scholarly journals Assistance Needs in Production Environments: A Contextual Exploration of Workers’ Experiences and Work Practices

Author(s):  
Thomas Meneweger ◽  
Verena Fuchsberger ◽  
Cornelia Gerdenitsch ◽  
Sebastian Egger-Lampl ◽  
Manfred Tscheligi

AbstractThis paper presents assistance needs in production environments for assembly processes from a workers’ perspective, i.e. what kind of assistance assembly workers would need to enhance their everyday work experience and to better cope with challenges coming along with an increasing digitization in these work environments. Within a large-scale empirical field study in central Europe, we interviewed assembly workers and observed everyday work situations in different production environments (e.g., automotive domain) to understand workers’ experiences and work practices in increasingly connected and automated production environments. Based on the insights gained in this study, we describe several assistance needs for assembly workers that serve as a guidance for future worker-centric designs of assistance systems in production environments.

Author(s):  
Kahler W. Stone ◽  
Kristina W. Kintziger ◽  
Meredith A. Jagger ◽  
Jennifer A. Horney

While the health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on frontline health care workers have been well described, the effects of the COVID-19 response on the U.S. public health workforce, which has been impacted by the prolonged public health response to the pandemic, has not been adequately characterized. A cross-sectional survey of public health professionals was conducted to assess mental and physical health, risk and protective factors for burnout, and short- and long-term career decisions during the pandemic response. The survey was completed online using the Qualtrics survey platform. Descriptive statistics and prevalence ratios (95% confidence intervals) were calculated. Among responses received from 23 August and 11 September 2020, 66.2% of public health workers reported burnout. Those with more work experience (1–4 vs. <1 years: prevalence ratio (PR) = 1.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.08−3.36; 5–9 vs. <1 years: PR = 1.89, CI = 1.07−3.34) or working in academic settings (vs. practice: PR = 1.31, CI = 1.08–1.58) were most likely to report burnout. As of September 2020, 23.6% fewer respondents planned to remain in the U.S. public health workforce for three or more years compared to their retrospectively reported January 2020 plans. A large-scale public health emergency response places unsustainable burdens on an already underfunded and understaffed public health workforce. Pandemic-related burnout threatens the U.S. public health workforce’s future when many challenges related to the ongoing COVID-19 response remain unaddressed.


Author(s):  
Christoph Schwörer ◽  
Erika Gobet ◽  
Jacqueline F. N. van Leeuwen ◽  
Sarah Bögli ◽  
Rachel Imboden ◽  
...  

AbstractObserving natural vegetation dynamics over the entire Holocene is difficult in Central Europe, due to pervasive and increasing human disturbance since the Neolithic. One strategy to minimize this limitation is to select a study site in an area that is marginal for agricultural activity. Here, we present a new sediment record from Lake Svityaz in northwestern Ukraine. We have reconstructed regional and local vegetation and fire dynamics since the Late Glacial using pollen, spores, macrofossils and charcoal. Boreal forest composed of Pinus sylvestris and Betula with continental Larix decidua and Pinus cembra established in the region around 13,450 cal bp, replacing an open, steppic landscape. The first temperate tree to expand was Ulmus at 11,800 cal bp, followed by Quercus, Fraxinus excelsior, Tilia and Corylus ca. 1,000 years later. Fire activity was highest during the Early Holocene, when summer solar insolation reached its maximum. Carpinus betulus and Fagus sylvatica established at ca. 6,000 cal bp, coinciding with the first indicators of agricultural activity in the region and a transient climatic shift to cooler and moister conditions. Human impact on the vegetation remained initially very low, only increasing during the Bronze Age, at ca. 3,400 cal bp. Large-scale forest openings and the establishment of the present-day cultural landscape occurred only during the past 500 years. The persistence of highly diverse mixed forest under absent or low anthropogenic disturbance until the Early Middle Ages corroborates the role of human impact in the impoverishment of temperate forests elsewhere in Central Europe. The preservation or reestablishment of such diverse forests may mitigate future climate change impacts, specifically by lowering fire risk under warmer and drier conditions.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klemens Hocke ◽  
Franziska Schranz ◽  
Eliane Maillard Barras ◽  
Lorena Moreira ◽  
Niklaus Kämpfer

