The emergency system for the town of Milano: evaluation of an help point

The article presents a complex work of which the author has been asked by the Municipality of Milan an its Service Company (AEM, now A2A) to apply Ergonomics to evaluate a product designed for asking information and emergency, with particular attention to vulnerable city users.     

Wood, management and dust: analysis of the Context of Production of Goods and Services (CPGS) of an academic woodwork

The CGPS of the woodwork of a public university was observed and analyzed. Apart from what is usual in the field of Ergonomics' studies, it is an academic context, where there is not a direct implication of profit, productivity and clientele. The group tried to sever negative and broadcasted opinions about the place by analyzing it from a different point of view. This work was considered relevant, since it is related to neglect of education and citizenship. For this case study, it was used the Ergonomics Analysis of Work with all workers at the woodwork. The instruments were documental analysis, free observation with photographic register, semi-structured interview with the workers and survey Pontos de Verica??o Ergon?mica. The results are presented by the perspective of work conditions, work organization and social-professional work relationship. The present study brought several contributions, such as the complementation of the theory and a new perspective of the analyzed context, o bserved now by the worker's point of view. As a result of the analysis, it was questioned about citizenship and the neglect with the public good, even though the relevant social role that this academic institution plays. In conclusion, the group suggests some proposals that modify positively the CGPS of this academic woodwork.     

Sustainability and accessibility: the Design for All approach

A sustainable project should also be affordable, and it is cheaper if it its affordability is guaranteed to as much people as possible since the first phases of the project without any modifications. The author illustrates the activity of diffusion of DfA on an urban scale carried out on didactic and cultural level.     

Oxidative stress increases continuously with BMI and age with unfavourable profiles in males

Oxidative stress is a risk factor for chronic diseases and was previously shown to be independently associated with obesity. The authors investigated the relationship between body mass index (BMI), age and oxidative stress on 2190 subjects undergoing a health care examination. Total antioxidant status (TAS), total peroxides (TOC) and autoantibodies against oxidized LDL (oLAb) were used as oxidative stress biomarkers in addition to serum lipoproteins, bilirubin and uric acid. Gender-specific differences were observed for age, BMI, serum concentrations of bilirubin, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), uric acid and TAS, all of which were higher in males (p < 0.001), while high-density lipoprotein (HDL), HDL/LDL ratio and TOC were higher in females (p < 0.001). Total cholesterol (p < 0.05) and LDL were increased (p < 0.05), while HDL was decreased (p < 0.05) in overweight and obese subjects. This was accompanied by increased uric acid and TAS concentrations. Lowest oLAb titers were detected in obese subjects. In extremely obese subjects, increased TOC and decreased TAS were observed in spite of high uric acid levels. These results demonstrate that oxidative stress increases with increasing BMI and age, as a sequel to an impaired antioxidant status, the consumption of oLAbs, an increase of peroxides and uric acid and a disadvantaged lipid profile.     

Bayes factors for goodness of fit testing

We propose the use of the generalized fractional Bayes factor for testing fit in multinomial models. This is a non-asymptotic method that can be used to quantify the evidence for or against a sub-model. We give expressions for the generalized fractional Bayes factor and we study its properties. In particular, we show that the generalized fractional Bayes factor has better properties than the fractional Bayes factor.     

Antidepressants for neuroenhancement in healthy individuals: a systematic review

Neuroenhancement offers the prospect of improving the cognitive, emotional and motivational functions of healthy individuals. Of all the conceivable interventions, psychopharmacology provides the most readily available ones, such as antidepressants which are thought to make people “better than well”. However, up until now, whether they possess such an enhancing ability remains controversial and therefore in this systematic review we will evaluate the effect and safety of modern antidepressants in healthy individuals. A search of MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and cross-references was carried out and the pharmaceutical industry was contacted for suitable data. Trials published in any language through the third week of July 2007 were regarded. Included were single or double blind randomised or quasi-randomised controlled trials that compared a placebo to one or more of the following antidepressants: bupropion, citalopram, duloxetine, escitalopram, fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, moclobemide, paroxetine, reboxetine, sertraline or venlafaxine in any dose or dosing schedule. Eligible studies were those involving healthy people of any age and either sex who showed no evidence of a psychiatric disorder, cognitive decline or other disease. One hundred thirty-five articles met our inclusion criteria reporting single dose trials and trials with repeated drug administration. Sixty-five of these articles were eligible for a statistical analysis. Based on a linear mixed model, a meta-analysis and a fixed effects meta-regression were performed. Pooling of results by meta-analysis was stratified by the outcome measures (a) mood, (b) emotional processing, (c) wakefulness, (d) attention, (e) memory, and (f) executive functions. On a significance level of p < 0.05 the following significant results emerged: After a single dose of an antidepressant, a significant effect was shown in two of the analysed outcomes. Firstly, there was a small yet significant negative effect on wakefulness. On memory, a positive effect after several measurements was found, but this result could be traced to the results of the one study out of all included studies, which had that many assessment points. The analysis of trials with repeated drug administration (mean duration 14 days, standard deviation 9) yielded the following effects: on mood, a non-significant positive effect was detected that was continuously increasing and reached significance at the last assessment point. Regarding attention, a fluctuating effect was found, while for memory, the fact that the two groups started with a group difference confounded the results. For wakefulness there was no significant effect in any particular assessment point, while for emotional processing and executive functions, the small number of studies did not allow for any effect to emerge. In summary, no consistent evidence for enhancing effects of antidepressants could be found. There is little evidence so far to support the popular opinion that antidepressants have a positive effect on the mood of healthy individuals after repeated administration. No evidence of a significant adverse event profile could be found. The studies included in this systematic review not only provide insufficient evidence for or against any effect in healthy people, but they are inapt to be used for answering this question. This may be explained by the fact that most of them were not designed to examine neuroenhancement effects. The growing public interest in neuroenhancement stands in stark contrast to the paucity of data on enhancement effects of available psychopharmacological agents.     

Gesundheitsförderliche Arbeitsgestaltung als Ansatzpunkt für das Recruiting in der Zeitarbeit

Temporary work agencies are constantly seeking new personnel. However, the industry’s image as well as reports on unfavourable working conditions impede the recruitment of new temporary agency workers (TAW). In the present study semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 TAW to identify work characteristics that are perceived as potentially stressful and motivating, respectively. The results of the interview study can yield valuable hints for the improvement of the quality of work and further support the recruitment of new TAW. The results show that the working conditions of TAW contain a multitude of demands – e.g., high levels of insecurity, flexibility requirements and experiences of social marginalization – but only few resources. Starting from these insights possible measures are discussed that are suitable to improve TAW’s working conditions and provide recruiters with valuable arguments for the recruitment of new staff.     

Building up adjusted indicators of students’ evaluation of university courses using generalized item response models

This article advances a proposal for building up adjusted composite indicators of the quality of university courses from students’ assessments. The flexible framework of Generalized Item Response Models is adopted here for controlling the sources of heterogeneity in the data structure that make evaluations across courses not directly comparable. Specifically, it allows us to: jointly model students’ ratings to the set of items which define the quality of university courses; explicitly consider the dimensionality of the items composing the evaluation form; evaluate and remove the effect of potential confounding factors which may affect students’ evaluation; model the intra-cluster variability at course level. The approach simultaneously deals with: (i) multilevel data structure; (ii) multidimensional latent trait; (iii) personal explanatory latent regression models. The paper pays attention to the potential of such a flexible approach in the analysis of students evaluation of university courses in order to explore both how the quality of the different aspects (teaching, management, etc.) is perceived by students and how to make meaningful comparisons across them on the basis of adjusted indicators.