The interplay between formal and informal elements in analysing situations of role conflict among construction participants

The interplay of formal and informal factors in construction teams influences the enactment of roles and the individuals who fulfil those roles. With a specific focus on a phenomenon called role conflict, the aim is to explore if and how the interaction of formal and informal elements would lead to situations of role conflict. This phenomenon proved to lead to frustration, tension and employee burnout. An analytical model of role interaction was developed, which disentangles formal and informal elements that shape role interactions. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews, project documents and observations. Four cases of role conflict are presented here. Contract, as a formal element, and participant’s values and interests, as informal elements, appeared to be the most important factor shaping participants’ expectations and behaviours. The analysis in this study showed that if a participant who faces role conflict is able to influence the formal elements in favour of his or her informal elements, then he or she may experience less frustration. At a more general level, the results suggest that increasing formality can increase participants’ frustration, which then would decrease the likelihood of collaboration. As the theoretical contribution, this research extends organizational role theory to deal with informal and formal aspects. Taking into account formal sources enables the study of how roles are institutionally governed while including informal sources allows for the idea that some of the aspects of the role, even in the context of work role, are socially constructed

Parental Physical Activity and Resilience During Pandemic-Related Schooling at Home

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education for millions of families, forcing an instantaneous overlap in parental responsibilities and a resulting decline in personal mental health. Psychological resilience is an important contributor to handling prolonged stress. As physical activity (PA) is known to improve mental health, it is possible that PA during the COVID-19 education disruption could result in a significant difference in parental resilience. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine if PA levels during the COVID-19 educational disruption resulted in statistically significant differences in perceived resilience among parents of school-aged youth. METHODS: Fifty-six parents/guardians of youth aged 10-18 years completed a survey in fall of 2020. In addition to demographic questions, participants completed the recreational and sedentary portions of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Physical Activity Questionnaire and the Adult Resilience Measure, resulting in overall resilience as well as personal (e.g., individual thoughts, behaviors) and relational (e.g., mutually empowering connections) resilience subscale scores. Parents were classified as meeting or not meeting WHO recommended PA levels. T-tests examined differences in resilience scores between groups. RESULTS: Overall, personal, and relational mean resilience scores for parents who did (n = 36) versus did not (n = 20) meet WHO recommended PA levels were 73.39 ± 8.66 versus 67.95 ± 9.30, 41.78 ± 5.25 versus 39.70 ± 4.78, and 31.61 ± 4.45 versus 28.25 ± 5.54 respectively. T-tests revealed a significant difference in total (t(54) = 2.19, p = .033, d = .61) and relational subscale scores (t(54) = 22.48, p = .016, d = .67), but no difference between personal subscale scores (t(54) = 1.46, p = .149, d = .41). CONCLUSION: Parents of school-aged youth who did not meet WHO recommended PA levels had significantly lower overall perceived resilience than those who met recommended levels. The significantly lower relational, but not personal, resilience scores seen in parents who did not meet WHO recommendations also suggests the importance of meaningful connections during PA. In short, meeting PA recommendations resulted in significantly higher perceived parental resilience during the COVID-19 educational disruption

No Difference in Stress Level Based on Physical Activity During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Parents of School-Aged Children

Stress levels among children and parents have been heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially with related changes in school structure. Regular physical activity (PA) represents a way to decrease stress levels and improve overall mood. Thus, regular PA is even more important during this period of prolonged stress as the pandemic continues to affect communities. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in stress levels among parents of school-aged children during the COVID-19 pandemic based upon physical activity patterns. METHODS: Parents (n = 115, 91% female, 91% White) of school-aged children in the United States participated in surveys regarding their stress levels and physical activity. Stress levels were determined by the Perceived Stress Scale and dichotomized into Low Stress or Moderate/High Stress. To determine level of physical activity, participants also completed the Recreational and Sedentary portions of the WHO\u27s Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (7 questions). They were then dichotomized into “met” or “did not meet” World Health Organization’s recommendations for weekly physical activity (150 minutes moderate PA (MPA), 70 minutes of vigorous PA (VPA), or 600 MET*minutes). Perceived stress levels were analyzed using a chi-square test to determine any differences between the two groups based upon each WHO recommendation for physical activity (MPA, VPA, MET*minutes). RESULTS: A total of 47% of parents perceived themselves as having low stress while 53% reported moderate/high stress. A majority of parents did not meet WHO PA recommendations for weekly MPA (63%) nor VPA (64%) but did meet recommendations for weekly MET*min (59%). All chi-square tests were non-significant (MPA: Χ2 = .246, df = 1, p = .620; VPA: Χ2 = 3.422, df = 1, p = .064; MET*min: Χ2 = 1.361, df = 1, p = .243). CONCLUSION: The present study demonstrates that there was no significant difference in perceived stress levels based upon physical activity among parents of school-aged children during the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of intensity of the physical activity. Even with the known positive benefits of PA to decrease stress, PA was not significantly associated with reduced stress levels among parents of school-aged youth. This finding could reflect stress exceeding normal levels due to the novel and unknown nature of the pandemic. It is also possible that PA did have a positive impact on stress levels but was too small to significantly counteract the abnormal increase in perceived stress. However, PA is still important for adults, including parents of school-aged youth, during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the numerous other health benefits it can provide beyond reducing stress levels

