Insights Into Instructors’ Verbal Aggressiveness and Students’ Machiavellianism Through Leadership Style and Motivational Climate

The aim of the present study was threefold: a) to explore the relationship between perceived instructor verbal aggressiveness, leadership style, motivational climate and student Machiavellianism, b) to investigate the influence of instructor verbal aggressiveness on their leadership style, motivational climate and student Machiavellianism in physical education context and c) to propose students’ and instructors’ typology. The sample consisted of 247 Greek students (128 males, 119 females) aged 14-17 years old (M=15.4, SD=.49) from secondary schools who completed four types of questionnaires during physical education classes. The results supported the internal consistency of the instruments. Statistically significant differences were observed in instructors’ verbal aggressiveness, autocratic leadership teaching style, democratic leadership style and students’ Machiavellianism between the two genders of the students. Perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness was negatively related to their democratic teaching style and mastery climate. Also, there was a positive significant relationship between instructors’ verbal aggressiveness and autocratic teaching style, performance climate and students’ Machiavellianism. The results of regression analysis revealed that perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness could significantly predict the variables of leadership teaching style, motivational climate and students’ Machiavellianism. Distinct types of relations between students and instructors may be distinguished: the “insurrection”, the “acceptance of authoritarianism” and the “effective democracy”. The findings and the effects of the instructors’ verbal aggressiveness on leadership style, motivational climate and students’ Machiavellianism are further discussed and future research issues are suggested

The attractive, the aggressive and the withdrawn student in the university: Social network and content analysis.

The aim of this study is to detect and analyse relationships of attractiveness, social power and aggressiveness in the PE university community. A sample of 197 PE university students from University of Thessaly, Greece participated in the social network study, answering about the relationships developed with their fellow students and providing demographic non-network data as well. After the extraction of results, 8 of them were interviewed to further clarify the motives and thoughts that underlie their behaviour regarding attractiveness, social power and aggressiveness. Social network analysis, carried out with Visone 1.1, statistical analysis, carried out with SPSS 26 and content analysis of the qualitative data – interviews, carried out with MaxQDA 2020 led us to the following conclusions: Scientific attractiveness is related to social power and vice versa, protecting from verbal aggressiveness. Aggressiveness is negatively related to attractiveness and social power. Argumentativeness is important for the position one holds in their network and argumentational deficiency may lead to marginalization. Gender, body characteristics and academic distinction affect attractiveness and aggressiveness emergence.El objetivo de este estudio es detectar y analizar las relaciones de atractivo, poder social y agresividad en la comunidad universitaria de educación física. Una muestra de 197 estudiantes universitarios de educación física de la Universidad de Tesalia, Grecia, participaron en el estudio de redes sociales, respondiendo sobre las relaciones desarrolladas con sus compañeros y proporcionando datos demográficos fuera de la red también. Después de la extracción de los resultados, 8 de ellos fueron entrevistados para aclarar aún más los motivos y pensamientos que subyacen a su comportamiento con respecto al atractivo, el poder social y la agresividad. El análisis de redes sociales, realizado con Visone 1.1, el análisis estadístico, realizado con SPSS 26 y el análisis de contenido de los datos cualitativos – entrevistas, realizado con MaxQDA 2020 nos llevaron a las siguientes conclusiones: El atractivo científico está relacionado con el poder social y viceversa, protegiendo de la agresividad verbal. La agresividad está relacionada negativamente con el atractivo y el poder social. La argumentatividad es importante para la posición que uno ocupa en su red y la deficiencia argumentacional puede conducir a la marginación. Las características del género, del cuerpo y la distinción académica afectan a la aparición de atractivos y agresividad

Verbal Aggressiveness Exploration through Complete Social Network Analysis: Using Physical Education Students’ Class as an Illustration

