What kind of application software that is an electronic worksheet used to organize and manipulate numbers and display options for what if analysis?

Spreadsheets

An electronic spreadsheet can be used to automatically perform numerical calculations. Spreadsheet programs are usually set up in the form of a table with rows and columns. Each row and column intersects to form a cell in which data may be stored. These data may be a text label, a number, or a formula that combines data from other cells.

In security management spreadsheets are of immense value in preparing and tracking budgets, calculating expenses, estimating job costs, and conducting other numerical analyses. Data entries can be easily changed to analyze their effect. Another useful feature of most spreadsheet programs is the ability to graphically display results. Different types of graphs and charts can be used to visually display fluctuations and trends in the relationships between different variables within a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are also a useful tool to keep track of expense and income.

2.1 Spreadsheets

An electronic spreadsheet (or simply a ‘spreadsheet’) is an electronic version of the accountant's traditional paper spreadsheet, which stores numeric data in two-dimensional tables that display the results of calculations performed on these data. They have been called, with some justification, ‘God's gift to planners.’ They are easy to learn, forgiving of errors, and provide an intuitively logical structure for examining any quantitative problem that can be formulated as a two-dimensional table. They are easily adaptable, allowing users to copy data and computational formulas easily from one location to another and develop predefined ‘spreadsheet models’ that for many years provided the most widely used software tools designed specifically for planning applications (see, e.g., Klosterman et al. 1993). And, most importantly, spreadsheets are ideal for examining the ‘what if’ questions that permeate planning by allowing planners quickly and easily to determine the effects of alternative policy choices and different assumptions about the future.

Excel

The electronic spreadsheet has become an invaluable laboratory tool. Because of its general purpose numerical analysis and graphic features, the spreadsheet has replaced many previously custom-written scientific applications. These programs have also won favor among researchers owing to the flexibility they allow in entering, editing, and organizing data. It is, therefore, extremely advantageous to develop software which takes advantage of a full-featured spreadsheet.

Powerful as they have become, however, spreadsheets cannot efficiently manipulate data graphically. For example, the interactive cursor features of the Review program are not possible in any current spreadsheet application. Also, data acquisition is rarely performed directly by a spreadsheet. In the development of this system, however, it became apparent that flexibility of data collection and analysis had to be a key feature. The data acquisition, analysis, and output formats preferred by one researcher were completely unsatisfactory to another. It was therefore decided that these capabilities could best be met by incorporating MS Excel into the system.

Excel is a full-featured spreadsheet for Windows with graphic, database, macrolanguage, and interprogram communication capabilities. A set of macrocommands has been developed to facilitate the sharing of data between Review and Excel and to allow Acquire and Review to be controlled through Excel.

The Process of Budget Creation

Budget preparation and modification have changed drastically since the availability of software spreadsheets such as Excel™, Lotus 1-2-3, and Ability Office. Gone are the days when budgets were created on accountant-type paper and items would be written across broad columns reflecting various payments or disbursements over a year’s periods. These would then be totaled for each payment or disbursement category and then for the year as a whole. If the allocated budget equaled the total on the bottom right-hand corner, the process was considered a success. If not, the manager and staff had to review and revise projections to see where alterations could be made.

The same process still occurs, although procedures are greatly eased by software programs that produce running totals of the budget, instantly adjusting with each change. This has vastly improved management control. Each significant expenditure constitutes a line in the personnel and expense portion of the budget, as shown in Table 8.4. The manager reflects the budget changes that occur during the process. For example, if employees are granted pay increases at specific times, these are taken into account in the year’s total plan by inserting the increase at the projected time.

Table 8.4. Illustrative Security Budget Line Items Over Yearly Quarters

Budget planners allocate expenses for people, supplies, and major purchases over the length of the budget period. Numerous variations are possible to suit the recording and operating policies of particular organizations. The overhead charge, used in some organizations, is a charge management may impose on different departments reflecting a portion of the shared services provided by the organization to the department. A line item budget of this sort is best loaded onto a computer program so that cost items may be changed at any time, with budgetary consequences being instantly reflected. Security services may also be included in the organizational overhead, which is charged to other departments. The allocation for “other employees” under “expenses” can be a major one as it includes contracted security guard services planned for the entire year.

