Swimmers' experiences of organizational stress: Exploring the role of cognitive appraisal and coping strategies

This study investigated sport performers’ coping strategies in response to organizational stressors, examined the utility of Skinner, Edge, Altman, and Sherwood’s (2003) categorization of coping within a sport context, determined the short-term perceived effectiveness of the coping strategies used, and explored appraisal-coping associations. Thirteen national standard swimmers completed semi-structured, interval-contingent diaries every day for 28 days. Results revealed 78 coping strategies, which supported 10 of Skinner et al.’s (2003) families of coping. Twenty-four different combinations of coping families were identified. The perceived most effective coping family used in isolation was self-reliance and in combination was escape and negotiation. Stressful appraisals were associated with varied coping strategies. The results highlight the complexity of coping and point to the importance of appraisal-coping associations. Skinner et al.’s (2003) categorization of coping provides a promising conceptual framework for the development of coping research in sport

Speech Transmission Index from running speech : a neural network approach

Speech Transmission Index (STI) is an important objective parameter concerning speech intelligibility for sound transmission channels. It is normally measured with specific test signals to ensure high accuracy and good repeatability. Measurement with running speech was previously proposed, but accuracy is compromised and hence applications limited. A new approach that uses artificial neural networks to accurately extract the STI from received running speech is developed in this paper. Neural networks are trained on a large set of transmitted speech examples with prior knowledge of the transmission channels' STIs. The networks perform complicated nonlinear function mappings and spectral feature memorization to enable accurate objective parameter extraction from transmitted speech. Validations via simulations demonstrate the feasibility of this new method on a one-net-one-speech extract basis. In this case, accuracy is comparable with normal measurement methods. This provides an alternative to standard measurement techniques, and it is intended that the neural network method can facilitate occupied room acoustic measurements

How robust is the ring stain for evaporating suspension droplets?

The ring stain is commonly seen when droplets containing particles, such as coffee, are left to dry on a surface: a pinned contact line leads to outward radial flow, which is enhanced by the diverging evaporative flux at the contact line. As shown by Deegan et al. (1997) particles are swept outwards in this flow and create a ring which grows according to a simple power law with time. The final dried width and height of the ring should also be given by power laws of concentration, with both exponent equal to 0.5 provided all particles are in the ring, and the packing factor and ring profile are constant. We use suspensions of polystyrene particles in water with sizes ranging from 200 to 500 nm and initial concentrations c 0 from 0.009% to 1% deposited on glass substrates to investigate these scaling predictions. We vary the drying rate from 0.5 to 5 nl/s using humidity and reduced pressure, use a range of substrates to vary the initial contact angle between 5° and 35°, and invert the droplets to change the direction of gravity. We find that for all but the very lowest pressures, the ring height follows the predicted power law, with exponent equal to 0.50 ± 0.04 and the ring width having an exponent of 0.33 ± 0.05. The discrepancy between the measured and predicted width exponent is accounted for by an observed variation of droplet radius with concentration, and the presence of particles in the center of the droplet. In addition, for low pressures (fast evaporation) the scaling laws no longer hold: the ring is much narrower and there is significant deposition in the center of the droplet, possibly due to reduced particle-enhanced pinning

Crystal structure of the 3C protease from South African Territories type 2 foot-and-mouth disease virus

The replication of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is dependent on the virus-encoded 3C protease (3Cpro). As in other picornaviruses, 3Cpro performs most of the proteolytic processing of the polyprotein expressed from the single open reading frame in the RNA genome of the virus. Previous work revealed that the 3Cpro from serotype A – one of the seven serotypes of FMDV – adopts a trypsin-like fold. Phylogenetically the FMDV serotypes are grouped into two clusters, with O, A, C, and Asia 1 in one, and the three South African Territories serotypes, (SAT-1, SAT-2 and SAT-3) in another. We report here the cloning, expression and purification of 3C proteases from four SAT serotype viruses (SAT2/GHA/8/91, SAT1/NIG/5/81, SAT1/UGA/1/97, and SAT2/ZIM/7/83) and the crystal structure at 3.2 Å resolution of 3Cpro from SAT2/GHA/8/91)

Generation of unique mono-hydroxy-eicosatetraenoic acids from arachidonic acid by human neutrophils.

Incubation of [3H]arachidonic acid with the 17,000-g supernatant from homogenates of human neutrophils in the presence of indomethacin generated the unique metabolites 9-OH-5,7,11,14-eicosatetraenoic acid (9-HETE) and 8-HETE, in addition to 12-HETE, 11-HETE and 5-HETE. The human neutrophil chemotactic activity of the HETE products exhibited a rank-order of potency with 5-HETE greater than 8-HETE = 9-HETE greater than 11-HETE = 12-HETE. The expression of chemokinetic activity as well as chemotactic activity suggested that the endogenous production of these principles may influence the mobility of human neutrophils

KONSEP KESETARAAN GENDER DALAM PANDANGAN SANTRI (Studi Kasus di Pondok Pesantren Darussalam Buntet Pesantren – Kabupaten Cirebon)

