Organizational Effectiveness Measures and Their Relationship to Donor Contributions

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between organizational effectiveness measures and donor contributions for National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletic departments. For this study, donor contributions were used as a proxy for donors’ perception of organizational effectiveness for these athletic departments. Using a combination of the goals attainment model (Price, 1972) and the strategic constituencies model (Connolly, Conlon, & Deutsch, 1980) the effectiveness measures used were athletic performance, student athlete welfare, and student athlete academic success. The whole of Division I, as well as the three subdivisions, were examined for the five-year period from 2013 to 2017. The results of hierarchical multiple linear regressions suggested that a significant proportion of the variance in donor contributions was predicted by a combination of athletic performance, student athlete welfare, and student athlete academic success. This was true for all of Division I, but varied by subdivision. Approximately 60% of variance was predicted by the combination of effectiveness measures for the Football Bowl Subdivision, 12% for the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), and 20% for Division I without football. Student athlete academic success proved to only be a significant predictor on its own for the FCS

Houston College Sport Programs’ Hurricane Harvey Communication: A Twitter Content Analysis

This study provides a Twitter content analysis of tweets by Houston-based Division I college sport programs during Hurricane Harvey. A content analysis was performed on the tweets appearing on the main intercollegiate athletics Twitter pages of University of Houston, Houston Baptist University, Prairie View A&M University, Rice University, and Texas Southern University in response to Hurricane Harvey. The researchers based their study on grounded theory informed by a study conducted by Inoue and Havard (2015). While this study examined tweets rather than newspaper and magazine articles like Inoue and Havard (2015), this study confirmed the theme findings in Inoue and Havard (2015) applied well in a Twitter social media setting as well. New themes that were added by the researchers in the current study proved to be applicable

Savannah Hockey Classic Attendance Motivation

The Savannah Hockey Classic has become a very successful annual university club hockey team tournament. The 21st edition of the tournament was held in January 2020 in Savannah, Ga. featuring the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Florida, Florida State University, and University of Georgia club hockey teams—the same teams that have comprised the tournament for many years. This study utilized Personal Investment Theory (Braskamp, 1986) and the SPEED scale (Funk, Filo, Beaton, & Pritchard, 2009) for attendance motivation assessment. Social interaction motivations were significantly higher for county residents, spectators attending with friends, spectators attending with family, and past Savannah Hockey Classic attendees. Motivations related to athlete performance were significantly higher for those who had attended the event in the past. Excitement based motivations were greater for those who had attended the event in the past as well as for those who identified as a fan of one of the teams. There were significant differences related to the esteem and diversion constructs for those who had a team rooting interest. The article fills a gap in the literature by providing the first study of club hockey attendance motivations

Sport Management Study Abroad and International Exchange Program Innovation for a Post COVID-19 Era

The globalization of the sport industry has required sport management programs to create strategies for internationalizing students. Study abroad programs are a prominent example of those strategies. The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on study abroad programs in Spring of 2020. Many students had their study abroad experiences either cut short or canceled all together. The purpose of this essay is to discuss how the student learning process can continue during an interruption or cancellation of study abroad and international exchange programs due to a pandemic or other global issues. Using an observational study, we asked the following research questions: RQ1: What can the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to higher education teach the sport management community to ensure students are able to engage in experiential and transformative learning? RQ2: What strategies can institutions of higher education implement to provide students with continued opportunities to benefit from the types of engagements traditionally associated with international programming? We offer recommendations that will help sport management programs prepare for future interruptions to study abroad experiences. These recommendations aim at fostering experiential and transformative learning despite disruptions to the traditional study abroad experience

Sensitivity Comparison of Searches for Binary Black Hole Coalescences with Ground-based Gravitational-Wave Detectors

Searches for gravitational-wave transients from binary black hole coalescences typically rely on one of two approaches: matched filtering with templates and morphology-independent excess power searches. Multiple algorithmic implementations in the analysis of data from the first generation of ground-based gravitational wave interferometers have used different strategies for the suppression of non-Gaussian noise transients, and targeted different regions of the binary black hole parameter space. In this paper we compare the sensitivity of three such algorithms: matched filtering with full coalescence templates, matched filtering with ringdown templates and a morphology-independent excess power search. The comparison is performed at a fixed false alarm rate and relies on Monte-carlo simulations of binary black hole coalescences for spinning, non-precessing systems with total mass 25-350 solar mass, which covers the parameter space of stellar mass and intermediate mass black hole binaries. We find that in the mass range of 25 -100 solar mass the sensitive distance of the search, marginalized over source parameters, is best with matched filtering to full waveform templates, to within 10 percent at a false alarm rate of 3 events per year. In the mass range of 100-350 solar mass, the same comparison favors the morphology-independent excess power search to within 20 percent. The dependence on mass and spin is also explored.Comment: 11 pages, 2 tables, 25 figure

