scholarly journals Gender Perceptions of Psychological Empowerment in The Workplace: A Comparative Analysis from Two Cultures

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Greg-Victor Obi
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Method ◽  
Psychological Empowerment ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The United States ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Gender Perceptions ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
Cultural Power

This study investigates how female and male workers perceive feelings of Psychological Empowerment (PE), using respondents from two different countries with dissimilar cultural power dynamics. Two hundred ten non-managerial bank workers from Nigeria and the United States were selected for this study. A comparative quantitative method was used for this study. Statistical analyses were performed using both spreadsheets and SPSS. My key research question is designed to determine if there are differences in how female and male employees perceive Psychological Empowerment. Data analysis indicates that in both countries combined, and individually, there is a statistically significant difference in the perception of PE between the female and male respondents. Hence, I propose that the first step toward achieving power equity amongst both genders is to first understand how women and men perceive empowerment at a personal level (Psychological Empowerment).

Managerial Ethics and the Function of Culture in Mexico and the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-82
Author(s):  
F. Sigmund Topor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Ethical Attitudes ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Significant Positive Relationship ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
Significant Difference

This chapter is a reflection on the ethical distinctions between two cultures that share the same civilization (i.e., Mexico and the United States). Impoverished ethical attitudes have inflicted observable harm upon business by unethical decisions and misconduct. Much of this phenomenon is traceable to distinctive cultural construal of ethics. This phenomenon exemplifies the influence that culture exerts on managers, which has a distinct influence on attitudes and behaviors. This chapter explores, through empirical data, whether differences rooted in culture have any contribution to differences in ethical attitudes. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between national culture and ethical attitudes and the cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation. A significant difference in ethical attitudes between managers from the United States and Mexico was also found.

scholarly journals The Benefit of Utilizing Brain-Based Learning in Higher Education Online Environments

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renee Winter
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The United States ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Online Faculty ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Brain Based Learning ◽  
Face To Face Instruction

Higher education has experienced a significant transformation from traditional face-to-face instruction to online instruction. The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to determine to what extent postsecondary online faculty utilized brain-based learning techniques as part of their academic practices in the online asynchronous learning environment and to assess differences in the use of these techniques between online full-time and online adjunct faculty employed by two public universities and one private university located in the Southwest region of the United States. The theoretical framework of Hart’s (1983) brain-based learning theory (BBLT) informed this study. The sample consisted of 539 accepted and completed surveys. The participants completed 55 questions based on brain-based learning. Quantitative data were collected using Klinek’s (2009) questionnaire about brain-based learning knowledge, beliefs, and practices. The data from the questionnaire measured the online faculty’s knowledge, beliefs, and practices of brain-based learning techniques. The data were analyzed using descriptive information about the sample computing frequencies of the variables. Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities were conducted to complete the descriptive statistics for the first research question. The statistical analysis used for research question two and three was Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) using a 2×2 factorial design to test the hypotheses. The researcher found that there was a significant difference between the BBLT practices of the online faculty from public (M = 3.45) and private universities (M = 3.28), F (1, 294) = 1.62, p = .004, ŋ2 = .044. The study revealed that there is a lack of knowledge about BBLT supporting the need for professional development and training.

Does It Translate? A Case Study of Conceptual Design Outcomes With U.S. and Moroccan Students

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aoran Peng ◽  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Project Outcomes ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The U.S

Abstract High globalization in the world today results in the involvement of multi-discipline, multi-cultural teams, as well as the entrance of more economic powers in the market. Effective innovation strategies are critical if emerging markets plan to become economic players in this increasingly connected global market. The current work compares the design processes of designers from emerging and established markets to understand how design methods are applied across culture. Specifically, the design decisions of designers from Morocco, one of the four leading economic power in Africa, and the U.S. are investigated. Concept generation and selection are the focus of the current study as they are critical steps in the design process that can determine project outcomes. Previous studies have identified three factors, ownership bias, gender, and idea goodness as influential during concept selection. The effect of these three factors on designers in the United States is well established. The current study expands upon previous findings to examine the influence of these factors across two cultures — U.S. and Morocco. The results of this study, although preliminary, found that U.S. students had a higher idea fluency than Morocco students. It also found a significant difference in idea fluency between genders in the U.S. but not in Morocco. In addition, it was found that overall, participants exhibited ownership bias toward ideas with high goodness.

