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The present study aimed to broaden the knowledge about the personal and parental factors associated with teenagers' efforts to actively engage in the developmental task of vocational preparation. We investigated the associations between parental career-related behaviors (i.e., parental support, interference, and lack of engagement), adolescents' career exploration, and the moderating role of dispositional optimism. Our sample was formed by 441 Romanian teenagers (58 % males, M = 14.17, SD = 1.05). The results suggested that ado-lescents experiencing a low level of parental support reported a low level of career exploration, regardless of the level of dispositional optimism. Conversely, when the level of parental support was high, participants reported a higher level of career exploration when they also reported a high level of dispositional optimism. We discuss the importance of examining individual characteristics in conjunction with ecological factors related to adolescents' environments when understanding career exploration.
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On 23 March 2020, in response to the growing threat of Covid-19, world leaders including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told their countries that people must stay at home and avoid all unnecessary social contacts, including contact with family members, friends and romantic partners living elsewhere. As existential psychologists living in the UK, it is decided to engage in an online dialogue about the experiences of living in, and working therapeutically through, 'corona times'. This chapter explores and elaborates upon several of the key existential themes and concerns discussed in the two dialogues. The first dialogue took place a mere two weeks after UK lockdown had begun and was subsequently uploaded onto YouTube on 6 April 2020 where it can still be viewed. Just over a year later, following the realisation that many of the feelings and experiences had changed considerably, it is decided to engage in a second dialogue, which was primarily focused on the longer-term psychological and existential impact of this strange period in human history. Once again, the dialogue was uploaded onto YouTube on 30 April 2021. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted many business activities to non-face-to-face activities, and videoconferencing has become a new paradigm. However, conference spaces isolated from surrounding interferences are not always readily available. People frequently participate in public places with unexpected crowds or acquaintances, such as cafés, living rooms, and shared offices. These environments have surrounding limitations that potentially cause challenges in speaking up during videoconferencing. To alleviate these issues and support the users in speaking-restrained spatial contexts, we propose a text-to-speech (TTS) speaking tool as a new speaking method to support active videoconferencing participation. We derived the possibility of a TTS speaking tool and investigated the empirical challenges and user expectations of a TTS speaking tool using a technology probe and participatory design methodology. Based on our findings, we discuss the need for a TTS speaking tool and suggest design considerations for its application in videoconferencing. © 2023 ACM.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had serious implications on the health and well-being of student-athletes. The present study explored the athletic experiences of NCAA Division II college athletes during the competitive hiatus caused by the pandemic, as well as in their return to sport participation. Twenty male and female student-athletes from a variety of sports (freshman = 2, sophomores = 4, seniors = 9, and graduate = 5) participated in semistructured interviews to explore how the pandemic affected their athletic identity, anxiety, and mental health. Through the use of thematic content analysis, the following major themes were identified: (a) influence of COVID on athletic identity, (b) increased anxiety during COVID, (c) social aspects of sport participation, and (d) factors that influence mental health. Findings indicated a combination of positive and negative effects on the athletic identity, anxiety, and mental health and well-being of student-athletes.
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Assessment is the process of comparing the actual to the expected behavior of a business phenomenon and judging the outcome of the comparison. The ${{\sf assess}}$assess querying operator has been recently proposed to support assessment based on the results of a query on a data cube. This operator requires (i) the specification of an OLAP query to determine a target cube;(ii) the specification of a reference cube of comparison (benchmark), which represents the expected performance;(iii) the specification of how to perform the comparison, and (iv) a labeling function that classifies the result of this comparison. Despite the adoption of a SQL-like syntax that hides the complexity of the assessment process, writing a complete assess statement is not easy. In this paper we focus on making the user experience more comfortable by letting the system suggest suitable completions for partially-specified statements. To this end we propose two interaction modes: progressive refinement and auto-completion, both starting from an assess statement partially declared by the user. These two modes are evaluated both in terms of scalability and user experience, with the support of two experiments made with real users.
