Major Sport Event Operational Planning Issues and Strategies: A Multi-Case Delphi Study

This study examined the operational planning, implementation and execution issues of major sport events, as well as the mitigation and management strategies used to address these issues, with the aim of determining best practices in sport event operational planning. The three Research Questions were: 1) What can previous major sport events provide to guide the operational management of future events? 2) What are the operational issues that arise in the planning and execution of a major sport event, how are they mitigated and what are the strategies used to deal with these issues? 3) What are the best practices for sport event operational planning and how can these practices aid future events? Data collection involved a modified Delphi technique that consisted of one round of in-depth interviews followed by two rounds of questionnaires. Both data collection and analysis were guided by an adaptation of the work of Parent, Rouillard & Leopkey (2011) with a focus on previously established issue and strategy categories. The results provided a list of Top 26 Prominent Issues and Top 17 Prominent Strategies with additional issue-strategy links that can be used to aid event managers producing future major sport events. The following issue categories emerged as having had the highest impact on previous major sport events that participants had managed: timing, funding and knowledge management. In addition, participants used strategies from the following categories most frequently: other, formalized agreements and communication.

Factors influencing health care utilization following a cardiovascular event among aboriginal people in Central Australia

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Auditory and visual event-related potential alterations in fragile X syndrome

Le syndrome du X fragile (SXF) est la première cause héréditaire de déficience intellectuelle et également la première cause monogénique d’autisme. Le SXF est causé par l'expansion de la répétition du nucléotide CGG sur le gène FMR1, ce qui empêche l’expression de la protéine FMRP. L’absence du FMRP mène à une altération du développement structurel et fonctionnel de la synapse, ce qui empêche la maturation des synapses induite par l’activité et l’élagage synaptique, qui sont essentiels pour le développement cérébral et cognitif. Nous avons investigué les potentiels reliés aux événements (PRE) évoqués par des stimulations fondamentales auditives et visuelles dans douze adolescents et jeunes adultes (10-22) atteints du SXF, ainsi que des participants contrôles appariés en âge chronologique et développemental. Les résultats indiquent un profil des PRE altéré, notamment l’augmentation de l’amplitude de N1 auditive, par rapport aux deux groupes contrôle, ainsi que l’augmentation des amplitudes de P2 et N2 auditifs et de la latence de N2 auditif. Chez les patients SXF, le traitement sensoriel semble être davantage perturbé qu’immature. En outre, la modalité auditive semble être plus perturbée que la modalité visuelle. En combinaison avec des résultats anatomique du cerveau, des mécanismes biochimiques et du comportement, nos résultats suggèrent une hyperexcitabilité du système nerveux dans le SXF.

Boston College Law School 75th Celebration Event Salutes J. Donald Monan, S.J., Chancellor of Boston College

On September 13, 2005, in front of a standing-room only crowd of students and faculty, J. Donald Monan, S.J., accepted the Boston College Law School's 75th anniversary Distinguished Service Award from Dean John Garvey for more than thirty years of dedication to the school. Currently Chancellor of Boston College, a position he acquired in 1996, Monan holds the distinction of having been Boston College president for 24 years, the longest tenure in school history.

Celebrating 75 Years: Boston College Law School 75th Anniversary Event Honoring Fr. Robert F. Drinan, S.J.

Boston College Law School held the kickoff event to celebrate the School's 75 years in existence on Monday, October 4, 2004, welcoming Father Robert F. Drinan, S.J., back to campus to address the Law School community. The celebration drew close to 300 people to campus as Father Drinan, who served as the Dean of BC Law from 1956 through 1970, kept the crowd enthralled with an energetic and inspiring speech. Drinan received the Law School's first Distinguished Service medal, in recognition of his many great contributions to the School, the legal profession, and the public interest.

Constraining the active tectonic deformation of Andaman-Nicobar Arc in the background of December 26,2004 Great Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake

The Andaman-Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal lies in a zone where the Indian plate subducts beneath the Burmese microplate, and therefore forms a belt of frequent earthquakes. Few efforts, not withstanding the available historical and instrumental data were not effectively used before the Mw 9.3 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake to draw any inference on the spatial and temporal distribution of large subduction zone earthquakes in this region. An attempt to constrain the active crustal deformation of the Andaman-Nicobar arc in the background of the December 26, 2004 Great Sumatra-Andaman megathrust earthquake is made here, thereby presenting a unique data set representing the pre-seismic convergence and co-seismic displacement.Understanding the mechanisms of the subduction zone earthquakes is both challenging sCientifically and important for assessing the related earthquake hazards. In many subduction zones, thrust earthquakes may have characteristic patterns in space and time. However, the mechanism of mega events still remains largely unresolved.Large subduction zone earthquakes are usually associated with high amplitude co-seismic deformation above the plate boundary megathrust and the elastic relaxation of the fore-arc. These are expressed as vertical changes in land level with the up-dip part of the rupture surface uplifted and the areas above the down-dip edge subsided. One of the most characteristic pattern associated with the inter-seismic era is that the deformation is in an opposite sense that of co-seismic period.This work was started in 2002 to understand the tectonic deformation along the Andaman-Nicobar arc using seismological, geological and geodetic data. The occurrence of the 2004 megathrust earthquake gave a new dimension to this study, by providing an opportunity to examine the co-seismic deformation associated with the greatest earthquake to have occurred since the advent of Global Positioning System (GPS) and broadband seismometry. The major objectives of this study are to assess the pre-seismic stress regimes, to determine the pre-seismic convergence rate, to analyze and interpret the pattern of co-seismic displacement and slip on various segments and to look out for any possible recurrence interval for megathrust event occurrence for Andaman-Nicobar subduction zone. This thesis is arranged in six chapters with further subdivisions dealing all the above aspects.

Modelling and Analysis of Recurrent Event Data with Multiple Causes

This thesis Entitled “modelling and analysis of recurrent event data with multiple causes.Survival data is a term used for describing data that measures the time to occurrence of an event.In survival studies, the time to occurrence of an event is generally referred to as lifetime.Recurrent event data are commonly encountered in longitudinal studies when individuals are followed to observe the repeated occurrences of certain events. In many practical situations, individuals under study are exposed to the failure due to more than one causes and the eventual failure can be attributed to exactly one of these causes.The proposed model was useful in real life situations to study the effect of covariates on recurrences of certain events due to different causes.In Chapter 3, an additive hazards model for gap time distributions of recurrent event data with multiple causes was introduced. The parameter estimation and asymptotic properties were discussed .In Chapter 4, a shared frailty model for the analysis of bivariate competing risks data was presented and the estimation procedures for shared gamma frailty model, without covariates and with covariates, using EM algorithm were discussed. In Chapter 6, two nonparametric estimators for bivariate survivor function of paired recurrent event data were developed. The asymptotic properties of the estimators were studied. The proposed estimators were applied to a real life data set. Simulation studies were carried out to find the efficiency of the proposed estimators.

Meteorological aspects of an abnormal cooling event over Iran in April 2009

During the period from 12 to 15 April, 2009 nearly the entire Iran, apart from the southern border, experienced an advective cooling event. While winter freezing concerns are typical, the nature of this freezing event was unusual with respect to its date of occurrence and accompanying synoptic meteorological situation. To analyze the freezing event, the relevant meteorological data at multiple levels of the atmosphere were examined from the NCEP/ NCAR reanalysis dataset. The results showed that a polar vortex was responsible for the freezing event over the country extending southward extraordinarily in such a way that its ridge influenced most parts of Iran. This was recognized as an abnormal extension of a polar vortex in the recent years. The sea-level pressure fields indicated that a ridge of large-scale anticyclone centered over Black Sea extended southward and prevailed over most parts of Iran. This resulted in the formation of a severe cold air advection from high latitudes (Polar region) over Iran. During the study period, moisture pumping was observed from the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. The winds at 1000 hPa level blew with a magnitude of 10 m s-1 toward south in the region of convergence (between -2 9 10-6 s-1 and -12 9 10-6 s-1). The vertical profilesof temperature and humidity also indicated that the ICE structural icing occurred at multiple levels of the atmosphere, i.e, from 800 hPa through 400 hPa levels. In addition to the carburetor (or induction), icing occurred between 900 and 700 hPa levels in the selected radiosonde stations during the study period. In addition, the HYSPLIT backward trajectory model outputs were in quite good agreement with the observed synoptic features

Seismic behavior of capacity designed masonry walls in low seismicity regions

Eurocode 8 representing a new generation of structural design codes in Europe defines ‎requirements for the design of buildings against earthquake action. In Central and ‎Western Europe, the newly defined earthquake zones and corresponding design ground ‎acceleration values, will lead in many cases to earthquake actions which are remarkably ‎higher than those defined so far by the design codes used until now in Central Europe. ‎ In many cases, the weak points of masonry structures during an earthquake are the corner ‎regions of the walls. Loading of masonry walls by earthquake action leads in most cases ‎to high shear forces. The corresponding bending moment in such a wall typically causes a ‎significant increase of the eccentricity of the normal force in the critical wall cross ‎section. This in turn leads ultimately to a reduction of the size of the compression zone in ‎unreinforced walls and a high concentration of normal stresses and shear stresses in the ‎corner regions. ‎ Corner-Gap-Elements, consisting of a bearing beam located underneath the wall and ‎made of a sufficiently strong material (such as reinforced concrete), reduce the effect of ‎the eccentricity of the normal force and thus restricts the pinching effect of the ‎compression zone. In fact, the deformation can be concentrated in the joint below the ‎bearing beam. According to the principles of the Capacity Design philosophy, the ‎masonry itself is protected from high stresses as a potential cause of brittle failure. ‎ Shaking table tests at the NTU Athens Earthquake Engineering Laboratory have proven ‎the effectiveness of the Corner-Gap-Element. The following presentation will cover the ‎evaluation of various experimental results as well as a numerical modeling of the ‎observed phenomena.‎

