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Provides an introduction into wavelets and illustrates their application with two examples. The wavelet transform provides the analyst with a scaleable time‐frequency representation of the signal, which may uncover details not evidenced by conventional signal processing techniques. The signals used in this paper are Doppler ultrasound recordings of blood flow velocity taken from the internal carotid artery and the femoral artery. Shows how wavelets can be used as an alternative signal processing tool to the short time Fourier transform for the extraction of the time‐frequency distribution of Doppler ultrasound signals. Implements wavelet‐based adaptive filtering for the extraction of maximum blood velocity envelopes in the post processing of Doppler signals.

To better understand contributing factors and mediating mechanisms related to team dynamics in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments.

Literature review.

Our primary focus is on cohesion and adaptation – two critical aspects of team performance in ICE environments that have received increased attention in both the literature and funding initiatives. We begin by describing the conditions that define ICE environments and review relevant individual biological, neuropsychiatric, and environmental factors that interact with team dynamics. We then outline a unifying team cohesion framework for long-duration missions and discuss several environmental, operational, organizational, and psychosocial factors that can impact team dynamics. Finally, we end with a discussion of directions for future research and countermeasure development, emphasizing the importance of temporal dynamics, multidisciplinary integration, and novel conceptual frameworks for the inherently mixed work and social setting of long-duration missions in ICE environments.

A better understanding of team dynamics over time can contribute to success in a variety of organizational settings, including space exploration, defense and security, business, education, athletics, and social relationships.

We promote a multidisciplinary approach to team dynamics in ICE environments that incorporates dynamic biological, behavioral, psychological, and organizational factors over time.

This study seeks to build a financial uncertainty index for Saudi Arabia. This index serves as a leading indicator of Saudi economic activity and helps to describe economic fluctuations and forecast economic trends.

This study adopts an extension of the Jurado et al. (2015) procedure by combining financial uncertainty factors with their net spillover effects on GDP and inflation to construct an aggregate financial uncertainty index. The authors consider 13 monthly financial variables for Saudi Arabia from January 2010 to June 2021.

The empirical results show that the constructed financial uncertainty estimates are good leading indicators of economic activity. The robustness analysis suggests that the authors’ proposed financial uncertainty estimators outperform the alternative estimates used by other existing approaches to estimate the financial conditions index.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt at constructing a financial uncertainty index for Saudi Arabia. This study extends the empirical literature, from which the authors propose a novel conceptual framework for building a financial uncertainty index by combining the approach of Jurado et al. (2015) and the time-varying connectedness network approach proposed by Antonakakis et al. (2020)

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Despite the important implications for families, limited research has examined how workplace environments influence parenting behavior. Situated within the Work–Home Resources Model, the purpose of this study was to investigate (a) whether workplace flexibility, a contextual resource, predicts positive parenting behavior, a home outcome, and (b) whether work–family guilt mediates this relationship. A sample of working mothers with children between the ages of 1 and 18 (N = 302) completed an online survey. Linear regression analyses indicated perceived workplace flexibility predicted overall positive parenting, positive reinforcement, and warmth behaviors in working mothers, but not proactive parenting or supportiveness. Ordinary least squares (OLS) path analyses indicated work–family guilt did not mediate these relationships, but was significantly associated with workplace flexibility, indicating workplace flexibility had a significant negative effect on work–family guilt. The results of this study provide preliminary evidence that mothers’ workplace flexibility may influence positive parenting behaviors; thus, policies that promote flexible work arrangements could promote positive family outcomes and reduce feelings of guilt related to work and family life.

In face of global deinstitutionalization policy, some aging parents find themselves confronting violence and crime in the family due to abusive behavior from their adult child with mental disorder. The aim of this paper is to explore and understand the meaning given by aging parents to this deviant behavior and the different ways in which they cope with a lifetime in the shadow of violence.

Data collection was performed through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 parents, followed by content analysis.

Three themes that expressed the meaning attributed to life with ACMD in the shadow of violence: (1) constructing parental identity in a shared reality of violence, (2) social and family networks as a resource in coping with ACMD, and (3) keeping a daily life routine as an anchor in a vulnerable, abusive relationship

Intervention with such families should focus on the life review process as a therapeutic tool. Interventions should also provide a “safety belt,” including health services, public social networks, and knowledge regarding their right for self-protection.

