Exploring the associations of culture with careers and the mediating role of HR practices:A conceptual model

Purpose: The conceptual framework developed in the present study aims to highlight the importance of human resource (HR) practices as a mediator between national culture and employees' careers. Design/methodology/approach: The approach taken is a literature review and the development of a conceptual model. Findings: The paper contributes to the literature by focusing on how culture via HR practices might influence career success. Drawing on Hofstede's cultural dimensions, five propositions are developed regarding the impact of culture on career‐relevant HR practices, and how these practices are likely to influence employee career success. Research limitations/implications: Culture's effect should not be overstated. Looking at the propositions, it is possible that the influence of HR practices on career success is more pronounced than the direct effects of culture on career success. Future work is needed to measure and compare the relative strength of different associations as well as the possibility that other HR dimensions relevant to the study of career success may exist. Originality/value: At a general level, there is ample evidence of the impact of culture on the effectiveness of a variety of individual outcomes. The paper focused on the mediating role of HR practices as opposed to advancing hypotheses about direct relationships between culture and career success

From MinX to MinC: Semantics-Driven Decompilation of Recursive Datatypes

Reconstructing the meaning of a program from its binary executable is known as reverse engineering; it has a wide range of applications in software security, exposing piracy, legacy systems, etc. Since reversing is ultimately a search for meaning, there is much interest in inferring a type (a meaning) for the elements of a binary in a consistent way. Unfortunately existing approaches do not guarantee any semantic relevance for their reconstructed types. This paper presents a new and semantically-founded approach that provides strong guarantees for the reconstructed types. Key to our approach is the derivation of a witness program in a high-level language alongside the reconstructed types. This witness has the same semantics as the binary, is type correct by construction, and it induces a (justifiable) type assignment on the binary. Moreover, the approach effectively yields a type-directed decompiler. We formalise and implement the approach for reversing Minx, an abstraction of x86, to MinC, a type-safe dialect of C with recursive datatypes. Our evaluation compiles a range of textbook C algorithms to MinX and then recovers the original structures

Coordination as a function of skill level in the gymnastics longswing

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of inter-joint coordination at different levels of skilled performance to: (1) distinguish learners who were successful versus unsuccessful in terms of their task performance; (2) investigate the pathways of change during the learning of a new coordination pattern and (3) examine how the learner’s coordination patterns relate to those of experts in the longswing gymnastics skill. Continuous relative phase of hip and shoulder joint motions was examined for longswings performed by two groups of novices, successful (n = 4) and unsuccessful (n = 4) over five practice sessions, and two expert gymnasts. Principal component analysis showed that during longswing positions where least continuous relative phase variability occurred for expert gymnasts, high variability distinguished the successful from the unsuccessful novice group. Continuous relative phase profiles of successful novices became more out-of-phase over practice and less similar to the closely in-phase coupling of the expert gymnasts. Collectively, the findings support the proposition that at the level in inter-joint coordination a technique emerges that facilitates successful performance but is not more like an expert’s movement coordination. This finding questions the appropriateness of inferring development towards a “gold champion” movement coordination

Human-water interface in hydrological modeling: Current status and future directions

Over the last decades, the global population has been rapidly increasing and human activities have altered terrestrial water fluxes at an unprecedented scale. The phenomenal growth of the human footprint has significantly modified hydrological processes in various ways (e.g., irrigation, artificial dams, and water diversion) and at various scales (from a watershed to the globe). During the early 1990s, awareness of the potential water scarcity led to the first detailed global water resource assessments. Shortly thereafter, in order to analyse the human perturbation on terrestrial water resources, the first generation of large-scale hydrological models (LHMs) was produced. However, at this early stage few models considered the interaction between terrestrial water fluxes and human activities, including water use and reservoir regulation, and even fewer models distinguished water use from surface water and groundwater resources. Since the early 2000s, a growing number of LHMs are incorporating human impacts on hydrological cycle, yet human representations in hydrological models remain challenging. In this paper we provide a synthesis of progress in the development and application of human impact modeling in LHMs. We highlight a number of key challenges and discuss possible improvements in order to better represent the human-water interface in hydrological models

Risk factors for borderline personality disorder in treatment seeking patients with a substance use disorder: An international multicenter study

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and substance use disorders (SUDs) often co-occur, partly because they share risk factors. In this international multicenter study, risk factors for BPD were examined for SUD patients. In total, 1,205 patients were comprehensively examined by standardized interviews and questionnaires on psychiatric diagnosis and risk factors, and it was found that 1,033 (85.7%) had SUDs without BPD (SUD) and 172 (14.3%) had SUD with BPD (SUD + BPD). SUD + BPD patients were significantly younger, more often females and more often diagnosed with comorbid adult attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. SUD + BPD patients did not differ from SUD patients on most risk factors typical for SUD such as maternal use of drugs during pregnancy or parents having any SUD. However, SUD + BPD patients did have a higher risk of having experienced emotional and physical abuse, neglect, or family violence in childhood compared to SUD patients, suggesting that child abuse and family violence are BPD-specific risk factors in patients with SUDs

