Competition For People Research Articles

Long Multi-Stage Training for a Motor-Impaired User in a BCI Competition

In a Mental Imagery Brain-Computer Interface the user has to perform a specific mental task that generates electroencephalography (EEG) components, which can be translated in commands to control a BCI system. The development of a high-performance MI-BCI requires a long training, lasting several weeks or months, in order to improve the ability of the user to manage his/her mental tasks. This works aims to present the design of a MI-BCI combining mental imaginary and cognitive tasks for a severely motor impaired user, involved in the BCI race of the Cybathlon event, a competition of people with severe motor disability. In the BCI-race, the user becomes a pilot in a virtual race game against up to three other pilots, in which each pilot has to control his/her virtual car by his/her mental tasks. We present all the procedures followed to realize an effective MI-BCI, from the user's first contact with a BCI technology to actually controlling a video-game through her EEG. We defined a multi-stage user-centered training protocol in order to successfully control a BCI, even in a stressful situation, such as that of a competition. We put a specific focus on the human aspects that influenced the long training phase of the system and the participation to the competition.

Branding about Indonesia through cross-cultural communication

One of the most discussed issues currently is the competition of people among nations. Cross-cultural communication is becoming more and more apparent in countries in various aspects of life. This study aimed to provide an overview of how branding on Indonesia could be done through cross-cultural communication. The study examined cross-cultural communication between lecturers of Bina Nusantara University (Binus University) in Indonesia and lecturers from the Appalachian State University (ASU) the United States, as part of their research into Asian countries. The American lecturers interacted with lecturers from Binus University, Jakarta, as well as with the community in several regions of Indonesia. The study used a qualitative approach with descriptive method. This research was a case study with open interviews and observation of data collection techniques. The results showed that the interaction between Indonesian and American lecturers had built positive branding for Indonesia as reflected in posts on the American lecturers’ social media accounts which they did on their initiative after they visited Indonesia.

SPIRITUAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP DALAM PEMBERDAYAAN EKONOMI UMAT (Studi terhadap Tarekat Idrisiyah Pageningan Tasikmalaya)

This study aims to determine the pattern of intermediate application doctrine, workship or rite (dhikr) vertically and alms horizontally and their impact on empowerment community economy in a sustainable way at once to improve the quality of life of people who are decent, self-ufficient primary sector competition for people's lives. Which method used in this research is qualitative approach phenomenology. The researcher jumped directly into the field and interviewed the object of his research. The results of this study indicate that the level of leadership spirituality, doctrine and dzikir tarekat followers have an impact on acceptance and utilization and get sympathy from the community local Muslims which can influence branding, income, entrepreneurship and encourage charismatic traits for this tarekat.

Designing and Staging High-Quality Park and Recreation Experiences Using Co-Creation

While the field of park and recreation has long been focused on designing and delivering quality leisure experiences, the concept of experiences has become increasingly salient across almost all industries over the last two decades. From the time that Pine and Gilmore initially proposed the concept of the experience economy in a 1998 Harvard Business Review article, experiences have become a primary driver of the economy (Pine & Gilmore, 1999; 2011). If an organization is not providing experiences perceived by consumers as high quality and desirable, the organization most likely will not survive. A core concept associated with the design of experiences is co-creation—a collaborative process of value creation between participants and providers (Payne, Storbacka, & Frow 2008; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004a). This paper examines the concept of co-creation and its relevance for the field of park and recreation administration. This is accomplished by introducing a three-phased model of co-creation that spans over the three phases of leisure (i.e., anticipation, participation, and reflection) and discussing co-creation’s applicability to park and recreation settings through a descriptive case study. We define co-creation as active participation, dialogue, and collaboration between participants, producers, and a variety of other stakeholders throughout the process of designing, participating in, and reflecting on an experience (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004b; Rossman & Schlatter, 2015). Based on the work of Duerden, Ward, and Freeman (2015), we propose a three-phased model of co-creation, which includes co-design during the anticipation phase of an experience, co-actualization during the participation phase of the experience, and co-curation during the reflection phase of the experience. This paper provides specific examples of the different forms of co-creation during each experience phase. This paper also introduces the DART (dialogue, access, risk assessment, and transparency) model of co-creation (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2002; 2004a; 2004c) and provides examples of its applicability for park and recreation professionals. This paper concludes with a case study exemplifying how co-creation and its associated concepts can be used to design a swim program experience. Although park and recreation professionals have a long history of designing and delivering experiences, they risk seeing their offerings become obsolete if they do not find ways to stay on the forefront of the experience economy. As more organizations come to view themselves as experience providers, the competition for people’s time and resources will increase. We hope the insights in this paper will help park and recreation professionals embrace and apply the concept of co-creation in their experience offerings. Subscribe to JPRA

