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Objective High-performance marine craft personnel (HPMCP) are regularly exposed to vibration and repeated shock (VRS) levels exceeding maximum limitations stated by international legislation. Whereas such exposure reportedly is detrimental to health and performance, the epidemiological data necessary to link these adverse effects causally to VRS are not available in the scientific literature, and no suitable tools for acquiring such data exist. This study therefore constructed a questionnaire for longitudinal investigations in HPMCP. Methods A consensus panel defined content domains, identified relevant items and outlined a questionnaire. The relevance and simplicity of the questionnaire's content were then systematically assessed by expert raters in three consecutive stages, each followed by revisions. An item-level content validity index (I-CVI) was computed as the proportion of experts rating an item as relevant and simple, and a scale-level content validity index (S-CVI/Ave) as the average I-CVI across items. The thresholds for acceptable content validity were 0.78 and 0.90, respectively. Finally, a dynamic web version of the questionnaire was constructed and pilot tested over a 1-month period during a marine exercise in a study population sample of eight subjects, while accelerometers simultaneously quantified VRS exposure. Results Content domains were defined as work exposure, musculoskeletal pain and human performance, and items were selected to reflect these constructs. Ratings from nine experts yielded S-CVI/Ave of 0.97 and 1.00 for relevance and simplicity, respectively, and the pilot test suggested that responses were sensitive to change in acceleration and that the questionnaire, following some adjustments, was feasible for its intended purpose. Conclusions A dynamic web-based questionnaire for longitudinal survey of key variables in HPMCP was constructed. Expert ratings supported that the questionnaire content is relevant, simple and sufficiently comprehensive, and the pilot test suggested that the ...

OBJECTIVE: High-performance marine craft personnel (HPMCP) are regularly exposed to vibration and repeated shock (VRS) levels exceeding maximum limitations stated by international legislation. Whereas such exposure reportedly is detrimental to health and performance, the epidemiological data necessary to link these adverse effects causally to VRS are not available in the scientific literature, and no suitable tools for acquiring such data exist. This study therefore constructed a questionnaire for longitudinal investigations in HPMCP. METHODS: A consensus panel defined content domains, identified relevant items and outlined a questionnaire. The relevance and simplicity of the questionnaire's content were then systematically assessed by expert raters in three consecutive stages, each followed by revisions. An item-level content validity index (I-CVI) was computed as the proportion of experts rating an item as relevant and simple, and a scale-level content validity index (S-CVI/Ave) as the average I-CVI across items. The thresholds for acceptable content validity were 0.78 and 0.90, respectively. Finally, a dynamic web version of the questionnaire was constructed and pilot tested over a 1-month period during a marine exercise in a study population sample of eight subjects, while accelerometers simultaneously quantified VRS exposure. RESULTS: Content domains were defined as work exposure, musculoskeletal pain and human performance, and items were selected to reflect these constructs. Ratings from nine experts yielded S-CVI/Ave of 0.97 and 1.00 for relevance and simplicity, respectively, and the pilot test suggested that responses were sensitive to change in acceleration and that the questionnaire, following some adjustments, was feasible for its intended purpose. CONCLUSIONS: A dynamic web-based questionnaire for longitudinal survey of key variables in HPMCP was constructed. Expert ratings supported that the questionnaire content is relevant, simple and sufficiently comprehensive, and the pilot test suggested that the questionnaire is feasible for longitudinal measurements in the study population.

For so many years on end, my job of teaching some of the most representative American poets has rendered me nostalgic for my own memories of Romanian poetry, whether classic or contemporary. Especially whenever I have had a chance of teaching Emily Dickinson, I fell under the spell of a special affinity between her short striking poems and those of Ana Blandiana, whom I have devotedly admired as an amateur reader, ever since my adolescence. They both have enchanted me by the same playful tone and (seeming) simplicity of poetic expression while conveying metaphysical messages, by means of the most unexpected imagery, which all correspond to Paul Ricoeur's concept of the "living metaphor". This is why my paper title alludes to Ricoeur's celebrated volumes about The Rule of Metaphor and Time and Narrative, in which I have always found reliable support for approaching the best lively books of poetry and narrative of the entire world literature. I hope I will not fail either my guidance or my purpose here.

