HOME OFFICE SPACES FOR SMART WORK. IMPACT OF COVID-19 LOCKDOWN ON ARRANGEMENTS OF RESIDENTIAL INTERIORS

The Covid-19 pandemic has encouraged a shift to smart-working both for companies as well as their employees. Work-related activities once performed in dedicated offices had to be moved to private spaces of individual homes, severely influencing how people use their residential space. Living and working conditions have been modified and the balance between them – interrupted. In this paper the authors present a study of the changes in the use of residential space based on questionnaires addressed to respondents in five age groups (up to 25, 26-35, 36-50, 51-65, more than 65), and living or studying in and around Milan (Lombardy), an area affected severely by Covid-19 between March and May 2020. The obtained questionnaire results have allowed the authors to create a set of apartment design requirements, which improve the performance of space. Research has led to a model-case study apartment.

Morally Distressing Experiences, Moral Injury, and Burnout in Florida Healthcare Providers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Because healthcare providers may be experiencing moral injury (MI), we inquired about their healthcare morally distressing experiences (HMDEs), MI perpetrated by self (Self MI) or others (Others MI), and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 265 healthcare providers in North Central Florida (81.9% female, Mage = 37.62) recruited via flyers and emailed brochures that completed online surveys monthly for four months. Logistic regression analyses investigated whether MI was associated with specific HMDEs, risk factors (demographic characteristics, prior mental/medical health adversity, COVID-19 protection concern, health worry, and work impact), protective factors (personal resilience and leadership support), and psychiatric symptomatology (depression, anxiety, and PTSD). Linear regression analyses explored how Self/Others MI, psychiatric symptomatology, and the risk/protective factors related to burnout. We found consistently high rates of MI and burnout, and that both Self and Others MI were associated with specific HMDEs, COVID-19 work impact, COVID-19 protection concern, and leadership support. Others MI was also related to prior adversity, nurse role, COVID-19 health worry, and COVID-19 diagnosis. Predictors of burnout included Self MI, depression symptoms, COVID-19 work impact, and leadership support. Hospital administrators/supervisors should recognize the importance of supporting the HCPs they supervise, particularly those at greatest risk of MI and burnout.

Estimating the impact of parking on car ownership and commute mode choices

<p><b>Researchers in commuting studies predominantly focus on movements. However, every trip starts and terminates in a place. For drivers, commuting is a journey between parking locations. They start their journey from home parking, park near work, and eventually return to home parking. Cars spend most of the day parked, with associated externalities. Drivers waste time and fuel cruising for parking in city centres and waste other drivers’ time and fuel by slowing traffic. More fuel consumption implies more carbon emissions and local air pollution. Providing off-street home parking increases house prices and reduces house affordability. Nonetheless, parking is a small part of the transportation literature and further research is needed to support a comprehensive understanding of parking and its impacts on travel behavior. </b></p> <p>This thesis is centreed around three questions; “How does the quantity of home parking affect car ownership and commute mode?”, “How do home parking type and quantity affect car ownership?”, “How does walking time from parking location to work impact parking type choice?”. Each question is answered in a separate chapter using a discrete choice model and a sample of commuters surveyed in the New Zealand Household Travel Survey (NZHTS) in the Greater Wellington Region (GWR), New Zealand.</p> <p>We find that home parking quantity strongly and positively affects car ownership and proclivity for driving. Residential parking is the most important factor in encouraging carless households to acquire a car. High home parking supply motivates households to drive more often. More car trips from suburbs means higher demand for parking downtown and highlights the relationship between home parking and work parking. More garage spaces at home noticeably motivates households to have multiple cars. The number of driveway spaces positively influences owning more than two cars. An inverse relationship exists between on-street parking demand and car ownership. For work parking, we find that walking time from public off-street parking to work significantly discourages commuters from choosing public off-street parking. Walking time from an on-street parking to work is also a significant disincentive for choosing On-street parking. The cost of on-street parking is important, followed by the number of on-street parking spaces. Elasticities show that the motivation of drivers to change parking type is close to their willingness to choose non-driving modes, if any parking features change. This similar willingness indicates a potential for achieving lower car use through parking restriction and improving non-driving modes.</p> <p>This research contributes to the home parking literature by considering residential location as a choice that is interrelated with car ownership and mode choice. We study commuters who could live and work anywhere in a region (GWR) with a diverse range of socioeconomic characteristics, parking features, and traffic conditions, in order to give results that are more realistic and comprehensive. We mitigate the endogeneity between car ownership and home parking using novel instrumental variables for home parking. Our measure for on-street parking carefully considers parking competition and quantity. Commute length is measured as commute time to better represent commuters’ perception of commute length. For work parking, we consider mode choices and parking alternatives simultaneously, and use novel demand-based measures for parking features.</p> <p>We expect the findings of this research will contribute to a better understanding of how parking arrangements in cities can affect commuting patterns, and how parking policies can impact urban design, land use and transport outcomes.</p>

