Recent publications
Insomnia is prevalent among patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD), potentially undermining treatment and increasing the risk of relapse. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is the recommended first-line treatment for insomnia, but its efficacy is not well-characterized in patients across the spectrum of AUD. The aim of this meta-analysis was to quantify the effectiveness of CBT-I in improving insomnia severity and alcohol-related outcomes in adults with heavy alcohol use and/or varying levels of AUD severity and comorbid insomnia. MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO and ClinicalTrials.gov were systematically searched (up to February 2024) to retrieve randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Multilevel meta-analyses were conducted to estimate mean differences over time in insomnia severity, measured using the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), as well as in alcohol craving and alcohol-related psychosocial problems between CBT-I and control groups. For the number of heavy-drinking/abstinent days, incidence rate ratios were estimated. Risk of bias was assessed using the Risk of Bias 2 (RoB 2) tool. Eight RCTs encompassing 426 adults (68.78 % men) were included. Compared with control conditions, CBT-I resulted in a large reduction of insomnia severity post-treatment [estimated ISI reduction = -5.51, 95% CI (-7.13 to -3.90)], which was maintained at 1-to-3-month [7 studies; estimate = -4.39, 95% CI (-6.08 to -2.70)], and 6-month follow-up [4 studies; estimate = -4.55, 95% CI (-6.77 to -2.33)]. Alcohol-related outcomes were reported less consistently, and no significant differences were found. The included trials were judged to have a low or moderate overall risk of bias for the assessment of all outcomes. CBT-I effectively reduces insomnia severity across the spectrum of AUD, supporting wide implementation in AUD prevention and treatment settings. PROSPERO registration number: CRD42023464612.
The environmental impacts of the construction industry can be decreased by enhancing material circularity. This study explored the psychological factors that influence the intention of housing developers to use recycled wood materials in construction projects. A cross‐sectional survey (n = 138) was conducted in the fall of 2022 in southern Norway. A conceptual model was developed and tested to integrate the theory of planned behavior and institutional theory. The model incorporates three behavioral variables (behavioral attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control), regulatory and market factors, and previous reuse behavior to investigate their direct and indirect impacts on reuse intention. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. In addition, a bootstrapping test was used to examine the potential mediating effects. The conceptual model explained a large proportion (R2 = 53 %) of the intentions of housing developers to use recycled wood materials in construction projects in the next 5 years. The results reveal that previous reuse behavior, behavioral attitude, perceived behavioral control, and regulatory and market factors positively impact the intention to use recycled wood materials, while subjective norms do not have a significant effect. This suggests that changes in the use of recycled materials do not originate from consumer requirements. Easy access to materials, information, and suitable regulations and standards can improve the intention to use recycled wood in construction projects. Thus, this may be a first step toward establishing an industrialized value chain for recycled wood materials for construction.
During exercise stress, heart rate (HR) increases to support cardiac output, which also reduces ventricular filling time. Although echocardiography is widely used to assess cardiac function, studies display conflicting data on the dynamic changes in the healthy trained and untrained heart during rest and acute exercise stress. To address these discrepancies, we tested a new echocardiography exercise protocol on two groups with significant differences in cardiorespiratory fitness. Ten untrained individuals with maximal oxygen uptake of 38 ± 8 ml/kg/min and 10 endurance‐trained athletes matched for body surface area but with higher maximal oxygen uptake (71 ± 5 ml/kg/min) were evaluated at rest, during semi‐recumbent cycling at 25 and 75 W and at a relative workload intensity eliciting a HR of 140 beats/min (HR140). Stroke volume was 36% higher in the trained at rest, and this difference increased during exercise to 42% at 25 W, 46% at 75 W and 63% at HR140 (all P < 0.05). In contrast, no group differences were found in markers of myocardial function (ventricular contraction and relaxation velocities) or other traditional echocardiographic measures of ventricular function at rest or exercise for a given HR. However, while similar at rest, diastolic and systolic function provided limited insight into differences between less fit and highly fit individuals. The new exercise echocardiography protocol improves the ability to uncover differences in dynamic changes in diastolic filling capacity that explain the previously reported higher end‐diastolic compliance in endurance‐trained athletes.
Background
Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in South Sudan. Inadequate knowledge, negative attitudes and perceived stigma may complicate the prevention efforts. This study describes knowledge, attitude, and stigma associated with TB among communities in Wau and Jur River, South Sudan.
Methods
From March to May 2023, a cross-sectional study was conducted among 352 community members randomly selected from residential blocks. A validated structured questionnaire was used to collect the required data. Descriptive, bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed.
Results
Out of 352 respondents, 51% (n = 180) were males and 49% (n = 172) were females. Majority 227 (64.5%) had poor knowledge about TB, meanwhile hearing about TB, age and level of education were associated factors. Fear of having TB was the major negative attitude (57.1%; n = 218), and most of the respondents (n = 327; 92.9%) had a perceived stigma towards TB, voicing that they disliked drinking or eating with people with TB and/or felt uncomfortable and kept their distance from people with TB.
