The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has deeply altered social and working environments in several ways. Social distancing policies, mandatory lockdowns, isolation periods, and anxiety of ...getting sick, along with the suspension of productive activity, loss of income, and fear of the future, jointly influence the mental health of citizens and workers. Workplace aspects can play a crucial role on moderating or worsening mental health of people facing this pandemic scenario. The purpose of this literature review is to deepen the psychological aspects linked to workplace factors, following the epidemic rise of COVID-19, in order to address upcoming psychological critical issues in the workplaces. We performed a literature search using Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus, selecting papers focusing on workers' psychological problems that can be related to the workplace during the pandemic. Thirty-five articles were included. Mental issues related to the health emergency, such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and sleep disorders are more likely to affect healthcare workers, especially those on the frontline, migrant workers, and workers in contact with the public. Job insecurity, long periods of isolation, and uncertainty of the future worsen the psychological condition, especially in younger people and in those with a higher educational background. Multiple organizational and work-related interventions can mitigate this scenario, such as the improvement of workplace infrastructures, the adoption of correct and shared anti-contagion measures, including regular personal protective equipment (PPE) supply, and the implementation of resilience training programs. This review sets the basis for a better understanding of the psychological conditions of workers during the pandemic, integrating individual and social perspectives, and providing insight into possible individual, social, and occupational approaches to this "psychological pandemic".
Infectious disease control is a crucial public health issue. Although it is important to urgently perform public health measures in order to reduce the risk of spread, it could end up stigmatizing ...entire groups of people rather than offering control measures based on sound scientific principles. This "us" versus "them" dynamic is common in stigmatization, in general, and indicates a way in which disease stigma can be viewed as a proxy for other types of fears, especially xenophobia and general fear of outsiders. The pandemic risk associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection led us to consider, among other related issues, how stigma and discrimination remain serious barriers to care for people suspected of being infected, even more if they are assisting professions, such as health workers, employed in emergency response. The purpose of this review is to evaluate and promote the importance of psychological aspects of the stigma and social discrimination (SAD) in pandemic realities and, more specifically, nowadays, in the context of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. Just as it happened with HIV, HCV, tuberculosis, and Zika, stigma and discrimination undermine the social fabric compromising the ethics and principles of civilization to which each individual in entitled. Recognizing disease stigma history can give us insight into how, exactly, stigmatizing attitudes are formed, and how they are disbanded. Instead of simply blaming the ignorance of people espousing stigmatizing attitudes about certain diseases, we should try to understand precisely how these attitudes are formed so that we can intervene in their dissemination. We should also look at history to see what sorts of interventions against stigma may have worked in the past. Ongoing research into stigma should evaluate what has worked in the past, as above-mentioned, providing us with some clues as to what might work in the current pandemic emergency, to reduce devastating discrimination that keeps people from getting the care they need. We propose a systematic and historical review, in order to create a scientific and solid base for the following SAD analysis. The aim is to propose a coping strategy to face stigma and discrimination (SAD) related to SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, borrowing coping strategy tools and solutions from other common contagious diseases. Furthermore, our study observes how knowledge, education level, and socioeconomic status (SES) can influence perception of SARS-CoV-2/ COVID-19 risk in a digital world, based on previous research, best practices, and evidence-based research.
Over the past few decades, a growing body of evidence has emerged regarding the positive impact of boardgames in promoting life skills and well-being in various settings including health, education, ...and military schooling. However, the use of boardgames with inmates for cultural and educational purposes is still an unexplored and fragmented area of research. Incorporating boardgames into correctional settings can be a complex challenge for correctional stakeholders who seek to identify innovative tools to enhance inmate education and promote integration into society after incarceration. This article outlines our scoping review protocol designed to map and evaluate published and grey literature on the motivational, psychological, and pedagogical considerations involved in the design and use of boardgames as an innovative approach to promoting life skills and well-being among inmates.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The COVID-19 pandemic led to serious psychological consequences that negatively affect workers' mental health, leading to post-traumatic symptoms. In this scenario, employees may be exposed to ...multiple stressors that ultimately drain their resources. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources Theory (COR) and the stress-strain perspective, we analyzed the relationship between different dimensions of work-related stress and psychological distress in a sample of 294 workers in the industrial sector. Specifically, we hypothesized a series of mediation models in which the dimensions of work-related stress are associated with a lower level of mental health directly and indirectly through higher levels of COVID-19-related post-traumatic symptoms. The results partially support the hypotheses, showing that COVID-19-related trauma plays a mediating role between the stress experienced and the resulting decrease in mental health, except in the case of job control and colleague support. These results will hopefully offer insights into possible organizational interventions for the promotion of workers' well-being in the postpandemic setting.
Introduction: The present research aims to investigate the relationship between mindfulness, work- related stress management, and job satisfaction in the correctional context. Methods: The study ...enlisted the participation of 131 Italian correctional officers (F = 72,5%) in working age. The quantification of mindfulness levels was achieved by implementing the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire-short form (FFMQ-SF). A subset of the Organizational-Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (ORG EIQ) facilitated the assessment of work-related stress management. A 5-item Likert scale was employed to gauge job satisfaction. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) of the sample were analyzed. Subsequently, reliability analyses were performed using Cronbach's alpha. Finally, a simple mediation analysis was conducted to define the role of work-related stress management, and the direct, indirect, and total effects were calculated. Results: Concerning the indirect effect, mindfulness had a significant impact on work-related stress management β=0.42; p<.05, which, in turn, showed a significant effect on job satisfaction β=0.26; p<.001. Discussion and Conclusion: Our findings highlight mindfulness's potential and beneficial effects within social and occupational contexts, especially in the case of high-risk populations such as correctional officers.