The Perspective of Food Sustainability and Security for Forest Edge Community through Increasing Coffee Competitiveness for Income Sustainability

The consumption of rice on the edge of the forest tends to increase unbalanced with production causing food insecurity. Efforts to strengthen the food security of forest-edge communities can be through diversification of non-rice food (corn, sweet potato, banana, cassava and arrowroot) and increased income of smallholder coffee farmers. The objectives of the research are to obtain a model of increasing the competitiveness of the people's coffee to strengthen the resilience and security of forest-edge communities. Research location in Bondowoso District.. The results of the research show that: (1) The model of enhancing the competitiveness of coffee people can strengthen the resilience and security of marginalized communities by involving local institutions in Jember (Perhutani, Plantation Department, Industry Office, Coffee and Cocoa Research Center, Cooperative Service, and Higher Education) . (2) The strategy to strengthen the resilience and security of the food of marginalized forest communities can also through the diversification of non-rice food consumption. (3) Diversification of non-rice food consumption (66-77%) and rice (23-34%). (4) In general, the food security and security of forest-edge communities in the category is quite steady.

Benchmarking Brain-Computer Interfaces Outside the Laboratory: The Cybathlon 2016.

This paper presents a new approach to benchmarking brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) outside the lab. A computer game was created that mimics a real-world application of assistive BCIs, with the main outcome metric being the time needed to complete the game. This approach was used at the Cybathlon 2016, a competition for people with disabilities who use assistive technology to achieve tasks. The paper summarizes the technical challenges of BCIs, describes the design of the benchmarking game, then describes the rules for acceptable hardware, software and inclusion of human pilots in the BCI competition at the Cybathlon. The 11 participating teams, their approaches, and their results at the Cybathlon are presented. Though the benchmarking procedure has some limitations (for instance, we were unable to identify any factors that clearly contribute to BCI performance), it can be successfully used to analyze BCI performance in realistic, less structured conditions. In the future, the parameters of the benchmarking game could be modified to better mimic different applications (e.g., the need to use some commands more frequently than others). Furthermore, the Cybathlon has the potential to showcase such devices to the general public.

Основні компоненти та зміст спортивної волонтерської діяльності

Purpose: identification of the main structural components and content of sports volunteer activities. Material & Methods: used analysis of literature and documents, organizational analysis. Result: basic structural components of sports volunteer activity are defined. The content of sports volunteer activity is disclosed. Conclusion: sports volunteer activity includes the following structural components: subject, object, purpose, motivation, means, actions; subject is a sports volunteer, the object is a sports competition, the goal is to provide gratuitous assistance for a quality competition, the means are the special knowledge, skills, communication abilities of sports volunteers, actions should be understood as types of volunteer activities and functions that volunteers perform during the preparation and conduct of competitions. Main types of sports volunteer activity are: 1) organizational; 2) judiciary; 3) coaching; 4) legal; 5) medical. Functions that volunteers perform in the competition system are general and special. Content of the functions of sports volunteering depends on the specifics of the sports, the rank of the competition, the specifics of the competition for people with special needs.

Is Server Virtualization Implementation in Business and Public Organizations a Worthwhile Investment?