AbstractWe consider the coordination of a supplier–retailer supply chain where, in addition to classical contract considerations, a supplier decides the adoption of an information structure (IS) for the supply chain, with a higher‐quality IS allowing the supply chain parties to obtain a more accurate demand forecast. Because a wholesale price contract cannot coordinate the supply chain due to misaligned incentives of supply chain parties, we explore what common coordinating contracts in the classical coordination literature can continue coordinating the supply chain with the IS adoption. Interestingly, our analysis appears to reveal the power of simplicity: some simple classical coordinating contracts (e.g., the buy‐back and revenue‐sharing contracts), though not designed with the IS consideration, still coordinate the supply chain, whereas other more complicated classical contracts (e.g., the quantity flexibility and sales rebate contracts) fail to do so. We derive a general condition for supply chain coordination and show that any contract with a newsvendor‐like transfer payment can coordinate the supply chain.

The article deals with the first exemplars of the psalms translations into French and Ukrainian. Sociohistorical factors leading to a departure from canonical languages are analyzed. Similarities and differences in the process of psalms translation into national languages are identified. Translations of psalms are spread in those countries where the national language and literature are at the stage of search and formation. At that, both in Protestant and Catholic poetry one can easily trace the tendency for the departure from the original, the manifestation of individual author's origin due to the movements for the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation which considerably changed attitude towards individuality. The Book of Psalms, having its problematic and thematic elaboration of the expression of human feelings, distinctive lyricism, strength and intensity of emotions, bright ideas, providential vigour, precision and great simplicity in the poetic representation of religious feeling, in this case became a universal model prototext which inspired poets to its further actualization

This article experiments with the use of popular novels to study the meanings of money and property in two important Asian nations, Mainland China and Taiwan. From important dictionaries of Chinese literature, we selected eight mid-length novels published in the respective countries from 1974 to 1982. Our reading of these 16 novels reveals that Taiwanese novels depict a more capitalistic culture and higher socioeconomic level than the Mainland novels do, whereas the Mainland novels place party leaders and intellectuals on a higher level than the Taiwan novels do, higher than businessmen. In both cultures, wealth is fundamentally evil. On the Mainland, wealth is said to destroy families, interfere with serious thinking, and lead to superficiality. In Taiwan, it brings tribulation, and it is far less important than simplicity, deep thinking, conformity, and responsibility. Finally, the Mainland novels blame government bureaucrats for all the troubles, whereas the Taiwan novels blame the meddling capitalists, especially American businessmen.

The input required for a seismic hazard study using conventional Probabilistic Seismic Hazard assessment (PSHA) methods can also be used for probabilistic analysis of hazard using Monte Carlo simulation methods. This technique is very flexible, and seems to be under-represented in the literature. It is very easy to modify the form of the seismicity model used, for example, to introduce non-Poissonian behaviour, without extensive reprogramming. Uncertainty in input parameters can also be modelled very flexibly - for example, by the use of a standard deviation rather than by the discrete branches of a logic tree. In addition (and this advantage is perhaps not as trivial as it may sound) the simplicity of the method means that its principles can be grasped by the layman, which is useful when results have to be explained to people outside the seismological/engineering communities, such as planners and politicians. In this paper, some examples of the Monte Carlo method in action are shown in the context of a low to moderate seismicity area: the United Kingdom.

Summary Investment and uncertaintyAfter a few introductory remarks about the necessity of uniform definitions about plan horizon, returns, expenses, interest factor ett. for all investment alternatives and the necessity of an also uniform way of prediction, several models on investment analysis which are known from literature are briefly discussed. For simplicity there is only one decision variable (i.e. capacity); the variables influencing it are called exogeneous variables. These exogeneous variables may be deterministic and then one has to maximize the sum of the discounted cash flows from each project where different levels of investment into a project are supposed to exclude each other. The maximization may be subject to restrictions or not. If the exogeneous variables are stochastic one has to maximize the expected utility, mostly defined by the expected value and the variance of the discounted cash flows. The way to carry this out is simulation. Also portfolio analysis may be used, but there are some objections against this method, which are discussed.

Abstract
The aim of a correspondence analysis is the graphical representation of the categories of variables in one frame of reference. This visualization is possible due to the decomposition of the basic matrix with the use of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). There are three matrices used in the process of decomposition: right singular vectors, left singular vectors, and a singular value diagonal matrix. The aim of this paper is to compare four different approaches and algorithms of SVD methods used in a correspondence analysis. In the literature, four approaches are known to singular value decomposition, defined by: R.A. Fisher (1940), M.J. Greenacre (1984), E.B. Anderson (1991), and J.D. Jobson (1992). Those computational procedures will be presented and compared in this paper. Also, methods of determining the coordinates of the category column and line matrix, as well as the values of inertia will be defined for these approaches. A key problem is to compare the well-known approaches, since in the literature only one approach ‒ proposed by Greenacre ‒ is used for singular value decomposition. The reason of the superiority of this algorithm over the others may be the simplicity and ease of the mathematical calculations. Greenacre's algorithm is also used in R statistical software, making its availability and popularity growing, however, other algorithms are worth presenting and focusing on.

Despite considerable literature on the Bush administration's war on terrorism rhetoric, little attention has been paid to its discourse of moral disengagement, leaving an important and still relevant gap that this paper aims to address. Rather than approaching this gap in terms of an archival historical analysis that is disconnected from the present, it proposes an exploratory revisit of the rhetoric that the benefits of hindsight might enrich and, we argue, aid in understanding connections to the current post-invasion turmoil and the gradual ISIS takeover. Having subjected nineteen presidential speeches to qualitative content analysis, we identified a number of moral disengagement mechanisms: moral justification, advantageous comparisons, and attribution of blame, dehumanisation of the enemy, the use of sanitizing language, diffusion of responsibility and minimization of harm. We also identified novel themes relating to American excellence/patriotism, religious ideals and fear- arousing appeals, offering original contributions to the existing literature and advancing our understanding of dynamic, real-world, and highest stakes moral disengagement whose parallels can be identified in today's political discourses. The detailed analysis unveils the apparent paradox of propagating moral disengagement through a thread of arguments that interweave diversity with uniformity, complexity with simplicity, in effect alerting the reader to the processes of moral desensitisation that the past, current and future "warmongering" political discourses may often rely upon.

Despite considerable literature on the Bush administration's war on terrorism rhetoric, little attention has been paid to its discourse of moral disengagement, leaving an important and still relevant gap that this paper aims to address. Rather than approaching this gap in terms of an archival historical analysis that is disconnected from the present, it proposes an exploratory revisit of the rhetoric that the benefits of hindsight might enrich and, we argue, aid in understanding connections to the current post-invasion turmoil and the gradual ISIS takeover. Having subjected nineteen presidential speeches to qualitative content analysis, we identified a number of moral disengagement mechanisms: moral justification, advantageous comparisons, and attribution of blame, dehumanisation of the enemy, the use of sanitizing language, diffusion of responsibility and minimization of harm. We also identified novel themes relating to American excellence/patriotism, religious ideals and fear- arousing appeals, offering original contributions to the existing literature and advancing our understanding of dynamic, real-world, and highest stakes moral disengagement whose parallels can be identified in today's political discourses. The detailed analysis unveils the apparent paradox of propagating moral disengagement through a thread of arguments that interweave diversity with uniformity, complexity with simplicity, in effect alerting the reader to the processes of moral desensitisation that the past, current and future "warmongering" political discourses may often rely upon.

International audience ; Decision support is the science and associated practice that consist in providing recommendations to decision makers facing problems, based on available theoretical knowledge and empirical data. Although this activity is often seen as being mainly concerned with solving mathematical problems and conceiving algorithms, it is essentially an empirical and socially framed activity, where interactions between clients and analysts, and between them and concerned third parties, play a crucial role. Since the 80s', two concepts have structured the literature devoted to analysing this aspect of decision support: validity and legitimacy. Whereas validity is focused on the interactions between the client and the analyst, legitimacy refers to the broader picture: the organisational context, the overall problem situation, the environment, culture, history. Despite its unmistakable importance, this concept has not received the attention it deserves in the literature in operational research and decision support. The present chapter aims at filling this gap. For that purpose, we review the literature in other disciplines (mainly philosophy and political science) that is demonstrably relevant to elaborate a concept of legitimacy useful in decision support contexts. Based on this review, we propose a general theory of legitimacy, adapted to decision support contexts, encompassing the relevant contributions we found in the literature. According to this general theory, a legitimate decision support intervention is one for which the decision support provider produces a justification that satisfies two conditions: (i) it effectively convinces the decision support provider's interlocutors (effectiveness condition) and (ii) it is organised around the active elicitation of as many and as diverse counterarguments as possible (truthfulness condition). Despite its conceptual simplicity, legitimacy, understood in this sense, is a very exacting requirement, opening ambitious research avenues that we delineate.

