New perspectives in social studies on recreational running: The case of Poland

The article concerns the phenomenon of the popularity of recreational running in Poland. A search of existing studies on this phenomenon shows a clear overrepresentation of survey studies (mostly self-completion questionnaires), which in practice narrows the scope of empirical findings to issues such as the structure of the population of amateur runners, runners’ motivations, and running practices themselves. In contrast, there is limited recognition of the perspectives and experiences of the institutional actors who co-create the running boom. These actors are referred to as the stakeholders of the running boom in the article. In the second part of the text, we discuss the results of our own research, which focused on running competitions open to amateurs. Every year, several thousands of such events are organized in Poland. The study (standardized online desk research) was carried out on two randomly selected nationwide samples: N = 338 and N = 349 (measurements for 2014 and 2017). The research documented the activity of stakeholders of the running boom in the form of organization, sponsorship, and patronage of running events. However, it should be emphasized that certain activities are conducted by public sector entities (local governments); the involvement of market players is less visible. The conducted research also provides characteristics of the landscape of running events in Poland: their location (including regional distribution), size, and their most important sport features (distance and accompanying events). The time variable (2014 versus 2017) and the regional variable (Eastern Poland versus the rest of the country) were used as the basic independent variables in the statistical analyses. The study as a whole can be considered to be complementary to previous studies on the Polish running boom.

Spatial links in the analysis of voter turnout in European Parliamentary elections

This paper investigates the turnout in European Parliamentary elections by analyzing the four EP elections from 1999 to 2014 in 155 regions in EU-12. We use a number of econometric techniques that account for spatial dependence, also dealing with heteroskedasticity and endogeneity. The results confirm the role of spatial spillovers and indicate a significant role for GDP per capita, unemployment, age, institutional and electoral variables in influencing turnout. Finally, we disentangle the direct and indirect effects of the regional variable in affecting turnout.

Influence of Local Tax and Zakat Infaq Maslahah Through to Regional Income (Overview of New Trends in Sustainable Development)

Conditions Batam Island, Indonesia, economic growth declined from 5.4% in 2016, to under 2% percent in 2017, the disparity is difficult to increase revenue growth in Batam. It is necessary to look beyond the local revenues of local taxes, such as zakat and donation, to contribute to Maslahah through local revenue. Which research aimed at contributing to the Regional Income and Maslahah by using samples taken from the Department of Revenue at Batam City, Amil Zakat Agency (BAZ), Indonesia Religious Leader (MUI), Public Welfare with respondents 190. This study used software AMOS version 23 with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The result shows that the variable contribution of local taxes to regional variable income is a significant positive contribution to variable regional Infaq variable income is not notable positive. Tithe variable contribution towards regional variable pay is a significant positive contribution of the variable to variable Maslahah local tax is not significant positive contribution of geographical variables to variable Maslahah income is not a significant negative contribution to mutable Maslahah title variable is significantly positive, Infaq variable contribution towards Maslahah variable is significantly positive, regional changes in contributions by local income tax, donation, charity amounted to 55.2%, a shift Maslahah given by local tax contribution, Infaq, welfare, and regional income amounted to 53.6%. For the local contribution, Maslahah significant positive income to the charity and donation should be maximized not a tax.

MELD score exception overemphasizes the benefits to hepatocellular carcinoma patients in transplant. A proposal to improve the rules

Purpose: In Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD)-based allocation systems patients with cancer and some other diseases are assigned a special score. The goal of this study was to assess the fairness of organ distribution by the MELD system among different groups of diseases. Methods: Retrospective study with adult patients between 2009 and 2013. Demographics and MELD scores were compared with the incidence of transplant or death, patient origin and disease groups. Results: 260 selected patients were submitted to transplant or died before the transplant. Their median age was 54.9 years (12.1 -73.9 years); 70.4% were men; 63.3% had chronic liver diseases (alcoholic cirrhosis 33.1%, C-virus cirrhosis 24.2%). Exception score was assigned to 26.5% of listed patients. These patients received 31% of transplanted organs and had lower pre-transplant mortality or dropout (14.2 times less) rates than the other patients (p <0.001). Receiving exception points resulted in a higher likelihood of being transplanted. Conclusion: The authors propose the use of a regional variable score for transplantation in special situations, which should be based on the median MELD score of the latest transplants for chronic liver diseases, to refrain from harming patients who have access to transplant according to the calculated MELD score.

Site 2D Velocity Structure Imaged by Microtremors Method

In this paper, a two-step space prediction approach is developed to image site 2D velocity structures. Firstly the average Vs of each layer are fixed, the interfaces between each two soils layers are predicted by the interpolation method of bi-harmonic Green function as spline in tension, to keep soil interfaces varying smoothly in space. Furthermore, a method to determine tension coefficient is proposed based on microtremor H/V method, which makes most use of H/V information and avoids choosing the tension coefficient at will. Secondly, the variance essence of the Vs structure as a regional variable is deeply excavated by Kriging method and its structural characteristic is taken into account. The spatial successive distribution of the Vs structure between soil interfaces is simulated by high precision space extrapolation and prediction, and finally the detailed 2D model is constructed. The two-step space prediction approach describes the characteristic of Vs structure as a regional variable from the sparsely and non-uniformly distributed microtremors data. Obviously, it also can easily make good use of the other exploration data.

Estimation of streamflow by slope regional dependency function

Kriging is one of the most developed methodologies in the regional variable modeling. However, one of its drawbacks is that the influence radius can not be determined by this method. In which distance and in what ratio that pivot station is influenced from adjacent sites is rather often encountered problem in practical applications. Regional weighting functions obtained from available data consist of several broken lines. Each line has different slopes which represent the similarity and the contribution of adjacent stations as a weighting coefficient. The approach in this study is called as Slope Regional Dependency Function (SRDF). The main idea of this approach is to express the variability in value differences γ and distances together. Originally proposed SRDF and Trigonometric Point Cumulative Semi-Variogram (TPCSV) methods are used to predict streamflow. TPCSV and Point Cumulative Semi-Variogram (PCSV) approaches are also compared with each other. Prediction performance of all the three methods revealed a relative error less than 10% which is acceptable for most engineering applications. It is shown that SRDF outperforms PCSV and TPCSV with very high differences. It can be used for missing data completion, determination of measurement sites location, calculation of influence radius, and determination of regional variable potential. The proposed method is applied for the 38 stream flow measurement sites located in the Mississippi River basin.

Estimation of streamflow by slope Regional Dependency Function

Kriging is one of the most developed methodologies in the regional variable modeling. However, one of its drawbacks is that the influence radius can not be determined by this method. In which distance and in what ratio that pivot station is influenced from adjacent sites is rather often encountered problem in practical applications. Regional weighting functions obtained from available data consist of several broken lines. Each line has different slopes which represent the similarity and the contribution of adjacent stations as a weighting coefficient. The approach in this study is called as Slope Regional Dependency Function (SRDF). The main idea of this approach is to express the variability in value differences [γ(d)] and distances together. Originally proposed SRDF and Trigonometric Point Cumulative Semi-Variogram (TPCSV) methods are used to predict streamflow. Also TPCSV and Point Cumulative Semi-Variogram (PCSV) approaches are compared with each other. Prediction performance of all three methods stays below 10% relative error which is acceptable for the engineering applications. It is shown that SRDF outperforms PCSV and TPCSV with very high differences. It can be used for missing data completion, determination of measurement sites location, calculation of influence radius, and determination of regional variable potential. The proposed method is applied for the 38 stream flow measurement sites located in the Mississippi River basin.