Eagle Scouts: Merit beyond the Badge

Previous studies have shown that participation in Scouting produces better citizens.6 And, there is no shortage of examples or anecdotal accounts that would affirm these findings. Surprisingly, however, there is very little scientific evidence to confirm the prosocial benefits associated with Scouting or earning the rank of Eagle Scout. Thus, the central question of this study is to determine if participation in Scouting and ultimately becoming an Eagle Scout is associated with prosocial behavior and positive youth development that carries over into young adulthood and beyond

A CMOS Digital Beamforming Receiver

As the demand for high speed communication is increasing, emerging wireless techniques seek to utilize unoccupied frequency ranges, such as the mm-wave range. Due to high path loss for higher carrier frequencies, beamforming is an essential technology for mm-wave communication. Compared to analog beamforming, digital beamforming provides multiple simultaneous beams without an SNR penalty, is more accurate, enables faster steering, and provides full access to each element. Despite these advantages, digital beamforming has been limited by high power consumption, large die area, and the need for large numbers of analog-to-digital converters. Furthermore, beam squinting errors and ADC non-linearity limit the use of large digital beamforming arrays. We address these limitations. First, we address the power and area challenge by combining Interleaved Bit Stream Processing (IL-BSP) with power and area efficient Continuous-Time Band-Pass Delta-Sigma Modulators (CTBPDSMs). Compared to conventional DSP, IL-BSP reduces both power and area by 80%. Furthermore, the new CTBPDSM architecture reduces ADC area by 67% and the energy per conversion by 43% compared to previous work. Second, we introduce the first integrated digital true-time-delay digital beamforming receiver to resolve the beam squinting. True-time-delay beamforming eliminates squinting, making it an ideal choice for large-array wide-bandwidth applications. Third, we present a new current-steering DAC architecture that provides a constant output impedance to improve ADC linearity. This significantly reduces distortion, leading to an SFDR improvement of 13.7 dB from the array. Finally, we provide analysis to show that the ADC power consumption of a digital beamformer is comparable to that of the ADC power for an analog beamformer. To summarize, we present a prototype phased array and a prototype timed array, both with 16 elements, 4 independent beams, a 1 GHz center frequency, and a 100 MHz bandwidth. Both the phased array and timed array achieve nearly ideal conventional and adaptive beam patterns, including beam tapering and adaptive nulling. With an 11.2 dB array gain, the phased array achieves a 58.5 dB SNDR over a 100 MHz bandwidth, while consuming 312 mW and occupying 0.22 mm2. The timed array achieves an EVM better than -37 dB for 5 MBd QAM-256 and QAM-512, occupies only 0.29 mm2, and consumes 453 mW.PHDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147716/1/smjang_1.pd

The influence of personal beliefs on country-of-origin image

Country-of-Origin (CO) has been evaluated as a critical factor, which affect consumers\u27 evaluations of foreign products. This study focuses on the influence of personal cognitive structures on various facets of CO. Personal beliefs is mainly handled as a critical factor to predict CO. Assuming that CO influences consumers\u27 attitudes toward foreign products, this study has its research frame with two fundamental concepts: 1) Hierarchy of effects model and 2) Three facets of CO. Based on the hierarchy of effects model, personal beliefs assume a role as a cognitive dimension, which affect affective and behavioral dimensions. Affective and behavioral dimensions are measured as attitudes toward CO and intentions to purchase foreign products. Different CO facets are examined. There are three CO facets which affect consumers\u27 evaluations on foreign products: GCA (General Country Attributes), GPA (General Product Attributes), and SPA (Specific Product Attributes). These three facets influence reciprocally, and the overall CO image is assumed to be integrated with them. This study conceptualized that the two product facets, GPA and SPA, have two separate dimensions: affective and behavioral dimension. South Korea and its nine product categories are dealt with in this study. The two research questions are: 1) Do personal beliefs of consumers affect CO? and 2) How do the three facets of CO interrelate? It examines if the influences of personal beliefs can predict consumers\u27 attitudes toward and the intention to purchase foreign products by multiple and stepwise regression. The correlation method was used to examine the interrelationships among the three CO facets. Finally, the majority of product categories and the products in general showed significant results. The attitude toward Korea, Korean products, and some Korean specific product categories were significantly predicted and explained with personal beliefs. In other words, the more people know about Korea, Koreans, and Korean products, the more positive their attitudes toward and the intention to purchase Korean products. Especially, several technological products like VCRs, TVs, and automobiles were well predicted rather than other kinds of products. The interrelationships among the facets were considerably high, so it can be inferred that images of Korea, Korean products in general, and several specific Korean products are much interrelated with one another

What Is the Web-Based Interactive Advertising (WIA) to Consumers?: Consumer’s Interpretation and Interaction with WIA

Although numerous research has examined Web-based interactive advertising (WIA) in recent years, few studies have approached this topic from the consumers’ own perspectives. Much of the literature employed managerial perspectives to examine the effectiveness of WIA with the aim of improving practitioners’ performance. Studies that did deal with consumers often merely measured their uses of WIA and motives for using it without viewing the phenomenon from the consumers’ point-of-view. Unfortunately, this one-sided research trend provides little insight into how consumers deal with interactive advertising in the World Wide Web environment and cannot answer a basic question - do consumers really care about WIA. This study aimed to examine consumers’ perspectives toward Web-based interactive advertising. Specifically, the study explored what WIA meant to consumers and how they interacted with it through the actual navigation process. One differentiating characteristic of WIA is that it enables consumers to have an active role in the communication process; therefore, it is necessary to investigate their thoughts and behaviors regarding WIA. To pursue the research purposes, the following research questions were posed. 1) What does Web-based interactive advertising (WIA) mean to consumers? 2) How do consumers navigate through and interact with WIA in Web-based environment? Qualitative research was employed to explore the research questions. Two specific methods were used for data collection: participant observation with an articulation procedure and depth interview. Throughout the participant’s navigation process, the researcher observed how participants interacted with Websites, heard how they articulated their specific navigation behaviors, and had sporadic short interviews regarding specific actions they made. Upon completing the navigation process, the participants were interviewed about their behavior and thoughts regarding how they dealt with WIA throughout the navigation process and what they thought about WIA. Analysis was performed as the data collection was processed. Changes in data collection tactics were made based on the findings from analysis. Using scripts of interviews, articulations, and memos from observations, the consumers’ perspectives were captured and analyzed. Thematic analysis was made with open, axial, and selective coding methods. Nine themes representing consumers’ interaction with and thoughts about WIA were found. They are ‘Intrusive,’ ‘Annoying,’ ‘Informative,’ ‘Easy,’ ‘Controllable,’ ‘Relevant,’ ‘Fun,’ ‘Real-Time Communication,’ and ‘Reliable & Honest.’ Each of these themes was interrelated with some of other themes, and most of them either positively or negatively related to consumers’ evaluation of WIA. Various WIA formats emerged in addition to traditionally recognized formats such as banners and pop-ups. Two formats, ‘Customer review’ and ‘News stories about products,’ appeared frequently. The relationship between themes and WIA formats was also examined; in fact, each theme emerged with certain WIA formats. For example, ‘Intrusive’ was mentioned with traditional WIA formats such as banners and pop-ups, while ‘Relevant’ frequently emerged with corporate Websites and customer reviews. This study found that consumers are very active when using the Web. Any forced-exposure or forced-viewing was actively avoided. With the benefit of taking consumers’ perspectives, some valuable insights were also captured. For example, highly informative and interactive Web content about products usually had a positive influence on preference for WIA (this also usually translated to positive attitude toward the site or banners); however, the preferable amount of information and preferable level of interactivity varied by consumers. The study produced some valuable implications for a variety of stakeholders. Researchers can take full advantage of the findings in helping their theory building, and marketing professionals can apply the consumers’ voices to their strategic planning for interactive marketing. College teachers can integrate the findings into their Internet advertising classes as they develop consumer-based modules in these newly popular classes