THE NATURE OF INFORMAL ROLES IN INTERDEPENDENT SPORT TEAMS

The degree to which athletes understand and execute their formal role responsibilities (i.e., prescribed by coaches) is important for individual and group functioning (Eys, Schinke, Surya, & Benson, 2014). Recent literature suggested that informal roles can emerge within sport teams more naturally without coaches’ explicit assignments (e.g., team comedians, distracters), and have significant influences on team functioning (Cope, Eys, Beauchamp, Schinke, & Bosselut, 2011). This doctoral dissertation examined the nature of informal roles within interdependent sport teams, focusing on their antecedents and outcomes. Three separate projects were conducted. Project One examined athletes’ personality in the big five dimensions (McCrae & Costa, 2010) as antecedents of their informal role occupancy assessed via self- and teammate-identification (N = 535). Project Two examined whether athletes’ personality assessed near the beginning of the competitive season predicted their informal role occupancy at a later point of their season, and whether the presence of informal roles influenced valued outcome perceptions (e.g., group cohesion, athlete satisfaction) assessed closer to the end of the season (N = 286). Projects One and Two demonstrated that team comedians tended to be more extraverted (i.e., more outgoing) and distracters tended to be less conscientious (i.e., less dependable), although several inconsistent associations were also noted between personality and informal role occupancy across the two projects. Project Two further revealed that the presence of several informal roles affected athletes’ perceptions of group cohesion and satisfaction. Project Three employed an instrumental case study design with two sport teams, whereby different types of information (personality and informal role occupancy via questionnaires, athlete behaviours via video-recordings of competitions, interviews with coaches and athletes) were collected to conduct an in-depth examination of informal role emergence. The results revealed that those who occupied important task- and social-oriented informal roles, compared to those who did not, had higher tenure, garnered more playing time, and showed higher levels of activity during competitions. The interview results identified several factors that can influence informal role emergence, which pertained to either the role occupants (e.g., tenure, personal backgrounds) or the context (e.g., coach influence). Overall, this dissertation makes meaningful contributions to the group dynamics literature by highlighting important factors involved in the processes by which informal roles arise in groups, as well as their potential impact. Insight derived from this dissertation provides a foundation to continue this line of inquiry to further advance the understanding of the complex nature of informal roles

Due Process and Fair Trial in EU Competition Law

In Due Process and Fair Trial in EU Competition Law, Cristina Teleki addresses the complex relationship between Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The book is built around the idea that big business can threaten democracy. Due process and fair trial should be central to the process of addressing bigness through competition law, by safeguarding independent decision-making and judicial review and by preventing competition authorities from growing into administrative behemoths threatening democracy from inside. To show this, the book combines a comprehensive review of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights with insight from economics, psychology and systems theory. Readership: Lawyers and researchers interested generally in fundamental rights, EU competition law and the interplay between the two or particularly in due process, independent decision-making or judicial review

Secure data communication over mobile devices in health networks.

The continuous developments in the field of mobile computing have made it possible to use mobile devices for healthcare applications. These devices can be used by healthcare providers to collect and share patients' medical data. However, with increasing adoption of mobile devices that carry confidential data, organizations need to secure the data from unauthorized users and mobile device theft. When unencrypted data is transmitted from one device to another it faces various security threats from malicious code, unsecure networks, unauthorized access, and data theft. The objective of this research is to develop a secure data sharing solution customized for healthcare environments, which would allow authorized users to securely access and share patients' data over mobile devices. We identify the vulnerable locations in mobile communication network that can possibly be exploited by unauthorized users or malicious code to access the confidential data, and develop an efficient security protocol that provides end to end data protection without compromising device's performance. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed data sharing architecture, a prototype customized for Point-of-Care-Testing (POCT) scenarios was built in collaboration with Northern Health, Prince George. Simulations were performed to analyze and validate our solution against the pre-defined requirement criteria. --P. ii.The original print copy of this thesis may be available here: http://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b178382

The Fourth Amendment and Technological Exceptionalism After Carpenter: A Case Study on Hash-Value Matching

The Fourth Amendment has long served as a barrier between the police and the people; ensuring the government acts reasonably in combating crime. Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is more dynamic than other constitutional guarantees, and has undergone periodic shifts to account for technological and cultural changes. The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in United States v. Carpenter marks the most recent jurisprudential shift, as the Court departed from the well-settled reasonable expectation of privacy test to account for a new technology (CSLI records). This Note examines Carpenter’s impact on future Fourth Amendment cases, using another novel surveillance technique, hash-value matching, as a case study. Hash-value matching is a binary authentication method that can scan billions of digital communications in seconds for evidence of contraband

Unreasonable Distinctions: A Comparative Analysis of the Definitional Framework of Koreas New Anti-Age Discrimination Law