International audience ; Decision support is the science and associated practice that consist in providing recommendations to decision makers facing problems, based on available theoretical knowledge and empirical data. Although this activity is often seen as being mainly concerned with solving mathematical problems and conceiving algorithms, it is essentially an empirical and socially framed activity, where interactions between clients and analysts, and between them and concerned third parties, play a crucial role. Since the 80s', two concepts have structured the literature devoted to analysing this aspect of decision support: validity and legitimacy. Whereas validity is focused on the interactions between the client and the analyst, legitimacy refers to the broader picture: the organisational context, the overall problem situation, the environment, culture, history. Despite its unmistakable importance, this concept has not received the attention it deserves in the literature in operational research and decision support. The present chapter aims at filling this gap. For that purpose, we review the literature in other disciplines (mainly philosophy and political science) that is demonstrably relevant to elaborate a concept of legitimacy useful in decision support contexts. Based on this review, we propose a general theory of legitimacy, adapted to decision support contexts, encompassing the relevant contributions we found in the literature. According to this general theory, a legitimate decision support intervention is one for which the decision support provider produces a justification that satisfies two conditions: (i) it effectively convinces the decision support provider's interlocutors (effectiveness condition) and (ii) it is organised around the active elicitation of as many and as diverse counterarguments as possible (truthfulness condition). Despite its conceptual simplicity, legitimacy, understood in this sense, is a very exacting requirement, opening ambitious research avenues that we delineate.

International audience ; Decision support is the science and associated practice that consist in providing recommendations to decision makers facing problems, based on available theoretical knowledge and empirical data. Although this activity is often seen as being mainly concerned with solving mathematical problems and conceiving algorithms, it is essentially an empirical and socially framed activity, where interactions between clients and analysts, and between them and concerned third parties, play a crucial role. Since the 80s', two concepts have structured the literature devoted to analysing this aspect of decision support: validity and legitimacy. Whereas validity is focused on the interactions between the client and the analyst, legitimacy refers to the broader picture: the organisational context, the overall problem situation, the environment, culture, history. Despite its unmistakable importance, this concept has not received the attention it deserves in the literature in operational research and decision support. The present chapter aims at filling this gap. For that purpose, we review the literature in other disciplines (mainly philosophy and political science) that is demonstrably relevant to elaborate a concept of legitimacy useful in decision support contexts. Based on this review, we propose a general theory of legitimacy, adapted to decision support contexts, encompassing the relevant contributions we found in the literature. According to this general theory, a legitimate decision support intervention is one for which the decision support provider produces a justification that satisfies two conditions: (i) it effectively convinces the decision support provider's interlocutors (effectiveness condition) and (ii) it is organised around the active elicitation of as many and as diverse counterarguments as possible (truthfulness condition). Despite its conceptual simplicity, legitimacy, understood in this sense, is a very exacting requirement, opening ambitious research avenues that we delineate.

The Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO) is a population-based meta-heuristic algorithm that belongs to the family of swarm intelligence algorithms inspired by the social behavior of gray wolves, in particular the social hierarchy and hunting mechanism. Because of its simplicity, flexibility, and few parameters to be tuned, it has been applied to a wide range of optimization problems. And yet it has some disadvantages, such as poor exploration skills, stagnation at local optima, and slow convergence speed. Therefore, different variants of GWO have been proposed and developed to address these disadvantages. In this article, some literature, especially from the last five years, has been reviewed and summarized by well-known publishers. First, the inspiration and the mathematical model of GWO were explained. Subsequently, the improved GWO variants were divided into four categories and discussed. After that, each variant's methodology and experiments were explained and clarified. The study ends with a summary conclusion of the main foundation of GWO and suggests some possible future directions that can be explored further.