Fiona Yu, Alana Cavadino, Lisa Mackay, Kim Ward, Anna King and Melody Smith
Limited evidence exists regarding a group of nurses' physical activity patterns and association with resilience. Less is known about the physical activity health paradox in nurses…
Abstract
Purpose
Limited evidence exists regarding a group of nurses' physical activity patterns and association with resilience. Less is known about the physical activity health paradox in nurses (the positive health effects of leisure time physical activity vs the negative health effects of occupational physical activity). This study aimed to explore the profiles of intensive care nurses' physical activity behaviours and associations with resilience, following a developed study-specific job demands–recovery framework.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional study was conducted with intensive care unit (ICU) nurses to explore their physical activity profiles and associations with resilience. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 25 (CD-RISC 25) was used to assess resilience, and accelerometry was utilised to record participants' four-day activity (two workdays, two non-workdays). Hierarchical cluster analysis was employed to define groups of nurses by activity behaviours.
Findings
Participants (N = 93) were classified as low actives (n = 19), standers (n = 36), sitters (n = 31) and movers (n = 7). During two 12-h shifts, movers had the highest mean level of dynamic standing and the lowest mean level of sitting. During two non-workdays, movers had the highest mean level of walking as well as the lowest mean level of sitting and sleep time.
Originality/value
The uniqueness of this study was that it analysed ICU nurses' physical activity profiles and associations with resilience using identified clusters. However, the small number of participants limited this study's ability to determine significant relationships between resilience and the grouped physical activity profiles.
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Penelope Carroll, Karen Witten, Melody Smith, Victoria Egli, Suzanne Mavoa and Marketta Kytta
The overarching aim of our research is the social and environmental sustainability of cities, with a focus on ensuring the rights and needs of the children who live in them are…
Abstract
The overarching aim of our research is the social and environmental sustainability of cities, with a focus on ensuring the rights and needs of the children who live in them are considered in policy and planning arenas. How do we, as researchers, work ethically and effectively with children to foreground their voices and produce robust evidence to inform policies and processes which promote their wellbeing in child-friendly cities, and in line with Sustainable Development Goals? Children have the right to be heard, and their views taken seriously, in policy and planning arenas. Conducting ethical and effective child-centred research requires balancing considerations of children’s rights to genuine participation and their rights to protection at all stages of the research process. This balance requires methodological flexibility and a situated ethical approach, where researchers and participants together determine appropriate research pathways. In this chapter, the authors reflect on ethical and methodological insights gained during a decade of conducting urban-related research with children. The various projects used different methods and provided different lessons; but common to all was an understanding of the importance of relationship-building, of supportive and engaged adults, and of methods which were respectful, age/culturally appropriate and ‘fit for purpose’. These factors are crucial to ethically enable the foregrounding of children’s voices, the collection of robust data and effective dissemination of research with children.
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Emma Smith, Melody Carter, Elaine Walklet and Paul Hazell
This paper aims to explore how enforced forms of social isolation arising from the first COVID-19 lockdown influenced experiences of problem substance use, relapse and coping…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how enforced forms of social isolation arising from the first COVID-19 lockdown influenced experiences of problem substance use, relapse and coping strategies for recovery in individuals engaging with harm reduction recovery services.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative semi-structured interview design was adopted for this research. Seven participants were recruited from a harm reduction recovery organisation. During their initial interview, participants volunteered information regarding their experience of the first lockdown due to emerging concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed a second semi-structured interview at the end of the first lockdown regarding their experience of enforced isolation during this time.
Findings
Three themes identified from the analysis were isolation resulting in hindered human capabilities; adjusting to a new normal: an individual experience; and unexpected benefits to recovery resulting from isolation. While some participants reported boredom, loneliness and relapse events, others reported that the national response to the virus did not adversely affect them as they had already adjusted to living in a state of anxiety, isolation and uncertainty. These findings illuminate negative, neutral and positive aspects of substance use recovery throughout the COVID-19 lockdown as well as highlighting the complex and individualised role that social connectedness plays in relapse occurrence.
Originality/value
Participants reported differences in how they were affected by the pandemic, leading to theoretical implications for the effect of social isolation on recovery. For this reason, individuals with a history of dependency should be considered potentially vulnerable to the effects of enforced isolation and should be supported accordingly.
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Discusses some of the differences between Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and his earlier work The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Gives an account of what Smith primarily intended…
Abstract
Discusses some of the differences between Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and his earlier work The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Gives an account of what Smith primarily intended by these works, i.e. to resolve the values conflict ‐ that of natural liberty versus traditional, conservative virtues. Identifies the ideas and cultures which influenced Smith in his writing; defines the thematic structure of The Wealth of Nations and describes and evaluates the arguments behind Smith’s resolution of the values conflict as detailed in his work.
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Ian H. Witten and Rodger McNab
The New Zealand Digital Library project aims to develop the underlying technology for digital libraries and make it available for others to use to create their own collections. We…
Abstract
The New Zealand Digital Library project aims to develop the underlying technology for digital libraries and make it available for others to use to create their own collections. We have built a large number of demonstration collections. Because our policy is to avoid manual processing of material, full‐text indexing and — to a lesser degree — automatically created browsing structures provide the primary point of access to the material. As well as conventional textual collections, we are experimenting with collections of musical and audio material. This article describes the library structure and present and planned collections, and summarises our experiences in the project.
