During COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) have had high workload and have been exposed to multiple psychosocial stressors. The aim of this study was to evaluate HCWs in terms of the ...relative contributions of socio-demographic and mental health variables on three burnout dimensions: personal, work-related, and client-related burnout.
A cross-sectional study was performed using an online questionnaire spread via social networks. A snowball technique supported by health care institutions and professional organizations was applied.
A total of 2008 subjects completed the survey. Gender, parental status, marriage status, and salary reduction were found to be significant factors for personal burnout. Health problems and direct contact with infected people were significantly associated with more susceptibility to high personal and work-related burnout. Frontline working positions were associated with all three dimensions. Higher levels of stress and depression in HCWs were significantly associated with increased levels of all burnout dimensions. Higher levels of satisfaction with life and resilience were significantly associated with lower levels of all burnout dimensions.
All three burnout dimensions were associated with a specific set of covariates. Consideration of these three dimensions is important when designing future burnout prevention programs for HCWs.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Nanofiltration was studied for detoxification of lignocellulose hydrolysates obtained in harsh conditions. A hemicellulosic hydrolysate obtained from sulfuric acid steam explosion of wheat straw and ...presenting very low pH (= 1) and high osmotic pressure (28 bar) was studied and 8 inhibitory compounds were followed, among which 4 phenolic compounds. Several polymeric nanofiltration membranes were compared for separation performances and permeabilities; DK membrane (GE Osmonics) proved suitable with high rejection of sugars (> 99%) and lower rejections of inhibitors. Acetic acid and furfural were quasi-fully transmitted whereas the rejection of compounds ranked as follow: HMF (5-hydroxymethyl-furfural) < coumaric acid < levulinic acid < vanillin < ferulic acid < syringaldehyde with values of 40%, 50%, 60%, 80%, 90% and 98%, respectively, at a permeate flux of 14 L h−1 m−2. Diafiltration was carried out at a transmembrane pressure of 26 bar until 3 DV (Diafiltration Volume) to complete detoxification, and continuous and sequential-dilution modes were compared. Thanks to the permeability of the membrane to the monovalent form of sulfuric acid HSO4-, effective transmembrane pressure was increased and pH reached 2. At 3 DV, both modes showed removal performances between 92% (acetic acid and furfural) and 25% (syringaldehyde). Irreversible fouling was observed, leading to 30% permeability loss after diafiltration.
•Detoxification of hemicellulosic hydrolysate by nanofiltration was investigated.•Hydrolysate has a very low pH (pH = 1) and a high osmotic pressure (28 bar).•Phenolic compounds behavior was highlighted.•Continuous and sequential-dilution diafiltrations were compared.•HSO4- transmission allowed pH to increase and osmotic pressure to decrease.
Background
Primary care physicians have been present on the frontline during the ongoing pandemic, adding new tasks to already high workloads. Our aim was to evaluate burnout in primary care ...physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as associated contributing factors.
Methods
Cross-sectional study with an online questionnaire disseminated through social media, applying the snowball technique. The target population was primary care physicians working in Portugal during the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to sociodemographic data, the questionnaire collected responses to the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI), the Resilience Scale and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21). Data were collected from May 9 to June 8, 2020, a period comprising the declaration of a national calamity and then state of emergency, and the subsequent ease of lockdown measures. Levels of burnout in 3 different dimensions (personal, work, and patient-related), resilience, stress, depression, and anxiety were assessed. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify factors associated with burnout levels.
Results
Among the 214 physician respondents, burnout levels were high in the 3 dimensions. A strong association was found between gender, years of professional experience, depression and anxiety, and burnout levels.
Conclusions
Physician burnout in primary care is high and has increased during the pandemic. More studies are needed in the long term to provide a comprehensive assessment of COVID-19’simpact on burnout levels and how to best approach and mitigate it during such unprecedented times.
Innovation is one of the main concerns of European Union countries since the beginning of the century. Despite failing to reach their targets, innovation remains a priority because innovation enables ...countries to achieve better economic performance. This study analyzes the relation between the level of innovation and the economic effects and applies a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to study the relation between six conditions and two different outcomes. The data comes from the Union Innovation Scoreboard. The study finds that research systems, linkages and entrepreneurship, and intellectual assets are necessary conditions for the outcomes of a high level of innovation and positive economic effects. The main sufficient condition for both outcomes is a good research system.
Communicating one's mindset means transmitting complex relationships between concepts and emotions. Using network science and word co-occurrences, we reconstruct conceptual associations as ...communicated in 139 genuine suicide notes, i.e., notes left by individuals who took their lives. We find that, despite their negative context, suicide notes are surprisingly positively valenced. Through emotional profiling, their ending statements are found to be markedly more emotional than their main body: The ending sentences in suicide notes elicit deeper fear/sadness but also stronger joy/trust and anticipation than the main body. Furthermore, by using data from the Emotional Recall Task, we model emotional transitions within these notes as co-occurrence networks and compare their structure against emotional recalls from mentally healthy individuals. Supported by psychological literature, we introduce emotional complexity as an affective analog of structural balance theory, measuring how elementary cycles (closed triads) of emotion co-occurrences mix positive, negative and neutral states in narratives and recollections. At the group level, authors of suicide narratives display a higher complexity than healthy individuals, i.e., lower levels of coherently valenced emotional states in triads. An entropy measure identified a similar tendency for suicide notes to shift more frequently between contrasting emotional states. Both the groups of authors of suicide notes and healthy individuals exhibit less complexity than random expectation. Our results demonstrate that suicide notes possess highly structured and contrastive narratives of emotions, more complex than expected by null models and healthy populations.
