The social network's influences on individual performance

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Czeslaw Milosz as a translator of the Hebrew Bibel

Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, translated some biblical ooks (Psalms, Job, the Five Scrolls) from Hebrew into Polish. According to his preface to the translation of the Psalms Milosz aimed to create a new stylistic variation of Polish language, which could be used in sacred texts and in worship. He describes this style as elevated. My investigation shows that biblical books translated by Milosz indeed stylistically differ from other Polish texts. Unfortunately it is gained mainly by means of literal translation. It makes the style rather awkward than elevated, it distorts the message of the original text and it precludes achieving semantic and stylistic equivalence to the Hebrew source

Challenging Stereotypes: Muslim Women's Photographic Self-Representations on the Internet

This paper focuses on embodiment as enacted and expressed on websites and blogs produced or populated by Muslim women. While there is no agreement amongst scholars and believers in different schools of Islam whether Muslim women are required to wear the headscarf, it is acknowledged that Muslim dresscode should be guided by the principle of modesty. Modest dress in Islam is understood in different ways, from all-concealing garments such as the burqa, to long-sleeved tops and long skirts or tunics obscuring body shape, all available to purchase online. This variety is reflected in material published by Muslim women on the Internet who construct their online identity by writing but also by posting their pictures on sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Muslim or Islamic dating websites. According to some interpretations, depictions of human bodies should not be published and Muslim women advocating this position choose to use photos of still nature or abstract works of art as their avatars. Imagery on the websites is a useful springboard into considering the nature of online identity, therefore a range of Muslim women's profiles on social networks as well a number of websites and blogs are analysed using interdisciplinary methods (visual and discourse analysis). Muslim women's representations of themselves often contrast with their representations produced by the media; it is argued that the latter are negative and biased (Afshar, 1998, 2008), hence it is imperative to address the ways in which Muslim women speak about themselves in not only textual, but also visual modes

Yhdenvertaiset multimodaalisen spatiaalisen saavutettavuuden mahdollisuudet lasten harrastamisessa käytetyille liikuntapaikoille Helsingin seudulla

Ohjatut liikuntaharrastukset tarjoavat lapsille tärkeitä terveysetuja, jotka jatkuvat myös pitkälle aikuisuuteen. Yleisesti lasten liikuntaharrastukset ovat eriytyneet sukupuolen mukaan. Liikuntamahdollisuuksien kohtuullisten matka-aikojen päässä on myös todettu vaikuttavan liikuntaan osallistumiseen. Tässä tutkielmassa onkin valittu muutama suosituimmista tyttöjen ja poikien liikuntaharrastuksista; tanssi, ratsastus, jalkapallo ja salibandy ja tutkitaan näiden harrastusten spatiaalista saavutettavuutta tasapuolisuuden näkökulmasta suhteessa sosioekonomisiin tekijöihin ja sitä, kuinka tarjonta näissä liikuntapalveluissa 7-12 -vuotiaiden ikäryhmässä toteutuu spatiaalisesti. Käytettyihin metodeihin kuuluvat harrastuspaikkojen identifioiminen, matka-aikojen analysoiminen Pääkaupunkiseudun matka-aikamatriisin avulla ja näiden matka-aikojen vertailu sosioekonomiseen summaindeksiin, joka pohjautuu Tilastokeskuksen tuottamaan ruututietokantaan. Tämä vertailu tehtiin Studentin t- testin avulla ja myös Local bivariate -analyysejä testattiin. Yleisesti jalkapallon, salibandyn ja tanssin kohdalla havaittiin harrastuslokaatioiden samankaltaista spatiaalista sijoittumista. Näissä lajeissa spatiaalisen saavutettavuuden olosuhteita eri kulkumuodoilla mitattuna lähimpään urheilupaikkaan voidaan pitää yleisesti hyvinä. Hevostalleja alueella on huomattavasti vähemmän ja ne sijaitsevat kauempana asutuskeskittymistä, mikä näkyi pidempinä matka-aikoina kaikilla eri kulkumuodoilla. Yleisesti, suurin osa lapsista saavutti lähimmän tanssi-, jalkapallo- tai salibandypaikan 15 minuutissa pyörällä, julkisella liikenteellä ja autolla. Matka-ajat pyöräillen olivat lyhyempiä kuin julkisella liikenteellä ja autolla taas kaikista lyhyimpiä. Käytetty t-testi paljasti monia tilastollisesti merkittäviä suhteita, jotka kertoivat eroista matka-ajoissa hyvä- ja huono-osaisimman kvintiilin alueiden välillä. Näissä tuloksissa matka-ajat erityisesti jalkapallossa olivat lyhyempiä huono-osaisimmalla alueella. Samansuuntaisia tuloksia oli nähtävissä myös tanssin ja salibandyn kohdalla. Ratsastuspaikkojen kohdalla tulokset olivat päinvastaisia. Tiivistettynä voidaankin sanoa, että merkittäviä eroja liittyen tasa-arvoiseen saavutettavuuteen ei löytynyt tutkittavien lajien kohdalta ja matka-ajat olivat yleisesti kohtuullisia. Kuitenkin ratsastustallien kohdalla voidaan ajatella esiintyvän myös epätasa-arvoisia matka-aikojen vaihteluita.Organized sports for children provide important health benefits continuing also later in life and are highly segregated based on gender. Having opportunities of organized physical activities within reasonable travel times has been shown to have an effect in participation of sports. In this thesis few of the most popular sports for each gender; dance, horse riding, floorball and football were chosen and the service level of the facilities providing organized sport activities in the age group of 7- to 12-year-olds were analysed in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. Special interest lied in how equally these services can be reached with different travel modes in reasonable travel times also in relation to spatial socioeconomic differences. As the research on the topic has been inconsistent and sparse, this thesis contributes to the research field with comprehensive outlook on equality considerations and a seldomly used perspective of children’s sports facility accessibility focused on provided services. The methods used included identifying locations used by children in the chosen sports, analysing travel times to these locations with the Helsinki Region Travel Time Matrix and comparing the resulting spatial accessibility conditions to a sum index of disadvantage calculated from a population grid database. This comparison was done through a Student’s t-test and testing of local bivariate relationships. Generally, the results indicated quite similar spatial patterns and good spatial accessibility conditions in floorball, football and dance when it comes to travel times to closest facilities. The horse riding facilities were located in more remote areas and were significantly fewer which resulted in longer travel times. Overall, most children reached their closest floorball, football or dance facilities within 15 minutes of biking, public transport or car travel times. Biking travel times were found to be shorter than public transportation travel times while private car provided the shortest travel times. The t-test revealed many statistically significant relationships indicating difference in travel times in the most and least disadvantaged quintile areas of the sum index of disadvantage. In these results, travel times especially in football were found to be shorter in more disadvantaged areas. This was the direction of the findings also in floorball and dance. Horse riding travel times were longer in most disadvantaged areas. The bivariate relationship tools revealed variation in the local relationships between the travel times and the sum index. In conclusion, due to travel times being of reasonable length considerable inequalities in the spatial accessibility conditions were not found, although horse riding facilities indicated some inequalities

