Serving in Bosnia made me appreciate living in Bristol: stressful experiences, attitudes, and psychological needs of members of the United Kingdom Armed Forces

Peacekeeping operations form an increasing part of the role of the U.K. Armed Forces. This study identified perceived needs for training before such operations, experiences of stress during deployments, beliefs and attitudes regarding psychological support and debriefing on return, general attitudes toward peacekeeping duties, and positive aspects of the peacekeeping role. Although nearly all peacekeepers were exposed to a variety of experiences, most perceived stress came from professional difficulties and frustrations with the occupational role of being a peacekeeper, rather than from dangerous situations. The exception was a significant fear of land mines. For many, peacekeeping had a positive impact on soldiers' lives, most commonly an appreciation of "things back home." Respondents' opinions about the peacekeeping experience vary greatly. Additional training addressing and exploring potential conflicts between the traditional role of the soldier and the role of the peacekeeper may be useful.

Emotional intelligence and teaching situations : development of a new measure

This article reports on the development of a new measure entitled: Reactions to Teaching Situations to indicate levels of emotional intelligence among beginning teachers. This article discusses the concept of emotional intelligence and defends the development of such a measure specifically related to the situations in the teaching environment, an environment where emotional intelligence is considered to influence a teachers' thoughts and actions. The measure was found to have acceptable reliability and a range of individual differences was reported. Gender differences were found where female teachers reported greater likelihood of demonstrating emotional intelligence compared to male teachers. There was partial support for the four branch model of emotional intelligence. The discussion includes some projections for these findings and for the use of this measure with more experienced teachers.

A comparison of Australian and Malaysian views on the use of biometric devices in everyday situations

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, many countries including Australia and Malaysia have been able to justify the use biometric devices such as finger print scans, retina scans and facial recognition for identification and surveillance of its citizens and others in the name of national security. In addition, biometric devices are increasingly being used worldwide by organizations to keep track of their employees and their productivity, leading to concerns of privacy, the safety, reliability, abuse and misuse of the data collected and violations of civil liberties. Taking the critical theory perspective, this paper will analyse the data collected and report on the findings of a survey carried out in Australia and Malaysia, with respect to the responses provided and opinions expressed to the survey s open ended and other questions
by individuals as to their current use, experiences, preferences, concerns about the devices and the situations in which they think biometric devices should be used, including in their workplaces. This descriptive study uses both quantitative and qualitative data to examine what Australians and Malaysians think about the use of biometric devices in everyday situtions
and compare them as to their similarities and differences. The paper will then critically examine the ethical and civil liberties issues involved in the use of biometric devices in everyday life and argues that regulatory and legal measures should be taken to safeguard the rights of citizens while maintaining national security and productivity, in order to avoid the situation of Michel Foucaults Panopticon becoming an unpleasant everyday reality, which could negatively irifluence socialjustice and create social change due to its effects on individuals in two multicultural societies. The paper will argue about the need to educate the general public as to the issues of surveillance and privacy involved in the use of biometric devices in everyday situations.

Dead, done for and dangerous: teaching editing students what not to do

The most difficult aspect of teaching editing at a university tutorial is imparting to students a sensitivity to the appropriate relationship between the editor and author and, more particularly, between the editor and the author's work. Students are tempted to see themselves as critics or assessors of the author's work rather than assistants in the writing process. This paper discusses where teaching editing is difficult in a classroom, arguing that such difficulty is a symptom of both problems experienced in the editing profession and limitations of university teaching.

Dealing constructively with negatively evaluated emotional situations: the key to understanding the different reactions of teachers with high and low levels of emotional intelligence

Recent work on the distinctive features of emotions appraised as either negative or positive has links to the investigation of differences in levels of emotional intelligence. In a study with experienced teachers as participants, it was found that emotional reactions to positive or negative situations was moderated by level of emotional intelligence. The reactions to positively charged emotional situations involving students and peers were similar for teachers with high and low levels of emotional intelligence, although the low level group showed somewhat lower likelihood of making an “emotionally intelligent” response compared to the high level group. A much sharper contrast in response likelihood was found for negatively charged emotional situations involving students and peers. Teachers with high levels of emotional intelligence responded quite differently to those with low levels of emotional intelligence. The results indicate the prospect of clarifying a neglected area of exploration of differences in the likely behaviour of teachers differing in levels of emotional intelligence.

