Salient Difference Research Articles

Comparison of two severe low‐temperature snowstorm and ice freezing events in China: Role of Eurasian mid‐high latitude circulation patterns

AbstractA severe low‐temperature snowstorm and ice freezing event occurred in China in early 2018. This event was similar to that occurred in early 2008 but with a weaker intensity and salient difference in location and extent. The reason for this discrepancy was investigated in this study using station data and atmospheric reanalysis data. The results reveal that two different circulation patterns (i.e., zonal dipole pattern and meridional dipole pattern) over the mid‐high latitudes of Eurasia played an important role. The zonal dipole pattern, which is closely related to the 2018 event, is characterized by positive anomalies over the Ural Mountains and negative anomalies over Lake Baikal in the 500 hPa geopotential height field. This pattern can cause intense low temperatures in northern China through its influence on the anomalous cyclone over Northeast Asia. The meridional dipole pattern, which is highly associated with the 2008 event, is characterized by positive anomalies over Siberia and negative anomalies over Asia in the 500 hPa geopotential height field. This pattern corresponds to a strong East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) and can drive cold air to move further southward, causing nearly nationwide chilly weather, particularly in northwestern China and south of the Yangtze River valley. The two patterns, combined with the strengthened western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH), have a synergistic role in the occurrence of snowfall. However, these patterns have weak correlations with the number of icy days but provide favourable conditions for ice freezing events.

Being realistic and demanding the impossible

Characterising realism by contrasting it with moralism leaves open several questions to do with realism’s practical import. If political judgment is not to be derived — exclusively or at all — from pre-political moral commitments, what scope is there for genuinely normative political thinking? And even if there is some scope for political normativity, does realism’s reliance on interpretations of political practices condemn it to some form of status quo bias? In this paper I address those questions. My main aim is to assuage some worries about realism’s alleged conservative tendencies. I argue that there is an important sense in which realists can support radical and even unachievable political change — one can be realistic and demand the impossible, as the soixante- huitard slogan goes. To see how that may be the case one needs to characterise realism by contrasting it with both non-ideal theory and utopianism. In a nutshell, realism differs from non- ideal theory because it need not be concerned with feasibility constraints, and it differs from utopianism because it eschews detailed blueprints of the perfect polity.

Knowledge requirement theoretical framework for construction procurement management

Procurement management has been a focal point of many studies. This led to several industry stakeholders to produce reports on how best to achieve it. The construction sector comprises of loosely integrated activities and assemblage of various products from other industries. These characteristics make it unique from other industries, and as such, its success is largely dependent on the quantum of knowledge applied in its products design, strategy and implementation. However, clients of the industry and other stakeholders failed to appreciate this salient difference between the construction industry and others, thereby treating the procurement of its product as though is off-the-shelf. This is found in several procurement frameworks reviewed by this study, when the procurement for construction is lumped together with the same consideration as procurement for goods and services. Given the above perspective, this study explores the literature in order to develop a knowledge requirement theoretical framework for construction procurement management. An exploratory design was used as a stand-alone approach through a critical review of the extant literature on construction complexities, general procurement competencies and management. The reviews were applied in the context of systems thinking theory to develop a knowledge requirement theoretical framework for construction procurement management. The framework conceptualized knowledge requirement for construction procurement management as a conglomerate of knowledge (system) that is made up of units of knowledge aligned to accomplish a construction project. Thus, for full attainment of construction procurement management knowledge, a manager needs to possess the various units of knowledge that are appropriate for the execution and coordination of the various activities in construction procurement processes.

