We report the initial stages of validation of the 64-item Test of Performance Strategies, a self-report instrument designed to measure the psychological skills and strategies used by athletes in competition and during practice. Data were obtained from a sample of 472 athletes competing across a range of performance standards in a wide variety of sports. Exploratory factor analyses of their resp...

Mobile Robot competitions are an important way for dissemination of science and engineering to the general public but are also excellent way of testing and comparing different research strategies. In this paper we discuss how today’s research challenges of Intelligent and Autonomous Mobile Robots are being handled by the Autonomous Driving competition that takes place in the Portuguese Robotics...

Enhancing the speed and competition in an exhibition of services and products motivated the companies to provide high-quality products to the customers. One of the effective strategies to reach these goals is to create working groups. These groups can help the companies to improve the quality and exposure of their services along with reducing the costs. This approach is applicable in the health...

Abstract Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is an approach to translate customer requirements into technical requirements for a product or service. The traditional QFD provides a fundamental analysis, but it is still inconvenient when decision making in technical design should address business objection. The competition strategies and the resource allocation for this improvement planning are ess...

The amount, composition and timing of food intake can profoundly affect sports performance. Good nutritional practice will help athletes train hard, recover quickly and adapt more effectively with less risk of illness and injury. Athletes should adopt specific nutritional strategies before and during competition to help maximise their performance. Athletes will benefit from the guidance of a qu...

We propose a new concept for how to make choices in games without assuming an equilibrium. To beat the average means to obtain a higher payoff against the others than the others obtain amongst themselves, for any way in which the game might be played. Only Nash equilibrium strategies can beat the average. Beating the average is possible in many symmetric games, including Cournot competition wit...

In this brief note, a competition on a new product produced by two firms sharing a market is analyzed both from a Cournot and Stackelberg point of view. In contrast with classical models, setup costs are considered in the firms’ production costs, leading to ambiguities in their best response strategies. Our aim is to establish the different equilibria strategies that may arise from these two co...

Advances and widespread use of Internet shopping intermediaries have empowered consumers to collect detailed product information and discover the price dispersion for the product and its alternatives. These intermediaries provide in-depth decision support systems for consumers to search and sort out vast amount of information available on Internet. This paper examines the impact of these interm...