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Purpose: Shadowing is an important part of medical student education. The COVID-19 pandemic limited medical students' hospital access. At the same time, virtual access to learning experiences has expanded greatly. In response, we implemented a novel virtual shadowing system to provide students with convenient and safe exposure to the Emergency Department (ED). Patients and Methods: Six EM faculty hosted 2-hour virtual shadowing for up to 10 students per experience. Students registered via signupgenius.com. Virtual shadowing was conducted using a HIPAA-compliant ZOOM account on an ED issued mobile telehealth Monitor/iPad. The physician would bring the iPad into the room, obtain consent from patients, and ensure students were able to see the encounter. Between visits, students were encouraged to ask questions using the chat function and microphone. A short de-briefing followed each shift. Each participant received a survey about the experience. The survey consisted of 4 questions for demographics, 9 Likert style questions to assess efficacy, and 2 free response sections for comments and feedback. All survey responses were anonymous. Results: In total, 58 students participated in 18 virtual shadowing sessions with an average of 3-4 students per session. Survey responses were collected between October 20, 2020 and November 20, 2020. The overall response rate was 96.6% (56/58 surveys completed). Of respondents, 46 (82.1%) rated the experience as "effective" or "very effective" at providing exposure to Emergency Medicine. Fifty-three (94.6%) said they would participate in virtual shadowing in the ED again, and 48 (85.7%) would do virtual shadowing in another specialty were it available. Conclusion: We found virtual shadowing to be an easy to implement and effective way for students to shadow physicians in the ED. Even in post-pandemic times, virtual shadowing should be explored as an accessible and effective way to expose students to a broad array of specialties.
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High stigma toward COVID-19 sufferers was observed in Indonesia's and Malaysia's social media spheres, especially at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. This study compared individual and interpersonal stigmas through analysis of online conversations and established government protocols in handling COVID-19 in Malaysia and Indonesia. The critical narrative found was 'blaming others,' pointing fingers toward other actors, such as certain ethnic and religious groups, for the continuous spread of the virus. We found that stigmatisation of COVID-19 in Indonesia and Malaysia pointed out jarring concerns, 1) lack of knowledge on COVID-19, 2) the need for effective and efficient dissemination of information to avoid victim blaming, and 3) politicisation of COVID-19 for one's benefit. In times of public health crises such as COVID-19, governments should not only be responsive in formulating just policies that could help to control the spread of the virus but also mitigate stigmatization towards certain members of society. For Indonesian and Malaysian governments, while there were attempts to address COVID-19 stigma through various online and offline campaigns, observers expressed concern over the lack of recognition of the effects of stigma in COVID-19 official protocols. We discovered that COVID-19 protocols did not provide sufficient information on how to develop a safe environment for COVID-19 sufferers, thus preventing people from getting health treatment and other public services during the pandemic. Also, the protocols were found to have strengthened existing negative stereotypes toward marginalised groups.
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INTER/her is an immersive installation and virtual reality artwork highlighting (post)reproductive diseases that women over 30 frequently experience, including endometriosis, fibroids, polyps, ovarian and other cysts and growths, as well as the more serious cervical, ovarian, uterine and endometrial cancers. The artwork presents an , intimate immersive journey within the inner world of women's bodies, exposing the diseases they can suffer. INTER/her is intended as a personal exploration, conversation starter and community builder. This article discusses the development experience, exhibition and discoveries from INTER/her since its inception to the present. It explores the nature, staging and significance of the piece and what is implicated for future work in this area for art, design and research. It reveals the design process, visual and narrative elements made to represent, convey and understand the emotional and bodily/sensorial experience intended for visitors, as well as the visual metaphors representing the different organs and ailments. It covers the collaborative approach of the design team, using various technologies and the storytelling techniques used in the work during the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, from autumn 2020 to May 2021. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.
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PurposeThe study explores the perceptions of graduates on their employability and future of work, in light of the challenges thrown upon by new vicissitudes in the work environment. The study intends to assess the preparedness of management graduates in facing the challenges and uncertainties of the actual job market.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured and informal interviews with 65 management graduates from UK, Canada, Italy and India. The thematic analysis uncovered the concerns and areas to develop for management graduates regarding their future employability perceptions.FindingsThe authors benefited from a unique opportunity to capture the views and experience of graduates who are undergoing management education during this ambiguous period. Three major themes were developed on how to develop oneself for an ambiguous future of work which includes Psychological strengths, Skill enhancement and Future mindset. The study also unearthed the major focus areas for better employability from a graduate perspective.Practical implicationsPractical contribution comes from strategies to prepare university graduates for sustainable careers. Study hints at the importance of work experience, adaptability and skill enhancement in meeting the challenges of the future.Originality/valueFrom a global approach this is one among the first studies to look into the graduate perspective of their preparedness for future work.