Revisiting gender gap in quality of health care in urban China: a standardised patient audit study

BackgroundGrowing evidence suggests that female physicians tend to deliver health services of higher quality than their male counterparts. We aimed to revisit the issue of gender disparities in health-care quality in a typical primary care setting. MethodsIn our audit study, both male and female standardised patients (SPs) recruited from the local community and trained to present consistent cases of illness (unstable angina and asthma) were randomly assigned by computer generation to male and female primary health-care providers of community health centres (CHCs) in urban Xi'an, China. Written consent was obtained from clinicians and the hospital director 3 months before the SP visits. Data were anonymised when analysed. We estimated linear regression models to compare clinical practice and outcomes (including clinical process, assessment of treatment, service time, health expenditure, and physician–patient relationship) by physician gender and by physician–patient gender match after controlling for provider characteristics, and series of fixed effects. Ethics approval was obtained by the Ethics Committee of Xi'an Jiaotong University Health Science Center. FindingsIn Aug 17–28, 2017, and July 30 to Aug 10, 2018, there were 492 interactions between 243 physicians and 12 SPs in 63 CHCs. We found little difference by physician gender. However, our results suggest a salient difference by patient gender, which was driven by a physician–patient gender match. Compared with female patients with female physicians, male patients with female physicians were prescribed 0·586 more items of invasive tests (p=0·003) and 0·623 more items of unnecessary tests (p=0·008). However, male patients were prescribed 0·299 less items of unnecessary drugs (p=0·026). Importantly, the interactions of male patients with female physicians came with a 23·0% higher correct diagnosis (p=0·008), and a 19·4% higher correct drug treatment (p=0·029) than for female patients with female physicians. Male patients had a 14·93 China Yuan higher clinical tests expense (p=0·008) and a 2·040 higher score in the measure of patient-centred communication (p=0·052). InterpretationThese findings might help to explain the gap in quality of care received by male and female patients, a form of health-care inequity and potential discrimination that has to be addressed. FundingThe National Natural Science Foundation of China (71874137), Shaanxi Social Science Foundation (2017S024), Shaanxi Soft Science (2015KRM117), Shaanxi Provincial Youth Star of Science and Technology in 2016, Xi'an Jiaotong University (SK2015007), Top-notch Young Professionals of China and China Medical Board (15-227), China Scholarship Council (201706280307; 201806280021), the US PEPPER Center Scholar Award (P30AG021342), and National Institutes of Health (R03AG048920; K01AG053408).

Fake News in Media Art: Fake News as a Media Art Practice Vs. Fake News in Politics

Fake news has become popular in the last few years and appears mainly in the form of alleged news articles that spread via social media or as satire. However, fake news can appear in two additional manifestations: in politics—when falsehoods are generated by politicians; and as a practice of media art—by the activist-art branch ‘tactical media’. From the perspective of media art history, this article presents a comparative analysis of two case studies of each of these domains: the political case was a false statement about the 2017 tax bill by US president Donald Trump, and the media art case was a false statement on BBC television in 2004 regarding corporate responsibility for the Bhopal industrial disaster, acted by the art duo The Yes Men. The cases were compared for their tactics, motivations, purposes and rhetoric. The most salient difference reveals the producers’ relation to truth: while in a ‘post-truth’ manner Trump ‘bullshitted’, distorted facts and disregarded truth, the Yes Men emphasized facts and exposed truth. This article concludes that fake news in politics is dangerous and that fake news in media art has an educational potential to fight fake news and promote critical deliberation.

Assessing the reliability of the Laban Movement Analysis system.

The Laban Movement Analysis system (LMA) is a widely used system for the description of human movement. Here we present results of an empirical analysis of the reliability of the LMA system. Firstly, we developed a directed graph-based representation for the formalization of LMA. Secondly, we implemented a custom video annotation tool for stimulus presentation and annotation of the formalized LMA. Using these two elements, we conducted an experimental assessment of LMA reliability. In the experimental assessment of the reliability, experts–Certified Movement Analysts (CMA)–were tasked with identifying the differences between a “neutral” movement and the same movement executed with a specific variation in one of the dimensions of the LMA parameter space. The videos represented variations on the pantomimed movement of knocking at a door or giving directions. To be as close as possible to the annotation practice of CMAs, participants were given full control over the number of times and order in which they viewed the videos. The LMA annotation was captured by means of the video annotation tool that guided the participants through the LMA graph by asking them multiple-choice questions at each node. Participants were asked to first annotate the most salient difference (round 1), and then the second most salient one (round 2) between a neutral and gesture and the variation. To quantify the overall reliability of LMA, we computed Krippendorff’s α. The quantitative data shows that the reliability, depending on how the two rounds are integrated, ranges between a weak and an acceptable reliability of LMA. The analysis of viewing behavior showed that, despite relatively large differences at the inter-individual level, there is no simple relationship between viewing behavior and individual performance (quantified as the level of agreement of the individual with the dominant rating). This research advances the state of the art in formalizing and implementing a reliability measure for the Laban Movement Analysis system. The experimental study we conducted allows identifying some of the strengths and weaknesses of the widely used movement coding system. Additionally, we have gained useful insights into the assessment procedure itself.