Prosection-based human anatomy teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

Peer reviewe

Linking employee behaviour to external customer satisfaction using quality function deployment

This paper considers the relationship between human behavioural patterns occurring in industrial environments to the general level of external customer satisfaction, the hypothesis being that by correlating behaviour patterns to levels of customer satisfaction a route can be found to improve performance by changing behaviours. A modification of the quality function deployment (QFD) technique is used to relate attributes that external customers value to internal behavioural patterns. Situation strength is seen as the key influencing factor on individual and group behaviour, the argument being that, if the situation is strong, then changes to situational variables would have the primary impact upon the behaviour. In contrast, if the situation is weak, then recruitment and a rewards system are better influencers of behaviour. A case study based around a small engineering enterprise demonstrates how the use of QFD can guide managers on the introduction of the most appropriate initiatives to improve performanc

Experimental restoration trials in Nakula Natural Area Reserve in preparation for reintroduction of Kiwikiu (Pseudonestor xanthophrys)

Reports were scanned in black and white at a resolution of 600 dots per inch and were converted to text using Adobe Paper Capture Plug-in.The native montane mesic forest in the Kahikinui region of Maui, Hawai‘i USA has been degraded by non-native ungulates for over a century. This has resulted in large areas of non-native grassland and savanna with small intact native forest patches, mainly in steep gulches. The Nakula Natural Area Reserve (NAR), on the southwestern slope of Haleakalā volcano, was selected as the site of the reintroduction of Kiwikiu (Pseudonestor xanthophrys), a critically endangered songbird currently found only in a small range on the northern slope of the volcano. This area was selected for the reintroduction because it is located within a mesic koa (Acacia koa) forest representing some of the best potential habitat outside of the current Kiwikiu range. Historic accounts noted the Kiwikiu’s affinity for koa as a foraging substrate, although little koa forest remains on Maui. Intensive forest restoration has created new habitat and enhanced the existing habitat in Nakula to the point where the reserve may now be capable of supporting a small population of Kiwikiu and other native birds. As a precursor to reintroduction efforts, we designed experimental trials to inform managers of the most efficient and effective techniques to restore the forest in Nakula NAR and surrounding region. Trial plots were established in open grass-dominated areas within a fenced, ungulate-free portion of the reserve to investigate natural regeneration, outplanting, and seed broadcast as restoration techniques under a number of conditions. Treatments to suppress and/or remove non-native grass were implemented as these grasses likely reduce germination of native seedlings and potentially influence outplanting success. Some plots were treated with herbicide and the dead grass biomass was removed to expose bare topsoil in a subset of these plots. Additional plots were established under mature koa trees to investigate natural recruitment and the success of these same restoration techniques in this microhabitat. In two years, natural regeneration was largely limited to ‘a‘ali‘i (Dodonea viscosa) and koa, and was enhanced by the application of herbicide followed by the removal of the grass biomass. Outplanting survivorship was high in most species, exceeding 80% after two years in five of seven species. Treatment application had little effect on survivorship, but the growth rates in four of the seven species planted was greatest in plots where herbicide was applied prior to planting. Seed broadcast was not found to be an effective treatment of producing seedlings. Based on our results, we recommend non-native grass biomass removal combined with outplanting as the primary method of forest restoration in Nakula NAR and the surrounding region.These trials could not have been conducted without the financial support of State of Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW), University of Hawai‘i – Manoa, and American Bird Conservancy. We thank Native Nursery LLC for producing high-quality seedlings and preparing seeds for broadcast. We also thank DOFAW-Forestry and The Nature Conservancy for access to seed collection sites. We also thank J. Leary for aide with herbicide methodology and S. Yelenik for helpful comments and edits to this report

Cardiac ryanodine receptor activation by a high Ca2+ store load is reversed in a reducing cytoplasmic redox environment

Here, we report the impact of redox potential on isolated cardiac ryanodine receptor (RyR2) channel activity and its response to physiological changes in luminal [Ca2+]. Basal leak from the sarcoplasmic reticulum is required for normal Ca2+ handling, bu