No abstract

Social media and mobile phones have emerged as important platforms for college students' communication activities. This study examined how college students' psychological need to belong is associated with their use of social media and smartphones. In addition, it further investigated the effects of college students' digital media use on their social engagement. Findings revealed that students' need to belong was positively related with their use of social media and smartphones, which could further facilitate their social engagement. Moreover, the relationship between the need to belong and social engagement was mediated by college students' digital media use. This study offers empirical evidence of the positive effects of digital media on social behaviors and contributed to further understanding about the mechanisms by which need to belong leads to social engagement through digital media use.

To our knowledge, this is the first study reporting concentrations of perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in waterbird eggs in south China. Concentrations of 11 PFCs (PFOS, PFHxS, PFBS, PFOSA, PFDoDA, PFUnDA, PFDA, PFNA, PFOA, PFHpA, PFHxA) were measured in night heron, great egret, and little egret eggs from south China (Hong Kong, Xiamen, Quanzhou). PFOS was found to be the dominant PFC in the waterbird eggs. Total concentrations of the 11 PFCs in waterbird eggs ranged from 27.0 ng/g ww (great egret from Hong Kong) to 160 ng/g ww (night heron from Quanzhou). Significant differences in PFOS concentrations were found among species, but not among locations. The composition profiles of the individual PFCs among egg samples were generally similar. Positive correlations were found between PFOS and some of the PFCAs in the egg samples from Hong Kong. Concentrations of some of the PFCs were significantly correlated with total PCB concentrations reported in a previous study in the night heron egg samples, but not in the great egret samples. Preliminary risk assessment suggests that there is no immediate risk of a reduction in offspring survival in waterbirds in south China due to PFOS, but more information is needed on the potential effects of PFCs in waterbirds.

Social media have been increasingly used by sports organizations to establish relationships with the public. This study explored the Twitter using practices of NBA clubs (N = 30) in the United States in building relationships with their publics during the 2013-14 season.Specifically, it focused on how these clubs used Twitter as a communication tool to build professional, personal, and community relationships through a content analysis of 5561 tweets on their official Twitter sites. The results demonstrated that sports organizations tended to use social media to develop professional relationships with fans via sharing information and promoting products. They utilized several types of communication tools such as retweets, public messages, hyperlinks, and hashtags, among which hashtags were used most frequently. Professional relationships could benefit more from hyperlinks while there could be greater benefit to personal relationships from public messages and retweets and to community relationships from hashtags and hyperlinks. Sports organizations should use these tools effectively to strengthen the professional, personal and community relationship with their publics.ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to everyone who helped me and supported me through the trials

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract