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Evaluating pain and discomfort in animals is difficult at best. Veterinarians believe however, that they can establish a proxy for estimating levels of pain and discomfort in canines by observing variations in their activity levels. Sufficient research has been conducted to justify this assertion, but little has been conducted to analyze the volumes of activity data collected. We present the first of a series of analyses aimed at ultimately presenting an effective predictive tool for canine pain and discomfort levels. In this chapter, we perform analyses on a dataset of normal (control) dogs, containing almost 3 million records. The forecasting analyses incorporated multiple polynomial regression models with transcendental transformations and ARIMA models to provide effective determination and prediction of baseline normal canine activity levels.

This is the third in a series of papers aimed at providing models effective in predicting the degree of pain and discomfort in canines. The first two papers provided benchmarking and examination of dogs suffering from osteoarthritis (OA). In this chapter, we extend the study to include dogs suffering from OA, sarcoma, and oral mucositis (a side effect of chemotherapy and radiation treatments). The R programming language and SAS JMP are used to clean data, generate ANOVA, LSR regression, decision tree, and nominal logistic regression models to predict changes in activity levels associated with the progression of arthritis. The predictive models provide a diagnostic basis for determining the degree of disease in a dog (based on demographics and activity levels) and provide forecasts that assist in establishing appropriate medication dosages for suffering dogs.

An extensive research base supports the positive effects of self-monitoring interventions on a number of student outcomes, both academic and behavioral. While the vast majority of this research base relied on traditional paper-and-pencil forms of self-monitoring, advances in technology have created significant opportunities to develop technology-based self-monitoring (TBSM) systems that may offer a number of benefits in terms of efficiency and data management, storing, and graphing. Technology-based self-management applications have evolved and been studied extensively in health-related fields, but research and development for such applications is only beginning in the field of education. In this chapter we (1) provide a brief overview of the literature on traditional forms of self-monitoring, (2) examine how educators and educational researchers may apply lessons learned about TBSM from the medical field, (3) summarize emerging literature on TBSM for students with or at risk for emotional/behavioral disorders in particular, and (4) offer suggestions for future research and development in TBSM.

This conceptual chapter introduces an interdisciplinary model of emotional ambivalence using an adapted framework based on the Affective Events Theory (AET). Given the preoccupation in the current literature with studying affective disposition and discrete emotions, there is opportunity for researchers to explore the presence and influence of conflicting emotions. I use the organizational context of Personal Web Usage (PWU) monitoring to set the stage for a hypothetical discussion of the AET-based model of emotional ambivalence. The likelihood of conflict in the cultural norms and values associated with both monitoring activity and employee behavior presents an opportune setting to study emotional ambivalence. After an in-depth description of the model and its application to the PWU-based monitoring context, I conclude with a brief discussion of potential areas for future research.

A meta-evaluation is an assessment of evaluation practices. Meta-evaluations include assessments of validity and usefulness of two or more studies that focus on the same issues. Every performance audit is grounded explicitly or implicitly in one or more theories of program evaluation. A deep understanding of alternative theories of program evaluation is helpful to gain clarity about sound auditing practices. We present a review of several theories of program evaluation.

This study includes a meta-evaluation of seven government audits on the efficiency and effectiveness of tourism departments and programs. The seven tourism-marketing performance audits are program evaluations for: Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Australia, and two for Hawaii. The majority of these audits are negative performance assessments. Similarly, although these audits are more useful than none at all, the central conclusion of the meta-evaluation is that most of these audit reports are inadequate assessments. These audits are too limited in the issues examined; not sufficiently grounded in relevant evaluation theory and practice; and fail to include recommendations, that if implemented, would result in substantial increases in performance.

The purpose of this chapter is to review how well walking interventions have increased and sustained walking, and to provide suggestions for improving future walking interventions. A scoping review was conducted of walking interventions for adults that emphasised walking as a primary intervention strategy and/or included a walking outcome measure. Interventions conducted at the individual, community, and policy levels between 1990 and 2015 were included, with greater emphasis on recent interventions. Walking tends to increase early in interventions and then gradually declines. Results suggest that increased walking, and environmental-change activities to support walking are more likely to be sustained when they are immediately followed by greater economic benefits/time-savings, social approval, and/or physical/emotional well-being. Adaptive interventions that adjust intervention procedures to match dynamically changing environmental circumstances also hold promise for sustaining increased walking. Interventions that incorporate automated technology, durable built environment changes, and civic engagement, may increase cost-efficiency. Variations in outcome measures, study duration, seasons, participant characteristics, and possible measurement reactivity preclude causal inferences about the differential effectiveness of specific intervention procedures for increasing and sustaining walking. This review synthesises the effects of diverse walking interventions on increasing and sustaining walking over a 25-year period. Suggestions are provided to guide future development of more effective, sustainable walking interventions at the population level.

Our notion of project control is based on the five-by-five model and constitutes a comprehensive control model including control of results, time and work control, resource control, financial control, and contract management.

The task of project control is determined by uncertainty and complexity and calls for improvisation and ingenuity in order to be able to maneuver the project. The notion of forward-oriented follow-up is introduced.

Whether institutional investors monitor corporations and improve firm value is a key question for corporate governance and investment management. I find little empirical support for the hypothesis that institutions undertake monitoring that increases firm quality and valuation. Granger causation tests show that while quality firms do attract institutional investment, institutions do not monitor and firm value subsequently declines. Instead, institutional incentives are critical; some institutions with strong incentives to monitor do, indeed, monitor. Institutions with concentrated portfolios successfully monitor while institutions with a larger percentage stake do not. Pensions and endowments are better monitors than insurers, banks and mutual funds.

This paper formalizes the determination of effort in work teams as a social dilemma, adding a mutual-monitoring activity and reciprocity motivations to the formal model of effort provision in cooperatives. It turns out that the cooperative solution is viable in a work group in which the workers frame effort as a reciprocal gift, and if they do frame effort in this way in worker cooperatives, this could explain the observed tendency of cooperatives to attain higher productivity.