Security program line item budgets usually are completed on electronic spreadsheets, which allows for specific indication of fund allocations. Personnel budgets frequently are expressed as line item expenses in that each position is considered permanent, and funds are allocated for an entire period. The spreadsheet allows numerous adjustments to occur over time. When a user changes an entry, the program immediately updates the data in all columns. The following are factors that affect change in a line item budget:

Personnel costs. Table 8.4 divides security program costs for illustrative purposes into four quarters. However, most programs allocate personnel expenditures according to pay periods, that is, weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly. In a line item budget, each employee will have a line for the entire year.

Expenses. These predictable costs can be planned over an extensive period of time based on previous experience. They also represent variable expenditures. For example, plans for employees to attend conventions can be curtailed if projected costs get out of hand. In previous years, the “miscellaneous” category allowed managers a safety valve for adjusting their budget according to contingencies. Today, the category is small or is eliminated entirely in many reports. Contractual security guard services may be in this category and constitute the largest item in the entire budget.

Capital budget. This represents spending for purchases that have a lifetime of 2 or more years.

Budget emergencies and contingencies. As one budget is being planned, a budget for the current year is operating. Further, the implementation of unexpected plans will cause budget changes that will have to be taken into consideration. Senior management expects operating managers to stay within their budgets without substantial deviation. Senior managers also may ask departmental managers to reduce their budgets on short notice. A reason for this could be to respond to an unexpected earnings shortfall or other reversal.

Managing the budget can be a challenge to security practitioners, who sometimes must deal with emergencies that create budget overruns. At such times, the manager is nonetheless expected to “find the money” within the current budget. This signifies that managers need to have the capacity to meet a contingency by cutting previously planned and allocated expenditures. Managers with budget responsibilities constantly analyze what cuts in programs or purchases could be made if they had to be made. Similarly, they consider how they would expand programs if additional resources not presently contemplated were made available. At all times, it is vital for the protection manager to understand what the program’s benefits are and communicate to senior management how the security function is contributing to the ultimate goals of the operations.

Data Processing

The storage of data has evolved throughout time going from paper archives, to electronic spreadsheets and web-based data-base engines (Fig. 9). The postprocessing is performed using software developed by the geodesy group of the Volcano Disasters Assistance Program (VDAP) to eliminate the effects from the linear drift of the instrument and cyclic fluctuation associated with the external temperature (see Alpala et al., 2017).

Replacing the raw data set with its moving average is another method employed to remove the effects of environmental temperature from the record. This approach can be very useful for analyzing time series when the instrument trend is not linear and there an interest in studying the long-term behavior of the volcano (Fig. 10). According to Chou (1990), if data series show periodic uniform fluctuations, a moving average with a window equal to the fluctuations period will eliminate the periodic variations. Fig. 10 presents data recorded by the tiltmeters Peladitos and Huairatola (installed in the Galeras volcano), logged with a sampling rate of 10 min. The Peladitos tiltmeter, installed directly over solid lava and buried at least one meter (e.g., Fig. 7, right), shows daily periodic fluctuations smaller than 2 μrad, temperature changes in the order of decimals of a Celsius degree in 2 months (Fig. 10A, left) and hundredths of a Celsius degree in 1 week (Fig. 10A, right). The Huairatola tiltmeter, installed at the surface on solid lava and isolated from direct weather (e.g., Fig. 7, center), has daily periodic variations in its tilt components up to 10 μrad; the temperature shows variations around 4°C in 2 months (Fig. 10B, left) and 2°C in 1 week (Fig. 10A, right). To eliminate the daily variations, a moving average with a window of 144 data points was applied to the time series, equivalent to the data value recorded in 1 day, achieving much cleaner series and reducing the fluctuations in the tilt sensors to less than 0.5 μrad (Fig. 10A and B, red lines).

