Heat stress adaptation in hyperthermophiles: bosynthesis of inositol-containing compatible solutes

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry

Paradox of choice: The influence of assortment size on customer satisfaction

Recently researchers showed that more choice is not always better. Choosing from large assortments can be overwhelming, raising expectations and decreasing overall level of consumer satisfaction. Author contributes to existing overchoice studies by using real assortment of online stores to find influence of assortment size on customer satisfaction. 90 students participated in the main experiment, where they chose a smartphone case for their friend. Results of the study show that large assortment size leads to higher expectations, higher choice difficulty and higher level of satisfaction. This research does not show overchoice presence and author suggests future studies could focus more on assortment variety and more personal characteristics of consumers, like preference uncertainty.

Aspects of Passives in Capeverdean (Santiago’s variety)

The present dissertation intends to study passives in Capeverdean. I argue that Capeverdean have eventive passives with specific morphology, postverbal morphemes, -du and -da, which affix to the verb to form passives and interact with the TMA morphemes available in the language in the same way as in the active voice. I also show that Capeverdean only allows short passives. However, this study demonstrates that the by-phrase, although not expressed phonologically, is implicit and can be tracked through instrumentals and Agent-oriented adverbs. In order to account for this specific property of Capeverdean passives, I assume the existence of a Voice head which introduces the external argument in all finite sentences in Capeverdean, except in unaccusatives, following proposals from Marantz (1984), Kratzer (1996), Sailor & Ahn (2010), Pratas (2014). I also assume that this Voice head is subject to a Doubly Filled Comp Filter, similar to what is proposed in Koopman (1997), which determines that either heads or specifiers can be overt, never both. In the case of passives, I propose that external argument is in Spec,Voice and the passive morphology is lexicalized in Voice0 and that while Spec,Voice is silent, Voice0 is not. This configuration can be explained if it is assumed, following Costa & Martins (2004), that in Capeverdean passives Voice0 is a strong functional head, thus requiring visibility at PF. This restriction, combined with the Doubly Filled Comp filter, imposes that Spec,Voice is silent.