Major life goals of college students: An investigation of personality traits, vocational interests, and values

Life goals, values, vocational interests, and personality traits are important factors that influence career and everyday life decision-making. This dissertation presents a framework for how personality traits, interests, and values relate to life goals. There were two studies conducted using structural equation modeling. Study 1 was a cross-sectional study investigating the domain-specific relationship among major life goals, personality traits, interests, and values. The results showed that personality traits are the most fundamental disposition and can predict vocational interests, values, and then goals. Moreover, in certain domains, interests serve as a mediator between personality traits and life goals; values serve as a mediator between personality traits and goals, and between interests and goals. Study 2 is a longitudinal study examining how relationships among major life goals, interests, and personality traits may change over time. The results indicated that personality, interests, and major life goals are stable across time. Both personality and interests are enduring psychological dispositions that can predict future major life goals. The models also show that some variables are more capable of explaining and predicting major life goals when other variables were controlled. Combining these two studies, this dissertation contributes to the deeper understanding of how important psychological dispositions influence individuals’ goal settings during emerging adulthood. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies together provide a broader picture of the trajectory of these dispositions’ development

Physical Properties of Escherichia coli Spheroplast Membranes

AbstractWe investigated the physical properties of bacterial cytoplasmic membranes by applying the method of micropipette aspiration to Escherichia coli spheroplasts. We found that the properties of spheroplast membranes are significantly different from that of laboratory-prepared lipid vesicles or that of previously investigated animal cells. The spheroplasts can adjust their internal osmolality by increasing their volumes more than three times upon osmotic downshift. Until the spheroplasts are swollen to their volume limit, their membranes are tensionless. At constant external osmolality, aspiration increases the surface area of the membrane and creates tension. What distinguishes spheroplast membranes from lipid bilayers is that the area change of a spheroplast membrane by tension is a relaxation process. No such time dependence is observed in lipid bilayers. The equilibrium tension-area relation is reversible. The apparent area stretching moduli are several times smaller than that of stretching a lipid bilayer. We conclude that spheroplasts maintain a minimum surface area without tension by a membrane reservoir that removes the excessive membranes from the minimum surface area. Volume expansion eventually exhausts the membrane reservoir; then the membrane behaves like a lipid bilayer with a comparable stretching modulus. Interestingly, the membranes cease to refold when spheroplasts lost viability, implying that the membrane reservoir is metabolically maintained

Bond-Slip Characteristics between Cold-Formed Metal and Concrete

Composite action in systems consisting of steel and concrete depends on an effective shear-transfer mechanism between the two materials. Such mechanism for smooth steel surfaces inside concrete will be limited to the bond-slip behavior at the steel/concrete interfaces. This research investigates the bond-slip behavior of galvanized cold-formed (light gauge) steel profiles embedded in concrete. A new innovative pull-out test is presented and global bond-slip curves for different values of concrete strength are obtained from such tests. Next, through an innovative procedure, mathematical equations and a few points from the experimental global bond-slip curves are used to develop a bi-linear local bond-slip model which represents the local bond-slip behavior. Then by curve fitting, empirical equations are proposed to determine the suggested model’s parameters based on concrete compressive strength. Finally, validity of the proposed model is explored by two methods: 1) by comparing its resulting global bond-slip graphs from analytical equations with test results. 2) by comparing its resulting global bond-slip graphs from finite element modeling with test results

Some cases of Vojta's conjectures related to algebraic tori over function fields

We first formulate a function field version of Vojta's generalized abc conjecture for algebraic tori. We then show a function field analogue of the Lang-Vojta Conjecture for varieties of log general type that are ramified covers of $\mathbb G_m^n$. In particular, it includes the case $\mathbb P^n\setminus D$, where $D$ is a hypersurface over a function field in $\mathbb P^n$ with $n+1$ irreducible components and $\deg D\ge n+2$. The main tools include generalizations of the techniques developed by Corvaja and Zannier in 2008 and 2013 and a gcd estimate of two multivariable polynomials over function fields evaluated at $S$-unit arguments. The gcd theorem obtained here is an adaptation of Levin's methods for number fields in 2019 via a weaker version of Schmidt's subspace theorem over function fields, which we derive with the use of Vojta's machine in a setting over the constant fields