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HealthECCO is the driving force behind the COVID-19 knowledge graph spanning multiple biomedical data domains. One way to access CovidGraph is SemSpect, an interface designed for data exploration in graphs. To showcase the possibilities that arise from integrating a variety of COVID-19 related data sources over the last three years, we present three use cases from the (bio-)medical domain. Availability: The project is open source and freely available from: https://healthecco.org/covidgraph/. The source code and documentation are available on GitHub: https://github.com/covidgraph.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , Software , DocumentationABSTRACT
The oil industry is experiencing a critical situation as the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. There are several challenges that facing the industry specially the investors as the global decline in demand for Energy merchandises, the future exploration and development drilling in new assets that require massive investments is still uncertain based on the current market price and conditions. The much-reported fall in oil prices and the acute pressure on IOCs to survive in this environment led the companies to stop many ongoing projects and shrink work profile that affected the oil production all over the world. The situation in Egypt is quite challenging for the investors as Egypt is a big consumer, along with the political stability that kept the economy running directed the big IOCs to embrace innovative approaches to lower the operating costs that has the direct impact on the cost per barrel to support maintaining the country growth and secure current energy demand. Dragon Oil company as newly introduced to Egypt's market after acquiring the market shares of one of the major joint ventures in Egypt (Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company- GUPCO) in October 2019 has faced the same dilemma of exerted pressure on the expenditures (Capex and Opex) in order to cope with the global market circumstances. However that didn't deter the company to embrace an innovative way of thinking and handling for the situation. Dragon Oil/GUPCO multi-disciplinary teams achieved successfully a production incremental increase of 10,000 barrels per day through the past six month by adapting a strategic management innovative plans, alternative lower cost technical solutions, production optimization and introducing new proved technologies to the 50 years old assets. This paper will highlight the complete workflow adopted by GUPCO/Dragon Oil teams covering the whole process aspects;appraise, select, define and execution phases to achieve the company goals. The work done was including restoring production from Shut-in offshore platforms or wells via fixing the surface network using neoteric solutions, widely applying rigless interventions using several new techniques in the current producers to maximize their production and optimizing the production cycle across the four production chokes In Summary, Dragon Oil/GUPCO teams managed to increase GUPCO's production despite of the restricted budget and the negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the oil price and reach an outstanding performance in operation excellence and safety aspects that results in arresting the natural decline and increase the growth production by about 15% from the 2019 Average production. Copyright © 2023, Society of Petroleum Engineers.
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Despite a significant increase in global clean energy investments, as part of the decarbonization process, it remains insufficient to meet the demand for energy services in a sustainable manner. This study investigates the performance of sustainable energy equity investments, with focus on environmental markets, using monthly equity index data from 31 August 2009 to 30 December 2022. The main contributions of our study are (i) assessment of the performance of trading strategies based on the trend, momentum, and volatility of Environmental Opportunities (EO) and Environmental Technologies (ET) equity indices;and (ii) comparison of the performance of sustainable equity index investments to fossil fuel-based and major global equity indices. Market performance evaluation based on technical analysis tools such as the Relative Strength Index (RSI), Moving Averages, and Average True Range (ATR) is captured through the Sharpe and the Sharpe per trade. The analysis is divided according to regional, sector, and global EO indices, fossil fuel-based indices, and the key global stock market indices. Our findings reveal that a momentum-based strategy performed best for the MSCI Global Alternative Energy index with the highest excess return per unit of risk, followed by the fossil fuel-based indices. A trend-based strategy worked best for the MSCI Global Alternative Energy and EO 100 indices. The use of volatility-based information yielded the highest Sharpe ratio for EO Europe, followed by the Oil and Gas Exploration and Production industry, and MSCI Global Alternative Energy. We further find that a trader relying on a system which simultaneously provides momentum, trend, or volatility information would yield positive returns only for the MSCI Global Alternative Energy, the S&P Oil and Exploration and Production industry, NYSE Arca Oil, and FTSE 100 indices. Overall, despite the superior performance of the MSCI Global Alternative Energy index when using momentum and trend strategies, most region and sector EOs performed poorly compared to fossil fuel-based indices. The results suggest that the existing crude oil prices continue to allow fossil fuel-based equity investments to outperform most environmentally sustainable equity investments. These findings support that sustainable investments, on average, have yet to demonstrate consistent superior performance over non-renewable energy investments which demonstrates the need for continued, rigorous, and accommodating regulatory policy actions from government bodies in order to reorient significant capital flows towards sustainable equity investments.
