The development and utilization of underground spaces can ease the shortage of urban land resources, ensure urban safety, and improve the urban ecological environment. Human overall comfort and work ...efficiency in underground spaces are affected by several environmental factors, such as thermal, acoustic, and lighting. Owing to the particularities of an underground space at any given location, the guarantee of a comfortable indoor environment is different from that in aboveground buildings. Based on the thermal, acoustic, and illumination characteristics of an underground space, the main differences between underground spaces and aboveground buildings, limitations of current standards/codes, and imperfections of internal environmental evaluation indicators are summarized and analyzed, and human comfort and work efficiency in terms of one-way and three-way interactions are discussed based on the literature published since 2000. The findings reveal that the current standards/codes for underground spaces mainly refer to aboveground buildings. Where the parameter index is single, there exists a large difference between the underground environment and the design standard, and there is no evaluation index for human comfort in underground spaces. In the existing research, two methods have been adopted: field surveys and climate room experiments. These have mainly focused on the effects of thermal, acoustic, and lighting environment unidirectional control on personnel comfort, while only a few studies have been conducted on work efficiency. Research on the three-directional interactions involving thermal, acoustic, and lighting environments in underground spaces is lacking. The creation of a microenvironment based on local cooling and heating, and the technologies generated under the concepts of imitating the ground environment, imitating the natural environments, and thermal–acoustic–light coordinated control are expected to play important roles in the construction of underground space environments in the future, and lay the foundation for the construction of an ecological environment system in underground spaces.
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•Current standards/codes have limitations.•The internal environment evaluation index is not perfect; its results are quite different from perceived human overall comfort.•There is a large gap in research on the comfort and work efficiency of personnel working in underground spaces.
This study aims to evaluate the impact of effective emotional intelligence on the work of auditors in Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh. The authors conducted a survey for 355 auditors at companies and ...organizations operating in the field of auditing. The results show that there were 4 factors of emotional intelligence that affect job performance, arranged in the following sequence: (1) Perception of emotions, (2) Positive thinking with emotions, (3) Understand emotions, (4) Control emotions. This is the basis for the authors to give some implications to improve the emotional intelligence characteristics of auditors towards work efficiency.
Daytime sleepiness affects work efficiency, occupational safety, and public health. Although previous studies have reported an association between environmental carbon dioxide (eCO2) and daytime ...sleepiness, it has been challenging to draw a firm conclusion due to the lack of standardized sampling and profiling protocols.
We examined the effect of pure CO2 exposure at 5000 (ppm, parts per million) on daytime sleepiness.
Eleven healthy participants (males of 24 ± 3 years, mean ± SD) completed a four-nap multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) protocol in the environmentally controlled chamber under two conditions: the CO2 condition (4851 ± 229 ppm) and the Control condition (1102 ± 204 ppm). The subjective sleepiness level and cognitive performances were also evaluated using the Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) questionnaire, Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT), and Stroop test after each nap session.
A significant reduction in sleep latency was observed in the CO2 exposure condition (Control vs. CO2 = 13.1 ± 3.3 min vs. 9.7 ± 3.2 min). The subjective sleepiness scores were also significantly higher in the CO2 exposure condition than in the Control condition (Control vs. CO2 = 2.7 ± 0.5 vs. 4.7 ± 0.8). Cognitive responses after naps showed no significant difference across conditions.
This study revealed that exposure to environmental CO2 at a concentration as high as the upper safety limit at work sites significantly shortened the sleep latency and enhanced subjective sleepiness during naps in the MSLT without affecting cognitive responses after each exposure. Our results demonstrated that exposure to high environmental CO2 induces daytime sleepiness that potentially compromises work efficiency and safety.
•The CO2 effect on daytime sleepiness was assessed by an objective procedure.•CO2 exposure significantly shortened sleep latency and enhanced subjective sleepiness.•Cognitive responses were not significantly altered after CO2 exposure.
Cognitive functions refer to the set of brain-based skills to execute tasks of various difficulty levels. As people spend substantial time indoors, the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) influences ...occupants’ cognitive functions and consequently their learning and work performance. Previous studies have commonly examined the effects of IEQ on integrated learning or work performance, rather than specific cognitive skills. The present review decomposes IEQ into five factors—indoor air quality, the thermal environment, lighting, noise, and non-light visual factors. It divided cognition into five categories—attention, perception, memory, language function, and higher order cognitive skills—to better understand the relationship between IEQ and cognition. We conducted a detailed manual review of 66 focused studies and adopted co-occurrence analysis to generate landscapes of the associations between IEQ and cognition factors by analyzing keywords and abstracts of 8133 studies. Overall, results show that poor IEQ conditions are but not always associated with reduced cognition. However, the effects of a specific IEQ factor on different cognitive functions are quite distinct. Likewise, a specific cognitive function could be affected by different IEQ factors to varying degrees. Furthermore, the results suggest extensive inconsistencies in the relevant literature, especially regarding the effects of IAQ or thermal environment on cognition. Additionally, the keyword co-occurrence analysis identified more IEQ factors and cognitive functions emerging in the recent literature. Future studies are recommended to explore the factors causing the inconsistencies that we highlight here.
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•Effects of IEQ factors on cognition are reviewed.•IEQ and cognition are but not always statistically associated.•Considerable conflicting results are identified among studies.•A specific IEQ factor may have varying effects on different cognitive functions.
Aged workers were mostly questioned in terms of their work efficiency. However, as time changed and the structure of human resource in the organization also changed, older people became important ...part of all human resources in the organization. The study, hence, aimed 1) to study the level of work efficiency of aged workers; and 2) to study factors affecting work efficiency of aged workers. The study applied quantitative method using questionnaire as a data collection tool, collecting data from aged governmental officers in Nong Khai province, Thailand. There were 402 completed questionnaires which were taken for analysis. The finding presented that aged workers performed very high level of work efficiency using frequency, mean, and standard deviation techniques to analyze. To find the factors affecting work efficiency, the research applied multiple regression analysis. The finding presented that recognition and respect, fair evaluation, job design, and compensation were factors affecting work efficiency of aged governmental officers.
The role of Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) the key worker is primely surrounded to be mainly a link-worker or facilitator, a community health worker, and a social activist under National ...Rural Health Mission (NRHM). This study was conducted to study the workload and work pattern of ASHAs and identify the causes for improving work.
This was an observational cross-sectional study conducted using a time-motion study as the tool among seventeen ASHAs from two primary health centers (PHC) in central India for four months. An ASHA's work pattern and workload were studied by constructing a 24-h recall. An focus group discussion (FGD) was conducted with the ASHAs to identify the factors affecting their effective functioning, after which content analysis was done.
It was observed that activities under National programs consumed most of the time of ASHAs, followed by Maternal-Child Health (MCH) activities and Register maintenance. There was no homogenous work distribution among ASHAs. In content analysis, 30 concepts were categorized into four themes (responses from villages- an important drive, work pressure, survey a double-edged sword, demands of ASHAs).
We conclude that the ASHAs are overburdened, and hence, not effectively utilizing their role as social activists. Clarity about job responsibilities, training, support, and coordination among seniors, frontiers trust-building can improve their work efficiency.
Enterprise social media (ESM) has been widely adopted by firms for employee work-related communication. However, it is still debatable how such usage benefits work stress and employee work ...efficiency. Applying the transactional theory of stress, this study examined the impact of resilience as a moderator on the link between work stressors and individual work efficiency. A total of 285 entries were used to analyze the proposed hypothesis, using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique and hierarchical regression analysis on SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0 software. According to the findings, ESM use has a considerable impact on work stresses (challenge and hindrance). The findings also revealed that challenge stressors have a beneficial influence on employee work efficiency, while hindrance stressors have a negative impact on it. Furthermore, the results also indicated that resilience strengthens the positive relationship between challenge-stressed employees and work efficiency. However, the findings also revealed that resilience reduces the negative association between hindrance-stress and work efficiency. Finally, the author also explored the study's implications for theory and management.