13.4.1 Experimental Tips

A number of modifications have been made to the original assay2 to optimize performance and reproducibility. Sonication of the antigen prior to coating the plates enhanced plate lot uniformity, reducing intra- and inter-plate variation. As well, constant shaking of the plates during the blocking and competition steps improved reproducibility. Though computer software can be used to drive the plate reading at targeted times and to perform the subsequent calculations, single point readings from 5–15 min after addition of the Substrate Buffer were found to yield comparable results to those obtained through the software interface. A simple electronic spreadsheet can be used for calculations.

The positive threshold value reported for the original assay (20%) was based on ROC analyses of neutralizing antibody titer and cELISA values for fox sera alone. Following the introduction of changes to the assay, this threshold was re-evaluated for fox sera, as well as for the other species targeted for ORV in Canada. While the positive threshold for fox sera remained similar, higher values were necessary for skunk and raccoon sera to achieve good agreement between VNT and cELISA analyses. However, the threshold values can be changed to favor sensitivity or specificity, depending on the purpose of the study. For example, if the desire is to have a very stringent analysis of vaccine performance (i.e. to eliminate all false positives), the threshold can be raised. Similarly, the threshold can be lowered to ensure that no true positives are overlooked, or ranges of values can be established to categorize samples as “negative,” “suspect positive,” and “positive.” Similar validations should be performed if the assay is used to analyze sera from other species, or if other Ag or MAbs are utilized, in order to establish appropriate cut-off values.

2.6 Transparency and Accountability: Documenting Experimental Detail

An increasingly important aspect of addressing the issue of reproducibility is the accurate recording of experimental methodologies and the raw data in a form that is accessible for those “skilled in the art.” Traditionally, a laboratory notebook, written or electronic, is viewed as a complete and independent record of a researcher’s laboratory activities with its content being immediately understandable to any other researcher in the research area. This is unfortunately infrequently the case such that the raw data—if indeed there is any in a notebook or electronic spreadsheet—often disappears along with its author making efforts to reproduce key experiments a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes (Engber, 2016). Baker (2016b) cites apocryphal instances of researchers “scribbling data on paper towels, repeating experiments without running controls and guessing at details months after an experiment” rather than formal notebooks that are kept current and audited (Williams et al., 2008).

With the emergence of Open Data Peer Review (ODPR) and open data policies (Chapter 5.3.2.6) that have been increasingly mandated by federal and private research funding bodies (Hahnel, 2015), the voluntary nature of the approach to laboratory QC will no doubt change. Additionally, some journals are requesting that raw experimental data be submitted together with manuscripts for ODPR. In situations where plagiarism and/or fraud is suspected in a submitted manuscript (and where a frequent response is an inability to “locate the data”—the scientific version of “the dog ate my homework”), this can lead to rapid resolution and rejection or retraction of an article depending on its publication status. At the present time it was found that “Most data sharing policies did not provide specific guidance on the practices that ensure data is maximally available and reusable.” (Vasilevsky et al., 2017). In the more positive context of the “big data” revolution (Luo et al., 2016; Taglang and Jackson, 2016) raw data sets, public and private, especially those from omics disciplines can be mined by researchers to more precisely model complex diseases (Alyass et al., 2015) while population data sets collected in areas with public health issues can be used to identify and help fight global epidemics (Marr, 2015).

2.2 A little computer history

In the early days of personal computing, there were no networks accessible to the general public, and very limited storage options. The original personal computers to reach an audience outside of the pure hobbyist realm were the IBM Personal Computer, the Apple computer, the Commodore PET, and the Tandy TRS-80.

However, big businesses were still using mainframe computers and dumb terminals for their business applications such as word processing and financial tracking. This would soon change.

