The Working with Parents in Sport Model (WWPS-model): A practical guide for practitioners working with parents of elite young performers

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journal of Sport Psychology in Action on 15/07/2014, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21520704.2014.914113In this paper we introduce the Working with Parents in Sport Model (WWPS-Model), which highlights key areas applied practitioners can use to inform their practice with regard to the development and implementation of support programmes for parents/guardians of elite junior athletes. The stage approach and nature of the model, which is accompanied by practical checklists, are all intended to serve as a valuable resource to both the experienced professional and the neophyte practitioner about to engage on the applied practice journey within an elite junior sporting environment

Government and self-government in in the information society

Research on the information society and the policies and strategies for its creation has tended to discuss them rationally as the national, and occasionally international or regional, responses to changes in the competitive environment. The predominant notion of the information society in various levels of governance has only rarely been critically examined. The paper provides a Foucauldian analysis of the constitution of the information society as a political and policy imperative at the level of the European Union and the multiple effects it had for its member states. Drawing on ideas on governmentality and regimes of truth, I argue that the European Commission continually shaped the rationality and identity of the information society it heralded, by managing to set itself as the legitimate locus of policy for the information society. In revealing the dominant discursive truths about the European information society, the research discusses how the truth claims about the construction of a particular version of the information society and the legitimate loci of its government shaped the degrees of freedom of the Greek policy makers through a range of disciplining and selfdisciplining practices

Pulling offshore and staying onshore: A framework for analysis of offshoring dynamics

Given that the force of offshoring is one of the most important economic changes in the early 2000s it is vital to understand what propels it further. The landscape of offshoring is such that firms in the wealthy nations (onshore) have already off-shored, sometimes extensively. As researchers, we need to ask not whether the firm will offshore, but rather how far the firm will go offshore and what are the subtle factors that are driving this offshore decision process. Therefore, in this paper we propose a framework in order to understand the firm-level decisions that are not as well understood and not as well researched. There are a number of key variables that we already collectively know about offshoring. First, we already know that offshoring is driven by low wages and large labor pools in India, China and elsewhere. Thus, everything else being equal, work will flow to the less expensive offshore locations. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Gender Intersections and Environmental Concern

The work presented here provides an exploration into the complexities of gender when considered in conjunction with other socio-demographic variables. Our goal is to look at how gender moderates several socio-demographic characteristics (age, race, class, education, political orientation, residence, marital status, number of children, religious beliefs, and scientific knowledge) as these characteristics predict several measures of environmental concern. Previous researchers suggest that inconsistencies in findings regarding gender as a predictor of environmental concern are largely due to differences in question wording and the various types of environmental concern that can be measured. We do not disagree that the framing of environmental problems is extremely important; however, explanations involving question wording are overly simplified. Our exploration of moderating effects provides greater insight into the complexities of the relationship between gender and environmental concern. We find that lived experiences lie at the intersection of multiple socio-demographic identities. Thus, exploring differences between different types of women’s and different types of men’s environmental concern helps to further elucidate our understanding of the demographic correlates of environmental orientations

The oral condition of elderly institutionalized males

A survey was carried out in the summer of 1966 of the oral condition of all male patients over 60 years old, at Saint Vincent de Paul Hospital Malta, a government geriatric institution. All the patients were examined with regards to the number and condition of the teeth, the presence of calculus and periodontal disease, and the degree of dental attrition. A questionnaire was completed on the drinking and smoking habits, masticatory ability, dry feeling of oral mucosa and subjective evaluation of dentures, when present. Further related subjects discussed following this survey are leukoplakia, pigmentation and other lesions. The geriatric patient tends to respond to noxious stimuli in an atrophic rather than in a productive manner so that dental and oral symptoms of disease are not prominent. This was evident in this survey and very few of the patients had any specific oral complaints. The dental surgeon has an important role in the health team looking after geriatric patients and should keep his patients under constant surveillance rather than wait for specific complaints.peer-reviewe

Investigation of the Electrochemical Behaviour of MWCNTs in the detection of Cr(VI)

The electrochemical behaviour of a glassy carbon (GC) electrode modified with MWCNTs was investigated and characterised using K3[Fe(CN)6] as a probe. An increase in the electroactive surface area and the rate of electron transfer was observed on sonication of the MWCNTs prior to casting at the GC electrode. The modified electrode was also used in the detection of Cr(VI) in both pH 5.0 and pH 2.0 aqueous solutions. Better detection limits were obtained in the acidic solution

Listening while reading promotes word learning from stories

Reading and listening to stories fosters vocabulary development. Studies of single word learning suggest that new words are more likely to be learnt when both their oral and written forms are provided, compared to when only one form is given. This study explores children’s learning of phonological, orthographic and semantic information about words encountered in a story context. Seventy-one children (8 - 9 years) were exposed to a story containing novel words in one of three conditions: 1) listening, 2) reading, or 3) simultaneous listening and reading (‘combined condition’). Half of the novel words were presented with a definition and half without. Phonological and orthographic learning were assessed through recognition tasks. Semantic learning was measured using three tasks assessing recognition of the word’s category, sub-category and definition. Phonological learning was observed in all conditions, showing that phonological recoding supported the acquisition of phonological forms when children were not exposed to phonology (the reading condition). In contrast, children showed orthographic learning of the novel words only when they were exposed to orthographic forms, indicating that exposure to phonological forms alone did not prompt the establishment of orthographic representations. Semantic learning was greater in the combined condition than in the listening and reading conditions. The presence of the definition was associated with better performance on the semantic sub-category and definition post-tests but not the phonological, orthographic or category post-tests. Findings are discussed in relation to the lexical quality hypothesis and the availability of attentional resources

Oesophageal foreign bodies in dogs: factors affecting success of endoscopic retrieval

Oesophageal foreign bodies are common in dogs. Endoscopic removal is a viable treatment option but few studies have assessed the clinical and radiographic features that would be useful in decision-making and prognosis

Game-theoretic analysis of pay-as-bid mechanisms

Enterprises are facing a challenging dilemma. In order to be able to accommodate peak loads on their IT systems, they must maintain large computing clusters, which lie idle most of the time. At the same time, IT departments are under constant pressure to cut down on hard- and software expenses. Grid technology offers a promising way out of this dilemma by allowing the dynamic sharing both within enterprises as well as across organizational boundaries. This sharing approach, however, requires proper economic incentives. This paper is concerned with the determination of dynamic market-based prices. Due to their simplicity, so-called pay-as-bid mechanisms have become popular. This paper is novel as we provide an in-depth analysis of two such pay-as-bid mechanisms – Proportional Share and a discriminatory pay-as-bid mechanism – for the case of three users, thus extending previous work by Sanghavi and Hajek (2004) and Stößer et al. (2008). This analysis is important as we show that the nice results for two users cannot be retained once three or more users are present. Even worse, we show that these results can even be reversed if we move to games with more than two players