INITIAL STEP OF SPECIALIZED CORPORA BUILDING: CLEANING PROCEDURES

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Yakubson ◽  
Victor Zakharov
Keyword(s):  
Text Processing ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Linguistic Annotation ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Cleaning Procedures ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
Future Work

This paper deals with the specialized corpora building, specifically academic language corpus in the biotechnology field. Being a part of larger research devoted to creation and usage of specialized parallel corpus, this piece aims to analyze the initial step of corpus building. Our main research question was what procedures we need to implement to the texts before using them to develop the corpus. Analysis of previous research showed the significant quantity of papers devoted to corpora creation, including academic specialized corpora. Different sides of the process were analyzed in these researches, including the types of texts used, the principles of crawling, the recommended length of texts etc. As to the text processing for the needs of corpora creation, only the linguistic annotation issues were examined earlier. At the same time, the preliminary cleaning of texts before their usage in corpora may have significant influence on the corpus quality and its utility for the linguistic research. In this paper, we considered three small corpora derived from the same set of academic texts in the biotechnology field: “raw” corpus without any preliminary cleaning and two corpora with different level of cleaning. Using different Sketch Engine tools, we analyzed these corpora from the position of their future users, predominantly as sources for academic wordlists and specialized multi-word units. The conducted research showed very little difference between two cleaned corpora, meaning that only basic cleaning procedures such as removal of reference lists are can be useful in corpora design. At the same time, we found a significant difference between raw and cleaned corpora and argue that this difference can affect the quality of wordlists and multi-word terms extraction, therefore these cleaning procedures are meaningful. The main limitation of the study is that all texts were taken from the unique source, so the conclusions could be affected by this specific journal’s peculiarities. Therefore, the future work should be the verification of results on different text collections

scholarly journals Protective Effectiveness of Long-Lasting Permethrin Impregnated Clothing Against Tick Bites in an Endemic Lyme Disease Setting: A Randomized Control Trial Among Outdoor Workers

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 1532-1538
Author(s):  
Cedar Mitchell ◽  
Megan Dyer ◽  
Feng-Chang Lin ◽  
Natalie Bowman ◽  
Thomas Mather ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
The United States ◽  
Amblyomma Americanum ◽  
Adverse Outcomes ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Tick Bites ◽  
Outdoor Workers ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Protective Effectiveness

Abstract Tick-borne diseases are a growing threat to public health in the United States, especially among outdoor workers who experience high occupational exposure to ticks. Long-lasting permethrin-impregnated clothing has demonstrated high initial protection against bites from blacklegged ticks, Ixodes scapularis Say (Acari: Ixodidae), in laboratory settings, and sustained protection against bites from the lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum (L.) (Acari: Ixodidae), in field tests. However, long-lasting permethrin impregnation of clothing has not been field tested among outdoor workers who are frequently exposed to blacklegged ticks. We conducted a 2-yr randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded trial among 82 outdoor workers in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. Participants in the treatment arm wore factory-impregnated permethrin clothing, and the control group wore sham-treated clothing. Outdoor working hours, tick encounters, and bites were recorded weekly to assess protective effectiveness of long-lasting permethrin-impregnated garments. Factory-impregnated clothing significantly reduced tick bites by 65% in the first study year and by 50% in the second year for a 2-yr protective effect of 58%. No significant difference in other tick bite prevention method utilization occurred between treatment and control groups, and no treatment-related adverse outcomes were reported. Factory permethrin impregnation of clothing is safe and effective for the prevention of tick bites among outdoor workers whose primary exposure is to blacklegged ticks in the northeastern United States.

Henry James, The Outcry, and the Possibilities of Connoisseurship

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Deli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Henry James ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Cultural Hero

Abstract This article reveals Henry James’s commitment to professional connoisseurship as a means of asserting control over a mass reading public. Focusing on The Outcry (1911), James’s last published novel, it demonstrates the author’s deployment of connoisseurial strategies to produce a text that, perhaps surprisingly, turns away from the performance of authorial nuance. A related strand of analysis situates The Outcry within the cultural and social context of the Edwardian art drain, the period of time when a significant number of British-owned art objects were sold to museums and private collectors, most often in the United States. I argue that in this text, James seizes upon the figure of the professional connoisseur as a cultural hero and proxy for the novelist author. At the same time, he makes a point of celebrating and promoting the autocratic power exercised by this figure. Although The Outcry is often disregarded as a simple, even superficial work, these moves articulate a complex manifestation of class conflict, aesthetic training, and cultural power. They simultaneously reflect James’s late-in-life conviction that connoisseurship might itself serve as a literary strategy for seeing and shaping meaning.

