Humor in High-Stress Relationships: Understanding Communication in Police Officers' Romantic Relationships

A career in law enforcement is highly stressful given the nontraditional shiftwork, uncertain interactions, and risk of harm. These combined stressors likely spillover into one's romantic relationship and, thus, the study reported here explored one potential communicative coping mechanism—humor. Research exploring humor suggests that humorous communicators are better able to respond to stress, and this study explored if humor appears to benefit relational communication in police officer relationships. Findings begin to support this argument, revealing that romantic partners of police officers with a high humor orientation (HO) report using humor more to cope as well as experiencing less stress (both perceived and physical) and conflict (lower frequency of conflict and less intense/hostile conflict). Path analyses revealed that the use of humor to cope mediated the relationships between self-reported HO and stress, as well as conflict. Implications for humor and romantic relational communication are discussed.     

Testing Lesniaski's Revised Brief Test

In 2004, Lesniaski revised White's Brief Test methodology for smaller academic libraries that lack sufficient subject specialist librarians to perform the brief tests as originally proposed by White. As a part of regular collection development, Cowles Library implemented Lesniaski's Brief Tests on the print monograph collection. While primarily a review of Lesniaski's methodology, this article also discusses how the Brief Tests were used for improved collection evaluation and maintenance.     

Fine-Tuning the Institutional Repository: Evaluating the Self-Archiving Behavior of Researchers in Music

While self-archiving gains more traction as a means for scholars to make their research freely available, a perception persists that certain disciplines in the humanities lag behind the sciences in this regard. This article investigates the rate of self-archiving by scholars contributing to the top journals in the field of music, a discipline that traditionally falls within the humanities, although research in the field is highly interdisciplinary and draws heavily on multiple scientific fields. The contributors to these journals come from a range of background and interests, and represent colleges and universities from six continents.     

Grip pressure distributions and associated variability in golf: a two-club comparison

Teaching and playing professionals offer multiple theories concerning the manner in which forces should be applied to the handle of the club during the golf swing. This study extends recent research concerning grip pressures and forces in golf, with the purpose of exploring the similarities and differences between force profiles for a 7-iron and driver swung by proficient golfers. A secondary purpose was to further analyze the way that golfers use grip forces to manipulate the club. Grip forces were measured on eight low handicap golfers (USGA indexes 0 to 7) swinging their own 7-irons and drivers. In total, lead-hand and trail-hand grip forces were isolated as well as anatomically specific forces within the hands. Force profile variability across multiple swings for each golfer and between golfers characterized consistencies and important differences. Correlations between 7-iron and driver force profiles characterized force ‘signatures.’ The data highlight large fluctuations in grip forces during the swing. Marked differences between participants were observed, involving force magnitudes and phasing. Dominant forces arose primarily from the lead hand, specifically the last three fingers. Force profiles were highly repeatable across swings for a golfer (standard deviations < 7% of total force) and force profile correlations between 7-iron and driver for a golfer were remarkably high (r² = 0.86). Notably, within swing force variability was greatest during club acceleration, but dramatically decreased at impact.     

Transformative Education? A Philosophic-Augustinian Response to the 2010 Albertan Reform Initiatives in “Inspiring Education”

The Alberta Government’s 2010 “Inspiring Education” reform proposals claim to be “transformational” in nature. This paper examines these proposals in light of ancient philosophy and various among the world’s wisdom traditions. Drawing particularly on the philosophic reflections of St. Augustine in his Confessions, it argues that the proposals are neither new nor “transformational,” but part of a long and problematic educational lineage that has its roots among the ancient sophists. As an alternative to the Alberta proposals and “sophist-icated” education, this paper advocates for the incorporation of philosophic or contemplative elements into the school day during which both teachers and students might learn the genuine meaning of school as schole through the practice of pursuing wisdom.     

Using dual Euler angles for the analysis of arm movement during the badminton smash

Camera techniques are typically used in the study of human movement. However, as the number of joints and markers involved in a study increases, data extraction and calculation become increasingly tedious and complicated. To overcome this challenge, we propose a method of study that simplifies data extraction and calculation by using an electrogoniometer and dual Euler angles. The contribution of the rotation of each arm segment to produce a racket head’s speed was identified in the context of a badminton smash. The contribution of each segment rotation was computed using dual velocity analysis. A set of orthogonal Cartesian frames was established for computing the anatomical rotational velocities for each of the three segments of the upper arm. Electrogoniometers were attached to the subjects during the execution of the smash to obtain measurements of joint angles throughout the motion. To test the algorithm, the calculated velocity of the racket head was compared to the measured velocity. The calculated velocity was derived from an algorithm, while the measured velocity was obtained from a video image. The results are similar, indicating that the dual velocity method is suitable for determining segmental velocities in such kinematic situations.