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Do emergent technologies turbocharge adaptive selling behavior? A review and futuristic outlook
No full textAdaptive Selling Behavior (ASB) research has evolved over the past four decades, making substantial contributions to the sales literature. However, considering that emergent technologies such as AI, ML, and GenAI are becoming essential sales enablers with a transformative impact on the sales function and its output, further investigation is necessary to expand knowledge. Managers are pushing for organization-wide adaptations to mitigate environmental shocks and the impact of digital and analytical technologies.
Accordingly, this study synthesizes the extant ASB and sales enablement literature to reconceptualize ASB typology at four levels: Macro (organization), Meso (intra-organization), Micro (salesperson), and Nano (sales activities/interactions sub-level), which helps in extricating the hierarchical nuances of the phenomenon and facilitates better implementation and measurement for sales productivity. Additionally, we situate ASB within sales enablement theory, which orchestrates the capability to align data, tools, content, and coaching, enabling ASB across all four levels in technology-mediated contexts. This study provides organizational leadership and sales managers with a definitive pathway to systematically evaluate the opportunities and downsides at all four ASB levels, determining when these emergent technologies will be suitable for their organization to implement. Finally, based on the systems of emergent technology impact at all four levels, we propose a future research agenda on emergent sales technologies, organized with pertinent research questions at each of the four levels of our reconceptualized ASB typology.This accepted article is published as Moorthy, J., Kamath, R., ShabbirHusain, R.V., Agnihotri, R., Do emergent technologies turbocharge adaptive selling behavior? A review and futuristic outlook. Industrial Marketing Management. 133(February 2026);131-147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2026.02.00
Planned unit development (PUD) and housing outcomes: An empirical assessment in West Des Moines, Iowa
No full textRestrictive zoning regulations are considered by many to be a factor contributing to the affordable housing crisis in North America. Over the years, zoning reforms such as upzoning and flexible zoning have been introduced to alleviate this crisis. While upzoning has led to increased housing production in some cases, its effectiveness in achieving affordability and density objectives remains inconsistent. Among various zoning reform strategies, the Planned Unit Development (PUD) has emerged as a tool to provide zoning flexibility, encouraging higher-density, mixed-use, and innovative development while allowing developers more flexibility than traditional restrictions. Challenges such as extended approval timelines, developer risk, and political opposition have constrained PUDs’ effectiveness. Some studies suggest that PUDs can facilitate higher-density development, yet others highlight that uncertainty in the approval process discourages their utilization. The impact of PUDs on housing prices and density remains underexplored, particularly in comparison to conventional zoning approaches. This study investigates the use of PUDs and whether they are associated with differences in housing outcomes compared to conventional zoning in one U.S. Midwestern suburb. The City of West Des Moines, Iowa, presents a valuable case study due to its extensive use of PUD zoning, with around 142 designated PUD zones over the course of 50 years. This study employs a mixed-method approach, combining statistical and spatial analyses with interviews from public officials to understand the intent, utilization, and outcomes of PUDs in West Des Moines. The findings provide empirical evidence for urban planners and policymakers seeking data-driven insights on the outcomes of zoning flexibility through PUDs compared to conventional zoning, particularly in suburban contexts. As cities consider zoning reforms to address housing shortages, this study offers a grounded understanding of whether PUDs are a meaningful mechanism for shaping housing density and pricing outcomes. Empirical results indicate that the permitted residential density in PUD districts averages 7.16 dwelling units per acre, compared to 3.63 dwelling units per acre in conventional residential districts. Furthermore, homes located within PUD districts in West Des Moines sell, on average for 1.7 percent higher than comparable homes in conventional residential zones, even after controlling for structural, neighborhood, and spatial factors. These results demonstrate that PUD zoning in West Des Moines effectively allows for higher residential density but supports a modest but consistent price premium
LCLA: Language-Conditioned Latent Alignment for Vision-Language Navigation