scholarly journals Testing telediagnostic thyroid ultrasound in Peru: a new horizon in expanding access to imaging in rural and underserved areas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. Marini ◽  
S. L. Weiss ◽  
A. Gupta ◽  
Y. T. Zhao ◽  
T. M. Baran ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Thyroid Nodule ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
The United States ◽  
Epidemiological Studies ◽  
Thyroid Ultrasound ◽  
Target Region ◽  
Experienced Radiologist ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Size Evaluation

Abstract Purpose Thyroid ultrasound is a key tool in the evaluation of the thyroid, but billions of people around the world lack access to ultrasound imaging. In this study, we tested an asynchronous telediagnostic ultrasound system operated by individuals without prior ultrasound training which may be used to effectively evaluate the thyroid and improve access to imaging worldwide. Methods The telediagnostic system in this study utilizes volume sweep imaging (VSI), an imaging technique in which the operator scans the target region with simple sweeps of the ultrasound probe based on external body landmarks. Sweeps are recorded and saved as video clips for later interpretation by an expert. Two operators without prior ultrasound experience underwent 8 h of training on the thyroid VSI protocol and the operation of the telemedicine platform. After training, the operators scanned patients at a health center in Lima. Telediagnostic examinations were sent to the United States for remote interpretation. Standard of care thyroid ultrasound was performed by an experienced radiologist at the time of VSI examination to serve as a reference standard. Results Novice operators scanned 121 subjects with the thyroid VSI protocol. Of these exams, 88% were rated of excellent image quality showing complete or near complete thyroid visualization. There was 98.3% agreement on thyroid nodule presence between VSI teleultrasound and standard of care ultrasound (Cohen’s kappa 0.91, P < 0.0001). VSI measured the thyroid size, on average, within 5 mm compared to standard of care. Readers of VSI were also able to effectively characterize thyroid nodules, and there was no significant difference in measurement of thyroid nodule size (P = 0.74) between VSI and standard of care. Conclusion Thyroid VSI telediagnostic ultrasound demonstrated both excellent visualization of the thyroid gland and agreement with standard of care thyroid ultrasound for nodules and thyroid size evaluation. This system could be deployed for evaluation of palpable thyroid abnormalities, nodule follow-up, and epidemiological studies to promote global health and improve the availability of diagnostic imaging in underserved communities.

scholarly journals Assessing Diazinon Pollution in the Three Major Rivers Flowing into the Caspian Sea (Iran)

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 335
Author(s):  
Reza Dahmardeh Behrooz ◽  
Abbas Esmaili-sari ◽  
Magdalena Urbaniak ◽  
Paromita Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Organophosphorus Pesticides ◽  
Aquatic Organisms ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Caspian Sea ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Pollution Levels ◽  
Haraz River ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Medium Risk

The aim of this study was to investigate the seasonal and spatial variations in the concentrations of a widely used organophosphorous pesticide (OPP), diazinon, and the associated risk posed by this OPP in the surface water from the three largest rivers located in the northern province of Iran: the Haraz, the Talar and the Babolrood rivers. These rivers are located in the agriculture province of Mazandaran, and are exposed to high doses of organophosphorus pesticides, especially diazinon. The concentration of diazinon was determined using gas chromatography, while the potential risk posed by diazinon was elucidated using a Risk Quotient (RQ) calculated for general (RQm) and worst-case (RQex) scenarios. The obtained results demonstrated that the average diazinon concentrations ranged from 41 ± 76 ng/L in the Talar River and 57 ± 116 ng/L in the Haraz River, to 76.5 ± 145 ng/L in the Babolrood River, with a significant difference noted between summer and autumn seasons for all three rivers. For some stations, the concentration of diazinon is higher than the standard guidelines of Australian/New Zealand Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality (FMWQ) and the United States Criteria Maximum Concentration (CMC). The calculated RQs indicated a medium risk of diazinon, RQm = 0.73 and RQex = 2.27, in the Talar River; RQm = 1.02 and RQex = 2.49 in the Haraz River; and RQm = 1.35 and RQex = 4.54 in the Babolrood River. The overall exposure of diazinon was defined to have a high risk (RQm and RQex > 1); however, the summer sampling revealed a high risk (RQm and RQex > 1), while the autumn had a medium risk (RQm and RQex < 1). The obtained results revealed not only elevated concentrations of diazinon in the studied rivers but most importantly the high risk posed by this OPP for the aquatic organisms and the wellbeing of the whole river ecosystem. The current study showed that development and implementation of appropriate standards and regulations toward diazinon in countries such as Iran are required to reduce the pollution levels and risks related to elevated concentrations of the studied pesticide.