Views on aging among undergraduates, faculty, and staff: Domain-specific measurement invariance and comparisons

ABSTRACT Views on aging have been shown to reliably predict various psychological and physical health outcomes. To our knowledge, this is the first study exploring domain-specific views on aging using a university sample including students, faculty, and staff (N = 646). Specifically, we assessed how one’s age stereotypes (AS), current self-views on aging (CS), and future self-views on aging (FS) vary among students, faculty, and staff by age and by eight everyday functioning domains using an existing domain-specific scale. In general, the older one becomes, the more positive one’s views on aging are in various domains with a few exceptions. No single group (e.g., students, faculty, or staff) consistently had more positive views across domains than the other groups. Moreover, faculty and staff tended to share similar views on aging compared to students. The most salient difference between students and faculty/staff was in the finance domain; students had more positive age stereotypes and future self-views than faculty and staff but not for current self-views. The results highlight the importance of examining the domain-specific age stereotypes, current and future self-views on aging to understand the differences among university populations and provide implications for future educational programs on ageism.

RKKY interaction on the surface of three-dimensional Dirac semimetals

In three-dimensional Dirac semimetals the properties of bulk and surface electrons are qualitatively different. While the former have a three-dimensional pseudorelativistic spectral behavior, the latter disperse effectively like one-dimensional quasiparticles. Such a salient difference leads to qualitatively distinct properties of the RKKY exchange interaction between localized spins introduced in the bulk versus those introduced on the surface. Here, the authors demonstrate that at large distances the contribution of the Fermi-arc surface states dominates the exchange interaction and may lead to quasi-one-dimensional magnetic stripes.

Substitution efficiency of agro-chemical input intensity and its influence factors

We examined the substitution efficiency of agro-chemical input intensity from 2000 to 2016 in China by employing SE-DEA model and Gini coefficient, and analyzed the driving factors of substitution efficiency with Tobit model. The results showed that the comprehensive efficiency and the scale efficiency of substitution of agro-chemical input intensity displayed the trend of "N-shaped", while the pure technical efficiency was enhanced with some fluctuations. The regional diffe-rences of substitution efficiency were obvious, with the eastern region relying more heavily on the input scale of substitution factors. The most salient provincial-regional difference was the comprehensive efficiency, followed by the pure technical efficiency, and the least salient regional diffe-rence was the scale efficiency nationwide. The provincial-regional difference decreased year by year within each region. The Eastern region's provincial-regional difference was the greatest. The substitution efficiency was significantly affected by agricultural technology level, farmers' income level, agricultural production structure, agricultural development level and industrialization level. Besides, there were obvious differences in the influencing factors among regions. To promote the substitution efficiency of agro-chemical input, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of substitution factors of agro-chemical input intensity, to adjust the development structure of agro-industry, to pay attention to farmers' income level, and to revise the subsidy policy of substitution of agricultural chemical input intensity.