Conclusions
Communities have little knowledge, negative attitude and perceived stigma towards people with TB. Hence, tailored health messages using local languages, training of community volunteers to reach villages without accessibility and communication network are essential to improve TB prevention and control in South Sudan.
The main purpose of this chapter is to offer inspiration and ideas regarding how action methods may be integrated into higher education. Creating a safe learning climate is the foundation for motivation, knowledge acquisition and well-being in universities. This chapter focuses on how action methods and sociometry may be used as a tool to promote learning, establish social connections and construct a safe learning climate among new students. First, we briefly outline the philosophical underpinnings of action methods and discuss how using it as a foundation for teaching may promote good encounters between students and university lecturers. Next, we present empirical studies of psychodrama and sociometry conducted in a university setting. We then present studies based on dramaturgical perspectives and on aesthetic learning processes, as well as studies focused on role play and simulation—representing overlapping fields. The first part of this chapter thus provides a basis for understanding the application of Morenian approaches to higher education. The next part of the chapter concerns practical applications, outlining sociometric techniques that we consider relevant to use with students. We present a case example of how sociometric techniques may be used to ease students’ transition to higher education and help them develop confidence in their role of new university student. We also explore how sociometric techniques may aid in establishing social connections, building group cohesion, promote motivation and reduce stress. Our intention with this section is to describe methods and procedures thoroughly, enabling university lecturers to be inspired to implement some of the techniques in their teaching. We therefore discuss (a) how psychodrama and sociometric techniques may contribute directly to learning in higher education, by developing specific skills (for instance, via role training); and (b) how sociometric techniques may promote learning indirectly, by creating a safe learning climate. In the third and final part of the chapter, we discuss advantages and challenges in introducing action methods into higher education. Our aim is to bridge different traditions by drawing on dramaturgical perspectives, role play, simulation and aesthetic dimensions of learning, as well as explorative, experimental and holistic approaches. We discuss the importance of creating a safe learning climate as a precondition for using action methods, as well as the balance between opening up a personal space to integrate experiences into academic learning without crossing the line into therapeutic issues. Finally, we point to promising future avenues of integrating a Morenian perspective into cross-disciplinary work in higher education.
Purpose
The purpose of this meta-ethnography is to integrate and synthesize nurses’ and nurse leaders’ perspectives on a health-promoting work environment to enhance understanding of its essential aspects.
Methods
A meta-ethnographic approach developed by Noblit and Hare was conducted.
Findings
Line of argument synthesis led to the development of an overarching tree metaphor: “cultivating a flourishing environmental tree rooted in values, held stable by leadership, and nurtured by safe working conditions.” This metaphor illustrates that a health-promoting work environment is imbued with three interdependent aspects: 1) core values as the roots of the tree, including respect, recognition, community, and engagement 2) value-conscious leadership as the trunk of the tree, meaning a leader who is conscious of their power position and responsibilities and 3) safe working conditions as fertile soil for the tree, comprising the physical and administrative dimensions of the work environment.
Conclusions
Collaboration between nurses and leaders is crucial for cultivating a health-promoting work environment. However, nurse leaders, due to their influential positions, have the responsibility to facilitate this environment. Consequently, leaders need to receive adequate resources and support from their superiors to foster an environment that enhances nurses’ health and job satisfaction.
Sleep problems are commonly related to stress and mental health problems. However, social media use has become widespread in the general population during recent years, and their addictive potential may influence people’s sleep routine. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to substantial mental health problems in the population, and restrictions in social life gave social media a unique position as means for both entertainment and interpersonal contact. The aim of the study was to examine sleep problems in relationship to social media use in a cross-national sample two years after the COVID-19 outbreak. Participants were 1405 adults from four countries who completed a cross-sectional online survey. The data were analyzed with independent samples t-tests, Chi Squared tests of independence, and single and multivariable logistic regression analyses. Of the 858 (61.1%) participants who reported sleep problems during the past weeks, a substantial proportion (n = 353, 41.1%) related their sleep problems to their experience with COVID-19. With adjustments for age, gender, employment, and psychological distress, more hours of daily social media use was not significantly associated with sleep problems. However, higher age (OR: 1.13, p = 0.01), female gender (OR: 1.69, p<0.001), having employment (OR: 1.34, p = 0.04), and higher levels of psychological distress (OR: 1.20, p<0.001) were independently associated with sleep problems. While the debate about the pros and cons of social media use continue, this study suggests that higher levels of social media use was not of great concern for people’s sleep quality in the late COVID-19 pandemic phase. However, other aspects of social media use (eg, time of the day, content of interactions, associated stress experience) may be more relevant for understanding sleep problems and may be taken into consideration for people who experience such problems.
This study examines the relationships between the leadership display of curiosity, employees’ creative performance, and two psychological conditions mediating this relationship. The two psychological conditions are represented by (i) psychological capital and (ii) psychological safety. A sample of 181 employees from different hospitality organizations participated in this study. The sample was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with the SmartPLS 4 statistical program. Leadership display of curiosity are directly related to employees’ creative performance. Employees’ psychological capital mediates the relationship between leadership and creative performance. Psychological safety was affected by the leadership’s display of curiosity but did not mediate the relationship between the leadership’s display of curiosity and creative performance. Leadership display of curiosity, psychological capital, and psychological safety explain almost 50 percent (48,2%) of employees’ creative performance variance. Overall, the findings reveal that leadership display of curiosity have a substantial impact on both employees’ creative performance and psychological capital, as well as the psychological safety climate in the organization. Accordingly, an essential implication of this study is to develop the level of curiosity among leaders and consider it a resource that organizations can capitalize on. This study contributes to a relatively new research domain, focusing on and revealing the role of the leadership display of curiosity within organizations.
