<p>The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to develop and to test the Perceived Health & Sport Participation Profile (PHSPP) Questionnaire; (b) to examine the relationship between athletes’ perceived health, goal orientation, self-esteem, physical self perception and sport satisfaction. The main theoretical framework used in this study is the Perceived Health & Sport Participation model (PH&SP) (Stambulova, Johnson, Lindwall & Hinic, 2005). A package of five questionnaires was completed by 139 competitive athletes representing different types and levels of sport. The data treatment involved descriptive statistics, correlation, factor, and regression analyses performed with the SPSS. A test-re-test was also performed on the PHSPP questionnaire with 30 subjects. </p><p>The study confirmed major parts of the PH&SP-model and its link to some established concepts and theories, e.g., athletic identity and goal orientation. Factor analyses of the PHSPP resulted in eight extracted factors explaining 61.46% of the total variance of the questionnaire with alpha values between 0.71 and 0.89 for all the factors. Test-re-test reliability appeared as satisfactory. Regression analyses showed that social influences on athletes contribute more to unhealthy than to healthy sport participation. Analyses also confirmed that healthy sport participation contributes to satisfaction with health and sport participation, and unhealthy sport participation contributes to dissatisfaction with health and sport participation. The results are discussed in relation to the corresponding literature and the PH&SP-model.</p><p>Key words: competitive athletes, perceived health, social influences, sport satisfaction.</p>

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to develop and to test the Perceived Health & Sport Participation Profile (PHSPP) Questionnaire; (b) to examine the relationship between athletes’ perceived health, goal orientation, self-esteem, physical self perception and sport satisfaction. The main theoretical framework used in this study is the Perceived Health & Sport Participation model (PH&SP) (Stambulova, Johnson, Lindwall & Hinic, 2005). A package of five questionnaires was completed by 139 competitive athletes representing different types and levels of sport. The data treatment involved descriptive statistics, correlation, factor, and regression analyses performed with the SPSS. A test-re-test was also performed on the PHSPP questionnaire with 30 subjects. The study confirmed major parts of the PH&SP-model and its link to some established concepts and theories, e.g., athletic identity and goal orientation. Factor analyses of the PHSPP resulted in eight extracted factors explaining 61.46% of the total variance of the questionnaire with alpha values between 0.71 and 0.89 for all the factors. Test-re-test reliability appeared as satisfactory. Regression analyses showed that social influences on athletes contribute more to unhealthy than to healthy sport participation. Analyses also confirmed that healthy sport participation contributes to satisfaction with health and sport participation, and unhealthy sport participation contributes to dissatisfaction with health and sport participation. The results are discussed in relation to the corresponding literature and the PH&SP-model. Key words: competitive athletes, perceived health, social influences, sport satisfaction.

The impetus for this study was my own curiosity about how seasoned entrepreneurial women were able to stay the course. As someone who has experienced the world of the employee and that of the entrepreneur, my goal was to better understand how, within their varied personal contexts, the lifelong learning experiences of seasoned entrepreneurial women were shaped by socio-cultural influences, significant individuals, gender, and learning challenges. Theories and research on lifelong and biographical learning, entrepreneurial learning, women's learning, and entrepreneurial women's learning helped to frame the study. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews and focus groups with eight women entrepreneurs between the ages of 40 and 60, with 16 to 30 years' experience in running their service-oriented enterprise were conducted. These women's stories illustrate how serendipitous their careers were, that is, they did not begin their working lives thinking they would become entrepreneurs, rather, it became the path that best supported their desires, independence and creativity. They were shaped by and sometimes resisted parents' messages about the role that education, work and marriage with children should play in women's lives. How they faced and learned from adversity and from the support of business mentors and friends were also significant. As they reflected back on their lives, they have a strong sense of mastery. Success for them did not focus on finances, rather, their autonomy, freedom, and control over the direction of their lives and the development of strong caring relationships with others, were key. Their learning was dynamic and experiential, it was both self directed and drew on others' knowledge. Women contemplating an entrepreneurial path may find this study of interest as they can learn how others, particularly family, shape their dreams, how they might meet challenges and learn from adversity, and overall, how central lifelong learning is to the development of their entrepreneurial careers. Educators and policymakers need to appreciate the serendipitous nature of entrepreneurship, how they can create entrepreneurial experiences for students, and expose the learners to not only essential skills required to run a business, but also to the stories regarding the self-development of successful entrepreneurs