Pondok pesantren dikenal dengan kekolotannya perihal ilmu pengetahuan dan isu-isu kontempoer. Pengetahun mengenai kesetaraan gender masih enggan diperkenalkan secara utuh kepada santri. Hal ini dikarenakan konstruksi pemahaman yang telah mengakar dan budaya yang telah melekat. Di era globalisasi saat ini, persaingan bebas dibuka lebar. Penerapan dan pemahaman akan konsep kesetaraan gender sebagai salah satu fenomena sosial tampak masih bias dan kontrofersial. Berbagai diskursus dan sosialisasi diupayakan dengan harapan dapat melahirkan sumber daya manusia yang mampu memadupadankan ilmu pengetahuan umum, ilmu pengetahuan agama dan problematika masyarakat. Namun demikian pada kalangan pondok pesantren seperti Pondok Pesatren Darussalam Buntet disinyalir masih jelas bagaimana pandangnnnya tentang konsep kesetaraan gender. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui konsep kesetaraan gender dalam pandangan santri, bentuk-bentuk kesetaraan gender pada kalangan santri, dan agar dapat memaparkan keterlibatan santri dalam realitas kesetaraan gender di pondok pesantren Darussalam Buntet Pesantren – Kabupaten Cirebon. Konsep kesetaraan gender adalah cara untuk mencirikan laki-laki dan perempuan yang terbentuk oleh konstruksi sosial, masyarakat yang membangun fungsi serta peran seseorang di dalam lingkungannya dan seringkali dipengaruhi budaya serta keyakinan masyarakat tersebut. Dimana konsep itu seringkali tertukar dengan konsep sex, bahwa seks adalah ciri yang di lihat berdasarkan anatomi tubuh dan atribut biologis yanag melekat pada manusia serta tidak dapat diubah. Jenis penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatatif dengan menggunakan metode studi lapangan dan teknik pengumpulan data yaitu observasi, wawancara dan dokumentasi. Adapun teknik analisa data dilakukan dengan menggunakan penyajian data dan analisa data, yaitu melalui tahapan-tahapan reduction, data display dan coclution drawing verification. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian diketahui bahwa konsep kesetaraan gender dikalangan santri terbagi menjadi dua, yaitu : golongan konservatif dan golongan progresif. Bentuk-bentuk kesetarannya pun beragam seperti telah dibukanya persaingan bebas mengenai kemampuan santri laki-laki dan perempuan serta kesamaan kitab, guru dan materi yang diberikan oleh santri pada waktu yang sama. Serta keterlibatan santri yang sudah bersedia bertukar peran dan melakukan pekerjaan-pekerjaan yang identik dengan perempuan. Kata Kunci : Konsep Kesetaraan Gender, Santri, Pondok Pesantren

Learning organization and mentoring practice: an empirical investigation

The Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry (AEC) of the 21st century is undergoing significant changes to address issues such as the economic integration, international partnering and globalization. These changes are initiating a challenge for AEC industry in regard to how to educate personnel to appropriately respond to the rapid change. A needs-driven approach to mentoring recognizes the fact that employees in the workplace are required to engage in continuous learning to keep pace with changes taking place inside the organization The foundation of this challenge focuses on how to facilitate learning organization and establish continuous human resource development throughout all levels of the organization. Organization has a great demand of transforming into learning organization. Quantitative research is designed in order to achieve four main objectives: 1) To validate ‘learning organization’ concept in Hong Kong AEC organizations 2) To set out the benchmark for learning organizations 3) To evaluate differences among demographics characteristics. 4) To determine the relationship between organizational learning cultures, mentoring practice, and organizational commitment. The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) is adopted in light of the review to access Hong Kong AEC industry toward learning organization. The questionnaire was administered to young professionals, and drew on responses from a total sample of 151 employees to gauge the progress towards learning organization and mentoring practice in local AEC industry. Emphasis has been placed on young professionals’ view towards organization to ensure learning and knowledge transfer as a means of increasing the knowledge base of workers and improving performance. The achievement of either could lead to improvements in overall performance.postprin

Coalition formation in transmission expansion planning

The study of a decentralized coalition formation scheme in a specific power systems transmission expansion scenario is the purpose of this paper. We define first who are the agents in the expansion game and provide a decentralized coalition scheme based on Bilateral Shapley values. Finally, we allocate the total costs of expansion amongst the agents, based on the coalition history, and we compare our method with a centralized scheme.published_or_final_versio

Risk assessment of generation investment

Session 15: Paper 2This paper proposes an improved approach to risk assessment of generation investment in the new deregulated environment using the option pricing theory. A more realistic model for electricity price in the application of real option pricing method for generation asset valuation is proposed, which takes into account its fluctuation and uncertainties, and, more importantly, its daily, weekly and annual cyclic patterns, which is a unique characteristic of electricity price. Base on such a price process, the generation asset can be evaluated by the application of real option method. In order to manage the risks of the investment on generation expansion project, risk assessment tools such as Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) may be used to provide the investors with tools for more informed decisions. A numerical example is given to illustrate the proposed method.postprintThe 15th Power Systems Computation Conference (PSCC'05), Liege, Belgium, 22-26 August 2005. In Proceedings of 15th PSCC, 2005, p. 1-