iii Dedication To God, who has blessed me with a wonderful family and amazing opportunities. To my family who has shown me unconditional love and support. You have been my stability, my rock, and my biggest fans. You have been there every step of the way and have picked me back up when I felt like giving up. You have shown me that together, we are unbreakable. To my parents who have been my str...

ii To my parents, Clementino da Cruz and Varlene Rodrigues da Cruz To my husband, Cristiano Oliveira, for their unconditional love, support, encouragement, and unfailing belief that I was capable of attaining this goal. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With the deepest gratitude I wish to thank my husband, Cristiano Oliveira, for understanding my love for Dentistry. To my family, for their love, support and...

To my beloved family, relatives and friends. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My dissertation would not have been possible without the support of so many people in my life. It was a long and winding road to my dissertation defense, and now it is time to express my gratitude to those who helped me so much along the way. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the support of Prof. Calton Pu, who was a pa...

DEDICATION To my family, my Mom, my Dad, and my sister, for their love, support, and patience ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my family, my Mom, my Dad, and my sister, for their love, support, and patience. Their love means very much to me and inspired me through the challenges of graduate research to this meaningful milestone in my life. I want to tell them that " I love yo...

Are men or women more likely to confess love first in romantic relationships? And how do men and women feel when their partners say "I love you"? An evolutionary-economics perspective contends that women and men incur different potential costs and gain different potential benefits from confessing love. Across 6 studies testing current and former romantic relationships, we found that although pe...

In this paper, we explain the encryption algorithm used by the Queen of France, MarieAntoinette, to send letters to Axel von Fersen during the French Revolution. We give the complete deciphering of some letters for which we found differences with the text taken from historical books. We also provide the deciphering of one letter that seems to be unknown so far. The results we get bring new proo...

I am incredibly blessed to be used in ministry to God and neighbor behind the walls of Washington Correction Center (WCC) in Shelton, WA. I never would have chosen to be a prison minister and yet I know I am exactly where God wants me. And I ONLY want to be where God wants me. For years I was involved in churches that performed prison ministry in one way or another. I never attempted to go insi...