Thermodynamic evaluation of a combined-cycle power plant with MSF and MED desalination

Rising water scarcity and abundant brine water resources, especially in desert locations, call for the wider adaptation of desalination techniques. Furthermore, the interdependency of water and energy has gained more attention in recent years and it is expected to play an important role in the near future. The present study deals with both topics in that it presents the coupling of a power plant with desalination units for the simultaneous generation of energy and water in Iran. The power plant used in the analysis is the Qom combined-cycle power plant. The plant is integrated, first, with a multi-stage flash (MSF) unit and, then, with a multi-effect desalination (MED) unit, and it is evaluated using energy and exergy analyses. We find that the generated power of the integrated systems is decreased by 9.7% and 8.5% with the MED and the MSF units, respectively. Lastly, the freshwater production in the plant using MED is significantly higher than in the plant with MSF (1,000 versus 1,521 kg/s).Fontina Petrakopoulou would like to thank the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Ramón y Cajal Programme RYC-2016-20971) for their financial support of this study

Exergoeconomic modeling and evaluation of a combined-cycle plant with MSF and MED desalination

In the coming years, numerous regions are expected to suffer from water scarcity. One of the technologies of great interest in facing this challenge has been the generation of freshwater through water desalination, a process that reduces the amount of salt and minerals to a standard level, making the water suitable for drinking or agricultural/industrial use. The efficiency of each desalination process depends on the concentration of salts in the raw water and the end-use of the produced water. The present study presents the exergetic and exergoeconomic analyses of the coupling of a power plant with desalination units for the simultaneous generation of energy and water in Iran. The plant is integrated, first, with a multi-stage flash (MSF) unit and, then, with a multi-effect desalination (MED) unit. We find that the cost of exergy destruction of the MED and MSF integrated plants is lower when compared to the standalone power plant by about 0.1% and 9.2%, respectively. Lastly, the freshwater production in the plant using MED is significantly higher than that in the plant with MSF (1,000 versus 1,521 kg/s).Khoshgoftar Manesh, M. H., Kabiri, S., Yazdi, M., & Petrakopoulou, F. (2020a). Exergoeconomic modeling and evaluation of a combined-cycle plant with MSF and MED desalination. Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination, 10(2), 158-172

Informal Persian Universal Dependency Treebank

This paper presents the phonological, morphological, and syntactic distinctions between formal and informal Persian, showing that these two variants have fundamental differences that cannot be attributed solely to pronunciation discrepancies. Given that informal Persian exhibits particular characteristics, any computational model trained on formal Persian is unlikely to transfer well to informal Persian, necessitating the creation of dedicated treebanks for this variety. We thus detail the development of the open-source Informal Persian Universal Dependency Treebank, a new treebank annotated within the Universal Dependencies scheme. We then investigate the parsing of informal Persian by training two dependency parsers on existing formal treebanks and evaluating them on out-of-domain data, i.e. the development set of our informal treebank. Our results show that parsers experience a substantial performance drop when we move across the two domains, as they face more unknown tokens and structures and fail to generalize well. Furthermore, the dependency relations whose performance deteriorates the most represent the unique properties of the informal variant. The ultimate goal of this study that demonstrates a broader impact is to provide a stepping-stone to reveal the significance of informal variants of languages, which have been widely overlooked in natural language processing tools across languages. © European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Стратегическое распределение активов и активное управление: данные пенсионных фондов Марокко

