Search results for "MEAN"
showing 10 items of 2320 documents
The European consumers’ understanding and perceptions of the “organic” food regime
2004
This paper explores consumer understanding and perception of organic food, with specific reference to the relatively new concept of organic farmed salmon. Key themes associated with the term “organic” and its meaning, as determined by consumers, are explored and the role of labelling and regulatory authorities considered. Focus groups in five countries (UK, Germany, Spain, Norway and France) consisting of 196 participants showed that most consumers are confused about the meaning of the term organic and are largely unaware of the organic certification and labelling process. Many consumers were unsure, even sceptical about the concept of organic farmed salmon and display a large amount of dis…
Double validation of translated questionnaires in international studies
2018
Background Study questionnaires developed in one country can be translated and used for similar studies in other countries. The main problem of this process is that people speaking different languages can understand the meaning of some questions differently due to disparate mentalities and backgrounds. To avoid a misunderstanding, to perform correct conclusions in accordance to the mentality of each country, and to permit the comparison of results in different countries, the intellectual validation of questionnaires is widely used. The main problem of such a validation is its qualitative nature that can be biased by the subjective approach of the investigator. Therefore, there is a necessit…
Narratives of Burnout and Recovery from an Agency Perspective : A Two-Year Longitudinal Study
2017
Abstract Purpose To provide knowledge about the recovery process during rehabilitation and two years later by exploring the manifestation of agency and spheres of meaning in the narratives of participants in a national rehabilitation course. Material and methods The subjects of the study were four participants in a national rehabilitation course, whose burnout levels had decreased between the initial and follow-up periods of the course. Semi-structured interviews on two occasions and an electronic questionnaire 1.5 years post rehabilitation comprised the main material. In addition, the BBI -15 (Bergen Burnout Indicator) and DEPS-screen were used. Results Thematic narrative analysis revealed…
Balance Perturbations as a Measurement Tool for Trunk Impairment in Cross-Country Sit Skiing
2018
In cross-country sit-skiing, the trunk plays a crucial role in propulsion generation and balance maintenance. Trunk stability is evaluated by automatic responses to unpredictable perturbations; however, electromyography is challenging. The aim of this study was to identify a measure to group sit-skiers according to their ability to control the trunk. Seated in their competitive sit-ski, 10 male and 5 female Paralympic sit-skiers received 6 forward and 6 backward unpredictable perturbations in random order. k-means clustered trunk position at rest, delay to invert the trunk motion, and trunk range of motion significantly into 2 groups. In conclusion, unpredictable perturbations might quantif…
Place and space in home-making processes and the construction of identities in transnational migration
2016
AbstractIn this era of increasing migration and the trend of growing social, political, and cultural integration worldwide, it is questionable whether the concept of home in its traditional meaning still applies or has to be redefined. Many social scientists agree that the mobile individual of the twenty-first century has become uprooted and thus disoriented or that the idea of home has lost its significance. Since home is still closely tied to one’s identity, the current discussions on the construction of identity must also be incorporated in the analytical processes of home-making. The objective is to point out new ways of understanding the idea of home by taking into consideration and an…
Can meaning buffer work pressure? An exploratory study on styles of meaning in life and burnout in firefighters
2016
Aim of the studyThe purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between different dimensions of meaning in life and burnout among firefighters. The relationships between personal meaning, presence of meaning, search for meaning, and burnout are to be examined. In addition, the differences in the firefighters’ level of burnout are to be evaluated within three styles of meaning in life.Subject or material and methodsParticipants were 189 Polish firefighters who participated in the study voluntarily. The age ranged from 20 to 50 years and the mean age was 33.04 years (SD = 7.87). The participants were randomly recruited from twelve fire stations located in southern parts of Poland. T…
A Clustering approach for profiling LoRaWAN IoT devices
2019
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are starting to play a predominant role in our everyday life. Application systems like Amazon Echo and Google Home allow IoT devices to answer human requests, or trigger some alarms and perform suitable actions. In this scenario, any data information, related device and human interaction are stored in databases and can be used for future analysis and improve the system functionality. Also, IoT information related to the network level (wireless or wired) may be stored in databases and can be processed to improve the technology operation and to detect network anomalies. Acquired data can be also used for profiling operation, in order to group devices according…
How do presenters engage with their audience? Speakers multimodal interpersonal behaviour in research dissemination talks
2020
Abstract Speakers in research dissemination talks are challenged with the need to connect with an audience that does not necessarily share their knowledge and expertise. This communicative situation can be particularly challenging for speakers using English both as a foreign language and for academic purposes. This study combines multimodal and ethnographic methods to explore how speakers of dissemination talks engage with their public. It focuses on four presenters’ use and combination of language, paralanguage, kinesics, proxemics and gaze during intensive moments of engagement. The results show that these interpersonal rich points consist of dense multimodal ensembles that serve to short…
Prosodic modulation as a mark to express pragmatic values: The case of mitigation in Spanish
2021
Abstract One of the functions of prosody in discourse is to convey pragmatic values that add up to the core semantic meaning of spoken units or segments. Regarding mitigation, Caffi (1999: 890) specifically discusses “the very important prosodic and kinesic means of mitigation, such as changes in pitch prominence, rhythm, speech rate, as well as eye-contact, gaze, gaze aversion, smile, particular postures, etc.” In this paper, I focus on some prosodic factors such as pitch, intensity, duration and speech rate that can be used in European Spanish, in combination with pragmatic meanings. The first aim is to establish a theoretical deliberation on prosody as a clear marker to convey pragmatic …
The language game of lost meaning: Using literal meaning as a metalinguistic resource
2019
AbstractBy literal meaning (LM) we usually refer to a theoretical notion which is at the center of a big debate involving philosophers and linguists with various orientations. At the same time, LM is rooted in a linguistic intuition of the speaker, which we could formulate as follows: words taken in isolation have a meaning. Adopting this general take on LM, we are using a notion of LM that seems incompatible with any research program of a contextualist type; I will show, instead, that in a radically contextualist (and Wittgensteinian) perspective, this notion of LM can have legitimate circulation in particular types of language games. I will propose a recovery of the notion of LM saving th…