Old age becomes an arena for redefined relationships combining increased vulnerability, needs of both sides, and its impact on the well-being of the ageing parents. This calls for better insights and deeper understanding in regard to intervention with such families.

Arthur W. Frank's dialogical narrative analysis (DNA) has been a recent addition to the plethora of methods in analysing stories. What makes this method unique from the rest is its concern for both the story's content and its effects. Stories are seen as selection/evaluation systems that do things for and on people. This chapter aims to provide the reader a heuristic guide in conducting DNA and emphasises learning through exemplars as the way of learning DNA. It provides an outline of DNA and reviews how researchers have applied it in different disciplines. Then, DNA will be applied in in the current ‘war on drugs’ in the Philippines. The stories of the policy actors – for and against the drug war – will be analysed to explore how stories affect policy choices and actions, call actors to assume different identities, associate/dissociate these actors and show how they hold their own in telling their stories. Finally, the potential of using DNA in criminology and criminal justice will be discussed.

Teams are best positioned for success when certain enabling conditions are in place such as the right mix of individuals. Effective team staffing considers team members’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) as well as the configuration of team member KSAOs and their relations, called team composition. In practice, however, how to integrate team composition considerations into team staffing to facilitate outcomes such as team cohesion can seem nebulous. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how team member KSAOs and their configurations and relations affect team cohesion, and suggest how this information can inform team staffing. We frame team cohesion as an aspect of team human capital to understand when it may be an important consideration for staffing. We describe multilevel considerations in staffing cohesive teams. We summarize theories that link team composition to team cohesion via interpersonal attraction, a shared team identity, and team task commitment. Finally, we propose a six-step approach for staffing cohesive teams, and describe a few areas for future research.

Banking sectors in central, eastern and southeastern European (CESEE) countries have gone through a transformation from state-ownership and central planning to private ownership and market-oriented decision making during the first decade of the 21st century. However, financial markets in these countries are still developing and the private sector is highly exposed to changes in exchange rates, especially in terms of the balance sheet channel. The fact that these banking sectors are predominantly owned by eurozone banks makes them vulnerable to macroeconomic tensions in the European union. This analysis investigates macroeconomic determinants of the realisation of credit risk in the loan portfolio of banks in Serbia using a panel data set covering the period from 2008Q3 to 2012Q2. Three different panel methods were applied separately for loans to households and loans to enterprises. The results indicate that a deteriorating business cycle and exchange rate depreciation led to the worsening of the quality of banks’ loan portfolio in Serbia in the period under review. In addition, statistical evidence indicates that the CPI inflation additionally affected the quality of loans. Furthermore, we find that household loan portfolios are also sensitive to changes in the short-run interest rates. As for policy implications, the importance of international cooperation between regulators is rising. A very important topic for such cooperation should be the risk-taking channel between countries with significant differences in interest rates and degree of riskiness. The interrelationship between the exchange rate and credit risk should be a major focus of both domestic macro- and micro-prudential policy – banks should be motivated to pay more attention to the possible negative spillovers when making credit decisions. Also, further development of the domestic primary and secondary T-bills market would help reducing unhedged FX risks.

This chapter draws on previous work calling for a narrative criminology sensitive to fictional stories about how we have instigated or sustained harmful action with respect to the environment. It begins by offering some defining features of narrative criminology, before turning to two examples of narrative criminological work focused on environmental crime and/or harm. One analyzes a corporate (offender's) website; the other examines attorneys' stories of environmental wrongdoing. Together, they depict a cultural narrative in the US of the causes, consequences, punishments (or lack thereof) and corporate representations of environmental harm. Next, this chapter turns to a discussion of examples of depictions or representations of environmental harm and protection in the literature. Here, the focus is on fictional works that are explicitly environmental – where the subject, plot and message centre on one or more environmental issues, such as a particular harm, its cause or causes and possible responses thereto. Finally, this chapter considers ‘allegories of environmental harm,’ examining literature that is less overtly environmental. As an illustration, it suggests an interpretation of the American children's story, Muncus Agruncus: A Bad Little Mouse (Watson, 1976), as a cautionary tale of Western hubris in the face of environmental catastrophe – with the goal of demonstrating how green criminologists have attempted to identify environmental lessons and messages in works with ostensibly other or broader messages. Overall, the intent is to acknowledge both that cultural narratives (and our interpretation of them) change and to demonstrate (the importance of) human agency to transform those narratives (and our interpretation thereof).