Korea has recently enacted legislation that strengthens existing prohibitions on age discrimination by providing stiff penalties for violation. The core of any legislation lies in its definitional framework since it is through this framework that liability is ultimately established. This article examines and evaluates the scope and definitional language of the new Korean legislation through a comparative analysis of related provisions in the anti-age discrimination statutes of the US and UK. These jurisdictions are selected for comparison because they represent both a long-standing statutory regime and one that has been more recently established. The analysis reveals critical weaknesses in the structural and definitional aspects of the Korean legislation that may render determinations of liability ambiguous and therefore unreliable. Specifically, ambiguities in the scope of application due to faulty construction, reliance on a minimalist definition that appears to merely prohibit unreasonable distinctions, and a confusion in the possible exceptions to discrimination raise concerns as to whether the new penalties will have any significant impact on reducing age discrimination in the Korean workplace since the prospects for ultimately reaching those penalties are doubtful

Examining the policy diffusion of organic food and agriculture legislation in the U.S. - the role of the states in developing organic standards

2014 Spring.From 1976-2010, 38 states created and passed legislation regarding the regulation of organic food and agriculture. Most legislation was passed during the time period of 1985-1990, a period that ended with Congress passing the Organic Food Production Act [OFPA] in 1990. OFPA was passed to eliminate the patchwork of state and private third-party organic standards regulating the market and to maintain access to international markets by assuring U.S. standards were harmonized with key markets. Subsequently, it may have been expected that state adoption of organic policies would cease after federal action in 1990. However, many states continued to adopt and modify existing policies after the passage of OFPA. This research examines the diffusion of organic food and agriculture legislation and dynamics of legislative refinement in the United States both prior to and after federal adoption of organic legislation. With both theoretical and applied implications to be derived, this research uses the policy diffusion literature to examine the diffusion of organic legislation. A mixed-methods approach is utilized to answer the central research question of why do some states adopt organic food and agriculture legislation while others do not? The quantitative portion of this research uses time-series logistical regressions to test an enhanced unified model of policy diffusion. Time controls were used to evaluate the nationwide dynamics across several time periods. In addition, regional models were constructed for four statistically significant regions to further examine regional variations in diffusion factors. The qualitative portion of this research consists of a comparative case study between a leader and laggard state adopters. California and Georgia were the state cases selected for analysis. The results of this analysis suggest that wealth, political culture, partisan control of state government, state vegetable production, third-party certification organizations, horizontal pressures, national-scale pressures, and salience are key explanatory factors for state adoption of organic food and agriculture legislature from 1976-2010. Per capita wealth, issue salience, and regional effects are the most robust explanatory power over the 35-year time period and for each adoption-type. Pre-1990 state adoptions were also strongly influenced by the presence of third-party certifiers and the policy type design. Post-1990 state adoptions were additionally influenced by federal adoption and implementation, partisan control of state government, and state vegetable production. Action at the federal level, including federal adoption and implementation, did not dramatically deter state adoption or cause the repeal of state organic food and agriculture statutes. Across all time periods, certain regions remain distinctive in terms of diffusion dynamics including the Far West, North Central, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic regions. Two case studies, California and Georgia, shed some light on how adoption of organic food and agriculture legislation occurred in the Far West and Southeast regions

Governance of Cloud-hosted Web Applications

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way developers implement and deploy applications. By running applications on large-scale compute infrastructures and programming platforms that are remotely accessible as utility services, cloud computing provides scalability, high availability, and increased user productivity.Despite the advantages inherent to the cloud computing model, it has also given rise to several software management and maintenance issues. Specifically, cloud platforms do not enforce developer best practices, and other administrative requirements when deploying applications. Cloud platforms also do not facilitate establishing service level objectives (SLOs) on application performance, which are necessary to ensure reliable and consistent operation of applications. Moreover, cloud platforms do not provide adequate support to monitor the performance of deployed applications, and conduct root cause analysis when an application exhibits a performance anomaly.We employ governance as a methodology to address the above mentioned issues prevalent in cloud platforms. We devise novel governance solutions that achieve administrative conformance, developer best practices, and performance SLOs in the cloud via policy enforcement, SLO prediction, performance anomaly detection and root cause analysis. The proposed solutions are fully automated, and built into the cloud platforms as cloud-native features thereby precluding the application developers from having to implement similar features by themselves. We evaluate our methodology using real world cloud platforms, and show that our solutions are highly effective and efficient

Unveiling the challenges of curbing wildlife crime in Kenya : evaluating the 3Cs solution.