Globalization is responsible for rapid development and release of information technologies. Globalization drives the competitiveness of people and organizations. Competitiveness makes organizations in particular to seek for solutions to enhance their competitive edge. Recent survey results on server virtualization suggest that the need to enhance competitiveness by reducing costs and improving business productivity is a major reason for the adoption of server virtualization in organizations. Thus, in taking adoption decisions on emerging technologies such as server virtualization, the provocative question we ask is: Is server virtualization implementation in business and public organizations a worthwhile investment? The outcomes of this study clearly show the answer is YES. However, the pitfalls associated with the implementation of these technologies are capable of making future adopters skeptical. This study examined the benefits and drawbacks of server virtualization implementation in 83 South African organizations. Server virtualization implementation has couple of drawbacks, which should be looked into.

TENDENCIES IN DEVELOPMENT OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING OFINDUSTRIAL PERSONNEL IN THE EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES

The article highlights many challenges that determine and define the tendencies in the world development. The author focuses on professionalism of human resources as it plays significant role in creating public goods and stability of the planet. Comparative pedagogical research considers this problem in relation with the tendencies of professional education development, exactly one of its component which is seen as professional training of industrial personnel. Human and social assets are two social phenomena of EU that are seen as strategic resource of education and competencies. European expansion has led to changed in migration landscape of Europe. The picture of social and professional mobility at the labour market of Europe is rather contradictory. The level of mobility is increasing employing people with high education status whereas people with low qualification are not employed. The author highlights the conditions necessary to follow in order to enter the labour market. These conditions are seen as competitiveness of people should that should be based on multi-level lifelong learning; interaction between educational programs and professional qualifications that allow people to build educational transfers in non-formal and informal learning; advanced approach to the content of professional education; assessment of learning outcomes and qualifications certification. The flexible model of pedagogical education that focuses on professional development of a teacher is considered to be the leading factor of training. The paper recognizes social partnership as a tendency of personnel training. This social partnership is seen as multipartied teams between professional education and training and state bodies, public organizations and labor market aimed at consensus-building of the parties. Due to multipartied teams, the subjects of cooperation fulfill weak points and make competitive advantages by means of public and private partnership. Alternative mechanism ensures financing of professional education and training; private capital takes responsibilities that usually lie upon the governmental bodies. However it cannot operate without the state that provides legislation and infrastructure of business.

Rivals for Attention: How Competition for Scarce Time Drove the Web Revolution, What it Means for the Mobile Revolution, and the Future of Advertising

Most online businesses try to get the attention of people and then sell advertisers access to that attention. The scarcity of attention — there’s only 24 hours in a day and much of that is spoken for — results in intense competition for people’s time and incentives to develop creative ways to people’s attention. Competition for attention helps explain how the web-based ecosystem has evolved over the last two decades and why ostensibly different companies see themselves in mortal combat. This paper describes this “attention market” and what it means for the past, present, and future of online competition.

A regional focus for solving the skills-jobs mismatch.

The United States and other nations around the world are not producing enough workers with the skills needed for employment is today's high-tech global economy. Many STEM occupations are now vital to a broad range of industries and professions, thus placing different economic sectors in competition for people with in-demand skill sets. The media's continuing fixation on the Federal Reserve's monetary medicine for unemployment obscures the growing uncomfortable reality that monetary/fiscal policy alone cannot fix the structural failures of the ossified U.S. education-to-employment system. Washington leaders inside the beltway and people across America are just starting to understand this new reality as the skilled workforce crisis deepens.