3D Simultaneous Inversion for Seismic Structure and Local Hypocenters in Germany under Consideration of Seismic Anisotropy in the Upper Mantel

The main task of this work has been to investigate the effects of anisotropy onto the propagation of seismic waves along the Upper Mantle below Germany and adjacent areas. Refraction- and reflexion seismic experiments proved the existence of Upper Mantle anisotropy and its influence onto the propagation of Pn-waves. By the 3D tomographic investigations that have been done here for the crust and the upper mantle, considering the influence of anisotropy, a gap for the investigations in Europe has been closed. These investigations have been done with the SSH-Inversionprogram of Prof. Dr. M. Koch, which is able to compute simultaneously the seismic structure and hypocenters. For the investigation, a dataset has been available with recordings between the years 1975 to 2003 with a total of 60249 P- and 54212 S-phase records of 10028 seismic events. At the beginning, a precise analysis of the residuals (RES, the difference between calculated and observed arrivaltime) has been done which confirmed the existence of anisotropy for Pn-phases. The recognized sinusoidal distribution has been compensated by an extension of the SSH-program by an ellipse with a slow and rectangular fast axis with azimuth to correct the Pn-velocities. The azimuth of the fast axis has been fixed by the application of the simultaneous inversion at 25° - 27° with a variation of the velocities at +- 2.5 about an average value at 8 km/s. This new value differs from the old one at 35°, recognized in the initial residual analysis. This depends on the new computed hypocenters together with the structure. The application of the elliptical correction has resulted in a better fit of the vertical layered 1D-Model, compared to the results of preceding seismological experiments and 1D and 2D investigations. The optimal result of the 1D-inversion has been used as initial starting model for the 3D-inversions to compute the three dimensional picture of the seismic structure of the Crust and Upper Mantle. The simultaneous inversion has showed an optimization of the relocalization of the hypocenters and the reconstruction of the seismic structure in comparison to the geology and tectonic, as described by other investigations. The investigations for the seismic structure and the relocalization have been confirmed by several different tests. First, synthetic traveltime data are computed with an anisotropic variation and inverted with and without anisotropic correction. Further, tests with randomly disturbed hypocenters and traveltime data have been proceeded to verify the influence of the initial values onto the relocalization accuracy and onto the seismic structure and to test for a further improvement by the application of the anisotropic correction. Finally, the results of the work have been applied onto the Waldkirch earthquake in 2004 to compare the isotropic and the anisotropic relocalization with the initial optimal one to verify whether there is some improvement.

Unusual voltage sag event detection in power systems

Three multivariate statistical tools (principal component analysis, factor analysis, analysis discriminant) have been tested to characterize and model the sags registered in distribution substations. Those models use several features to represent the magnitude, duration and unbalanced grade of sags. They have been obtained from voltage and current waveforms. The techniques are tested and compared using 69 registers of sags. The advantages and drawbacks of each technique are listed

Foreign perception of sovereign risk : an event study of the colombian armed conflict

Este paper estudia la relación entre algunos de los eventos más importantes del conflicto colombiano con la percepción extranjera de riesgo soberano, medido por los Credit Default Swaps (CDS) de los bonos del Gobierno Colombiano. Usando dos metodologías relativamente recientes, yo estimo el efecto causal de los eventos de conflicto ampliamente cubierto por los medios internacionales. En primer lugar construyo un grupo de control sintético que funciona como contra factual de la serie real de los CDS colombianos pero en ausencia de eventos de conflicto. Segundo, estimo el efecto acumulado del evento bajo la metodología de retornos anormales acumulados. Los resultados sugieren que los efectos de los eventos de conflicto sobre la percepción extranjera de riesgo soberano dependen de las especificaciones de cada evento.

Event Driven Programming in Java

Event driven programming is a way of writing a program that works by responding to things happening (rather than executing a preplanned series of tasks). It is most often used to manage more advanced user interactions, such as GUI programs. In this session we look at how event driven programming works in Java GUIs, as both an introduction to events (using MouseListeners), and also to the way that GUI programs are constructed.

Faculty Good Practice - Event

Slides and link to Panopto recording about 'good practice' within from across the Faculty Adam Procter - Winchester School of Art. Liz Williams - Southampton Law School. Jean Leah - School of Management.