The frequent consumption of alcohol and cannabis by youth poses both concern and ambivalence to society about the nature of the problem and how to respond. In the last few decades, social science research has devoted considerable attention to substance use among youth, making it an important issue to consider; however, controversy abounds when considering where consumption patterns of youth fall on a continuum from normal to deviant. Central to these debates is the social acceptability of the substances being used, their legal status, the frequency with which they are consumed, and the particular groups most often engaged in their use. Youth who consume alcohol are viewed with less trepidation than those who consume cannabis. Moreover, those who use either substance recreationally or experimentally are deemed to be more typical than those who have escalated their use to more regular or frequent episodes. Finally, drug-using youth who are embedded in conventional society are viewed more positively than those who occupy the margins of society, such as those who are delinquent or homeless. To fully understand the debate about the deviancy versus the normalcy of adolescent substance use, more inclusive approaches that take into account structural, individual and situational explanations are needed; however, existing studies fail to consider all of these influences. Instead, there is debate about the dominance of each of these explanations. This dissertation examines and tests these competing representations and explanations of adolescent substance use by drawing on multiple sociological theories of deviance including control theories, differential association theory, routine activity approaches, and drift theory. Using a combined sample of high school students and street youth, the findings suggest that adolescent substance use is far too complex to be explained by only one theory. Instead, explanations for the variations in substance use must take into account both individual backgrounds and more immediate situational influences. Most importantly, individual beliefs about substances are an important and often ignored aspect of individual substance use patterns.

What is considered anomalous among the Late Bronze/Iron I Age Canaanite tomb plans rests on the understanding of the foreign and the local elements of interments of that period. When Diane Bolger, in her discussion of ancient Cypriot mortuary practices, noted the shift in the scholarly literature from the emphasis on the identity and status of the dead to an examination of the ways in which rituals of death and burial reveal the motives and identities of the living (Bolger 2003), her observation highlighted the importance of burial as a process rather than an event. <p>The phenomenon of burials in loculi chamber tombs during the transitional period of the end of the Late Bronze and beginning of the Early Iron Age is explored, building on the foundations established by Rivka Gonens work on Late Bronze burial behaviour in Canaan (Gonen 1992). The structural and ritual characteristics of the tombs that present evidence for cultural context and origins are considered, establishing whether the archaeological remains translate into a picture of a regional variation or a foreign influence. Are the Late Bronze/Iron I burials in Canaan examples of an amalgamation of cultural traits of variable geographical origins or did they represent an immigration of a mortuary custom? Why are loculi cave burials considered intrusive in the Canaanite territory?<p>The examination of Tell Dothan, Lachish, Tell el-Ajjul and Megiddo, and of the Cypriot sites of Ayios Iakovos Melia, Lapithos Vrysi tou Barba, Korovia Paleoskoutella and Dhenia Kafkalla facilitates the discussion of loculi chamber tomb plan interments in the Levant have prompted.

What is considered anomalous among the Late Bronze/Iron I Age Canaanite tomb plans rests on the understanding of the foreign and the local elements of interments of that period. When Diane Bolger, in her discussion of ancient Cypriot mortuary practices, noted the shift in the scholarly literature from the emphasis on the identity and status of the dead to an examination of the ways in which rituals of death and burial reveal the motives and identities of the living (Bolger 2003), her observation highlighted the importance of burial as a process rather than an event. <p>The phenomenon of burials in loculi chamber tombs during the transitional period of the end of the Late Bronze and beginning of the Early Iron Age is explored, building on the foundations established by Rivka Gonens work on Late Bronze burial behaviour in Canaan (Gonen 1992). The structural and ritual characteristics of the tombs that present evidence for cultural context and origins are considered, establishing whether the archaeological remains translate into a picture of a regional variation or a foreign influence. Are the Late Bronze/Iron I burials in Canaan examples of an amalgamation of cultural traits of variable geographical origins or did they represent an immigration of a mortuary custom? Why are loculi cave burials considered intrusive in the Canaanite territory?<p>The examination of Tell Dothan, Lachish, Tell el-Ajjul and Megiddo, and of the Cypriot sites of Ayios Iakovos Melia, Lapithos Vrysi tou Barba, Korovia Paleoskoutella and Dhenia Kafkalla facilitates the discussion of loculi chamber tomb plan interments in the Levant have prompted.