Litter and Monuments

The hype that dominates so much of urban governance today has made it impossible to miss the claim that the 21st century is the century of the city. The statistics routinely cited by bureaucrats, politicians and planners confirm that more than half the world’s population now lives in cities. With the number of city dwellers swelling, the urbanization of more and more of the world will only develop in significance in all kinds of ways. The combination of population growth and increasingly complex urban environments has profound implications for city life. Forecasts of a new, utopian era of opportunity appear as often as warnings of dire environmental catastrophe: unparalleled economic innovation driven by the finely tuned engines of “creative” and “postindustrial” cities on the one hand (Florida, 2002; Landry, 2000) and an imminent “planet of slums” on the other (Davis, 2006). But what exactly does it mean to claim that this is the age of the city, an “urban age”? Beyond the facts and figures that appear repetitively in urban development and renewal strategies, what are the consequences for the relationships between citizens, immigrants, tourists, and outsiders, as well as the many others who inhabit, and frequently struggle within, the city today? Regionally and globally cities have emerged as increasingly important players. In the context of globalization, cities create and shape connections on a worldwide scale, taking an active role in the formation and conduct of international affairs and world politics, financial flows and economic networks, as well as new forms of city-based cultural linkages, organization, and political engagement. In this sense, cities are caught in a paradoxical tension as both milieu and actors, and they are increasingly charged with a presence and power on the global stage that can compete with that of the nation-state (Calder & de Freytas, 2009; Sassen, 1991). At the same time, cities are seeking to establish themselves as dynamic and attractive cultural centers with viable local economies. In an era of international competition for people, capital, ideas and investment, cities today are ever more conscious of the importance of establishing a distinctive edge, feel and buzz—an urban “brand” that will beckon business and tourism. Constantly in search of a market niche that will hopefully translate into a competitive advantage over other city rivals, cities have become more and more entrepreneurial, adopting place-marketing and branding strategies. The so-called new creative industries built on the production and consumption of profitoriented cultural and symbolic goods are central to these strategies of city branding. Through such industries, cultural production and consumption become imbricated in extensive networks

Elections in Hybrid Regimes: Conceptual Stretching Revived

This article challenges the use of diminished subtypes as a strategy for avoiding conceptual stretching in the conceptual construction of hybrid regimes. The popular adoption of this strategy is based on its perceived ability to increase analytical differentiation and, more relevantly, avoid conceptual stretching by making a more modest claim about the extent of authoritarianism and democracy. Using this strategy, regimes are classified according to any additional or missing properties they contain vis-à-vis these two root concepts. This is demonstrated by an influential body of scholarship using elections as the defining property (e.g., ‘competitive authoritarianism’ and ‘pseudodemocracy’). The problem, however, is that the creation of these subtypes is premised on a ‘true’ democratic definition of elections: a method for selecting and empowering political representatives through a competition for people's votes (albeit without freedom and fairness). This article argues that in attempting to avoid stretching the meaning of authoritarianism and democracy, scholars have inadvertently displaced concept stretching by assuming that the meaning of democratic elections is applicable to hybrid regimes. Instead, it is proposed that elections in hybrid regimes can have at least three alternatives roles: legitimation, patronage and elite management. This article concludes by discussing the implications of this finding for the field of comparative studies and proposes three solutions to help guard against conceptual stretching in the future.

Competition for People as Drivers of Future Economic Growth: European People’s Attitudes Towards Migration

The paper follows an argument that the key elements of global competition are no longer trade of goods and services and flows of capital, but the competition for people. We claim that economic growth is driven by educated and innovative people, who prefer to live and migrate to countries that are diverse, tolerant and open to newcomers. Countries should compete for educated and diverse people and therefore a positive attitude to migration is an important argument for future economic growth. We analysed peoples’ attitudes to migration in 23 European countries based on the micro-data of the European Social Survey fourth round database. The outcomes of the empirical analysis show that European peoples’ attitudes toward immigrants vary depending on 1) personal characteristics of the respondents; 2) country’s characteristics; 3) peoples’ attitudes towards countries’ institutions. The results of the study provide empirical evidence based grounds for development of policy measures for improving peoples’ attitudes to immigration and to ethnically diverse human capital that support future economic growth.

International academic mobility: problematic and possible paradigms

‘Brain drain- (re) gain’, ‘high skills mobility’ and ‘talent wars’ are among the titles given to the international movement of and competition for people with the expertise and aptitudes that are h...

Critical Human Asset Issues for Churches

ABSTRACT Environmental trends such as low unemployment rates, downshifting, the changing profile of the labor force, increased competition for people's free time, rapid technological change, and a litigation-prone society are present human asset challenges for churches. In addition, changing organizational requirements in all types of management operations such as the growing importance of customer service, skill shortages, necessity of adapting the organization's culture to change, and solving problems in unique ways have important implications for the church. This article presents possible strategies for dealing with these issues as they impact the human assets of the church -the ministerial staff, support staff, and voluntary staff.