Estimating the impact of parking on car ownership and commute mode choices

<p><b>Researchers in commuting studies predominantly focus on movements. However, every trip starts and terminates in a place. For drivers, commuting is a journey between parking locations. They start their journey from home parking, park near work, and eventually return to home parking. Cars spend most of the day parked, with associated externalities. Drivers waste time and fuel cruising for parking in city centres and waste other drivers’ time and fuel by slowing traffic. More fuel consumption implies more carbon emissions and local air pollution. Providing off-street home parking increases house prices and reduces house affordability. Nonetheless, parking is a small part of the transportation literature and further research is needed to support a comprehensive understanding of parking and its impacts on travel behavior. </b></p> <p>This thesis is centreed around three questions; “How does the quantity of home parking affect car ownership and commute mode?”, “How do home parking type and quantity affect car ownership?”, “How does walking time from parking location to work impact parking type choice?”. Each question is answered in a separate chapter using a discrete choice model and a sample of commuters surveyed in the New Zealand Household Travel Survey (NZHTS) in the Greater Wellington Region (GWR), New Zealand.</p> <p>We find that home parking quantity strongly and positively affects car ownership and proclivity for driving. Residential parking is the most important factor in encouraging carless households to acquire a car. High home parking supply motivates households to drive more often. More car trips from suburbs means higher demand for parking downtown and highlights the relationship between home parking and work parking. More garage spaces at home noticeably motivates households to have multiple cars. The number of driveway spaces positively influences owning more than two cars. An inverse relationship exists between on-street parking demand and car ownership. For work parking, we find that walking time from public off-street parking to work significantly discourages commuters from choosing public off-street parking. Walking time from an on-street parking to work is also a significant disincentive for choosing On-street parking. The cost of on-street parking is important, followed by the number of on-street parking spaces. Elasticities show that the motivation of drivers to change parking type is close to their willingness to choose non-driving modes, if any parking features change. This similar willingness indicates a potential for achieving lower car use through parking restriction and improving non-driving modes.</p> <p>This research contributes to the home parking literature by considering residential location as a choice that is interrelated with car ownership and mode choice. We study commuters who could live and work anywhere in a region (GWR) with a diverse range of socioeconomic characteristics, parking features, and traffic conditions, in order to give results that are more realistic and comprehensive. We mitigate the endogeneity between car ownership and home parking using novel instrumental variables for home parking. Our measure for on-street parking carefully considers parking competition and quantity. Commute length is measured as commute time to better represent commuters’ perception of commute length. For work parking, we consider mode choices and parking alternatives simultaneously, and use novel demand-based measures for parking features.</p> <p>We expect the findings of this research will contribute to a better understanding of how parking arrangements in cities can affect commuting patterns, and how parking policies can impact urban design, land use and transport outcomes.</p>

Improving Health Through the Application of Ergonomics to Food Practices

Food and nutrition are important to ensuring health, and practices related to food (including obtaining, preparing, consuming, sharing and cleaning up food) involve effortful activity - work. Human Factors and Ergonomics (HF/E) efforts that leverage expertise in across HF/E domains (i.e., physical, cognitive and organizational ergonomics) can provide a holistic approach to supporting human wellbeing and performance in these food practices. For example, ergonomists can attend to the physical environment and tools, the mental processes and/or overall sociotechnical systems involved in food practice all to facilitate food practices that increase the health and wellbeing of humans across diverse needs, abilities and limitations. This panel will introduce the ergonomics of food, highlighting ongoing work as well as opportunities for further work impact.