Janie Hubbard, Adam Caldwell, Paige Moses, Ben Reed, Kristen Watts and Brooklyn Wood
My Country ‘Tis of Thee: How One Song Reveals the History of Civil Rights offers insights into the historic significance of the song’s familiar melody as an instrument for change…
Abstract
My Country ‘Tis of Thee: How One Song Reveals the History of Civil Rights offers insights into the historic significance of the song’s familiar melody as an instrument for change Protesting for freedom is universal, and songs have long provided a sense of solidarity and a means to communicate messages for protesters with strong beliefs about various causes. By hearing an instrumental recording, students first engage in an activity to identify the song, which, since 1831, has been known as “America” to many in the USA. Students become familiar with concepts and historic people named throughout the book by manipulating and sorting concept cards. Using historic events depicted in the book, students create timelines using a technological timeline tool. Then, after listening to a read-aloud of the book, they use clues to match different sets of lyrics with corresponding historical events. Civil rights history is revealed through different lyrics of this song.
Nowadays, available music information is increasing rapidly from fast growing digital libraries and the Internet. How to effectively retrieve music data is a challenging task and…
Abstract
Nowadays, available music information is increasing rapidly from fast growing digital libraries and the Internet. How to effectively retrieve music data is a challenging task and content‐based retrieval of music is a relatively large area. Much work that aims at creating acoustical waveforms of music has been carried out. But to many people, the most important and useful feature of music is the melody. This paper focuses on the melody‐based retrieval of music, which can be regarded as a kind of content‐based retrieval of music but much closer to the actual nature of music. It can be divided into three parts for studying: the extraction of melodic attributes, the melody input methods and the matching methods.
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Colin M. Fisher, Ozumcan Demir-Caliskan, Mel Yingying Hua and Matthew A. Cronin
Organizational scholars have long been interested in how jazz musicians manage tensions between structure and freedom, plans and action, and familiarity and novelty. Although…
Abstract
Organizational scholars have long been interested in how jazz musicians manage tensions between structure and freedom, plans and action, and familiarity and novelty. Although improvisation has been conceptualized as a way of managing such paradoxes, the process of improvisation itself contains paradoxes. In this essay, we return to jazz improvisation to identify a new paradox of interest to organizational scholars: the paradox of intentionality. To improvise creatively, jazz musicians report that they must “try not to try,” or risk undermining the very spontaneity that is prized in jazz. Jazz improvisers must therefore control their ability to relinquish deliberate control of their actions. To accomplish this, they engage in three interdependent practices. Jazz musicians intentionally surrender their sense of active control (“letting go”) while creating a passive externalized role for this sense of active control (using a “third ear”). Letting go allows new and unexpected ideas to emerge, while the metaphorical third ear can identify promising ideas or problematic execution and, in doing so, re-engage active agency (“grabbing hold”). Examining the practices within creative improvisation reveals the complexity of the lived experience of the paradox, which we argue suggests further integration among organizational research on improvisation, creativity, and paradox.
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Science of systems requires a specific and constructive mathematical model and language, which describe jointly such systemic categories as adaptation, self‐organization…
Abstract
Purpose
Science of systems requires a specific and constructive mathematical model and language, which describe jointly such systemic categories as adaptation, self‐organization, complexity, evolution, and bring the applied tools for building a system model for each specific object of a diverse nature. This formalism should be connected directly with a world of information and computer applications of systemic model, developed for a particular object. The considered information systems theory (IST) is aimed at building a bridge between the mathematical systemic formalism and information technologies to develop a constructive systemic model of revealing information regularities and specific information code for each object.
Design/methodology/approach
To fulfill this goal and the considered systems' definition, the IST joins two main concepts: unified information description of interacted flows, initiated by the sources of different nature, with common information language and systems modeling methodology, applied to distinct interdisciplinary objects; general system's information formalism for building the model, which allows expressing mathematically the system's regularities and main systemic mechanisms.
Findings
The formalism of informational macrodynamics (IMD), based of the minimax variational principle, reveals the system model's main layers: microlevel stochastics, macrolevel dynamics, hierarchical dynamic network (IN) of information structures, its minimal logic, and optimal code of communication language, generated by the IN hierarchy, dynamics, and geometry. The system's complex dynamics originate information geometry and evolution with the functional information mechanisms of ordering, cooperation, mutation, stability, diversity, adaptation, self‐organization, and the double helix's genetic code.
Practical implications
The developed IMD's theoretical computer‐based methodology and the software has been applied to such areas as technology, communications, computer science, intelligent processes, biology, economy, management, and other nonphysical and physical subjects.
Originality/value
The IMD's macrodynamics of uncertainties connect randomness and regularities, stochastic and determinism, reversibility and irreversibility, symmetry and asymmetry, stability and instability, structurization and stochastization, order and disorder, as a result of micro‐macrolevel's interactions for an open system, when the external environment can change the model's structure.