No full textWe propose LCLA (Language-Conditioned Latent Alignment), a framework for vision-language navigation that learns modular perception-action interfaces by aligning sensory observations to a latent representation of an expert policy. The expert is first trained with privileged state information, inducing a latent space sufficient for control, after which its latent interface and action head are frozen. A lightweight adapter is then trained to map raw visual-language observations, via a frozen vision-language model, into the expert's latent space, reducing the problem of visuomotor learning to supervised latent alignment rather than end-to-end policy optimization. This decoupling enforces a stable contract between perception and control, enabling expert behavior to be reused across sensing modalities and environmental variations. We instantiate LCLA and evaluate it on a vision-language indoor navigation task, where aligned latent spaces yield strong in-distribution performance and robust zero-shot generalization to unseen environments, lighting conditions, and viewpoints while remaining lightweight at inference time.This is a preprint from Subedi, Nitesh, Adam Haroon, Samuel Tetteh, Prajwal Koirala, Cody Fleming, and Soumik Sarkar. "LCLA: Language-Conditioned Latent Alignment for Vision-Language Navigation." arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.07629 (2026). doi: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.07629.This work is jointly funded by the NSF–USDA COALESCE program (NSF award #1954556; USDA award #2021-67021- 34418) and NSF CNS-2313104
A high-order numerical procedure to solve a ten-equation model for high-speed, monodisperse, fluid-particle flows
No full textIn this work, a ten-equation model is presented for the study of high-speed, monodisperse, fluidparticle flows. The model is well-posed for any fluid-particle material density ratio and includes a large range of physical modeling: collisional and frictional pressures in the dense regime, added mass, internal energy and heat transfer between particles, added mass and the fluid. The numerical methods associated with the hyperbolic system are designed to fulfill the main features of a compressible two-phase flow solver: capturing sharp particle fronts, preserving contact discontinuities, and obtaining stability in all flow regimes. This is done by employing a combination of an AUSM + up scheme for the particle phase, and a HLLC scheme for the fluid phase with limited WENO5 reconstructions. A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for stability is obtained by keeping the discrete consistency between spatial fluxes and non-conservative terms. Test cases combining a high-speed fluid interacting with heavy/light particles are used to demonstrate that the qualitative behavior of the flow dynamics over a wide range of density ratios is captured correctly by the ten-equation model.This is a preprint from Boniou, Victor, Rodney O. Fox, and Frédérique Laurent. "A high-order numerical procedure to solve a ten-equation model for high-speed, monodisperse, fluid-particle flows." (2026). doi: https://hal.science/hal-05505999v1
Parental sensitivity, child cognitive competence, and child socioemotional competence: Long-term cascade and transactional effects
No full textObjective
The goal was to test a developmental model incorporating various parent and child effects.
Background
Approaches offered to describe child development include attachment, transactional, and cascade perspectives, but research testing these three theories simultaneously has been lacking.
Method
We investigated whether early parental sensitivity predicted later child competence, child cognitive competence and socioemotional competence predicted one another, transactional relations existed between parental sensitivity and child competence, and the association between parental sensitivity and child competence was moderated by child gender. Indirect effects between parental sensitivity and child competence were examined. Multiple-informant data from a multiethnic sample of children and their families followed from ages 3 to 10 years (N = 1,364, 48% female) were analyzed using the cross-lagged panel model and multiple-group analysis in structural equation modeling. Indirect effects were tested using bootstrap.
Results
Parental sensitivity predicted later child competence (eight out of 18 paths, 44%), child cognitive competence and socioemotional competence predicted one another (three out of eight paths, 38%), and transactional relations between parental sensitivity and child competence existed (18 out of 32 paths, 56%). Two moderation effects by child gender were identified (out of 40 paths, 5%). Cascade and transactional indirect effects lasted between 3.5 to 5.5 years (14 out of 39 paths, 36%).
Conclusion
Children receiving higher parental sensitivity from early through middle childhood generally show better socioemotional and cognitive competence later, and child effects on parents are also evident.