This paper focuses on companies within the cleantech industry (clean technology and its derivation “cleantech”) that have started up and produced clean techniques to the industrial world. The main purpose of this study is to contribute a better understanding of cleantech entrepreneurs’ motivations and influences to start up a cleantech company. This understanding, in turn, will provide regulatory agencies and society the key factors to stimulate cleantech entrepreneurial activity which take the environment and social problems into consideration. Thus, this study attempt to answer the following question: Why do entrepreneurs choose to run a cleantech company? In order to fulfill the main purpose of this project, a qualitative study was conducted. The qualitative study was performed as an unstructured interview of twelve founders of cleantech companies.  The cleantech companies were still in the in the start –up stage and some are at an even earlier stage. The companies were selected with the assist of Swentec’s mapping of cleantech companies in Sweden and ETAPs (Environmental Technologies Action Plan). In the theory chapter, this study contributes with a new framework of motives and goals for ecopreneurship. This new framework originates from the studies on the driving forces of ecopreneurship (Schaltegger (2002), Linnanen (2002), Valley &amp; Taylor (2002) and Pastakia (2002).  The new framework recognizes four new types of ecopreneurs: eco-idealists, eco-innovators, ad-hoc enviropreneurs and environment opportunist. This typology is used to position and analyze cleantech entrepreneurs who participated in this study. In the empirical chapter, the findings revealed that the cleantech entrepreneurs’ motivations lie primarily in the opportunity to convert their innovation of techniques into concrete business and succeed in the private sector. Due to the fact that the great majority of entrepreneurs are academic researchers with a doctoral degree in engineering, their personal motives can be characterized as the pursuit of a “need for achievement”, “independence” and “extensive experience” in the field of cleantech development.  Furthermore, the cleantech entrepreneurs were thoroughly engaged in social and environmental problems. They pursue sustainability because they believe that their work contributes to create sustainable values in society. As a result, cleantech entrepreneurs are ecopreneurs. This study also showed that these values require influencing factors such as law and regulations, customers who demand clean technology in their manufacture of products, services and overall processes.  However, the cleantech companies argued that this influences especially regulations not provide enough incentives for cleantech development in order to address the environmental problem successfully. An implication of these findings is that government’s support should not be an obstacle but ensuring a sustainable society.

Current accounts of self-control are highly individualistic. When individuals succeed at exerting self-control, we assume that they possess some positive internal characteristic that explans their success. Similarly, when individuals do not succeed, we blame their failure on an internal flaw. Yet many factors may influence the likelihood that an individual will exert self-control, including not only internal characteristics of individuals but also external factors. In this dissertation, I develop a framework for understanding the multiple sources of influence on individuals' state self-control that groups these factors into three categories: social, personal, and environmental. Further, I detail the multiple mechanisms by which the factors in the Social, Personal, and Environmental Control of Self (SPECS) model may influence self-control. Specifically, I examine the potential role of regulatory accessibility as a mechanism of influence on state self-control. In Study 1, I show that individuals who think about a friend with good self-control demonstrate increased performance on a persistence task than do participants who think about a friend with bad self-control. In Study 2, I replicate this effect, showing increased inhibitory capacity among individuals who wrote about a friend with good self-control compared to a control group, and decreased inhibitory capacity among individuals who wrote about a friend with bad self-control. In Study 3, I show that regulatory exertion increases among individuals subliminally primed with the name of a friend with good self-control and that regulatory exertion decreases among indivdiuals primed with the name of a friend with bad self-control. These findings support my hypothesis that models of self-control should account for sources of influence external to the individual, as well as explore the multiple pathways by which regulatory exertion is influenced. These findings support my hypothesis that social factors influence regulatory exertion, or state self-control. Further, they provide evidence that state self-control is influenced not only by regulatory capacity, but also by other mechanisms, including regulatory accessibility. Further research following the SPECS model will investigate the combined influence of social and environmental influences on self-control and the indirect influences of personal characteristics, such as trait self-control, on regulatory exertion. / Dissertation

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Constitution is a contract between a state and its people. For a modern democratic state ruled by law, all limitations on exercise of a state's right are stipulated in its written constitution in order to protect the people's rights from being infringed. Besides, the value of constitution is established through the will and thoughts of the whole people to lead the way for a well-ordered constitutional government. Even though a state ruled by an unwritten constitution, there will be legal instruments, customary practices, judgements and theories to form a substantive standard with biding force. According the constitution of the Republic of China, Grand Justices of the Judicial Yuan are the supreme and sole constructionist. They are vested with the authority to shoulders the heavy responsibilities of safeguard and support of the constitutional system. For this reason, Grand Justices enjoy the good name of "guardian angel of constitution". The Grand Justices of course should construe laws and decrees in accordance with the regulations of the constitution, so as to exert their judicial influences on balance of power, protection of human right and solution of constitutional disputes. A constitution lays down nothing but the political life of a state. So, the Grand Justices should take the development, change and needs of politics, economics, society and culture into consideration based on laws before they make a proper judgement and decision. That is not only an inevitable fate of the Grand Justices to be "political", but also an essential political character of a constructionist. In the past over 5 decades, our constitution experienced an unusual period of legal system, transformation of regime, frequent modification of constitution, and even the rotation of political parties. In the face of such a great change in environment, tide and the times, it is inevitable for a constructionist to present a different style in its construction of the constitution.