Compliment responses of female German and Italian university students: a contrastive study

This paper presents the results of an empirical contrastive analysis of compliment responses between female interlocutors in Germany and Italy. Drawing on previous research on compliment behaviour in Western cultures, the study examines new data from 24 native German speakers and 28 native Italian speakers at undergraduate level, elicited by a Discourse Completion Task comprising nine compliment situations. The results indicate some notable differences in compliment behaviour between the two cultures. Positive politeness appears to play more of a role in Italian responses, as the Italian participants tended to favour agreement strategies. In comparison, German respondents tended to favour qualification strategies, suggesting that negative politeness plays more of a role in their compliment behaviour. The results from this paper could be useful in forming initial hypotheses for more in-depth research based on observations of natural speech in these cultures

History of the Ida Belle McCluer Home Management House

A brief history of the Ida Belle McCluer House that was used for teaching home economics to students

Long-term retrospective analysis of mackerel spawning in the North Sea: a new time series and modeling approach to CPR data

We present a unique view of mackerel (Scomber scombrus) in the North Sea based on a new time series of larvae caught by the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey from 1948-2005, covering the period both before and after the collapse of the North Sea stock. Hydrographic backtrack modelling suggested that the effect of advection is very limited between spawning and larvae capture in the CPR survey. Using a statistical technique not previously applied to CPR data, we then generated a larval index that accounts for both catchability as well as spatial and temporal autocorrelation. The resulting time series documents the significant decrease of spawning from before 1970 to recent depleted levels. Spatial distributions of the larvae, and thus the spawning area, showed a shift from early to recent decades, suggesting that the central North Sea is no longer as important as the areas further west and south. These results provide a consistent and unique perspective on the dynamics of mackerel in this region and can potentially resolve many of the unresolved questions about this stock.lved questions about this stoc

Taphonomic Bias of Selective Silicification Revealed by Paired Petrographic and Insoluble Residue Analysis

Silicification is an important mode of fossil preservation but the extent to which silicified material represents an unbiased sampling of the total fossil assemblage within a given rock sample remains poorly quantified. Here, we use paired analyses of thin sections and acid-extracted silicified specimens from the same samples to examine the biases introduced during silicification of Lower Triassic Virgin Limestone carbonates preserved in the Muddy Mountains of southern Nevada. Bivalves dominate most thin sections in the point count data, but rarely silicify completely enough to be recognized in residue. Echinoderms and gastropods are less abundant in thin section but dominate the residues. The abundances of these groups in thin section and residue are only weakly correlated. These findings suggest that although silicification generally captures relative trends in proportional abundance of higher taxa among samples, the silicification process can be taxonomically biased. Given the biases that can occur during silicification, it should not be assumed that silicified collections present a pristine picture of taxonomic or paleoecologic composition. Petrographic analysis has the potential to illuminate the reliability of paleontological data based on silicified collections

Representations of contemporary feminist protest in Germany and the UK

This thesis is situated within the increasing visibility of feminism in the public sphere in Germany and the UK. Case studies of three contemporary feminist groups, representing two forms of protest, comprise this study: FEMEN, an exclusive group who perform topless public protests across Europe; #aufschrei, an online anti-sexism campaign in Germany; and the Everyday Sexism Project, another online anti-sexism campaign in the UK which was a precursor to #aufschrei. I have selected texts from three different locations from the year 2013: self-representation online, including FEMEN’s reporting on their protests and the stories of sexism shared on the hashtag feminist groups’ websites; mainstream news media representation via online articles from four major newspapers per country, with a range of left and right-leaning and tabloid and broadsheet newspapers; and the discussion forum comments from these online news articles, which provide a view into more ‘general public’ discourse. The aim of this study is not to provide a comparison across countries or media types, but to explore the ways that feminist protest is represented in different locations: how is it constructed and legitimated by the groups themselves? How is it negotiated, supported or rejected in the news media and discussion forum comments? I work with a theoretical framework provided by Discourse Theory and linguistic analytical tools from CDA, namely, social actor theory and contextually constructed opposition. Discourse Theory is well-suited to understanding the construction of identity and conflict, a feature of much of feminist discursive terrain, but it lacks analytical tools for detailed linguistic research. Therefore, as well as providing knowledge about representations of contemporary feminist protest, this study also provides a contribution to developing the methodological rigour of Discourse Theory

Teacher Absenteeism in a Metro-Atlanta School District

There is a well-established research base linking teacher absenteeism and students’ academic outcomes. This research was undertaken in partnership with a metro-Atlanta school district to understand leave-taking patterns of teachers within the district better. C. Kevin Fortner and Kate Caton examined leave-taking behaviors across the district, by school, and by cluster to identify patterns of teacher absenteeism based on calendar timing and teacher characteristics. We used several types of regularly-collected administrative teacher data, including teacher-level daily absence data and teacher demographic and employment characteristics for the 2012 through 2019 school years. This work identified total absences, discretionary absences, spells of five or more consecutive days absent, and chronic absenteeism. It also identified teachers with perfect attendance. We use descriptive statistics and regression analyses to analyze the data. Our findings indicate that overall teacher attendance rate in the district is high at about 93% and remains consistent over time throughout the time period. The district-wide aggregation of data, however, masks patterns of teacher absenteeism when we disaggregated the data into smaller units such as individual school buildings or grade level (elementary, middle, or high school grades). Regression analysis explains little of the overall variation in absences, though some characteristics of teachers and their students are predictive of teacher attendance. The characteristics that most strongly predicted absenteeism were teacher experience level and gender. These findings indicate that teachers newer to their positions may feel more pressure to avoid absences, and the gender-based differences in absences, which are well-documented across industries, might be mitigated through interventions that address out-of-work burdens such as family care. This research does not address the potential trade-off between the student benefits of having teachers more often in their classrooms and the negative impacts of burnout and stress on teachers that strong interventions to minimize teacher absences may increase