Gases and thermal behavior during high-temperature oxidation of weathered coal

In order to investigate the spontaneous combustion characteristics of weathered coal, gas generation and thermal behavior of weathered and fresh coal were analyzed. A self-made high-temperature-programmed experimental system was applied to simulate the spontaneous combustion of weathered and fresh coal. The characteristic parameters during oxidation were between 30 and 650 °C. The growth rate obtained through the analysis of an indicator gas was adopted to calculate the characteristic temperatures of high-temperature spontaneous combustion of coal. A C80 Calvet calorimeter was used to capture the thermal behavior during oxidation. At a high temperature and low oxygen concentration, weathered coal continued oxidizing and releasing thermal energy to sustain oxidation. The concentration of gases produced through high-temperature oxidation was lower for weathered coal than for fresh coal. The exothermic onset temperature of weathered coal was 43 °C, which was lower than the exothermic onset temperature of fresh coal. A salient difference was observed in the thermal energy release between weathered coal and fresh coal at different oxidation stages. From the critical temperature to crack temperature, the percentage of thermal energy release of weathered coal was much lower than that of fresh coal.

An association study of dopaminergic (DRD2) and serotoninergic (5-HT2) gene polymorphism and schizophrenia in a North Indian population.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in DRD2 and 5-HT2 receptor genes are associated with schizophrenia in North Indian population. Four hundred forty-three patients who met ICD10-DCR criteria for schizophrenia were enrolled from six participating centers along with 443 genetically related healthy subjects and 150 genetically unrelated healthy participants. A total of 7 gene polymorphisms from DRD2 (rs1800497, rs1079597, rs1800498, rs1801028) and 5-HT2 A (rs6313, rs6311, rs6305) were genotyped for their association with schizophrenia. No significant difference was found in frequency of various genotypes and alleles of the studied markers for DRD2 and 5-HT2 A genes between the cases and their genetic controls. However, significant differences were noted for rs1079597 genotype (Taq1B; p = 0.039) and its allele frequencies (p = 0.029) in persons with schizophrenia and the unrelated healthy controls. The DRD2 (Taq1 A-B-D) and 5-HT2 A (rs6311-rs6313-rs6305) haplotype frequencies differed significantly for A2B1D2 [p = 0.038; OR = 0.685 (95%CI = 0.479-0.981)] and ACC [p = 0.001; OR = 0.621 (95%CI = 0.461-0.838)] for the cases vs genetically related healthy controls. Similarly, significant difference was observed for the frequencies of GCC [p = 0.006; OR = 0.692 (95%CI = 0.532-0.900)] and ACC [p < 0.001; OR = 3.622 (95%CI = 1.73-7.585)] in the cases and unrelated healthy controls. Unlike previous research from India as well as abroad, the predominance of B1 allele of rs1079597 in patients with schizophrenia and absence of Cys311 in all study participants is a salient difference. Concluding, the B2 allele of rs1079597 may increase the risk of schizophrenia while the A2B1D2 haplotype may be protective in North Indian population.

Hey, what is your choice? Uncertainty and inconsistency enhance subjective anticipation of upcoming information in a social context.

This research examined whether uncertainty would modulate subjective anticipation during social interactions as it does in the non-social context, and further explored how response consistency between participants would influence one's anticipation. We set up an encyclopedic knowledge quiz involving two anonymous same-sex players and manipulated the difficulty of proposed questions (high-uncertainty accompanies highly difficult questions). An enlarged stimulus-preceding negativity was observed when participants were anticipating the presentation of their counterparts' responses to high-uncertainty questions (versus low-uncertainty ones), as well as when they were anticipating the display of correct answers to high-uncertainty questions after they found out that responses given by their partners were inconsistent (versus consistent) with their own. In addition, inconsistent responses gave rise to a more salient difference wave reward positivity and a more positive P300 during the feedback stage. Taken together, these results suggested that both uncertainty and inconsistency would enhance subjective anticipation of upcoming information during social interactions, and that inconsistency would strengthen one's concern and attention over outcomes.