This is an original thematic research thesis that investigated the causes that lead to the current unprecedented escalation of wildlife crime in Africa that threatens to destroy our global environment by decimating and driving our wildlife which is a global heritage to extinction. The research study which was conducted both in Kenya and in the United Kingdom, has developed unique and distinguishable proposals, methods and recommendations, referred to as the 3Cs solutions, which can be effectively utilized in combating and curbing wildlife crime at a global scale. Nature has provided very delicate and sophisticated ecological systems where all plants and animals have very important roles that they play which keeps this planet Earth’s environment habitable. The realization that the future of this World and the entire human race is greatly linked to these global ecological systems and their biodiversity balance has caused a new global awareness and eagerness to view these eco-systems and the entire global environment as one and to halt destruction of any of these eco-systems taking place anywhere on planet Earth. Wildlife crime is currently the greatest threat to the ecological system and its bio-diversity balance in Africa and by extension to the global environment, as it is destroying an ecological and bio-diversity system of a globally important biome and green belt area south of the Sahara. East, Central and Southern Africa have been identified as the largest source markets that supply illegal wildlife trophies to the consumer markets in the Far East Asia, Western Europe the Middle East and the USA. Yet some of these supply source countries have functioning legal systems that have failed to curb this crime. Kenya is one such country. Kenya was selected for this study because it is the region’s major logistics and trading hub for illegal wildlife crime trophies. Kenya has a functioning Criminal Justice System mandated to combat wildlife crime yet it has badly failed to do so. The three departments within that Criminal Justice System which are mandate to protect wildlife by enforcing wildlife crime laws in Kenya are Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) warders for policing, the Prosecution and the Judiciary. The main purpose of this study was therefore to investigate and understand why a functioning legal system is unable to combat wildlife crime by determining the challenges it faces in curbing this vice. The study focused on wildlife crime committed for commercial export purposes and identified 5 prime species that are targeted for their trophies for illegal export which are the elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and cheetah herein after referred to in this study as the ‘Charismatic Five. The study employed Empirical research methods to conduct the research and to answer the research questions. Qualitative and quantitative research techniques were utilized. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design in order to assist the researcher achieve the objective of the study. Five national parks were selected for the study being the parks where the charismatic 5 wildlife species are abundantly found and therefore the targeted parks by poachers. The population of the study were therefore Kenya Wildlife Service Wardens in the selected national parks, Magistrates and Prosecutors serving in the courts where these parks are located. A peer review of this study’s research tool was first done followed by pilot study carried out at the Nairobi National Park in Kenya, which tested and found the research tool to be suitable, reliable and valid to achieve the overall research objectives. The main survey was conducted in Kenya and took over 4 months for data collection to be completed. Data analysis was done in the United Kingdom. Inferential statistics were used in drawing conclusions. Out of the 156 questionnaires distributed, 152 were completed and returned, representing a 97% response rate due to massive interest shown on the topic by the respondents. The study identified 20 causes and challenges being experienced within the criminal justice system and made recommendations for each challenge that offers the best solution to resolving that challenge. This research study has developed and promulgates some conclusive proposals as its original contributions to knowledge. These contributions are supported by analytical and empirical evidence from this research study and are as follows: Firstly, it challenges the Apocryphal Cause that corruption is the cause of the escalation of wildlife crime. Based on the evidence collected through this research, it can now be categorically and authentically proved that the sudden upward surge of demand in wildlife trophies in the consumers markets of the Far East Countries is the leading cause of escalation of wildlife crime in the source markets like Kenya. Secondly, this study has developed a new concept called ‘The 3Cs’ concept, through which it proposes and offers new methods for combating wildlife crime. The concept is conceptualized and propounded in a pack consisting of The Concept; The 3Cs Test; The 3C’s Model; and, the 3 Cs Application Tool Kit. Overall, it is sincerely hoped that the finding of this research will dominate discussions in the global arena dealing with wildlife crime and contribute tremendously as a solution to this global cause

The review of the law on abuse of a dominant position through soft law in the European Union and Turkey: the Commission’s guidance on article 102 TFEU and implications for the guidelines on Art.6 in Turkey

Issuing soft law instruments on the enforcement of abuse of a dominant position in different competition law systems has never been a global trend in the last decade than before. In the European Union (EU), the European Commission published the “Guidance on the Commission’s Enforcement Priorities in Applying Article 82 of the EC Treaty to Abusive Exclusionary Conduct by Dominant Undertakings” (the Guidance) in February 2009 as yet the final formal stage during the “modernisation” of Art.102 TFEU. As an official candidate for EU membership, Turkey is unlikely to distance itself from the developments in the EU. Within this context, “Guidelines on the Assessment of Abusive Exclusionary Conduct by Dominant Undertakings” (the Guidelines on Art.6) were published on April 7, 2014. Evident from their structure and substantive content, the Guidelines on Art.6 are closely modelled on the Guidance. Although the transposition of the Guidance into Turkish competition law seems prima facie desirable in terms of the harmonisation of Turkey’s domestic competition law with the EU acquis, the question as to whether the Guidelines on Art.6 have suited to Turkey’s own needs gains significance. Despite being the first secondary legislation on Art.6 of the Act on the Protection of Competition 1994 in Turkey, a lack of much-needed guidance on the problematic areas in the enforcement of Art.6 may well result in the Guidelines on Art.6 being a missed opportunity to establish a coherent policy on Art.6. This thesis explores whether there is a need for adopting Guidelines in relation to Art.6 in Turkish competition law, examines whether the Guidance can or should be used as a model, and finally gives reflections on how the legal regime and content of these Guidelines can be best tailored to the enforcement of Art.6 in Turkey