The IBM PC, introduced in 1981, would eventually become the de facto standard for all personal computers, resulting in the term “IBM compatible.” With the introduction of Lotus 1-2-3, a financial spreadsheet program, IBM personal computers began to make inroads into the corporate computing world, driven by the desire of financial managers to have the ability to create electronic spreadsheets. Lotus 1-2-3 became the “super app” that drove sales of IBM personal computers and had a huge impact on the growth of the personal computer industry. As the demand for personal computers grew, companies like Compaq began to produce “IBM clones,” making inroads into the market dominated by IBM. To combat this, IBM introduced Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) in an effort to force companies to purchase IBM parts in order to be compatible. However, the effort failed, and IBM soon returned to building personal computers using a common architecture based on industry standards.

Today, all computer hardware is based on well-known industry standards. The computing platform chosen by consumers today is driven more by aesthetics and specific software preferences than any proprietary hardware platform. However, the dominance of the Microsoft operating system on corporate desktops has resulted in the majority of businesses choosing Microsoft Windows for compatibility with the vast number of vertical market software applications built on the Microsoft Windows platform. Vertical market software is software created for a specific group of users, such as a loan management software application, a document management application, or an automotive shop management application.

Today these applications have been extended beyond the personal computer to portable devices. The popularity of smart phones and pad computers like the Apple iPad and Motorola Xoom has revolutionized the way people work with business documents and e-mail in what amounts to a handheld portable office.

Situational Cues and Metaphysical Perceptions

As we began considering the relationship between metaphysical perceptions and self-control, one central question drove our initial approach: What cues in the immediate environment cause individuals to perceive the same self-control task in different metaphysical terms? In other words, could we change certain aspects of a self-control context such that individuals perceive performance as reliant on physical or mental processes? As mentioned in the introduction—and as demonstrated in the various chapters comprising this volume—there exist numerous self-control components that can be described in either physical or mental terms (eg, effort, pain, fatigue, endurance). For instance, a person might perceive effort as a product of psychological or physiological influence, they might experience pain as a mental or physical symptom, or they might expect endurance to rely upon mental or physical resources. Although most lay people may not consider these dichotomies explicitly in all situations, we reasoned that if they generally differentiate between mental and physical processes, then experimental manipulations might push perceptions toward one side of the metaphysical continuum. Assuming that such metaphysical perceptions of self-control contexts are malleable, we reasoned that such perceptual changes could drive subsequent alterations in self-control exertion.

Our lab therefore began focusing on contextual manipulations that could alter one’s metaphysical perceptions of self-control tasks. As is summarized throughout this volume, there exist a wide array of contexts employed to gauge self-control, regardless of whether one considers research in the area of ego depletion (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010), cognitive fatigue (Ackerman, 2011), or human physiology (Bray et al., 2011). From these myriad possibilities, we selected a task highly representative of self-control research across multiple domains: handgrip persistence. Handgrip tasks have been utilized to study how multiple psychophysiological systems influence self-control, with the assumption that greater fatigue in a given system predicts lesser persistence on an extended handgrip task. Experimental research on handgrip exertion has highlighted several systems that influence task persistence, including prior effort expenditure on both physiological (Bray et al., 2011, 2012) and psychological (Egan et al., 2012; Martijn, Tenbült, Merckelbach, Dreezens, & de Vries, 2002; Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998) tasks. With an established relationship to both “physical” and “mental” systems, a handgrip paradigm represents a context in which metaphysical perceptions are highly malleable. That is, this task has been studied in both purely physiological and purely psychological contexts, which affords the possibility to realistically frame handgrip exertion in physical or mental terms.

In considering cues that could effectively prime mental or physical construals of this handgrip paradigm, we observed several past experiments that employed highly salient psychophysiological measurements to track ongoing task performance. For instance, in the human physiology literature, participants have electrodes attached to their arm as they persist on handgrip persistence tasks, such that researchers can measure muscle fatigue as a mediating process of behavioral output (Bray et al., 2011). Because electrodes can viably detect activity in both the arm (ie, electromyography) and brain (ie, electroencephalography), we reasoned that their placement could effectively focus participants on arm activity or brain activity—both of which are theorized to drive effective task performance. In general, we anticipated that participants with electrodes on their biceps would be more likely to focus on the physical nature of handgrip persistence (eg, muscle activity, hand pressure), whereas participants with electrodes on their temples would be more likely to focus on the psychological nature of handgrip persistence (eg, brain activity, willpower). Pilot work reinforced this general expectation, in that participants who read about a hypothetical handgrip paradigm were more likely to believe the grip task measured mental constructs when electrodes were attached to the subject’s temples, as opposed to the subject’s biceps.