scholarly journals El Nacimiento del Pueblo Mestizo: Critical Discourse on Historical Trauma, Community Resilience and Healing

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-275
Author(s):  
Lisa Cacari Stone ◽  
Magdalena Avila ◽  
Bonnie Duran
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Field Notes

Purpose. Historical trauma has been widely applied to American Indian/Alaska Native and other Indigenous populations and includes dimensions of language, sociocultural, and land losses and associated physical and mental disorders, as well as economic hardships. Insufficient evidence remains on the experiences of historical trauma due to waves of colonization for mixed-race Mexican people with indigenous ancestry (el pueblo mestizo). Research Question. Drawing from our critical lenses and epistemic advantages as indigenous feminist scholars, we ask, “How can historical trauma be understood through present-day discourse of two mestizo communities? What are public health practice and policy implications for healing historical trauma among mestizo populations?” Methodology and Approach. We analyzed the discourse from two community projects: focus groups and ethnographic field notes from a study in the U.S.–Mexico border region (2012–2014) and field notes and digital stories from a service-learning course in northern New Mexico (2016–2018). Findings. Our analysis describes the social and historical experiences of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Chicanas/os, and Nuevo Mexicano peoples in the southwestern border region of the United States. We found four salient themes as manifestations of “soul-wound”: (1) violence/fear, (2) discrimination/shame, (3) loss, and (4) deep sorrow. Themes mitigating the trauma were community resiliency rooted in “querencia” (deep connection to land/home/people) and “conscientizacion” (critical consciousness). Conclusion. Historical trauma experienced by mestizo Latinx communities is rooted in local cultural and intergenerational narratives that link traumatic events in the historic past to contemporary local experiences. Future public health interventions should draw on culturally centered strength-based resilience approaches for healing trauma and advancing health equity.

scholarly journals Ampicillin-Ceftriaxone vs Ampicillin-Gentamicin for Definitive Therapy of Enterococcus faecalis Infective Endocarditis: A Propensity Score–Matched, Retrospective Cohort Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Niyati H Shah ◽  
Kathleen A Shutt ◽  
Yohei Doi
Keyword(s):  
Infective Endocarditis ◽  
Propensity Score ◽  
Adverse Events ◽  
Cohort Analysis ◽  
Hospital Readmissions ◽  
Length Of Hospital Stay ◽  
The United States ◽  
Aminoglycoside Resistance ◽  
Definitive Therapy ◽  
Significant Difference

Abstract Background Ampicillin-ceftriaxone (AC) has emerged as an alternative antibiotic regimen for enterococcal infective endocarditis (EIE) with reduced toxicity compared with ampicillin-gentamicin (AG), but evidence regarding its success in reducing EIE-associated death in the United States is limited. Methods We conducted a retrospective, propensity score–matched cohort analysis of EIE patients treated with AC or AG between 2010 and 2017 at 3 hospitals in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We assessed all-cause 90-day mortality as the primary outcome and in-hospital mortality, length of hospital stay, hospital readmissions, adverse events, and relapse of bacteremia as the secondary outcomes. Results A total of 190 patients with EIE (100 treated with AC and 90 with AG) were included. Ninety-day mortality was significantly higher with AC than AG (21% vs 8%; P = .02). After propensity score matching, 56 patients in each group remained for the outcomes analysis. Documented aminoglycoside resistance, presence of annular or aortic abscess, and complete pacemaker removal were the significantly different variables between the 2 matched cohorts. We observed no statistically significant difference in 90-day mortality between the 2 treatment groups (11% vs 7%; P = .55). Adverse events were more common in patients treated with AG (25 vs 39; P = .0091), and more patients in the propensity score–matched AG cohort switched antibiotic regimens than in the AC group (10% vs 49%; P &lt; .0001). Conclusions Patients treated with AC demonstrate no significant differences in mortality, treatment failure, or bacteremia relapse compared with AG in a propensity score–matched EIE cohort.

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