePortfolios

In 2018, the Communication program in the School of Communications conducted a program assessment of undergraduate senior capstone ePortfolios to evaluate the evidence of quality learning within the Communication major. The poster presents our assessment results and pre- and post- evaluation activities toward curriculum improvement