Aim of this study: is a) to detect informal structures (power and position in structures of targeting of verbal aggression) among higher education students, b) to analyze determinants of these structural properties, and c) to propose a typology of verbal aggression targets. Complete network analysis was applied on a sample of a 53 students in Physical Education Faculty, Thessaly University, Greece. Four network analysis algorithms were used: in-degree, Katz status, pagerank, authority. Non-network and network determinants of being target of verbal aggressiveness were analyzed. Gender (particularly femaleness), high grade of school graduation and parents education level protect from verbal aggressiveness while interest in post-graduate study seems to provoke criticism. Ignoring public opinion and intimacy with many “close friends” are positively correlated with verbal aggressiveness. Young (and not old-fashioned) appearance, imposing and eccentric appearance characteristics seem to protect against verbal aggressiveness. Big corporal size, dark skin colors seem to provoke insults in case of female students. Eminent economic state is also provocative as it implies pretentiousness. Phone verbal aggressiveness appears mainly among male students. Eminent qualities such as “good friend”, “desirable partner” etc make someone an eminent target for verbal aggressiveness. Verbal aggressiveness presents a catholic character and thus seems to be destructive and not constructive. Intellectual abilities (weaknesses) constitute a verbal aggressiveness target core. The following types of verbal aggressiveness targets are proposed: a) the “general ‘black sheep’”, b) the “contemptible type”, c) the “bagger” type, d) the “victim of mockers” and e) the “victim of serial criticizers”

Bullying y maquiavelismo en la universidad a través del análisis de redes sociales

The objectives of this study are to detect combinations of Machiavellian and bullying actions and to point out their determinants. A sample of five students’ networks from Higher Education departments in central Greece (Business Administration, Veterinary and Physical Education & Sport Science) has been collected (245 nodes). Standardized questionnaires were used. Social Network Analysis, Spearman and PCA have been implemented. The Physical Education department exhibits denser bullying and Machiavellianism. Students who try to get beneficial information from their colleagues are susceptible to harm others. Deception is often more likely to happen under conditions of controllability. Making fun is present together with causing unhappiness. Victims of bullying in childhood are susceptible to be bullies as students. Students of high economic status seem to avoid the practice of bullying. Types of Machiavellian and bullying behaviors were proposed based on outdegree (“Offended Machiavellian”, “Merciless”, “Almost Bullying”), authority (“Angry-Machiavellian”, “Bully Machiavellian”, “Hidden-troublemaker”) and Katz (“Just Offended Machiavellian”, “Annoyed”, “Amateur/self-seeker”).Los objetivos de este estudio son detectar combinaciones de acciones maquiavélicas y de bullying (acoso escolar) y señalar sus determinantes. Se ha recopilado una muestra de cinco redes de estudiantes de los departamentos de Educación Superior en el centro de Grecia (Administración de Empresas, Veterinaria y Educación Física & Ciencias del Deporte) (245 nodos). Se han utilizado cuestionarios estandarizados. Se ha implementado análisis de redes sociales, Spearman y PCA. El departamento de Educación Física exhibe un bullying más denso y acciones maquiavelicas. Los estudiantes que tratan de obtener información beneficiosa de sus colegas son susceptibles de dañar a otros. El engaño a menudo es más susceptible de ocurrir en condiciones de controlabilidad. Burlarse aparece junto con causar infelicidad. Las víctimas de bullying en la infancia son susceptibles de ser acosadas como estudiantes. Los estudiantes de alto estado económico parecen evitar practicar el bullying. Se propusieron tipos de comportamientos maquiavélicos y de acoso escolar basados en el grado de salida (“Maquiavélico ofendido”, “Despiadado”, “Casi bullying”), la autoridad (“Maquiavélico enojado”, “Maquiavélico acosador”, “Agente de problemas oculto”) y el marcador de nivel funcional (“Sólo Ofendido Maquiavélico”, “Molesto”, “Amateur/ auto-buscador”)

Dystrophic crisis event in Papas Lagoon, Araxos Cape, Western Greece in the summer 2012

A dystrophic crisis occurred in late June 2012 in the Lagoon of Papas, Araxos region, Western Greece (Ionian Sea) resulting in massive mortalities of aquatic organisms. The whole event was monitored through the basic aquatic physicochemical parameters (temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and pH) recorded before, during and after its occurrence. Although the phenomenon was manifested locally, it resulted in complete anoxia at the largest part of the lagoon which lasted ten days. Water quality of the entire lagoon was greatly affected by the dystrophic event and first signs of recovery were observed four months later

