Many public organizations implement teleworking: an organizational innovation expected to improve the working conditions of public servants. However, it is unclear to what extent teleworking is ...beneficial for public servants. This study adds to the literature by studying the effects of teleworking on a day-to-day basis. We used a daily diary methodology and followed public servants across five consecutive working days. Studies that apply a daily survey method are more accurate than cross-sectional measures because they reduce recall bias. The results highlight that public servants experience quite negative effects from teleworking, including greater professional isolation and less organizational commitment on the days that they worked entirely from home. Contrary to predictions, working from home did not affect work engagement. We also found that higher leader–member exchange (LMX) reduced the impact of teleworking on professional isolation. These findings not only contribute to the literature by showing the unfavorable effects of teleworking but also highlight that LMX can, to some extent, reduce these negative effects.
The performance of fixed ejector is limited by working conditions, so it is difficult to meet the operating requirements of electric vehicle heat pump system under varying conditions and wide ...temperature range. In this paper, a transcritical CO2 refrigeration cycle with dual ejectors in parallel (DEP) for electric vehicle heat pump system is established and its operation condition weight statistics method in all climate is proposed. On this basis, a fixed ejector optimization method based on the genetic algorithm is proposed, which takes the increment of integrated part load value (ΔIPLV) compared to the conventional transcritical CO2 refrigeration cycle (CON) system as the evaluation index. The performance analysis results show that under the cooling conditions, the coefficient of performance (COP) of DEP system with the optimized ejector for cooling is increased by 17.32%–23.42% compared to the CON system, and the COP of the transcritical CO2 refrigeration cycle with a single ejector (SEJ) system is increased by 7.31%–9.47%. In the heating mode, the COP of DEP system with the optimized ejector for heating is increased by 18%–19.79%, while the COP of SEJ system with the unoptimized ejector is decreased by 0.07%–2.43%.
•An electric vehicle CO2 heat pump system with dual ejectors in parallel is investigated.•The system operation condition weight statistics method in all climate is proposed.•A fixed ejector optimization method based on the genetic algorithm is proposed.•The performance of the system with optimized ejector is effectively improved.
The scientific literature about presenteeism among farm workers is scarce. This study estimated the prevalence of and factors associated with presenteeism among paid fruit farm workers. A ...cross-sectional study investigated 340 paid employees of both sexes, aged 18 years or above, who worked during the 2019 irrigated fruit harvest in the municipality of Petrolina, Northeast Brazil. Information about sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle, general health status, occupational characteristics, interpersonal work aspects, and the work environment’s structural characteristics was collected in a structured questionnaire. Presenteeism was established when participants reported working one or more days during the previous season despite feeling ill or when injured. Cox regression was used to estimate prevalence ratios adjusted by sex, area of residence (urban or rural), employment contract (permanent or seasonal), satisfaction with management, participation in workplace decision-making, availability of on-site healthcare facilities, and on-site availability of sunscreen. The prevalence of presenteeism during the previous season was high: 58.2%. In the final multivariate model, the adjusted prevalence ratio was higher (≥1.20) among female workers (1.42), workers dissatisfied with management (1.28), and those for whom sunscreen was not available on site (1.61). The prevalence of presenteeism was high and associated with personal, work organizational, and workplace resources characteristics.
The World Development Report 2020 (WDR2020) asserts that global value chains raise productivity and incomes, create better jobs and reduce poverty, and proposes state policies to facilitate global ...value chain-based development. We deploy an immanent critique of WDR2020 to interrogate its claims regarding wages and working conditions. Using the Report’s own evidence, we identify contradictions in its claims, which stem from its use of comparative advantage trade theory to reconceptualize global value chain relations. This perspective predicts mutual gains between trading partners, but its core assumptions are incompatible with the realities of global value chains, in which (mostly Northern) oligopolistic lead firms capture value from (mostly Southern) suppliers and workers. We show how WDR2020 conceals these contradictions by misconstruing, inverting and ignoring evidence (particularly of labour’s agency), whilst failing to recommend redistributive measures for the unequal outcomes that it recognizes. By redeploying heterodox conceptions of monopoly capital and by using a class-relational approach, we scrutinize WDR2020's overly positive portrayal of lead firms. We provide alternative theoretical foundations to better explain the evidence within the Report, which shows that global value chains concentrate wealth, exacerbate inequalities and constrain social upgrading – with negative consequences for supplier firm workers in developing countries.