•Weak anion resin in free base form fix ferulic acid from enzymatic hydrolysates.•Preliminary electrodialysis removes most competing inorganic anions.•Acidification should take place before ...electrodialysis to limit ferulic acid loss.•A fraction of pure carbohydrates is recovered during resin saturation.•Ferulic acid was crystallized from the regeneration fraction by pH adjustment.•The whole separation process is non-thermal.
Agricultural by-products such as wheat bran and straw are rich in arabinoxylans. Composed of a main chain of β-(1,4) linked xylose ramified by arabinose and ferulic acid, these polymers are sources of valuable molecules, in particular ferulic acid and monomeric (xylose, arabinose and glucose) and oligomeric carbohydrates. Enzymatic hydrolysis using hemicellulasic cocktails obtained from Thermobacillus xylanilyticus provide an eco-friendly alternative to acid or alkaline deconstruction. In this article, downstream purification of the enzymatic hydrolysate of wheat bran with a weak anion-exchange resin (Amberlyst A21- Dow) in free-base form was studied and optimized to reach concentrated ferulate fractions in environment-friendly conditions. A demineralization step by homopolar electrodialysis prior to anion-exchange allowed most of the competing inorganic anions to be removed from the hydrolysate. The capacity of fixation of ferulic acid on the active sites of the resin was increased, as well as purity and concentration of the basic eluate, consequently. Ferulic acid could therefore be crystallized by adjusting the pH of the eluate. 83% was crystallized and purity (NMR) reached 90–95%. At last, 52% of ferulic acid released from wheat bran by the hemicellulasic cocktail was purified and recovered as a solid. Moreover, more than 50 BV (Bed Volume) of the hydrolysate could be recovered during the resin saturation step as rather pure carbohydrates under monomeric (xylose, arabinose and glucose) and oligomeric (xylobiose, xylotriose and xylotetraose) form.
The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the mental health of the general population, and for healthcare workers (HCWs) it has been no different. Religiosity and spirituality are known coping ...strategies for mental illnesses, especially in stressful times. This study aimed to describe the role of spiritual-religious coping regarding fear and anxiety in relation to COVID-19 in HCWs in Portugal. A cross-sectional quantitative online survey was performed. Socio-demographic and health data were collected as well as the Duke University Religion Index, Spirituality Scale, Fear of COVID-19 Scale, and Coronavirus Anxiety Scale. Two hundred and twenty-two HCWs participated in the study, 74.3% were female and 81.1% were physicians. The median age was 37 years (Q1, Q3: 31, 51.3). Religiosity was neither a significant factor for coronavirus-related anxiety nor it was for fear of COVID-19. Participants with higher levels in the hope/optimism dimension of the Spirituality Scale showed less coronavirus-related anxiety. Female HCWs, non-physicians, and the ones with a previous history of anxiety presented higher levels of fear and/or anxiety related to COVID-19. HCWs' levels of distress should be identified and reduced, so their work is not impaired.
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•Thermobacilus xylanilyticus cocktails are efficient to hydrolyze destarched wheat bran.•The hydrolysates are rich in xylose, arabinose and ferulic acid.•Weak anionic resin is ...efficient to separate ferulic acid from carbohydrates.•High concentration (15g/L) of ferulate is recovered from regeneration fractions.•Competition with mineral anions limits resin capacity for ferulic acid fixation.
An integrated and eco-friendly process including enzymatic hydrolysis with a hemicellulasic cocktail and a chromatographic purification step was developed to obtain ferulic acid from wheat bran. Thermobacillus xylanilyticus, a thermophilic and hemicellulolytic bacterium, was able to produce enzymatic cocktails containing xylanase, xylosidase, arabinosidase and esterase activities. The cocktails produced were used to deconstruct destarched wheat bran, allowing the release of 6%, 20% and 37% (w/w) of monomeric arabinose, xylose and ferulic acid, respectively. A weak anionic resin under free-base form was proved successful to separate the carbohydrate fraction from the ferulate one after acidification. Ferulate was recovered at high concentration (15g/L) during regeneration of the resin. This non-optimized purification step allowed recovering 67% of ferulic acid fixed on the resin. Global recovery of ferulic acid contained in wheat bran after both enzymatic fractionation and purification stages reached 21.8%.
The heart-rate dynamics are one of the most analyzed physiological interactions. Many mathematical methods were proposed to evaluate heart-rate variability. These methods have been successfully ...applied in research to expand knowledge concerning the cardiovascular dynamics in healthy as well as in pathological conditions. Notwithstanding, they are still far from clinical practice. In this paper, we aim to review the nonlinear methods most used to assess heart-rate dynamics. We focused on methods based on concepts of chaos, fractality, and complexity: Poincaré plot, recurrence plot analysis, fractal dimension (and the correlation dimension), detrended fluctuation analysis, Hurst exponent, Lyapunov exponent entropies (Shannon, conditional, approximate, sample entropy, and multiscale entropy), and symbolic dynamics. We present the description of the methods along with their most notable applications.
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