The subject of the study is to evaluate the contribution of strategic asset allocation to the variability of Moroccan pension funds performance. The aim of the paper is to identify the role of active management factors, namely tactical allocation and security selection, in generating a performance surplus compared to strategic allocation. The relevance of the study is justified by the need to identify the sources of performance creation in order to face the commitments of Moroccan pension funds and to compensate for the decline and volatility of asset returns. The article addresses, through the use of simple linear regression methods, the relative importance of strategic asset allocation in explaining the variability of the performance of Moroccan pension funds. It introduces a scientific novelty through the use of the “performance attribution” method. The conclusions of the paper confirm the main role of strategic asset allocation, which varies according to the size of the fund, the asset classes, and the risk aversion of the manager.Предметом исследования является оценка вклада стратегического распределения активов в изменчивость результатов деятельности марокканских пенсионных фондов. Цель исследования — определить роль факторов активного управления, а именно — тактического распределения и выбора ценных бумаг — в создании положительного результата по сравнению со стратегическим распределением. Актуальность исследования обоснована необходимостью определить источники повышения эффективности инвестиционных вложений марокканских пенсионных фондов и компенсировать снижение и волатильность доходности активов. Использованы методы простой линейной регрессии при рассмотрении относительной важности стратегического распределения активов в объяснении изменчивости показателей деятельности марокканских пенсионных фондов. Научная новизна состоит в использовании метода «оценка эффективности». Сделан вывод, подтверждающий главную роль стратегического распределения активов, которое варьируется в зависимости от размера фонда, классов активов и склонности управляющего к риску

Living Situation and Physical Activity in the COVID-19 Pandemic Among American Private University Students

International Journal of Exercise Science 15(4): 1064-1074, 2022. Many university students experienced changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, including potential changes in physical activity (PA) levels and living situation. As PA behaviors in young adulthood help establish life-long habits and future health outcomes, the purpose of this study was to investigate overall change in PA, as well as change in PA due to living situation, among private university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Private university students (n = 109) between 18 and 25 years of age completed an online survey that included the International Physical Activity Questionnaire – Short Form. T-tests examined changes in overall time spent in PA from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the differences in MET-minute distributions between groups. Students performed significantly less activity during the COVID-19 pandemic than before (t(108) = 3.51, p = .001, d = 0.493), with 70.6% of all students meeting exercise recommendations before the pandemic and 51.4% after. Students living with vs. without a parent/guardian attained similar PA levels (t(107) = -.114, p = .910) before the pandemic (73.1% vs. 69.9%, respectively), but students living with a parent/guardian engaged in significantly less PA (t(107) = 2.04, p = .044, d = 0.475) than those living without a parent/guardian during the pandemic (37.5% vs. 57.1%, respectively). The declines in PA suggest the need for targeted interventions and education among private university students. In order to maximize the health benefits of PA, it is crucial that activity engagement return to at least pre-COVID-19 levels

Effects of a College-Mentored Physical Activity Program for Elementary Students

Health risks of a sedentary lifestyle for children, defined as being less than 5,000 steps per day, include unfavorable indicators of body composition and cardio-metabolic risk. Results of school-based physical activity interventions to increase physical activity levels have been mixed. However, mentorship programs have shown promise. Previous mentorship programs have relied on peer-to-peer mentorships, with participants being of a similar age group. College mentors present an alternative and low-cost resource that may also provide positive results, yet have been largely ignored in research studies to date. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a novel, individualized college-mentored physical activity program on physical activity levels among older elementary school students. METHODS: Fifth grade students (n = 12) were paired one-to-one with local college mentors for 30 minute bi-weekly running sessions on the elementary school campus for six weeks. Multiple assessments from activity trackers were compared on intervention versus non-intervention days using paired-samples t-tests. RESULTS: Significant increases in steps (t(11) = 8.056; p ≤ .001) and moderate-to-vigorous activity (t(11) = 5.202; p ≤ .001) were seen on intervention days, as compared to non-intervention days. The average increase in step count on intervention days (6,381) versus non-intervention days (3,158) also resulted in students being elevated out of a sedentary classification. CONCLUSION: Individualized mentoring from college students significantly increased multiple assessments of physical activity, including minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity and number of steps taken. Perhaps most notably, the mentored physical activity program promoted students from a sedentary to active lifestyle on intervention days as determined by step count. This novel high-impact and low-cost approach should be further developed for future school-based physical activity programs and research