Modelling factors of square tubes in high speed bending situations

Accurate finite element crash simulations of side impact depend upon a thorough understanding of dynamic tube bending. There is a need to understand the dynamic bending mode of square sections (equivalent of automotive structural parts) to obtain a greater confidence in CAE. This work varied strain rate and material definitions, such as Cowper-Symonds vs Zerilli-Armstrong, as well as initial velocity and yield strength. The results show that most of the plastic work is done between strains rates of 30 ¿ 300/s and strains up to 0.3. Peak strain rates were marginally above 1000/s with maximum strain greater than 1. When the strain rate definition and material model were modified, it was shown that a higher yield stress produced a higher reaction force. These results would suggest that the strain rate sensitivity needs to be carefully identified for accurate crash simulations.

Extending studies of collaborative cognition by way of care giving situations

Care giving situations contain several features that offer opportunities for expanding the way that collaborative cognition is conceptualised and explored. These features are the presence of several possible contributors, more than one kind of change in participation, distinctions drawn among parts of a task, and differences in understanding based on interests. All represent departures from the traditional focus on dyads, tasks that emphasise one kind of change only, single problems, and differences in competence or expertise. All are also features likely to be found in everyday problem solving. Study 1 focuses on family contributions, based on reports by care givers about their current situation and their preferences for the involvement of other family members. Study 2 presents a standard family scenario and focuses on the views held by care givers, older adults, and community nurses about the reasonableness of various changes in participation. Results are discussed in terms of the ways situations such as care giving can help build a richer picture of collaborative cognition, one that is applicable to a variety of tasks and to all parts of the life span.

Optimal lag-length choice in stable and unstable VAR models under situations of homoscedasticity and ARCH

The performance of different information criteria - namely Akaike, corrected Akaike (AICC), Schwarz-Bayesian (SBC), and Hannan-Quinn - is investigated so as to choose the optimal lag length in stable and unstable vector autoregressive (VAR) models both when autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) is present and when it is not. The investigation covers both large and small sample sizes. The Monte Carlo simulation results show that SBC has relatively better performance in lag-choice accuracy in many situations. It is also generally the least sensitive to ARCH regardless of stability or instability of the VAR model, especially in large sample sizes. These appealing properties of SBC make it the optimal criterion for choosing lag length in many situations, especially in the case of financial data, which are usually characterized by occasional periods of high volatility. SBC also has the best forecasting abilities in the majority of situations in which we vary sample size, stability, variance structure (ARCH or not), and forecast horizon (one period or five). frequently, AICC also has good lag-choosing and forecasting properties. However, when ARCH is present, the five-period forecast performance of all criteria in all situations worsens.

Comparison of Australian and Malaysian views on the use of biometric devices in everyday situations

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, many countries including Australia and Malaysia have been able to justify the use biometric devices such as fingerprint scans, retina scans and facial recognition for identification and surveillance of its citizens and others in the name of national security. In addition, biometric devices are increasingly being used worldwide by organizations to keep track of their employees and their productivity, leading to concerns of privacy and civil rights violations. Taking the critical theory perspective, this paper will analyse the data collected and report on the findings of a survey carried out in Australia and Malaysia, with respect to the responses provided and opinions expressed to the survey's open ended and other questions by individuals as to their current use, experiences, preferences, concerns about the devices and the situations in which they think biometric devices should be used, including in their workplaces. This descriptive study uses both quantitative and qualitative data to examine what Australians and Malaysians think about the use of biometric devices in everyday situations and compare them as to their similarities and differences within the context of each nation's culture and political systems. The paper will then critically examine the ethical and civil rights issues involved in the use of biometric devices in everyday life and what regulatory and legal measures should be taken to safeguard the rights of citizens while maintaining security and productivity, in order to avoid the situation of Michel Foucault's Panopticon becoming an unpleasant everyday reality, which could negatively influence social justice and create social change due to its effects on individuals in two multicultural societies. the apper will argue about the need to educate the general public as to the issues of surveillance and privacy involved in the use of biometric devices in everyday situations.

Engaged to learn pedagogy : theoretically identified optimism-building situations

Associations between resilience or optimism (Seligman, 1995) and the inclination to explore unfamiliar challenging problems in mathematics have been identified (Williams, 2005, 2008). This raised questions about how to build optimism to enhance mathematical performance. In this study, a theoretical framework was formulated to study optimism-building situations (Seligman, 1995; Csikszentmihalyi, 1992). By interrogating ‘Engaged to Learn’ pedagogy (Williams, 2000) through a video-stimulated interview study, situations theoretically expected to be optimism building were identified.