Optimized R functions for analysis of ecological community data using the R virtual laboratory (RvLab)

Background: Parallel data manipulation using R has previously been addressed by members of the R community, however most of these studies produce ad hoc solutions that are not readily available to the average R user. Our targeted users, ranging from the expert ecologist/microbiologists to computational biologists, often experience difficulties in finding optimal ways to exploit the full capacity of their computational resources. In addition, improving performance of commonly used R scripts becomes increasingly difficult especially with large datasets. Furthermore, the implementations described here can be of significant interest to expert bioinformaticians or R developers. Therefore, our goals can be summarized as: (i) description of a complete methodology for the analysis of large datasets by combining capabilities of diverse R packages, (ii) presentation of their application through a virtual R laboratory (RvLab) that makes execution of complex functions and visualization of results easy and readily available to the end-user. New information: In this paper, the novelty stems from implementations of parallel methodologies which rely on the processing of data on different levels of abstraction and the availability of these processes through an integrated portal. Parallel implementation R packages, such as the pbdMPI (Programming with Big Data – Interface to MPI) package, are used to implement Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) parallelization on primitive mathematical operations, allowing for interplay with functions of the vegan package. The dplyr and RPostgreSQL R packages are further integrated offering connections to dataframe like objects (databases) as secondary storage solutions whenever memory demands exceed available RAM resources. The RvLab is running on a PC cluster, using version 3.1.2 (2014-10-31) on a x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit) platform, and offers an intuitive virtual environmet interface enabling users to perform analysis of ecological and microbial communities based on optimized vegan functions. A beta version of the RvLab is available after registration at: https://portal.lifewatchgreece.eu

Artificial pancreas treatment for outpatients with type 1 diabetes: systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of artificial pancreas treatment in non-pregnant outpatients with type 1 diabetes. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. DATA SOURCES: Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, and grey literature up to 2 February 2018. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR SELECTING STUDIES: Randomised controlled trials in non-pregnant outpatients with type 1 diabetes that compared the use of any artificial pancreas system with any type of insulin based treatment. Primary outcome was proportion (%) of time that sensor glucose level was within the near normoglycaemic range (3.9-10 mmol/L). Secondary outcomes included proportion (%) of time that sensor glucose level was above 10 mmol/L or below 3.9 mmol/L, low blood glucose index overnight, mean sensor glucose level, total daily insulin needs, and glycated haemoglobin. The Cochrane Collaboration risk of bias tool was used to assess study quality. RESULTS: 40 studies (1027 participants with data for 44 comparisons) were included in the meta-analysis. 35 comparisons assessed a single hormone artificial pancreas system, whereas nine comparisons assessed a dual hormone system. Only nine studies were at low risk of bias. Proportion of time in the near normoglycaemic range (3.9-10.0 mmol/L) was significantly higher with artificial pancreas use, both overnight (weighted mean difference 15.15%, 95% confidence interval 12.21% to 18.09%) and over a 24 hour period (9.62%, 7.54% to 11.7%). Artificial pancreas systems had a favourable effect on the proportion of time with sensor glucose level above 10 mmol/L (-8.52%, -11.14% to -5.9%) or below 3.9 mmol/L (-1.49%, -1.86% to -1.11%) over 24 hours, compared with control treatment. Robustness of findings for the primary outcome was verified in sensitivity analyses, by including only trials at low risk of bias (11.64%, 9.1% to 14.18%) or trials under unsupervised, normal living conditions (10.42%, 8.63% to 12.2%). Results were consistent in a subgroup analysis both for single hormone and dual hormone artificial pancreas systems. CONCLUSIONS: Artificial pancreas systems are an efficacious and safe approach for treating outpatients with type 1 diabetes. The main limitations of current research evidence on artificial pancreas systems are related to inconsistency in outcome reporting, small sample size, and short follow-up duration of individual trials