Effect of pH on the denitrification proteome of the soil bacterium Paracoccus denitrificans PD1222

Denitrification is a respiratory process by which nitrate is reduced to dinitrogen. Incomplete denitrification results in the emission of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide and this is potentiated in acidic soils, which display reduced denitrification rates and high N2O/N2 ratios compared to alkaline soils. In this work, impact of pH on the proteome of the soil denitrifying bacterium Paracoccus denitrificans PD1222 was analysed with nitrate as sole energy and nitrogen source under anaerobic conditions at pH ranging from 6.5 to 7.5. Quantitative proteomic analysis revealed that the highest difference in protein representation was observed when the proteome at pH 6.5 was compared to the reference proteome at pH 7.2. However, this difference in the extracellular pH was not enough to produce modification of intracellular pH, which was maintained at 6.5 ± 0.1. The biosynthetic pathways of several cofactors relevant for denitrification and nitrogen assimilation like cobalamin, riboflavin, molybdopterin and nicotinamide were negatively affected at pH 6.5. In addition, peptide representation of reductases involved in nitrate assimilation and denitrification were reduced at pH 6.5. Data highlight the strong negative impact of pH on NosZ synthesis and intracellular copper content, thus impairing active NosZ assembly and, in turn, leading to elevated nitrous oxide emissions.

Nano-Adsorbents for Cobalt Removal from Wastewater: A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Articles Indexed in the Scopus Database

In this study, a combined technique of bibliometric and social network analysis was applied on research articles, related to the application of nano-adsorbents for cobalt removal from wastewater, published in Scopus database up to 2020. The results revealed that the first relative research article appeared in the Scopus database in the year 2002. The total output of research articles reached 214 in the year 2020. Published research articles of the years 2014–2020, added up to 83.6% of total articles. King Saud University of Saudi Arabia, Chinese Academy of Science, and LUT University of Finland were found to serve as the gatekeepers who control information flows in the network of the most prolific institutions, while cooperation between China, Saudi Arabia, and United States was also identified. On average, the most prolific authors cooperated with five others, while the top 10 cited publications appeared to represent a sparse and weakly interconnected network of co-authors. Graphene oxide was the most prominent nano-adsorbent among the top 10 cited publications, and their respective co-citations network visualization helped in capturing the value of certain citations to the evolution of the research on the topic, putting thus scientific work impact assessment to a different perspective.

Estado y problemas de la investigación cualitativa en Educación: Divulgación, investigación y acceso del profesorado universitario

This paper presents a reflexive panorama focusing the problems of divulgation of qualitative research results in Spain. In our experience, we observe that there is no equity between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, with a clear predominance of quantitative methods, which has made reliability in the qualitative methodology as a rigorous research approach to be seen strongly affected. To inquire into this situation, the production in high-impact Spanish journals of the last five years has been analysed, classifying the type of articles published according to methodology, as well as their focus and scope policies. On the other hand, in order to contrast the information with the documentary analysis, researchers in qualitative research, as well as students, have been interviewed about the problem of publishing in journals with high impact and the difficulties in obtaining research projects with this approach. Among the reasons that have led to this situation we find that, the access of university professors, focused mainly on merits of publications and research; and the preference of quantitative work impact journals derived, among other issues related to hegemonic thinking about how rigorous knowledge is generated, produces significant imbalances between both methodologies. We conclude the article considering possible proposals that presumably will value the richness of qualitative research as an indispensable part of scientific thinking in education.