From this pilot work, we constructed an experimental paradigm that could both measure handgrip persistence and manipulate metaphysical perceptions of such persistence simultaneously (see Appendix 1). To this end, we recruited undergraduate participants and randomly assigned them to one of three conditions (mental—electrodes on temples; physical—electrodes on biceps; control—no electrodes). All participants were exposed to an electronic handgrip system assessing both maximum grip strength (Phase 1) and grip persistence (Phase 2).2 In Phase 1, participants received an introduction to the system, completed a measure of maximum grip strength (two 10 s trials), and completed a short set of questions concerning their current mood. In Phase 2, participants were asked to stabilize their grip strength at 40% of their maximum Phase 1 performance, and then to hold their performance slightly above this threshold for as long as possible. Just prior to beginning this second phase, participants were informed that electrodes would be attached during this portion of the experiment—ostensibly to measure their internal state during the persistence task. Upon obtaining verbal consent, electrodes were attached to each temple (ie, approximately 1 inch above and outside the lateral end of each eye) or each bicep (ie, approximately 3 inches above the inside of each elbow). A control condition without any form of electrode attachment was also included for comparison purposes. During Phase 2, all participants reported their subjective pain at 20-s increments using a scale ranging from 1 (no pain at all) to 10 (extreme pain).

Our results yielded several patterns of findings suggestive of a relationship between metaphysical perceptions and self-control exertion. For one, we asked participants to reflect on their performance following Phase 2, such that they provided open-ended responses concerning how they perceived the task. Upon coding these responses, we examined differences in the types of constructs mentioned. Consistent with pilot data, we found that participants with electrodes attached to their temples during the task mentioned more mental constructs (eg, willpower, motivation, brain) and fewer physical constructs (eg, muscle, blood flow, bicep) than did participants with electrodes attached to their biceps. Thus, participants in the mental condition reflected on their performance with a greater amount of psychological terminology and a lesser amount of physiological terminology. These findings bolstered our confidence that the experimental manipulation was effective in varying participants’ metaphysical perceptions in the intended direction.

Upon confirming the efficacy of our electrode placement manipulation, we assessed how this manipulation affected subjective and objective outcomes during Phase 2. On the subjective side, we examined whether the electrode attachment influenced self-reported pain on the persistence task. In particular, we calculated each participant’s pain slope by computing how rapidly their subjective pain rating rose throughout the persistence task. Given that pain and discomfort can undermine performance on extended exercise persistence tasks, we reasoned that participants with lower pain slopes were demonstrating more effective self-control by regulating their subjective experience. Using this pain slope metric, we found that participants in the mental condition showed a less rapid rise in pain across the persistence task, suggesting that they were less responsive and/or more resistant to psychophysiological cues of pain.

On the objective side, we examined whether the electrode attachment influenced on the length of time participants maintained their performance above the performance threshold. To ensure that this time-on-task measurement was as valid as possible, we included both maximum handgrip strength (ie, the metric obtained in Phase 1) and overall performance quality (ie, the number of times participants temporarily fell below the threshold) as covariates in all analyses.3 Results showed significant differences in self-control exertion as a function of electrode placement, such that participants in the mental condition lasted longer on the persistence task than did participants in either the physical condition or the no electrode control condition (see Fig. 17.1, Panel A). In understanding why these conditional differences emerged, we observed that pain slope strongly predicted persistence (ie, lower pain slope = higher persistence), and fully controlling for differences in subjective pain accounted for the behavioral differences across conditions.