Implications
Transactional effects between parental sensitivity and child competence across a longer time span merit further investigation.This accepted manuscript is published as Chen, C.F., Russell, D.W., Schofield, T.J., Parental sensitivity, child cognitive competence, and child socioemotional competence: Long-term cascade and transactional effects. Family Relations, 2026, Early View. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fare.70110
Pedology and landscape positions in relation to soil fertility for cacao production in Busoga, Uganda
No full textCacao (Theobroma cacao) is a high-value perennial cash crops crucial for driving rural economic development, poverty alleviation, and sustainable land use in Uganda. It is likely to result in per capita income greater than US$1,000, boost agro-industrialization and propel the country towards middle-income status. The biggest constraints to this goal are the persistently low yields brought by lack of a context specific soil information for the toposequentially diverse landscape of Busoga. The dissertation shows that effective agronomic management must be grounded in an explicit understanding of how pedology and landscape positions dictate soil fertility gradients. The research utilizes the Busoga landscape pedology to evaluate cation exchange capacity (CEC), the soil productivity potential, and cacao as a function of soil productivity, fertilizer and ag lime. These fundamental soil landscape information form drivers for practical realities of technology application, adoption, and research efficiency in the Busoga region
Engineering microbial communities with novel prebiotic probiotic pairs
No full textThe human gut microbiota plays a crucial role in maintaining the health and disease status of an individual. However, controlling the population of these microorganisms in the complex gut environment is challenging. Probiotics are live microorganisms that, when administered in an adequate amount, confer health benefits and are a promising approach to restore microbial imbalance. Yet, their therapeutic efficacy is often limited by poor colonization, competition for nutrient, and lack of protect carbon source substrate for their energy metabolism. This dissertation explores novel prebiotic-probiotic platforms to overcome the above limitations by highlighting recent advances in microbial chassis and their biomedical application towards building next generation probiotics for treating human diseases. The first experimental chapter focuses on development of highly selective and protected prebiotics substrate. 2'-Fucosyllactose (2'-FL), the most abundant human milk oligosaccharide (HMO) found in breast milk was successfully sulfated using enzymatic and organic synthesis. Growth analysis demonstrated sulfation as an effective approach in protecting the substrate from further utilization. Building upon this, the subsequent chapter focused on engineering E.coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) with sulfatase, enabling the potential of enzymatic removal of sulfate group from modified prebiotics. Finally, this work investigates levoglucosan as a potential prebiotic substrate for engineered probiotics, utilizing the sugar as a sole carbon source for energy metabolism and redirecting the flux towards the production of antimicrobial peptides and anti-inflammatory compounds. Collectively, this work establishes a platform for protected prebiotics, enzymatic utilization, and demonstrates therapeutic application for microbiome engineering
The effects of orthography and cognate status on L2 German pronunciation
No full textOrthography has well-documented effects on L2 pronunciation accuracy. This study investigates the effects of orthographic input on the devoicing of L2 German learners’ production of voiced stops /b, d, g/ in final position. Additionally, we investigate the interaction of cognate status and orthographic input. Thirty L2 German students completed read-aloud, picture-naming, and delayed-repetition tasks using target words classified as identical, near, and noncognates. Analysis of voicing using stop closure duration and the amount of glottal pulse during stop closure showed orthography interfered with pronunciation accuracy. Cognate status resulted in more target-like pronunciation only for noncognates in the read-aloud and delayed-repetition tasks. The results confirm earlier findings that orthographic input in L1 English-L2 German matching leads to less accurate pronunciation and that identical cognates and near cognates suffer most from orthographic effects.This article is published as Sonsaat-Hegelheimer, S., Levis, J.M., Yildirim, C., The effects of orthography and cognate status on L2 German pronunciation. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation. Jan. 2026. Online First Articles. https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.25038.sonFunding: Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Iowa State University
Development of a temperature-controlled triaxial device for freeze-thaw testing of soils
No full textFrozen and seasonally frozen soils form the foundation for critical infrastructure in cold and high-altitude regions, where freeze–thaw (F–T) cycles can cause strength loss, heaving, and settlement. With global warming accelerating permafrost degradation and increasing the frequency of F–T transitions, reliable laboratory testing systems capable of reproducing realistic thermal–mechanical conditions have become essential. However, most existing temperature-controlled triaxial systems such as those produced by VJ Tech, GDS Instruments, Wille Geotechnik, and MTS Systems Corporation are expensive, and require specialized installation and proprietary software. This research addresses that limitation through the development of an economical temperature-controlled triaxial system that integrates precise thermal control with a standard commercial triaxial apparatus at less than 10 % of the cost of industrial systems.