Abstract. Observation and simulation of individual ozone streamers are important for the description and understanding of nonlinear transport processes in the middle atmosphere. A sudden increase in mid-stratospheric ozone occurred above Central Europe on December 4, 2015. The GROunbased Millimeter-wave Ozone Spectrometer (GROMOS) and the Stratospheric Ozone MOnitoring RAdiometer (SOMORA) in Switzerland measured an ozone enhancement of about 30 % at 34 km altitude from December 1 to December 4. A similar ozone increase is simulated by the Specified Dynamics-Whole Atmosphere Community Climate (SD-WACCM) model. Further, the global ozone fields at 34 km altitude from SD-WACCM and the satellite experiment Aura/MLS show a remarkable agreement for the location and the timing of an ozone streamer (large-scale tongue like structure) extending from the subtropics in Northern America over the Atlantic to Central Europe. This agreement indicates that SD-WACCM can inform us about the wind inside the Atlantic ozone streamer. SD-WACCM shows an eastward wind of about 100 m/s inside the Atlantic streamer in the mid-stratosphere. SD-WACCM shows that the Atlantic streamer flows along the edge region of the polar vortex. The Atlantic streamer turns southward at an erosion region of the polar vortex located above the Caspian Sea. The spatial distribution of stratospheric water vapour indicates a filament outgoing from this erosion region. The Atlantic streamer, the polar vortex erosion region and the water vapour filament belong to the process of planetary wave breaking in the so-called surf zone of the Northern mid-latitude winter stratosphere.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 118-124
Author(s):  
E. A. Kashekhlebova

The sphere of social and labor rights has undergone a large-scale transformation due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictive measures. Almost all enterprises and organizations during the period of restrictive measures were forced to switch to a remote (remote) mode of operation. Some, and sometimes all, employees of organizations were forced to perform their labor function, stipulated by an employment contract, at home.At the same time, before the introduction of the above-mentioned forced measures and subsequent amendments to the labor legislation regarding the regulation of the work of “homeworkers”, there were no provisions in the domestic labor legislation that would allow establishing legal regulation of the emergence of this kind of relationship between an employee and an employer.In December 2020, the Federal Law “On Amendments to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation regarding the regulation of remote (remote) work and temporary transfer of an employee to remote (remote) work on the initiative of the employer in exceptional cases” was adopted.This article is devoted to a conceptual review of the amendments to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation adopted in 2020, aimed at establishing the regulation of remote (remote) work, as well as the procedure for temporary transfer of an employee to remote (remote) work on the initiative of the employer in strictly exceptional cases.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilmar von Eynatten ◽  
Jonas Kley ◽  
István Dunkl ◽  
Veit-Enno Hoffmann ◽  
Annemarie Simon

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 376-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan B. Matt

The aims of this pilot study were to describe registered nurses’ attitudes toward nurses with disabilities in the hospital nursing work force, explore factors contributing to these attitudes and explore the concept of disability climate in the hospital workplace. The web-based 37-item Nurses’ Attitudes toward Nurses with Disabilities Scale (NANDS) was administered to a convenience sample of 131 registered nurses working in three urban tertiary care hospitals. Respondents with experience caring for patients with disabilities indicated a significantly more positive perception of accessibility in the workplace and more positive attitudes toward the capability of nurses with disabilities than those without patient exposure. Respondents with higher levels of education indicated a higher level of Americans with Disabilities Act awareness. The disability climate was significantly more positive in outpatient clinics than in intensive care unit environments. Nurses with physical and sensory disabilities may feel more welcomed in areas serving patients with lower acuities. Greater exposure to individuals with disabilities positively impacts attitudes toward this population. The NANDS may be useful to assist employers and nursing administrators in assessing and creating healthy, disability-friendly work environments that promote a positive disability climate and improve the work experience for nurses with disabilities.


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. e497-e517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hofstätter ◽  
Annemarie Lexer ◽  
Markus Homann ◽  
Günter Blöschl

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilmar von Eynatten ◽  
Jonas Kley ◽  
István Dunkl

&lt;p&gt;Large parts of Central Europe have experienced exhumation in Late Cretaceous to Paleogene time. Previous studies mainly focused on thrusted basement uplifts to unravel magnitude, processes and timing of exhumation. In this study we present a comprehensive thermochronological dataset from mostly Permo-Triassic strata exposed adjacent to and between the major basement uplifts in central Germany, comprising an area of at least some 250-300 km across. Results of apatite fission track and (U-Th)/He analyses from &gt;100 new samples reveal that (i) km-scale exhumation affected the entire region, suggesting long-wavelength domal uplift, (ii) thrusting of basement blocks like the Harz Mountains and the Thuringian Forest focused in the Late Cretaceous (about 90-70 Ma) while superimposed domal uplift of central Germany appears slightly younger (about 75-55 Ma), and (iii) large parts of the domal uplift experienced removal of 3 to 4 km of Mesozoic strata. Using spatial extent, magnitude and timing as constraints we find that thrusting and crustal thickening alone can account for no more than half of the domal uplift. Most likely, dynamic topography caused by upwelling asthenosphere has contributed significantly to the observed pattern of exhumation in central Germany.&lt;/p&gt;


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