Overall, these findings offer several novel extensions of extant research on self-control exertion. For one, they suggest that subtle situational manipulations might be an effective manner by which metaphysical perceptions of self-control exertion can be altered. Thus, even if a particular task can be construed as a complex combination of mental and physical inputs, environmental factors that heighten the salience of particular task components can shift metaphysical perceptions in manners predictive of self-control performance. In the present context, our electrode placement manipulation allowed an examination of whether handgrip persistence differs as a function of how such persistence is perceived from a metaphysical standpoint. Thus, even though it is reasonable to perceive various types of self-control tasks as reliant on a dynamic interplay between physical (ie, muscle endurance) and mental (ie, inhibition) processes, cues that differentially focus individuals on specific categories of processes may facilitate distinct patterns of effort exertion.

In addition to outlining the power of situational cues in altering metaphysical perceptions, our findings suggest that framing a task in psychological terms may benefit self-control to a greater extent than framing a task in physiological terms. There exist myriad possible explanations for this conclusion, including differences in construal level emerging from abstract versus concrete perceptions (Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006), differences in task motivation emerging from the potential implications of positive and negative performance (Muraven & Slessareva, 2003), and differences in lay theories concerning the limitations of physical versus mental energy (Job et al., 2010). Nonetheless, before delineating any broader explanations for a link between particular metaphysical perceptions and self-control performance, it is critical to replicate these types of findings across other self-control tasks and perceptual manipulations. In this vein, our lab found a similar positive impact of mental (as opposed to physical) task framing on a Stroop interference task, thus offering the possibility that the benefits associated with psychological task framings are applicable across a diverse range of contexts.4

Not only does our work suggest an advantage to psychological—versus physiological—framings of self-control tasks, it also suggests that such advantages are explained via perceptual mechanisms. For instance, when the handgrip persistence task’s mental nature was emphasized via electrode placement on the temples, this placement promoted improved effort exertion via the alteration of subjective pain. It follows that particular metaphysical frames may not only shift one’s thoughts about the task in question, they may also alter one’s thoughts about internal processes engaged by the task. From this, we theorize that an individual’s metaphysical task perceptions should be most impactful on behavioral output when such perceptions also alter the construal of ongoing transient states. In other words, even if a given framing manipulation changes how a participant thinks about the task (eg, “This handgrip task is testing my psychological willpower”), behavioral alterations are most likely when such task-level perceptions alter the construal of performance-relevant subjective states (eg, “If this task is testing my willpower, then this pain I’m feeling is mostly mental”). There exist a broad range of transient states that both (1) emerge during self-control exertion and (2) can be experienced in different metaphysical terms (eg, pain, effort, hunger, fatigue, endurance, focus), suggesting that subjective states offer a window into understanding how metaphysical task perceptions influence behavior (See Chapters 13, 4, 7, & 10Chapter 13Chapter 4Chapter 7Chapter 10).

2.6 Data analysis and presentation

Data were organised using electronic spreadsheet programming (Microsoft Excel). Data analyses were performed by JD. Relative expression/abundance/activity (expressed in arbitrary units [AU], mean ± SD) between the basal telomerase activity, TERT mRNA or TERT protein expression and the post-exercise time-point (human trials) were analysed. For the rodent studies the relative expression/abundance/activity (AU, mean ± SD) in telomerase activity, TERT mRNA or TERT protein expression from exercised rodents were compared to controls (no exercise) in analyses. For the acute exercise analyses, telomerase activity recorded at baseline compared to immediately after exercise training was used in analyses, whilst TERT mRNA analysis was restricted to baseline compared to 1 hr post training. Effect sizes of the influence of exercise (short and long-term training) on telomerase activity or TERT mRNA/protein expression were calculated from each comparison with random effect meta-analyses using Review Manager (version 5.4). Effect size confidence intervals were calculated using the random-effects method with an α = 0.05. Publication bias was visually assessed by plotting the effect sizes against the standard error using funnel plots. The fold-difference (FD) of leukocyte TERT gene expression or PBMC telomerase activity between endurance athletes compared to healthy controls were presented in a bar graph. Graphs were developed using GraphPad Prism (version 9.0.0).