The LHCb experiment, one of the four operating in the LHC, will be enduring a major upgrade of its electronics during the third long shutdown period of the particle accelerator. One of the main ...objectives of the upgrade effort is to implement a 40MHz readout of collision data. For this purpose, the Front-End electronics will make extensive use of a radiation resistant chipset, the Gigabit Transceiver (GBT), for readout as well as for slow control, monitoring and synchronization. At LHCb, the tools to operate the front-end electronics are developed by a central team and distributed to the users. This contribution describes the architecture of the system that implements the slow control and monitoring of all Front-End electronics using the GBT chipset, namely the GBTx and GBT-SCA. The system is implemented in 3 layers starting with an FPGA based electronic board that interfaces the GBT chipset directly through optical fibers. The second layer is composed by a PCIe driver and a number of processes to operate these boards. The user operates the system in the third layer which is the WinCC OA SCADA that is interfaced with the Front-Ends via a message broker called DIM. The requirements of the system as well as the design and integration of each layer are discussed in detail. The results of the firmware implementation in hardware and operational tests are shown and the overall performance of the system is discussed.
LHCb is one of the 4 experiments at the LHC accelerator at CERN. During the upgrade phase of the experiment, several new electronic boards and Front End chips that perform the data acquisition for ...the experiment will be added by the different sub-detectors.
These new devices will be controlled and monitored via a system composed of GigaBit Transceiver (GBT) chips that manage the bi-directional slow control traffic to the Slow Control Adapter(s) (SCA) chips. The SCA chips provide multiple field buses to interface the new electronics devices (I2C, GPIO, etc). These devices will need to be integrated in the Experiment Control System (ECS) that drives LHCb.
A set of tools was developed that provide an easy integration of the control and monitoring of the devices in the ECS. A server (GbtServ) provides the low level communication layer with the devices via the several user buses in the GBT-SCA chip and exposes an interface for control to the experiment SCADA (WinCC OA), the fwGbt component provides the interface between the SCADA and the GbtServ and the fwHw component, a tool that allows the abstraction of the devices models into the ECS. Using the graphical User Interfaces or XML files describing the structure and registers of the devices it creates the necessary model of the hardware as a data structure in the SCADA. It allows then the control and monitoring of the defined registers using their name, without the need to know the details of the hardware behind. The fwHw tool also provides the facility of defining and applying recipes named sets of configurations which can be used to easily configure the hardware according to specific needs.
LHCb MiniDAQ control system Granado Cardoso, Luís; Gaspar, Clara; Viana Barbosa, João ...
EPJ Web of Conferences,
2019, Letnik:
214
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
LHCb is one of the 4 experiments at the LHC accelerator at CERN,
specialized in B-physics. During the next long shutdown period, the LHCb
experiment will be upgraded to a trigger-less readout system ...with a full software trigger in order to be able to record data with a much higher instantaneous luminosity. To achieve this goal, the upgraded systems for Timing and Fast Control (TFC) and Data Acquisition (DAQ) will have new electronic boards and a new software stack will be introduced for data acquisition. In the development stage, all these components are housed in servers named MiniDAQ. These new components will need to be integrated in an upgraded Experiment Control System (ECS) based on the WinCC OA SCADA and the CERN JCOP framework. The ECS provides full monitoring and control for all these subsystems and many important features like configuration recipes and automated actions. This paper describes the implementation of the upgraded ECS and its component fwMiniDAQ, which integrates all the new developments and can be easily distributed to the sub-detector developers and configured for their various setups.
Deinococcus radiodurans is a Gram positive bacterium the capability of which to withstand high doses of ionizing radiations is well known. Physiologically speaking, D. radiodurans is a proteolytic ...prokaryote able to express and secrete quite a number of proteases, and to use amino acids as an energy source. When considering this, it is surprising that little information is available on the biochemical components responsible for the uptake of peptides in D. radiodurans.
Here we report on the purification and characterization of an ABC peptide transporter, isolated from D. radiodurans cells grown in tryptone-glucose-yeast extract (TGY) medium. In particular, we show here that the action of this transporter (denoted DR1571, SwissProt data bank accession number Q9RU24 UF71_DEIRA) is exerted on peptides containing at least 3 amino acids. Further, using tetra-peptides as model systems, we were able to observe that the DR1571 protein does not bind to peptides containing phenylalanine or valine, but associates with high efficiency to tetra-glycine, and with moderate affinity to tetra-peptides containing arginine or aspartate.
•A Deinococcus radiodurans ABC peptide transporter was purified.•The transporter was identified as Q9RU24 UF71_DEIRA (SwissProt data bank).•The purified ABC transporter acts on peptides containing at least 3 amino acids.•Peptides containing phenylalanine or valine are poor substrates.
The LHCb experiment at CERN has proposed an upgrade towards a full 40 MHz readout system in order to run between five and ten times its initial design luminosity. The various subsystems in the ...readout architecture will be upgraded to cope with higher subdetector occupancies, higher rate, and higher readout load. We introduce here the new architecture, the new functionalities, and the first hardware implementation of the new LHCb Fast Readout Control system (S-TFC) for the upgraded LHCb experiment. Moreover, in this particular paper we focus our attention in describing solutions for the distribution of clock and timing information to control the entire upgraded readout architecture by profiting of a bidirectional optical network and powerful FPGAs, including a real-time mechanism to synchronize the entire system. Protocols and FPGA logic are also described, together with first results on the simulation and the validation of the system. This paper is a public excerpt of the technical documentation for the LHCb upgrade.
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