The Effect of Organizational Culture and Employee Competence on Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) with Work Motivation as a Mediation Variable (Case Study in Pekalongan District Land Office)

Having skilled employees is not enough to achieve the goals of an organization. What is most important is how to manage qualified employees to demonstrate their performance actively and engage in work and organizations with skills that cover all or even beyond their formal roles and responsibilities. Employees are expected by the organization, not in terms of completing tasks that conform to usual behavior but also behavior that provides performance that exceeds expectations or extra-role behavior. This extra-role behavior is also known as OCB. In this study, three variables can affect OCB, namely organizational culture, employee competence, and motivation as mediating variables. In measuring the relationship between the third variable and OCB, the researcher uses the SmartPLS application. And the results of the study show that organizational culture has a positive and significant effect on OCB, employee competence has a positive and significant effect on OCB, motivation can mediate the effect of employee competence on OCB but work motivation cannot judge the relationship between organizational culture and OCB.

Prosocial behavior of wearing a mask during an epidemic: an evolutionary explanation

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, with limited or no supplies of vaccines and treatments, people and policymakers seek easy to implement and cost-effective alternatives to combat the spread of infection during the pandemic. The practice of wearing a mask, which requires change in people’s usual behavior, may reduce disease transmission by preventing the virus spread from infectious to susceptible individuals. Wearing a mask may result in a public good game structure, where an individual does not want to wear a mask but desires that others wear it. This study develops and analyzes a new intervention game model that combines the mathematical models of epidemiology with evolutionary game theory. This approach quantifies how people use mask-wearing and related protecting behaviors that directly benefit the wearer and bring some advantage to other people during an epidemic. At each time-step, a suspected susceptible individual decides whether to wear a facemask, or not, due to a social learning process that accounts for the risk of infection and mask cost. Numerical results reveal a diverse and rich social dilemma structure that is hidden behind this mask-wearing dilemma. Our results highlight the sociological dimension of mask-wearing policy.

Thermodynamic Contribution to Lightning Activity in the Fourth Chimney

<p>Lightning activity over oceans is normally greatly suppressed in comparison with continents.  The most conspicuous region of enhanced lightning activity over open ocean is found in the equatorial Pacific (150 W) in many global lightning climatologies (OTD, LIS, WWLLN, GLD360, RHESSI, Schumann resonance Q-bursts) and is associated with the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ).  This oceanic lightning anomaly completes the zonal wavenumber-4 structure of continent-based lightning maxima (with nominal 90-degree longitudinal separation between sources), and so is appropriately named “the fourth chimney”.  This region is now under continuous surveillance by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on the GOES-17 satellite (at 137 W).  This total lightning activity is compared with Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) from ERA-5 reanalysis.  These CAPE values are correlated with values extracted from thermodynamic soundings at proximal stations Atuona, Rikitea and Tahiti.  The shape of the regional climatology of CAPE resembles that of the SPCZ and is oblique to the equator.  The total lightning flash rate is positively correlated with CAPE, and lightning locations are found preferentially in regions of elevated CAPE on individual days.  The diurnal variation of total lightning for January exceeds a factor-of-two and shows a phase at odds with the usual behavior of oceanic lightning near continents.</p>

Non-Parametric Evaluation Methods of the Brain Activity of a Bottlenose Dolphin during an Assisted Therapy

Dolphin-Assisted Therapies (DAT) are alternative therapies aimed to reduce anxiety levels, stress relief and physical benefits. This paper is focused on measuring and analyzing dolphins brain activity when DAT is taking place in order to identify if there is any differences in female dolphin’s neuronal signal when it is interacting with control or intervention subjects, performing our research in Delfiniti, Ixtapa, Mexico facilities. We designed a wireless and portable electroencephalographic single-channel signal capture sensor to acquire and monitor the brain activity of a female bottle-nose dolphin. This EEG sensor was able to show that dolphin activity at rest is characterized by high spectral power at slow-frequencies bands. When the dolphin participated in DAT, a 23.53% increment in the 12–30 Hz frequency band was observed, but this only occurred for patients with some disease or disorder, given that 0.5–4 Hz band keeps it at 17.91% when there is a control patient. Regarding the fractal or Self-Affine Analysis, we found for all samples studied that at the beginning the dolphin’s brain activity behaved as a self-affine fractal described by a power-law until the fluctuations of voltage reached the crossovers, and after the crossovers these fluctuations left this scaling behavior. Hence, our findings validate the hypothesis that the participation in a DAT of a Patient with a certain disease or disorder modifies the usual behavior of a female bottle-nose dolphin.

Effect of Layer Directions on Internal Structures and Tensile Properties of 17-4PH Stainless Steel Parts Fabricated by Fused Deposition of Metals

17-4PH stainless steel specimens were fabricated by fused deposition of metals (FDMet) technology, which combines 17-4PH particles with an organic binder. FDMet promises a low-cost additive manufacturing process. The present research aims to clarify the influence of layer directions in the 3D printing process on the mechanical and shrinkage properties of as-sintered and as-aged specimens. All specimens (the as-sintered and as-aged specimens printed in three layer directions) exhibited high relative density (97.5–98%). The highest ultimate strengths (880 and 1140 MPa in the as-sintered and as-aged specimens, respectively) were obtained when the layer direction was perpendicular to the tensile direction. Conversely, the specimens printed with their layer direction parallel to the tensile direction presented a low ultimate strength and low strain at breakage. The fact that the specimens with their layer direction parallel to the tensile direction presented a low ultimate strength and low strain at breakage is a usual behavior of parts obtained by means of FDM. The SEM images revealed oriented binder domains in the printed parts and oriented voids in the sintered parts. It was assumed that large binder domains in the filament were oriented perpendicular to the layer directions during the fused deposition modeling printing, and remained as oriented voids after sintering. Stress concentration in the oriented void defects was likely responsible for the poor tensile properties of these specimens.