Despite growing interest in the concept of gig work, the nature and quality of gig work is not well understood. The article builds on recent research by exploring gig work through an application of ...notions of job quality associated with Scotland's Fair Work Convention. Further, in recognising the multidimensional nature of job quality and the divide between objective versus subjective approaches to job quality, the article adopts a checklist or job characteristics approach, focusing on objective aspects of quality work, whilst drawing on subjective experiences to capture lived experience of gig work. A key finding is, in spite of a deficit in objective characteristics of Fair Work, the subjective experience varies between platforms as well as in accordance with individual worker characteristics, such as between those undertaking gig work as a primary or supplementary source of income. A further key finding suggests the growth in gig work reflects the normalisation of what in the past would constitute poor working conditions. Taken together, the findings highlight limitations of theoretical models of job quality due to an emphasis on traditional employment.
Currently, most satellite propulsion systems are mainly chemical propulsion, and liquid propellant is the necessary power fuel for the propulsion system. The working environment of microgravity ...occurs when the satellite is in orbit. According to the working characteristics of the satellite, a propellant management device of vane type is designed. The PMD is composed of a vertical guide plate and a liquid accumulator, which is applied to the propellant tank to store and manage the propellant. In this paper, the microgravity gas-liquid management and control mechanism of a propellant management device of vane type is studied by numerical simulation and tower drop test. The results of numerical simulation and tower drop test are consistent, which verifies the good fluid management characteristics of this type of propellant management device, and provides references for its engineering application and the design of this type of structure.
The power of Jatra De Ambrogi, Marco
The Lancet,
08/2022, Volume:
400, Issue:
10351
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
The thought of the difficult working conditions in many factories in the Bengal region brings to mind Taslima Akhter's heartbreaking photograph of two dead workers, holding each other in the rubble ...after the collapse of the Rana Plaza, a building that housed garment factories in Savar, Bangladesh, on April 24, 2013. Through the words of the characters on stage, Bhattacharyya makes evident the imbalance in power between people who live in poverty and need the work to guarantee survival for themselves and their families, and the factory owners, who can set and break the rules. Bhattacharyya's play is ultimately a declaration of the power of art and storytelling as a way to promote change and fight injustice.
Histopathology image analysis is a gold standard for cancer recognition and diagnosis. Automatic analysis of histopathology images can help pathologists diagnose tumor and cancer subtypes, ...alleviating the workload of pathologists. There are two basic types of tasks in digital histopathology image analysis: image classification and image segmentation. Typical problems with histopathology images that hamper automatic analysis include complex clinical representations, limited quantities of training images in a dataset, and the extremely large size of singular images (usually up to gigapixels). The property of extremely large size for a single image also makes a histopathology image dataset be considered large-scale, even if the number of images in the dataset is limited.
In this paper, we propose leveraging deep convolutional neural network (CNN) activation features to perform classification, segmentation and visualization in large-scale tissue histopathology images. Our framework transfers features extracted from CNNs trained by a large natural image database, ImageNet, to histopathology images. We also explore the characteristics of CNN features by visualizing the response of individual neuron components in the last hidden layer. Some of these characteristics reveal biological insights that have been verified by pathologists. According to our experiments, the framework proposed has shown state-of-the-art performance on a brain tumor dataset from the MICCAI 2014 Brain Tumor Digital Pathology Challenge and a colon cancer histopathology image dataset.
The framework proposed is a simple, efficient and effective system for histopathology image automatic analysis. We successfully transfer ImageNet knowledge as deep convolutional activation features to the classification and segmentation of histopathology images with little training data. CNN features are significantly more powerful than expert-designed features.
Objective
To test the hypothesis that psychosocial working conditions are more strongly associated with subsequent work-related emotional exhaustion (core component of burnout) than with depressive ...symptoms at follow-up.
Methods
A 5-year cohort study (2011/2012–2017), based on a random sample of persons in employment subject to payment of social contributions aged 31–60 years (Study on Mental Health at Work; S-MGA;
N
= 1949), included self-reported measures of organisational demands (organisational layoffs and restructuring), task-level demands (work pace and amount of work) and job resources (influence at work, possibilities for development, control over working time, role clarity), all taken from the COPSOQ, except the organisational demands that were single-item measures. Work-related emotional exhaustion and depressive symptoms were measured with the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, respectively.
Results
Cochrane Q tests revealed stronger associations between psychosocial working conditions and work-related emotional exhaustion only for the amount of work (
p
= 0.013) and control over working time (
p
= 0.027). No differences were observed for the Demands and Resources Indexes, capturing overall exposure to psychosocial working conditions. The same differences were observed in a subsample including only participants who remained at the same employer from baseline to follow-up, although more psychosocial working conditions were associated with work-related emotional exhaustion than with depressive symptoms. Supplementary analyses employing dichotomous measures of work-related emotional exhaustion and depressive symptoms confirmed these results.
Conclusions
Overall, the findings provide limited evidence supporting the hypothesis that psychosocial working conditions are more strongly associated with work-related emotional exhaustion than with depressive symptoms.
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