Media use in long distance friendships

New media such as email and mobile phones have made it easier to maintain relationships over distances. The present paper examines which media people use to maintain long-distance friendships. The main focus lies on the comparison of email and phone. Media choice theories like media richness theory assume that media can be classified according to their richness, and that people choose the medium which fits best to the affordances of a specific task. The phone as richer medium should be preferred over email in the case of maintenance of long-distance friendships because it is easier to express emotions and to give immediate feedback via phone than via email. Email is an asynchronous medium and communication via email is therefore independent of space and time. Therefore, it can also be argued that email is preferred over the phone because it makes it easier to communicate across different work schedules or even time-zones. In two studies (Study 1 conducted in the Netherlands, Study 2 conducted in Germany) media use in long-distance friendships was measured. Across both studies, email was the most frequently used medium. In Study 1, an interesting asymmetric influence of closeness of the friendship emerged. The closer the friendship, the more emails were written in total, but the less the relative use of email. Instead, the percentage of phone calls increased. Study 2 aimed to replicate and explain this finding and assessed also the content of the phone call or emails. Whereas the intimateness of the emails did not change with increased closeness of the friendship, the intimateness of the phone calls increased with increasing closeness of the friendship. This result indicates that people use email primarily for staying in touch, whereas important personal matters are still discussed on the phone

A Plan of Farm Organization for Hill Land Farms in Southeastern Ohio

Exact date of bulletin unknown.PDF pages: 2

Social interactions in massively multiplayer online role-playing gamers

To date, most research into massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) has examined the demographics of play. This study explored the social interactions that occur both within and outside of MMORPGs. The sample consisted of 912 self-selected MMORPG players from 45 countries. MMORPGs were found to be highly socially interactive environments providing the opportunity to create strong friendships and emotional relationships. The study demonstrated that the social interactions in online gaming form a considerable element in the enjoyment of playing. The study showed MMORPGs can be extremely social games, with high percentages of gamers making life-long friends and partners. It was concluded that virtual gaming may allow players to express themselves in ways they may not feel comfortable doing in real life because of their appearance, gender, sexuality, and/or age. MMORPGs also offer a place where teamwork, encouragement, and fun can be experienced

Biomechanical factors may explain why grasping violates Weber's law

Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Acknowledgments The experiment was part of N. Aschenneller’s MD thesis. The study was funded by the Staedtler Stiftung (Nuremberg, Germany).Peer reviewedPostprin

Designing the Tax Treatment of Litigation-Related Costs

Defendants often deduct for income tax purposes their litigation-related costs, such as attorney fees and payments to settle claims or satisfy judgments. The result is often a large gap between the sticker price of settlements or judgments and their after-tax cost—what defendants really pay out of pocket. The problem: For every dollar that a defendant avoids in tax liability by, for example, deducting the damage awards it pays, the civil justice system falls that much short of its corrective-justice or optimal-deterrence goals in that case. For this reason, the entire civil justice system should care about this question: How should income tax law treat litigation-related costs? This Article identifies the critical tax-design choices that must be faced but that prior commentary has largely ignored: How to attribute litigation-related costs to an income-producing activity; whether to treat liability insurer payments made on a defendant’s behalf as income to that defendant; whether to coordinate the tax treatment of a payor’s damages payments with the tax treatment of those receipts to the payee; and whether litigation-related costs should be treated as capital expenditures. Then, the Article offers a new default rule for settlement agreements: Unless a settlement agreement expressly indicates otherwise, a settling defendant promises not to seek an allowable tax deduction for litigation-related costs. In so doing, this Article reveals the issues that lawyers, judges, and scholars must no longer ignore when they argue over how an income tax system could or should treat litigation-related costs

Long-term farming systems comparisons in the tropics Participatory technology development

Posterpresentation - Overview - Approaches and Results - Methodological Questions - Discussio

It is all about being popular: The effects of need for popularity on social network site use

Prior research on predictors of social network site (SNS) use has mainly focused on the Big Five, narcissism, and self-esteem. Results have been inconsistent, and variance explained was rather low. Need for popularity (NfP) might be a better predictor of SNS use, because SNSs are ideal venues for people with a high NfP. Study 1 tested NfP, self-esteem, need to belong, entitlement, and vanity as predictors for a range of SNS behaviors; Study 2 replaced entitlement and vanity with narcissism and added the Big Five as predictors. SNS behaviors assessed were grooming, strategic self-presentation, profile enhancement, disclosure of feelings, routine use of SNS, and number of friends. Results showed that NfP was the strongest and most consistent predictor of SNS behaviors. This pattern indicates that NfP plays an important role in SNSs. © 2012 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc