This study aimed to examine the effects of accumulating nursing work on maximal and rapid strength characteristics in female nurses and compare these effects in day versus night shift workers.
Nurses exhibit among the highest nonfatal injury rates of all occupations, which may be a consequence of long, cumulative work shift schedules. Fatigue may accumulate across multiple shifts and lead to performance impairments, which in turn may be linked to injury risks.
Thirty-seven nurses and aides performed isometric strength-based performance testing of three muscle groups, including the knee extensors, knee flexors, and wrist flexors (hand grip), as well as countermovement jumps, at baseline and following exposure to three 12-hour work shifts in a four-day period. Variables included peak torque (PT) and rate of torque development (RTD) from isometric strength testing and jump height and power output.
The rigorous work period resulted in significant decreases (–7.2% to –19.2%) in a large majority (8/9) of the isometric strength-based measurements. No differences were noted for the day versus night shift workers except for the RTD at 200 millisecond variable, for which the night shift had greater work-induced decreases than the day shift workers. No changes were observed for jump height or power output.
A compressed nursing work schedule resulted in decreases in strength-based performance abilities, being indicative of performance fatigue.
Compressed work schedules involving long shifts lead to functional declines in nurse performance capacities that may pose risks for both the nurse and patient quality of care. Fatigue management plans are needed to monitor and regulate increased levels of fatigue.
To investigate how people’s sequential adjustments to their position are impacted by the source of the information.
There is an extensive body of research on how the order in which new information is received affects people’s final views and decisions as well as research on how they adjust their views in light of new information.
Seventy college-aged students, 60% of whom were women, completed one of eight different randomly distributed booklets prepared to create the eight different between-subjects treatment conditions created by crossing the two levels of information source with the four level of order conditions. Based on the information provided, participants estimated the probability of an attack, the dependent measure.
Confirming information from an expert intelligence officer significantly increased the attack probability from the initial position more than confirming information from a longtime friend. Conversely, disconfirming information from a longtime friend decreased the attack probability significantly more than the same information from an intelligence officer.
It was confirmed that confirming and disconfirming evidence were differentially affected depending on information source, either an expert or a close friend. The difference appears to be due to the existence of two kinds of trust: cognitive-based imbued to an expert and affective-based imbued to a close friend.
Purveyors of information need to understand that it is not only the content of a message that counts but that other forces are at work such as the order in which information is received and characteristics of the information source.
This article contains the first detailed historical study of one of the new high-frequency trading (HFT) firms that have transformed many of the world’s financial markets. The study, of Automated Trading Desk (ATD), one of the earliest and most important such firms, focuses on how ATD’s algorithms predicted share price changes. The article argues that political-economic struggles are integral to the existence of some of the ‘pockets’ of predictable structure in the otherwise random movements of prices, to the availability of the data that allow algorithms to identify these pockets, and to the capacity of algorithms to use these predictions to trade profitably. The article also examines the role of HFT algorithms such as ATD’s in the epochal, fiercely contested shift in US share trading from ‘fixed-role’ markets towards ‘all-to-all’ markets.
Four studies were conducted to assess bicyclist conspicuity enhancement at night by the application of reflective tape (ECE/ONU 104) to the bicycle rear frame and to pedal cranks.
Previous studies have tested the benefits of reflective markings applied to bicyclist clothing. Reflective jackets however need to be available and worn while reflective markings enhance conspicuity without any active behavior by the bicyclist.
In the first study, reflective tape was applied to the rear frame. Detection distance was compared in four conditions: control, rear red reflector, high visibility jacket, and reflective tape. In the second study, the same conditions were studied with night street lighting on and off. In the third study, detection and recognition distances were evaluated in rainy conditions. In the fourth study, visibility was assessed with the reflective tape applied to pedal cranks.
In the first study, the application of reflective markings resulted in a detection distance of 168.28 m. In the second study, the detection distance with reflective markings was 229.74 m with public street light on and 256.41 m with public street light off. In rainy conditions, detection distance using the reflective markings was 146.47 m. Reflective tape applied to pedal cracks resulted in a detection distance of 168.60 m.
Reflective tape applied to the rear bicycle frame can considerably increase bicyclist conspicuity and safety at night.
Reflective tape is highly recommended to complement anterior and rear lights in bicycle riding at night.
The objective for this study was to investigate the effects of prior familiarization with takeover requests (TORs) during conditional automated driving on drivers’ initial takeover performance and automation trust.
System-initiated TORs are one of the biggest concerns for conditional automated driving and have been studied extensively in the past. Most, but not all, of these studies have included training sessions to familiarize participants with TORs. This makes them hard to compare and might obscure first-failure-like effects on takeover performance and automation trust formation.
A driving simulator study compared drivers’ takeover performance in two takeover situations across four prior familiarization groups (no familiarization, description, experience, description and experience) and automation trust before and after experiencing the system.
As hypothesized, prior familiarization with TORs had a more positive effect on takeover performance in the first than in a subsequent takeover situation. In all groups, automation trust increased after participants experienced the system. Participants who were given no prior familiarization with TORs reported highest automation trust both before and after experiencing the system.
The current results extend earlier findings suggesting that prior familiarization with TORs during conditional automated driving will be most relevant for takeover performance in the first takeover situation and that it lowers drivers’ automation trust.
Potential applications of this research include different approaches to familiarize users with automated driving systems, better integration of earlier findings, and sophistication of experimental designs.
Science diplomacy is a widely practiced area of international affairs, but academic research is rather sparse. The role of academia within this field of politics–science interaction has hardly been considered. This article analyzes this scholarly perspective: Based on a literature review, a case study of a German science diplomacy program is used to explore objectives, benefits, and constraints of science diplomacy for participating scholars. While political approaches suggest an ideal world where both sides profit from the collaboration, the findings of the case study point to another conclusion which shows that the interaction of scholars and officials in science diplomacy is far more complex. Thus, the contribution is regarded as both a useful starting point for further research and for a critical reflection of academics and politicians in science diplomacy practice to gauge what can be expected from the collaboration and what cannot.
Crowd science is scientific research that is conducted with the participation of volunteers who are not professional scientists. Thanks to the Internet and online platforms, project initiators can draw on a potentially large number of volunteers. This crowd can be involved to support data-rich or labour-intensive projects that would otherwise be unfeasible. So far, research on crowd science has mainly focused on analysing individual crowd science projects. In our research, we focus on the perspective of project initiators and explore how crowd science projects are set up. Based on multiple case study research, we discuss the objectives of crowd science projects and the strategies of their initiators for accessing volunteers. We also categorise the tasks allocated to volunteers and reflect on the issue of quality assurance as well as feedback mechanisms. With this article, we contribute to a better understanding of how crowd science projects are set up and how volunteers can contribute to science. We suggest that our findings are of practical relevance for initiators of crowd science projects, for science communication as well as for informed science policy making.
Science popularization fulfills the important task of making scientific knowledge understandable and accessible for the lay public. However, the simplification of information required to achieve this accessibility may lead to the risk of audiences relying overly strongly on their own epistemic capabilities when making judgments about scientific claims. Moreover, they may underestimate how the division of cognitive labor makes them dependent on experts. This article reports an empirical study demonstrating that this "easiness effect of science popularization" occurs when laypeople read authentic popularized science depictions. After reading popularized articles addressed to a lay audience, laypeople agreed more with the knowledge claims they contained and were more confident in their claim judgments than after reading articles addressed to expert audiences. Implications for communicating scientific knowledge to the general public are discussed.
In this article, we suggest that three concepts from cultural and media studies might be useful for analysing the ways audiences are constructed in science communication: that media are immanent to society, media are multiple and various, and audiences are active. This article uses those concepts, along with insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), to examine the category of ‘the disengaged’ within science communication. This article deals with the contrast between ‘common sense’ and scholarly ideas of media and audiences in the field of cultural and media studies. It compares the ‘common sense’ with scholarly ideas of science publics from STS. We conclude that it may be time to reconsider the ontology of publics and the disengaged for science communication.
Scholars have challenged the totalizing nature of the "geneticization thesis," arguing that its brushstrokes are too broad to capture the complicated nature of the new genetics. One such challenge has come from Nikolas Rose’s argument that genetic medicine is governed by a new biopolitics in which patients understand themselves as "somatic individuals" who treat their bodies as an "ethical substance" to be worked on in order to secure a healthier future. I argue that Rose’s argument, while compelling, paints the new genetics in equally broad brushstrokes and that in order for a concept like somatic individuality to become useful, we must study its manifestation across different communities of at-risk individuals. I undertake such a study by analyzing discourse use in two online biosocial communities, showing how the decision-making situations specific to each affect representations of somatic individuality, often creating opportunities for the rhetorical repurposing of older discourses of genetic determinism.