Growth Kinetics of Egyptian isolates of Trichomonas vaginalis: Possible Correlation to Clinical Presentation

Background: Trichomonas vaginalis is the most common non-viral sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the world. Trichomoniasis is an important risk factor for herpes simplex type II infections, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) acquisition and transmission, pelvic inflammatory disease and cervical neoplasia. Studying the variation in growth patterns of the parasite can be used for biological characterization of the parasites and might be related to the severity of clinical presentation. Aim of the Work: Study the growth kinetics of Egyptian Trichomonas vaginalis isolates in term of log phase, growth peaks reached, division rate and generation time of each isolate and correlation of such parameters with the clinical presentation of the patients, if any. Material and Method: The study was carried on 300 vaginal washouts collected from Egyptian women patients aged 20-45 years suspected for trichomoniasis. Positive samples for Trichomonas vaginalis were cultured and sub cultured on modified Diamond’s medium. Growth kinetics for each isolate was done by inoculated 104 trophozoites/ml into 2 tubes containing 10 ml of sterile culture medium followed by counting the trophozoites every 24 hours over seven days using a hemocytometer. Growth curves were done for each isolate by plotting the parasites numbers against the time. Division rates and generation times were calculated for each isolate. Results: Out of the 300 collected samples, twelve were found positive for Trichomonas vaginalis trophozoite by wet mount examination and culture technique. Comparison of the growth kinetics of the twelve Trichomonas vaginalis isolates revealed a salient difference among all isolates after 48 to 96 hours. Isolates 1, 2, 6, 8 and 10 had a log phase of 48 hours. Isolates 4, 5, 7, 11 and 12 had a log phase of 72 hours. Isolates 3 and 9 had a log phase of 96 hours. The fast growing isolates of Trichomonas vaginalis reached maximum growth after 48 hours and the highest yield was observed in isolate 10 (150.25±3.13). Slowly growing isolates reached a maximum after 96 hours with the lowest yield in isolate 3 (40.5±21). Regarding the clinical presentation, isolates 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 11 showed mild discharge and congested cervix. Isolates 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 showed profuse discharge with varying clinical findings on gynecological examination. Isolate 10 had the most severe pathology with cervical erosion. Isolate 9, 12 showed bleeding during examination, isolate 8 showed vaginal ulcer while isolate 6 showed just erythema of the vagina. Conclusion: Comparison of the growth kinetics of the twelve Trichomonas vaginalis isolates revealed a salient difference among all isolates after 48 to 96 hours. Regarding the clinical presentation, no clear correlation was found between the growth kinetics and clinical presentation of the patients. Methods other than growth kinetics such as genotyping and determination of genetic variability are needed to verify the relation between isolates of Trichomonas vaginalis and clinical presentation.

Growth Kinetics of Egyptian isolates of Trichomonas vaginalis: Possible Correlation to Clinical Presentation

Background: Trichomonas vaginalis is the most common non-viral sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the world. Trichomoniasis is an important risk factor for herpes simplex type II infections, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) acquisition and transmission, pelvic inflammatory disease and cervical neoplasia. Studying the variation in growth patterns of the parasite can be used for biological characterization of the parasites and might be related to the severity of clinical presentation. Aim of the Work: Study the growth kinetics of Egyptian Trichomonas vaginalis isolates in term of log phase, growth peaks reached, division rate and generation time of each isolate and correlation of such parameters with the clinical presentation of the patients, if any. Material and Method: The study was carried on 300 vaginal washouts collected from Egyptian women patients aged 20-45 years suspected for trichomoniasis. Positive samples for Trichomonas vaginalis were cultured and sub cultured on modified Diamond’s medium. Growth kinetics for each isolate was done by inoculated 104 trophozoites/ml into 2 tubes containing 10 ml of sterile culture medium followed by counting the trophozoites every 24 hours over seven days using a hemocytometer. Growth curves were done for each isolate by plotting the parasites numbers against the time. Division rates and generation times were calculated for each isolate. Results: Out of the 300 collected samples, twelve were found positive for Trichomonas vaginalis trophozoite by wet mount examination and culture technique. Comparison of the growth kinetics of the twelve Trichomonas vaginalis isolates revealed a salient difference among all isolates after 48 to 96 hours. Isolates 1, 2, 6, 8 and 10 had a log phase of 48 hours. Isolates 4, 5, 7, 11 and 12 had a log phase of 72 hours. Isolates 3 and 9 had a log phase of 96 hours. The fast growing isolates of Trichomonas vaginalis reached maximum growth after 48 hours and the highest yield was observed in isolate 10 (150.25±3.13). Slowly growing isolates reached a maximum after 96 hours with the lowest yield in isolate 3 (40.5±21). Regarding the clinical presentation, isolates 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 11 showed mild discharge and congested cervix. Isolates 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 showed profuse discharge with varying clinical findings on gynecological examination. Isolate 10 had the most severe pathology with cervical erosion. Isolate 9, 12 showed bleeding during examination, isolate 8 showed vaginal ulcer while isolate 6 showed just erythema of the vagina. Conclusion: Comparison of the growth kinetics of the twelve Trichomonas vaginalis isolates revealed a salient difference among all isolates after 48 to 96 hours. Regarding the clinical presentation, no clear correlation was found between the growth kinetics and clinical presentation of the patients. Methods other than growth kinetics such as genotyping and determination of genetic variability are needed to verify the relation between isolates of Trichomonas vaginalis and clinical presentation.

Musical rhythm and reading development: does beat processing matter?

There is mounting evidence for links between musical rhythm processing and reading-related cognitive skills, such as phonological awareness. This may be because music and speech are rhythmic: both involve processing complex sound sequences with systematic patterns of timing, accent, and grouping. Yet, there is a salient difference between musical and speech rhythm: musical rhythm is often beat-based (based on an underlying grid of equal time intervals), while speech rhythm is not. Thus, the role of beat-based processing in the reading-rhythm relationship is not clear. Is there is a distinct relation between beat-based processing mechanisms and reading-related language skills, or is the rhythm-reading link entirely due to shared mechanisms for processing nonbeat-based aspects of temporal structure? We discuss recent evidence for a distinct link between beat-based processing and early reading abilities in young children, and suggest experimental designs that would allow one to further methodically investigate this relationship. We propose that beat-based processing taps into a listener's ability to use rich contextual regularities to form predictions, a skill important for reading development.

Ocularity Feature Contrast Attracts Attention Exogenously.

An eye-of-origin singleton, e.g., a bar shown to the left eye among many other bars shown to the right eye, can capture attention and gaze exogenously or reflexively, even when it appears identical to other visual input items in the scene and when the eye-of-origin feature is irrelevant to the observer’s task. Defining saliency as the strength of exogenous attraction to attention, we say that this eye-of-origin singleton, or its visual location, is salient. Defining the ocularity of a visual input item as the relative difference between its left-eye input and its right-eye input, this paper shows the general case that an ocularity singleton is also salient. For example, a binocular input item among monocular input items is salient, so is a left-eye-dominant input item (e.g., a bar with a higher input contrast to the left eye than to the right eye) among right-eye-dominant items. Saliency by unique input ocularity is analogous to saliency by unique input colour (e.g., a red item among green ones), as colour is determined by the relative difference(s) between visual inputs to different photoreceptor cones. Just as a smaller colour difference between a colour singleton and background items makes this singleton less salient, so does a smaller ocularity difference between an ocularity singleton and background items. While a salient colour difference is highly visible, a salient ocularity difference is often perceptually invisible in some cases and discouraging gaze shifts towards it in other cases, making its behavioural manifestation not as apparent. Saliency by ocularity contrast provides another support to the idea that the primary visual cortex creates a bottom-up saliency map to guide attention exogenously.

Processes underpinning gender and number disagreement in Dutch: An ERP study

Abstract In the current experiment, participants read word-by-word sentences containing gender (adjective-noun) and number (article-noun) disagreement in Dutch while EEG was recorded. Number and gender disagreement were expected to elicit different responses due to several reasons. Firstly, gender is a lexical feature whose value (e.g., masculine or feminine) is stored in the lexicon, whereas number value is assigned depending on conceptual knowledge (numerosity). Also, Dutch marks number but not gender on the noun. Finally, due to the morphological nature of number, number disagreement provides more repair options than gender disagreement, thereby increasing the processing load. Both gender and number disagreement elicited a P600, but no LAN. The P600 effect was larger for number than gender disagreement in the late P600 stage. Since the observed effect was in the late P600 stage, we suggest that the most salient difference between the two types of disagreement lies in the increased repair complexity for number disagreement compared to gender disagreement.