Reflexivity in Modern Hebrew and Polish : contrastive remarks

1. Naturally reflexive actions are expressed by intransitive reflexive stems in Hebrew and by transitive verbs with the reflexive pronoun się in Polish. 2. Actions that are not naturally reflexive are expressed by transitive stems with the reflexive pronoun ’acmo in Hebrew, and by transitive verbs with the reflexive pronoun siebie in Polish. 3. Adverbials with anaphors referring to a subject contain personal pronouns in Hebrew, the reflexive pronoun siebie in Polish, if the reflexive reference of the pronoun is not abnormal. Otherwise the reflexive pronoun ’acmo and the emphatic pronoun samego siebie are used. 4. If a pronoun referring to the subject is a predicate, then in Hebrew it always has the form of an ordinary personal pronoun, while in Polish both the personal and the reflexive pronoun is possible, depending on the copula

Training Organizational Soldiers: Leadership and Control in Trainee Programs

Title: Training Organisational Soldiers: Leadership and Control in Trainee Programs Authors: Anna Piela and Annika Theiss Supervisor: Jens Rennstam Submission Date: May 22, 2015 Purpose: The purpose of our research is to provide a more critical perspective on leadership and leadership development within the context of trainee programs. Therefore we aim to understand how leadership is constructed in trainee programs and how companies make use of trainee programs to control trainees. Methodology: We based our research on a qualitative research design and combined an interpretive and a critical stance. Theoretical Perspective: As a theoretical background for our study we provided an overview of the existing literature on trainee programs in connection to leadership, identity and control. Empirical Foundation: The empirical material for this thesis was mainly generated by eight semi-structured interviews with trainees from a trainee program in a globally operating retail organisation located in Sweden. Furthermore, we added survey answers, company documents and notes from conversations with the HR team to our empirical basis. Main Findings: We found that leadership is constructed as something solely positive in the trainee program and that the leadership discourse is used to trigger the trainees’ identity work. This discourse can, on the one hand, be supportive of the trainees’ identity work and, on the other hand, lead to struggles and uncertainties. In both cases it functions as an organisational control mechanism which de- and reconstructs the trainees’ identities in accordance with the organisational objectives

Redefinition of stack efficiency and optimization of stack performance for PEMFCs

In the first part of this work, we present a general redefinition of the PEMFC stack efficiency taking into account all power losses directly connected with the stack performance and the applied stack operating conditions. These are the stack fuel loss, the stack polarization- and reaction entropy- and enthalpy losses, and the theoretical losses for stack feed stream conditioning. In general, the latter includes humidification and pressurization (or pumping) of the reactants as well as pumping of the coolant. Furthermore, examples will be given which power losses are relevant for different applications and which are dominant and have to be considered. By the use of this new figure of merit, the efficiencies of two stacks can be compared to each other in a system-relevant way and can be determined for a given application scenario. In addition, the accompanying redefined balance-of-plant efficiency is a parameter characterizing uniquely the effectiveness of the BoP design and of the BoP components. In the second part of this work, a procedure for the optimization of the PEMFC stack performance will be highlighted. The performance of a stack at a given constant load strongly depends on the operating conditions characterized by 7 parameters. These are the stack temperature, the stoichiometric values of the reactants, the relative humidity of the reactants, and the pressures in both compartments of the stack. The effect of these parameters on the stack performance is non-linear and synergistic. A separate optimization of each single parameter is not meaningful. Therefore, a direct-search algorithm, the Nelder-Mead simplex, was used for the simultaneous optimization of all parameters

Parallel algorithms for solving linear equations using Givens transformations

AbstractThe use of the Givens method to solve linear equations on a parallel computer is reviewed, and a new algorithm which requires fewer time steps in the infinite processor case is presented