The developed device employs a custom copper cooling coil surrounding the triaxial chamber, through which an ethylene glycol–water mixture circulates as both the confining and cooling fluid. A PolyScience programmable cryostat equipped with PID temperature regulation and dual RTD feedback maintains temperatures within ± 0.2 °C over a range of –30 °C to +30 °C. The chamber and tubing are insulated with HDPE and polyurethane foams, ensuring minimal heat loss and uniform radial freezing from the perimeter toward the specimen core. Infrared thermography and destructive sectioning confirmed stable freezing fronts and uniform cooling after 12–24 hours. The total system cost including cryostat, materials, and fabrication was under US $8,000, with all components available off-the-shelf, enabling replication in standard geotechnical laboratories.
Mechanical and thermal validation tests demonstrated the system’s reliability and precision. Comparative triaxial compression tests on Ottawa sand yielded nearly identical friction angles for the standard and modified systems confirming that thermal modifications did not affect mechanical accuracy. Consolidated undrained tests on kaolinite at 50, 100, and 350 kPa and temperatures of room temperature and –5 °C showed substantial increases in peak deviator stress and apparent cohesion under frozen conditions, consistent with results reported by Arenson et al. (2004) and Mu et al. (2019).
When compared to prior laboratory systems developed by Da Re et al. (2003), Yao et al. (2013), Ng et al. (2022), and Emami Ahari et al. (2023), the new triaxial apparatus achieved a wide thermal range, spatial uniformity, and adherence to ASTM-standard sample dimensions while maintaining mechanical reproducibility and operational simplicity. The system thus bridges the gap between costly commercial equipment and conventional laboratory devices, offering an accessible, replicable, and technically robust alternative for F–T research.
Overall, this study demonstrates that high-precision temperature-controlled triaxial testing can be achieved economically using standard laboratory infrastructure. The developed system enables realistic simulation of soil behavior under freeze–thaw conditions, supporting standardized data collection and improved constitutive modeling of frozen and seasonally frozen soils. By reducing both cost and complexity, this research contributes to the increased accessibility and standardization of cold region soil testing, expanding the capacity of geotechnical laboratories to evaluate and design resilient infrastructure in a changing climate
Using traffic metrics from intrusion warning systems to improve safety for mobile work zone operators
No full textMobile work zones present unique safety challenges for both workers and road users, due to their dynamic nature and the limitations of traditional traffic control measures. Although advances in intrusion warning systems and smart work zone technologies have improved situational awareness and response times in stationary work zones, their application in mobile environments remains underexplored. This research investigates the application of traffic metrics from intrusion warning systems to improve safety for mobile work zone operators, with a specific focus on Iowa pavement marking teams. The study analyzes traffic data collected from truck-mounted attenuator systems to identify operational patterns and investigates the relationship between these patterns and Time-to-Collision (TTC) as a means of assessing risk levels during operations. Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) are used to capture the non-linear effects of time of day and traffic density on the likelihood of safety-critical events. The findings reveal that while traffic conditions, time of day, and safety are interrelated, density-based modeling offers finer resolution and stronger predictive performance than traditional Level of Service (LOS) stratification. Ultimately, the results support the use of the traffic data to inform operational decision-making. The study concludes with recommendations for improving situational awareness and proactive safety management in mobile work zones, while acknowledging limitations related to data scope and vehicle classification