PolyGraph Dadu, Vidushi; Liu, Sihao; Nowatzki, Tony
2021 ACM/IEEE 48th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA),
06/2021
Conference Proceeding
Because of the importance of graph workloads and the limitations of CPUs/GPUs, many graph processing accelerators have been proposed. The basic approach of prior accelerators is to focus on a single ...graph algorithm variant (eg. bulk-synchronous + slicing). While helpful for specialization, this leaves performance potential from flexibility on the table and also complicates understanding the relationship between graph types, workloads, algorithms, and specialization.
In this work, we explore the value of flexibility in graph processing accelerators. First, we identify a taxonomy of key algorithm variants. Then we develop a template architecture (PolyGraph) that is flexible across these variants while being able to modularly integrate specialization features for each.
Overall we find that flexibility in graph acceleration is critical. If only one variant can be supported, asynchronous-updates/priority-vertex-scheduling/graph-slicing is the best design, achieving 1.93X speedup over the best-performing accelerator, GraphPulse. However, static flexibility per-workload can further improve performance by 2.71X. With dynamic flexibility per-phase, performance further improves by up to 50%.
•Syngas production from a nitrogen ionising plasma torch reactor.•Increasing O2 flowrate reduces work losses at the plasma torch.•Increase in O2 feed increases work losses associated with the ...reaction.•Operating the plasma at 900 °C temperatures reduce the relative total work losses.•H2O-cooled plasma torch is not an efficient way to add electrical-heat to a reactor.
Energy in the form of plasma was used to thermally decompose wood in the presence of O2. Heat required to sustain the gasification reactions was provided indirectly by: (i) the electricity fed to the nitrogen N2 plasma torch; (ii) the chemical potential of the oxygen fed to the reactor. Two sets of experiments were carried out at 700 °C and 900 °C in a plasma reactor to investigate syngas composition variation. The results show that increasing the O2 flow rate reduced the lost work potential caused by the plasma electrical energy being degraded to heat, but increased the lost work during the reaction, as well as across the process, thus increasing the irreversibility of the overall process. Furthermore, a plasma torch that requires cooling is not the best way to add high temperature heat in form of electricity to the gasifier, as this results in enormous heat and work loss.
•We investigated the effects of Fintech products (FTPs) on non-financial performance among commercial banks in China.•We developed a conceptual framework to capture the perception of FTPs among the ...customers and employees.•High levels of perceived usefulness (PU) and low levels of perceived difficulty of use (PD) are due to high customer satisfaction and low expectation.•We found the FTPs implementation have positive and significant impacts on service quality and work efficiency.•Multiple statistical tests are conducted to confirm our findings. FTPs can be adapted for leap forward or survival the fittest.
As the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic play out globally, the banking industry has been affected in both positive and negative ways, with the crisis creating both opportunities and threats for the collaborations between FinTech and banks. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of FinTech products (FTPs) on commercial bank's performance in China. Required data are collected with a quantitative approach and two self-designed questionnaires were distributed to customers and employees of commercial banks in China. The gathered data were examined using the structural equation modeling technique. The results of this study reveal that the perceived usefulness (PU) of FTPs has positive and significant impacts on customer satisfaction, low expectation of bank employee assistance, bank's service quality and employee work efficiency. Additionally, the perceived difficulty of use (PD) of FTPs has negative and significant impacts on customer satisfaction and low expectation of assistance. Interestingly, there is a positive and significant relationship between PD and banks' service quality and work efficiency, meaning that the service quality and work efficiency can reduce some shortcomings of using FTPs. This study recognizes the need to enhance the understanding of FTPs on non-financial firm performance. This is the first study that helps commercial banks in China understand the perception of FTPs from both customer and employee perspectives.