How Do Nepotism and Favouritism Affect Organisational Climate?

This study seeks to determine the effect of nepotism and favouritism on organisational climate. Using the method of random sampling, 269 persons working in Lithuanian organisations were surveyed. The received data was analysed via the application of the methods of correlation and linear regression. It was determined that organisational climate is influenced significantly by variables such as the manager’s behaviour, safety and relationships with employees, values and traditions, communication, sharing of information, behaviour of employees, and interrelationships and tolerance of one another. Meanwhile, nepotism and favouritism are influenced by the lower number of climate variables (fear related to the absence of concreteness and security, such as joining an organisation, union and tolerance of individuals who have shared interests). This work fills the void in the knowledge of connections that nepotism and favouritism have with organisational climate, drawing attention to the mutual interaction between these phenomena. The article presents a discussion and the research limitations, and provides guidelines for further research.

Prevalence of zoonotic potencial parasites in feces samples collected from public squares and beaches in São Lourenço do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil / Prevalência de parasitos com potencial zoonótico em amostras fecais coletadas de praças e praias públicas de São Lourenço do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil

In recent decades there has been a closer relationship between human beings and pets. Although this relationship is beneficial from several points of view, it also poses a risk to public health, as animals can transmit diseases to humans, called zoonoses. Among the main ones we can highlight the parasitic zoonoses, caused by helminths and protozoa, mainly transmitted via fecal-oral. Public squares and beaches are places with potential for the dissemination of parasitic zoonoses, as they are environments for mutual interaction between people and animals. The purpose of this study was to analyze the prevalence of parasites with zoonotic potential in samples of dog feces and sand collected from public squares and beaches in the municipality of São Lourenço do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. 204 samples of canine feces from the environment and 120 samples of sand were collected and submitted to coproparasitological techniques. Of the total, 57.84% of the fecal samples and 21.66% of the analyzed sand samples were contaminated with some parasitic genus. The contamination of the soil of public squares and beaches by parasites with zoonotic potential demonstrates that the population is at risk in these places, with the need to adopt sanitary measures to avoid human infection by zoonoses.

Kūn’s ‘body’: the many appearances and meanings of the pure even-numbered trigram in the early Yìjīng and related texts

One of the main reasons why words (i.e., ‘images’) in the Yìjīng and Guīcáng might appear so enigmatic is because they have become detached from the ‘pictures’ (guàhuà 卦畫) or ‘bodies’ (guàtǐ 卦體), as divination results, in which diviners first recognized them. This paper has two objectives. The first, as part of a larger database project, uses early Chinese excavated materials to reconstruct and reimage the many configurations and appearances of trigram Kūn’s ‘body’ (Kūn tǐ 坤體). Seeing and thinking about the pure even-numbered, yīn trigram in its original configurations leads us toward a deeper appreciation and understanding of the complexity of this early system of divination, and doing so is integral to investigating, as a thought experiment, complex relationships between divination results (i.e., trigrams and hexagrams) and numbers, numbers and images, and images and predictions. Users of the Changes should no longer visualize Kūn’s ‘body’ as one-dimensional ☷ and . The second, examines images of trigram Kūn in the Yìjīng, with a starting point being the images in the canonical commentaries, and the Shuō guà commentary in particular, by using hermeneutic principles in the ‘numbers and images’ tradition. The Shuō guà presents images either found in or to be extrapolated from the base text within a structured and highly interpretive system that creates ‘image programs’ for each of the eight trigrams. I argue the Shuō guà’s image programs have a defined architecture, and its images are not random lists of words collected without an agenda and devoid of relationships and mutual interaction with others.

On Some Aspects of Process Management and Human Resource Management Interaction at the Customs Authorities

Τhe name of article is “On some aspects of process management and human resource management interaction at the customs authorities”. Main stakeholders such as European Commission Directorate-General Taxation and Customs Union, World Customs Organization, universities and world customs administrations are looking for better training support mechanism, how to create contact points for university and customs internal training and to create qualitative business training programs in the customs area. In spite of different activities, for the time being concise and clear mechanism does not exist. Another problem lies in condition that training requirements do not underlie processes and job descriptions. Training organizers - customs authorities training centers and universities, developing own training programs follow the goals and objectives of staff development strategy, it becomes apparent that interaction of job descriptions and occupation standards is relatively little and do not supplement each other. The aim of research is to describe the mechanism of existing and potential human resource management and process management mutual interaction and mutual influence. To achieve the goal there has been set a task to study the specifics of job description formation at customs authorities, describe the significance of occupation descriptions to provide work at customs and their legislation, analyze the role of occupation standards to provide training needs. As a result of research proposals have been submitted about the improvement of process management, job description and occupation standard mutual interaction mechanism. Research is based on comparative analysis of literature and practical experience of custom authorities.

A System for Securing the Durabilityn and Effectiveness of the Three Seas Initiative

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the security system for the durability and effectiveness of the Three Seas Initiative as an informal union of Central European countries. The author diagnoses a set of elements that constitute potential ‘fuses’ for implementing the goals set by 3SI: embedding the Initiative’s priorities within strategic EU programmes, informalization and decentralization of cooperation, and development of mutual business and economic cooperation. The analysis of the security system has been embedded in the context of contemporary challenges faced by Europe. In order to verify the problem of security mechanisms, desk research was carried out, which consisted of a system (political) analysis and elements of strategic analysis. The result of the research work was to determine the mutual interaction and conditioning of the individual pillars of the durability and effectiveness of 3SI. Thus, evidence was carried out for the legitimacy of recognizing the three previously defined aspects as crucial for the effective operation of the Three Seas Initiative.

Collective transient ratchet transport induced by many elastically interacting particles

Several dynamical systems in nature can be maintained out-of-equilibrium, either through mutual interaction of particles or by external fields. The particle’s transport and the transient dynamics are landmarking of such systems. While single ratchet systems are genuine candidates to describe unbiased transport, we demonstrate here that coupled ratchets exhibit collective transient ratchet transport. Extensive numerical simulations for up to $$N=1024$$ N = 1024 elastically interacting ratchets establish the generation of large transient ratchet currents (RCs). The lifetimes of the transient RCs increase with N and decrease with the coupling strength between the ratchets. We demonstrate one peculiar case having a coupling-induced transient RC through the asymmetric destruction of attractors. Results suggest that physical devices built with coupled ratchet systems should present large collective transient transport of particles, whose technological applications are undoubtedly appealing and feasible.

The degree of context un/familiarity impacts the emotional feeling and preaware cardiac-brain activity: a study with emotionally salient naturalistic paradigm using DENS Dataset

Emotion experiments with naturalistic paradigms are emerging and giving new insights into dynamic brain activity. Context familiarity is considered as an important dimensions of emotion processing by appraisal theorists. However, how the context un/familiarity of the naturalistic stimuli influences the central and autonomic activity is not probed yet [check it]. Hence, we tried to address this issue in this work by breaking it down into three questions. 1) What is the relation between context un/familiarity with the neural correlates of self-assessment affective dimensions viz. valence and arousal; 2) the influence of context un/familiarity in cardiac-brain mutual interaction during emotion processing; 3.) brain network reorganization to accommodate the degree of context familiarity. We found that the less-context familiarity is primarily attributed to negative emotion feeling mediated by lack of predictability of sensory experience. Whereas, with high-context familiarity, both positive and negative emotions are felt. For less-context familiarity, the arousal activity is negatively correlated with EEG power. In addition, the cardiac activity for both high and less context familiarity is modulated before the reported self-awareness of emotional feeling. The correlation of cortical regions with cardiac activity and connectivity patterns reveals that ECG is modulated by salient feature during pre-awareness and correlates with AIC and conceptual hub in high-familiarity. Whereas, for the low familiarity, the cardiac activity is correlated with the exteroceptive sensory regions. In addition, we found that OFC and dmPFC have high connectivity with less-context familiarity, whereas AIC has high connectivity with high-context familiarity. To the best of our knowledge, the context familiarity and its influence on cardiac and brain activity have never been reported with a naturalistic paradigm. Hence, this study significantly contributes to understanding automatic processing of emotions by analyzing the effect of context un/familiarity on affective feelings, the dynamics of cardiac-brain mutual interaction, and the brain's effective connectivity during pre-awareness.

Association of Addictive Substance Use with Polyvictimization and Acceptance of Violence in Adolescent Couples

Theoretical framework: The objectives of this study were to analyse the possible influence that some variables such as substance use (alcohol and marijuana) might have on relevant aspects related to violence in adolescent dating (victimization, frequency of violence and acceptance of violence). Methods: The sample included 2577 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18. The instruments used were two questionnaires. The first identified and analysed the types and frequency of violence experienced by the victims, and their acceptance of violence. The second analysed the use of alcohol and marijuana in adolescents. Results: The results indicate that victims frequently take on the role of polyvictims, suffering aggression in up to more than five different forms at the same time. Furthermore, it was found that this phenomenon is precipitated by substance use, the frequency of abuse and the acceptance of violence in a cycle of mutual interaction.