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The survival of the home country and multinationals such as manufacturing companies depend solely on their readiness to learn the new normal by adjusting the behaviour, attitudes, and culture of their human resources through upskilling and reskilling approaches. It is based on this premise that this study investigates organisational learning as a strategy for human resource skill adjustment in manufacturing companies in South-Eastern Nigeria. The overall results revealed that dimensions of organisational learnings have positive significant effects on determinants of human resource skill adjustment which implies that an improvement on organisational learning leads to human resource skill adjustment with regards to new work culture engendered by COVID-19 pandemic. This study implies that for HR managers to effectively adjust the behaviour, attitude, skill, and knowledge of their subordinates, upskilling and reskilling, exploration learning, and exploitation learning should be deployed.
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The Internet of Drones (IoD) allows drones to collaborate safely while operating in a restricted airspace for numerous applications in Industry 4.0 world. Energy efficiency and sharing sensing data are the main challenges in swarm-drone collaboration for performing complex tasks effectively and efficiently in real-time. Information security of consensus achievement is required for multi-drone collaboration in the presence of Byzantine drones. Byzantine drones may be enough to cause present swarm coordination techniques to collapse, resulting in unpredictable or calamitous results. One or more Byzantine drones may lead to failure in consensus while exploring the environment. Moreover, Blockchain technology is in the early stage for swarm drone collaboration. Therefore, we introduce a novel blockchain-based approach to managing multi-drone collaboration during a swarm operation. Within drone swarms, blockchain technology is utilized as a communication tool to broadcast instructions to the swarm. This paper aims to improve the security of the consensus achievement process of multi-drone collaboration, energy efficiency, and connectivity during the environment's exploration while maintaining consensus achievement effectiveness. Improving the security of consensus achievement among drones will increase the possibility and stability of multi-drone applications by improving connectivity and energy efficiency in the smart world and solving real environmental issues.
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The Covid-19 pandemic crisis was an adverse situation for all economic actors. By mobilising the concept of entrepreneurial leadership, this article aims to analyse the organisational actions and leadership postures adopted by senior women managers to guarantee the continuity of their economic activity, and even, to ensure the survival of their company. We will try to show that their actions and practices are not univocal. They are characterised, on the contrary, by a form of contingency crossed by fields of tension and a subtle balance between strategic decisions of exploitation and exploration, and a strategic implementation based on both operational and relational processes. This research work will allow us to grasp the contours of a singular form of entrepreneurial leadership linked to the crisis. We will also question the limits of the use of the notion of gender to apprehend entrepreneurial behaviours and decision-making processes deployed by women entrepreneurs in contexts of adversity.
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The psychoanalytic exploration of social phenomena goes back as far as Freud's writings on cultural theory. In this article we aim at delineating how critical scholars following Freud sought to make psychoanalysis fruitful for social analyses and, based on this, develop contours of psychoanalytically oriented social research. This school of thought does not simply "apply" psychoanalytic knowledge but traces the social production of psychological conflicts. Moreover, we introduce Alfred Lorenzer's methodology and method of in-depth hermeneutic cultural analysis and from this theoretical perspective provide insights into recent research on the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) protests. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (German) Die psychoanalytische Erkundung gesellschaftlicher Phanomene beginnt bereits mit Freuds kulturtheoretischen Schriften. In diesem Artikel zeichnen wir nach, wie an Freud anschliesende kritische Denker:innen die Psychoanalyse fur Gesellschaftsanalysen produktiv zu machen suchten, und entwickeln davon ausgehend Konturen einer psychoanalytisch orientierten Sozialforschung, die nicht nur psychoanalytische Erkenntnisse anwendet", sondern der gesellschaftlichen Hervorbringung innerpsychischer Konflikte nachspurt. Wir gehen dann auf Alfred Lorenzers Methodologie und Methode der Tiefenhermeneutischen Kulturanalyse ein und geben aus dieser theoretischen Perspektive einen Einblick in aktuelle Forschungen zu den Coronaprotesten. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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The research aim to explore influential role of strategic ambidexterity through its two contradictory dimensions (exploration and exploitation) as two strategies that contemporary organizations can adopt in light of achieving contemporary initiatives required by current environment, especially tourism sector in Iraq after the paralysis it suffered as a result of spread of Corona virus and impact of repercussions of this pandemic on various Both industrial and service sectors, as researchers targeted tourism companies in Karbala governorate, which are characterized by attracting tourists to various visitors for religious tourism and in return, it is a port for their roaming to other cities and countries through tourism companies that need to keep pace with surrounding environment of developments and changes based on adoption of the two strategies of ambidexterity in Facing those changes and responding to them, as well as their readiness for rapid developments in this sector, as the questionnaire was adopted as a main tool for collecting data on this study by presenting it to the executive directors of those companies with (40) respondents, and after conducting necessary statistical tests using SPSS program, it was found that there are a strong positive and significant correlation between study variables, as well as a significant effect For strategic ambidexterity across its two dimensions in achieving and promoting contemporary initiatives at corporate level, the study community © The Author 2023. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) that allows others to share and adapt the material for any purpose (even commercially), in any medium with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