Bayesian inference for psychology, part IV: parameter estimation and Bayes factors.

In the psychological literature, there are two seemingly different approaches to inference: that from estimation of posterior intervals and that from Bayes factors. We provide an overview of each method and show that a salient difference is the choice of models. The two approaches as commonly practiced can be unified with a certain model specification, now popular in the statistics literature, called spike-and-slab priors. A spike-and-slab prior is a mixture of a null model, the spike, with an effect model, the slab. The estimate of the effect size here is a function of the Bayes factor, showing that estimation and model comparison can be unified. The salient difference is that common Bayes factor approaches provide for privileged consideration of theoretically useful parameter values, such as the value corresponding to the null hypothesis, while estimation approaches do not. Both approaches, either privileging the null or not, are useful depending on the goals of the analyst.

Particulate Matter Related Disease Burden – A Plethora of Estimates – Which Ones to Accept and Which Ones to Trust?

Background/Aim: Environmental burden of disease estimates are increasingly used to inform society and politics about harmful effects arising from ambient particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution. Institutes and international bodies, such as WHO, EEA and IHME, provide estimates on the number of premature deaths and years of life lost, related to air pollution, which are not in agreement. Using estimates for Germany, the aim of the study was to systematically assess the differences in model assumptions leading to diverging estimates. Methods: Necessary information was extracted from publications and methodological appendices. The assumptions were systematically compiled and evaluated. As reference years for the estimates were not matching, we selected estimates from 2010-2015. The evaluation focused on exposure estimates, health data, exposure-response-functions and the theoretical minimum risk exposure level (TMREL). Results: Comparisons for Germany indicate considerable differences in the number of premature deaths attributable to air pollution. For 2012, WHO and EEA report 26,160 and 59,500 deaths, respectively. IHME’s estimates for 2010 and 2015 are in between those with 40,993 and 43,117 deaths, respectively. The most salient difference is the choice of TMREL. EEA estimates are based on a counterfactual level of 0µg/m³, assuming no safe level for PM2.5-exposure, and thus are considerably higher than the other estimates, that use a uniform distribution for the TMREL (WHO: 5.9-8.7µg/m³; IHME: 2.4-5.9µg/m³). Conclusions: Policy makers often do not have the time and expertise to consider full details of methodologies used for estimating disease burdens. IHME’s estimates provide a high level of transparency, as they follow the GATHER guidelines. The estimates from the WHO and EEA do not provide a comparable level of transparency and EEA does not even provide uncertainty intervals around their estimates. However, a formal validation of environmental burden of disease estimates is not possible, because e.g. death statistics cannot capture a person’s risk-profile.

Psychological Resilience’s Moderation of the Relationship Between the Frequency of Organizational Stressors and Burnout in Athletes and Coaches

This paper presents 2 studies examining the extent to which the frequency of encountered organizational stressors relates to burnout and whether qualities of psychological resilience moderate any such relationship. The studies were conducted with independent samples of athletes and coaches using a questionnaire design. In Study 1, 372 athletes completed measures of organizational stressors (Organizational Stressor Indicator for Sports Performers [OSI-SP]), resilience (Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale-10 [CD-RISC-10]), and burnout (Athlete Burnout Questionnaire). In Study 2, 91 coaches completed measures of organizational stressors (OSI-SP), resilience (CD-RISC-10), and burnout (Coach Burnout Questionnaire). Data were analyzed in a moderated regression model using Hayes’s PROCESS macro for SPSS and supported the hypotheses that the frequency of organizational stressors was directly related to burnout in both athletes and coaches and that psychological resilience moderated this relationship. These results highlight the influential role of organizational dynamics for athlete and coach well-being and indicate that psychological resilience is a salient individual difference variable that buffers against potential negative outcomes.