Corona Virus Diseases (COVID-19) and Online Class among Children in Pokhara

The Declaration of COVID 19 as a pandemic became a turning point that shifted the paradigm of human civilization and education system. This paper aims to explore the behavioral aspects of school-level children and the situation of online education after the COVID 19 pandemic in Nepal. The study used an exploratory research design to achieve purposes. The parents having school-level children are the population for this study. And purposive sampling technique is used to collect primary data through an online system by sharing the link of the questionnaire form to parents living in urban areas, and fifty responses collected during a month. Descriptive statistical tools used for analysis purposes. The closure of schools has increased the use of mobiles phone in children. Children spent very little time in house undertakings, indooroutdoor games, singing and dancing, and playing with family members. They have observed changes in their usual behavior, parents are feeling difficulties to handle their children in a house settings. Online education is a new use for Nepalese society and school-level education. The participation of children in online education and the effectiveness is at a satisfactory level. However, electricity, accessory devices, internet facility, the interest of children, and lack of monitoring of children’s education have become the major problems. The study finding suggests that parents should take care of children’s education and prevent them from the unwanted effects of using the mobile phone and other undesirable behavioral changes due to the closures of schools.

Inclusive Approach for Quality and Safety Environment Improvement in Oil and Gas Industry

Implementing safety behavior in the oil and gas industries is still challenging, although fatal accidents often occur. This research aims to analyze how SHEQ talks, a Badak LNG program, can successfully prevent workers' work accidents. Using qualitative methods with a case study approach, the researchers interviewed several key persons in the SHEQ talk program, including the board of management, the SHEQ department's employees, and Badak LNG's employers. Inclusiveness is the main component in the SHEQ talks program. It leads to safety behavior among all Badak LNG's workers (interdependent stage). Unlike the usual behavior-based safety program, SHEQ talks encourage all employees to have good knowledge and skill of health and safety environments. Therefore, safety performance among the workers does not entirely depend on the OSH officers. Eliminating the superior and subordinate when conducting the safety talks are essential to build the safety culture among workers in the oil and gas industries.

Using Narrative Evidence to Convey Health Information on Social Media: The Case of COVID-19 (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED During disease outbreaks or pandemics, policy makers must convey information to the public for informative purposes (eg, morbidity or mortality rates). They must also motivate members of the public to cooperate with the guidelines, specifically by changing their usual behavior. Policy makers have traditionally adopted a didactic and formalistic stance by conveying dry, statistics-based health information to the public. They have not yet considered the alternative of providing health information in the form of narrative evidence, using stories that address both cognitive and emotional aspects. The aim of this viewpoint paper is to introduce policy makers to the advantages of using narrative evidence to provide health information during a disease outbreak or pandemic such as COVID-19. Throughout human history, authorities have tended to employ apocalyptic narratives during disease outbreaks or pandemics. This viewpoint paper proposes an alternative coping narrative that includes the following components: segmentation; barrier reduction; role models; empathy and support; strengthening self-efficacy, community efficacy, and coping tools; preventing stigmatization of at-risk populations; and communicating uncertainty. It also discusses five conditions for using narrative evidence to produce an effective communication campaign on social media: (1) identifying narratives that reveal the needs, personal experiences, and questions of different subgroups to tailor messaging to produce targeted behavioral change; (2) providing separate and distinct treatment of each information unit or theory that arises on social networks; (3) identifying positive deviants who found creative solutions for stress during the COVID-19 crisis not found by other members of the community; (4) creating different stories of coping; and (5) maintaining a dialogue with population subgroups (eg, skeptical and hesitant groups). The paper concludes by proposing criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of a narrative.

Long-Wave Penetration through a Laterally Periodic Continental Shelf

The transformation of long waves—such as tsunamis and storm surges—evolving over a continental shelf is investigated. We approach this problem numerically using a pseudo-spectral method for a higher-order Euler formulation. Solitary waves and undular bores are considered as models for the long waves. The bathymetry possesses a periodic ridge-valley configuration in the alongshore direction which facilitates a means by which we may observe the effects of refraction, diffraction, focusing, and shoaling. In this scenario, the effects of wave focusing and shoaling enhance the wave amplitude and phase speed in the shallower regions of the domain. The combination of these effects leads to a wave pattern that is atypical of the usual behavior seen in linear shallow-water theory. A reciprocating behavior in the amplitude on the ridge and valley for the wave propagation causes wave radiation behind the leading waves, hence, the amplitude approaches a smaller asymptotic value than the equivalent case with no lateral variation. For an undular bore propagating in one dimension over a smooth step, we find that the water surface resolves into five different mean water levels. The physical mechanisms for this phenomenon are provided.

Subchronic Systemic Toxicity of New Endodontic Material Based on Calcium Hydroxyapatite and Calcium Silicates

As an alternative to MTA, a new endodontic material based on hydroxyapatite and calcium silicates (ALBO-MPSA) has been synthesized, and its biocompatibility has been studied in manyin vitroandin vivostudies. The current study aims to evaluate a subchronic systemic toxicity of ALBO-MPSA on the rat animal model, as a continuation of the previous studies. Biochemical parameters of blood and histological parameters of the liver, kidneys, and spleen of the rats were analyzed after 120 days of consumption of the aqueous extract of ALBO-MPSA. The results showed no myelotoxic effect or autoimmune effect on peripheral blood cells and no pathological effect on the liver, kidney, and spleen tissues. Besides, no changes in the skin and hair of the rats, neither the change in the consumption of food and water, nor the change in their usual behavior were noticed during the experiment.