Human–water interface in hydrological modelling: current status and future directions

Over recent decades, the global population has been rapidly increasing and human activities have altered terrestrial water fluxes to an unprecedented extent. The phenomenal growth of the human footprint has significantly modified hydrological processes in various ways (e.g. irrigation, artificial dams, and water diversion) and at various scales (from a watershed to the globe). During the early 1990s, awareness of the potential for increased water scarcity led to the first detailed global water resource assessments. Shortly thereafter, in order to analyse the human perturbation on terrestrial water resources, the first generation of largescale hydrological models (LHMs) was produced. However, at this early stage few models considered the interaction between terrestrial water fluxes and human activities, including water use and reservoir regulation, and even fewer models distinguished water use from surface water and groundwater resources. Since the early 2000s, a growing number of LHMs have incorporated human impacts on the hydrological cycle, yet the representation of human activities in hydrological models remains challenging. In this paper we provide a synthesis of progress in the development and application of human impact modelling in LHMs. We highlight a number of key challenges and discuss possible improvements in order to better represent the human-water interface in hydrological models

HESS Opinions: Science in today's media landscape - Challenges and lessons from hydrologists and journalists

Media such as television, newspapers and social media play a key role in the communication between scientists and the general public. Communicating your science via the media can be positive and rewarding by providing the inherent joy of sharing your knowledge with a broader audience, promoting science as a fundamental part of culture and society, impacting decision- and policy-makers, and giving you a greater recognition by institutions, colleagues and funders. However, the interaction between scientists and journalists is not always straightforward. For instance, scientists may not always be able to translate their work into a compelling story, and journalists may sometimes misinterpret scientific output. In this paper, we present insights from hydrologists and journalists discussing the advantages and benefits as well as the potential pitfalls and aftermath of science-media interaction. As we perceive interacting with the media as a rewarding and essential part of our work, we aim to encourage scientists to participate in the diverse and evolving media landscape. With this paper, we call on the scientific community to support scientists who actively contribute to a fruitful science-media relationship..</p

Prevalence of severe childhood obesity in England:2006-2013

BACKGROUND: International evidence shows that severe paediatric obesity results in an increased risk of ill health and may require specialised weight management strategies, yet there remains a lack of data on the extent of the problem. OBJECTIVE: To examine the prevalence of severe obesity in children aged 4-5 and 10-11 years, attending English schools between 2006/2007 and 2012/2013. DESIGN: A retrospective analysis of National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) data. SETTING: Maintained schools in England. PARTICIPANTS: All children aged 4-5 and 10-11 years included in the NCMP dataset. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Prevalence of severe childhood obesity, defined using the 99.6th centile of the British 1990 (UK90) growth reference for body mass index (BMI), analysed by sex, geography, ethnic group and deprivation. RESULTS: The key findings show that in 2012/2013, severe obesity (BMI ≥UK90 99.6th centile) was found in 1.9% of girls and 2.3% of boys aged 4-5 years, and 2.9% of girls and 3.9% of boys aged 10-11 years. Severe obesity prevalence varies geographically and is more prevalent in children from deprived areas, and among those from black ethnic groups. CONCLUSIONS: The findings from this study should help to raise awareness of the prevalence of severe obesity and support the provision of adequate treatment and prevention services both to support children who are already severely obese and reduce the prevalence of extreme weight in the future

Coordination between arm and leg movements during locomotion

To evaluate the contrasting dynamical and biomechanical interpretations of the 2:1 frequency coordination between arm and leg movements that occurs at low walking velocities and the 1:1 frequency coordination that occurs at higher walking velocities, the authors conducted an experiment in which they quantified the effect of walking velocity on the stability of the frequency and phase coordination between the individual limb movements. Spectral analyses revealed the presence of 2:1 frequency coordination as a consistent feature of the data in only 3 out of 8 participants at walking velocities ranging from 1.0 to 2.0 km/h, in spite of the fact that the eigenfrequencies of the arms were rather similar across participants. The degree of interlimb coupling, as indexed by weighted coherence and variability of relative phase, was lower for the arm movements and for ipsilateral and diagonal combinations of arm and leg movements than for the leg movements. Furthermore, the coupling between all pairs of limb movements was found to increase with walking velocity, whereas no clear signs were observed that the switches from 2:1 to 1:1 frequency coordination and vice versa were preceded by loss of stability. Therefore, neither a purely biomechanical nor a purely dynamical model is optimally suited to explain these results. Instead, an integrative model involving elements of both approaches seems to be required