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With the continuous expansion of city scale and the advancement of transportation technology, route recommendations have become an increasingly common concern in academic and engineering circles. Research on route recommendation technology can significantly satisfy the travel demands of residents and city operations, thereby promoting the construction of smart cities and the development of intelligent transportation. However, most current route recommendation methods focus on generating a route satisfying a single objective attribute and fail to comprehensively consider other types of objective attributes or user preferences to generate personalized recommendation routes. This study proposes a multi-objective route recommendation method based on the reinforcement learning algorithm Q-learning, that comprehensively considers multiple objective attributes, such as travel time, safety risk, and COVID-19 risk, and generates recommended routes that satisfy the requirements of different scenarios by combining user preferences. Simultaneously, to address the problem that the Q-learning algorithm has low iteration efficiency and easily falls into the local optimum, this study introduces the dynamic exploration factor σ and initializes the value function in the road network construction process. The experimental results show that, when compared to other traditional route recommendation algorithms, the recommended path generated by the proposed algorithm has a lower path cost, and based on its unique Q-value table search mechanism, the proposed algorithm can generate the recommended route almost in real time. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems is the property of IOS Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
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COVID-19 has disconnected humanity, reduced social interaction in physical urban areas, and led to the new normal, which describes the anticipated changes in human life and professionals due to the impact of the pandemic. In addition, as part of digital transformation, the post-pandemic New Normal includes accelerating digital solutions and new standards for virtual urban exploration and planning. This study applies the concept of digital twin and serious game design and uses Minecraft, a game-based platform that inspires creative, inclusive learning through play, for virtual urban exploration and the development of social interaction among participants. Dadaocheng, a historical area of Taipei city, is then studied as a case study with the Geoboxers application to develop the prototype for a co-creation experiment in Minecraft. The prototype development and the results of the experiment are then used in the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) method to evaluate a set of influential criteria proposed in this study through pairwise comparisons by expert panelists. The results of the AHP analysis reveal users' simultaneous preferences for urban planning and social interaction with urban characteristics (22.14%), urban exploration (12.29%), and 3D models (11.97%). Subsequently, the research results showed a need to promote the integration of digital twins and serious game applications as digital tools for urban exploration and social interaction, increasing post-pandemic virtual urban planning and applying new urban design techniques. This study also contributes to the acceleration of digital transformation in urban planning and management. © 2023 The Authors
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In this article it is shown that information is a concept not only useful and used for the communication systems and data operation, but also for the understanding of the matter non-living and living structuration. On this basis it is described the Informational Model of Consciousness and the functions and operability of the Informational System of the Human Body, allowing to define and understand the Cognitive-Sentient Exploration of Reality used as a tool by our predecessors to create some archaic models of the universe and human, remained up to date as references from philosophic point of view, and still operating nowadays in the creative sciences and arts fields in our informational era. Introducing the concept of information-related matter, it was possible to explain the informational processes in human body and eukaryotic/prokaryotic cells, the basic units of life, and to show that in the living entities an informational system operating similarly with that of the human can be identified and defined as Informational System of the Living Structures. The predictive properties of the Cognitive-Sentient Exploration of Reality is nowadays assisted by the predictive big data analysis, helping in various scientific domains where a high quantity of data was accumulated, including in the bioengineering field and human health, particularly for the prediction of the evolution of COVID-19 cases in the world, with examples for Romania, Spain and USA. Multiple applications involving artificial intelligence and the informational models of human and living structures for a healthy society are mentioned, in particular in neurosciences, biosciences and bioengineering. The priority of the Romanian concepts on information and the important contribution of the Romanian informational science oriented to understand the brain functions/operability and applications in biomedical field is highlighted. © 2023, Publishing House of the Romanian Academy. All rights reserved.