Do hotel guests act according to their intentions as it relates to sustainability in a hotel setting?

As humans continue to use our planet’s resources at a rapid pace, we must act quickly to implement solutions and strategies that will create a positive impact on our environment. The hotel industry represents a huge opportunity for increasing sustainability practices, as these establishments tend to consume tremendous amounts of natural resources through energy and water usage; thus creating quite a bit of waste. For this customer-centric industry, change starts with consumer expectations and intentions to act. The purpose of this study was to assess hotel guests’ values and intentions for sustainable hotels, and compare how this aligns with their actual behavior during check-in. Although the overall results shed light on consumer behavior, there were no significant differences

The effects of an intensive training and feedback program on investigative interviews of children

In the present study, we assessed the effectiveness of an extensive training and feedback program with investigative interviewers of child victims of alleged abuse and neglect in a large Canadian city. Twelve investigative interviewers participated in a joint training initiative that lasted eight months and involved classroom components and extensive weekly verbal and written feedback. Interviewers were significantly more likely to use open-ended prompts and elicited more information from children with open-ended prompts following training. These differences were especially prominent following a subsequent ‘refresher’ training session. No negative effects of training were observed. Clear evidence was found of the benefits of an intensive training and feedback program across a wide variety of investigative interviews with children. Although previous research has found benefits of training with interviewers of child sexual assault victims, the current study extends these findings to a wide range of allegations and maltreatment contexts

Resilience and Resistance: Public Narratives from Post-Katrina New Orleans

Narratives of resilience and resistance are applied by public editors in post-Katrina New Orleans in hopes of reordering the city\u27s ruptured narrative. Using qualitative methods and grounded theory, the textual analysis of local newspaper editorials and letters to the editor, collected from the six month period between August 29, 2005 and February 28, 2006, have revealed categories of hope and struggle in acts of collective reaffirmation; of civility and leadership in expectations of personal transformation; and of self-reliance and civic engagement in acts of resistance. Discussion will focus on how editorialists work to create public narratives that will unite their audience and maintain social order during post-disaster reconstruction

Resilience and Resistance: Public Narratives from Post-Katrina New Orleans

Narratives of resilience and resistance are applied by public editors in post-Katrina New Orleans in hopes of reordering the city\u27s ruptured narrative. Using qualitative methods and grounded theory, the textual analysis of local newspaper editorials and letters to the editor, collected from the six month period between August 29, 2005 and February 28, 2006, have revealed categories of hope and struggle in acts of collective reaffirmation; of civility and leadership in expectations of personal transformation; and of self-reliance and civic engagement in acts of resistance. Discussion will focus on how editorialists work to create public narratives that will unite their audience and maintain social order during post-disaster reconstruction

Using Spaced Learning Principles to Translate Knowledge into Behavior: Evidence from Investigative Interviews of Alleged Child Abuse Victims

The present study assessed the progress of 13 investigative interviewers (child protection workers and police officers) before, during, and after an intensive training program (n = 132 interviews). Training began with a 2-day workshop covering the principles of child development and child-friendly interviewing. Interviewers then submitted interviews on a bi-weekly basis to which they received written and verbal feedback over an 8-month period. A refresher session took place two months into training. Interestingly, improvements were observed only after the refresher session. Interviews conducted post-refresher training contained proportionally more open-ended questions, more child details in response to open-ended questions, and proportionally fewer closed questions than interviews conducted prior to training and in the first half of the training program. The need for ‘spaced learning’ may underlie why so many training programs have had little effect on practice

Investigation of larval sensory systems in the marine bryozoan, Bugula neritina

Bugula neritina is a sessile marine bryozoan with a pelagic larval stage. Larvae frequently settle on boat hulls, facilitating the introduction of B. neritina to bays and estuaries worldwide. Adrenergic agonists, such as the vertebrate hormone noradrenaline, inhibit larval settlement in a variety of marine invertebrate species, including B. neritina. Light also inhibits B. neritina larval settlement, yet the underlying mechanisms by which light and adrenergic compounds exert their effects on larvae are not well understood. Octopamine is considered the invertebrate analog of noradrenaline, and may be an endogenous hormone involved in larval settlement pathways. I observed the effects of the adrenergic agonist noradrenaline and the adrenergic antagonist phentolamine on larval settlement, and found that high concentrations of noradrenaline increased larval mortality, inhibited larval attachment, and increased larval swimming behavior. High concentrations of phentolamine also increased larval mortality, but increased larval attachment and decreased larval swimming behavior. I used fluorescent labeling and microscopy to localize sensory system components, and found that larvae possess adrenergic-like receptors, as well as tyrosine hydroxylase-like and octopamine-like immunoreactivity. I also exposed larvae to phentolamine in both dark and light conditions, and found that light significantly inhibited larval attachment, but phentolamine blocked those inhibitory effects. These results suggest that B. neritina larvae possess adrenergic-like receptors, which serve as the binding sites for noradrenaline and phentolamine. These are likely octopamine receptors, and octopamine may be one endogenous compound involved in controlling larval phototaxis and settlement behavior. Light may increase octopamine production, thereby stimulating cilial activity, extending swimming behavior, and preventing larvae from attaching to a substrate. This research sheds light on previously unknown sensory mechanisms in B. neritina larvae, and may aid in the development of new biofouling control strategies

South African Homes: The Spatial Politics of Belonging in Post-Apartheid Novels

In this dissertation, I interrogate the postcolonial condition in contemporary South Africa still controlled by the effects of unjust geographies. This project offers an examination of conceptualizations of home in contemporary South African novels in English; specifically, the focus reveals how these representations reflect the multifaceted politics of belonging and identity formation. Drawing on the frameworks of home, belonging, and space of Foucault, Soja, Bhabha and others, this dissertation contends that concepts of home provide fertile areas of exploration into past and continued dislocation, while challenging the binaries embedded in South African identity discourse haunted by colonialization and apartheid. The primary texts reflect various subgenres of the South African novel in English, and each chapter explores how a spatial reading expands the aesthetic texture of the novel. Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe (2005), Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother (1998), and Matlwa’s Coconut (2007) interact and transform South African novel sub-genres born in traditions established through European colonialism and apartheid rule, and I explore the sites of dwelling as heterotopias. Next, I examine Andre Brink’s The Rights of Desire (2000) and Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor (2004) and The Impostor (2009) alongside J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) as crime novels revealing the unhomely condition of their white, middle-age protagonists. Finally, Zoë Wicomb’s October (2014), and Zukiswa Wanner’s London Cape Town Joburg (2014) reveal stories of those who left South Africa during apartheid and later returned. In this chapter, I utilize Bhabha and Soja’s dual vision of the thirdspace to reveal how Wicomb and Wanner explore the balance between the vacillating push and pull of home and the postmodern flux of cosmopolitan migration and rootlessness

Children’s episodic and generic reports of alleged abuse

With the present data, we explored the relations between the language of interviewer questions, children’s reports, and case and child characteristics in forensic interviews. Results clearly indicated that the type of questions posed by interviewers – either probing generic or episodic features of an event – was related to the specificity of information reported by children. Further, interviewers appeared to adjust their questioning strategies based on the frequency of the alleged abuse. Children alleging single instances of abuse were asked more episodic questions than those alleging multiple abuses. In contrast, children alleging multiple incidents of abuse were asked a greater proportion of generic questions. Given that investigators often seek forensically-relevant episodic information, it is recommended that training for investigators focus on recognition of prompt selection tendencies and developing strategies for posing non-suggestive, episodically focused questions