Although the green and blue dividends associated with circular economy have been widely advocated, whether circular economy necessarily guarantee environmental quality remains unclear. To provide a more precise insight, in this case for a novel case of all the European Union countries, environmental effect of the share of used material resources from the reuse of waste materials is examined over the period 2010–2021. The results reveal that the reuse of waste materials statistically (i) increase CO2 emissions in most quantiles in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, and Slovenia, (ii) mitigate CO2 emissions in most quantiles in Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Spain, and Ireland, and (iii) either increasing or reducing CO2 emissions depending on the quantile of material circularity use rate and CO2 emissions in Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Latvia. This result points to a more policy driven approach.
Using the case of efficient load out (ELO), a digital solution offered by Volvo Group, this chapter illustrates how activities can lead to a service-oriented value co-creation approach among actors during the development of a digital solution. In particular, activities performed in the ELO project focused on the customer’s process, collaboration, and creating a win-win solution. Adopting these new dimensions of a service-oriented value co-creation approach resulted in outcomes for the actors that were directly involved in the project and for those actors experiencing the result. By broadening the scope from the company to the ecosystem, the digital solution became applicable, and deeper relationships were created with customers. The company gained specific domain competence and increased its competitive advantages.
Managers who handle complaints often assume that customers report all service failure and passively wait for service personnel to resolve the problem solution (i.e., the service recovery). Here, based on decades of service recovery research, we seek to problematize the common conceptualization of a service failure. In particular, we argue for a broader understanding of what constitutes a service failure, encompassing failures that are not necessarily associated with the service provision, but can cause interruptions in the service experience. Using this new understanding of service failures, we outline advice for service managers to consider to avoid causing failures, and optimize their recovery processes by emphasizing the importance of the human service employees.
This chapter discusses service management from the perspective of the service ecosystem, which includes creating, proposing, and capturing value for all actors involved. Service management is becoming essential due to the increasing importance of the service sector in many economies worldwide and the servitization of manufacturing industries. This chapter highlights the challenges and opportunities for service management in the face of digitization and technological advances, including the emergence of service platforms as a dominant model and tool for service management. The chapter also emphasizes that service platforms should be understood as center-points in the service ecosystem, facilitating supply and demand among several actors. The service platform can also create opportunities for service managers to manage value co-creation effectively, facilitate collaboration, and provide tools and resources to customers. The chapter concludes by discussing the essential management considerations for service management, including multi-actor collaboration and ecosystem transformation.
Large‐scale anthropogenic developments in the metropolitan areas of Nepal and the rural to urban influx of people have exacerbated human–wildlife conflicts across human‐altered landscapes of Nepal. The Kathmandu Valley has experienced large‐scale urbanization and has subsequently witnessed substantial incidents of human–wildlife conflicts given the increasing levels of human encroachment into remnant wildlife habitats. Here, we applied DNA metabarcoding in combination with geospatial analysis to study the feeding ecology of two urban carnivores, the leopard (Panthera pardus) and the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), in the forests surrounding the Kathmandu Valley and to check whether the leopards' predation on domestic animals contributes to human‐leopard conflict in this region and to obtain a baseline data on the dietary habits of the poorly studied leopard cat. We found that leopards were highly dependent on domestic animals in areas dominated by human‐use activities (agricultural and built‐up areas), whereas leopard cats mostly predated on wild rodents. Through our work, we highlight the importance of domestic prey in the diets of urban carnivores like leopards and demonstrate the influence human‐induced habitat disturbance has on the ecology of local wildlife. This study generates critical information which will help to inform conflict mitigation strategies and conservation planning for the two carnivore species, in addition to identifying areas within the region that are susceptible to human–wildlife conflicts.
This chapter describes the evolution of service management (SM) from focusing on services as a category of market offerings (as distinct from physical products) to a perspective on value creation. This evolution of SM can be described in three broad periods. The first was when services were understood as unproductive or additions to physical products. Management models from manufacturing and marketing of goods were used, but service organizations could not be managed by using models from manufacturing. This sparked the second period, in which research on service-based concepts and models was grounded in the service encounter, service quality, and customer relations in service organizations. However, no widely accepted view or definition of service and SM was developed during this time. About 20 years ago, in the third period, a new view on service was developed, and this view is still moving SM forward. Service (singular) was understood as a perspective of value creation. The Service-Dominant Logic was born and has developed into a systemic view of understanding service businesses. Recently, a somewhat different view—a practice-theory approach to SM—has been suggested, which still focuses on value creation through service.
Coexistence with large carnivores represents one of the world's highest profile conservation challenges. Ecologists have identified ecological benefits derived from large carnivores (and large herbivores), yet livestock depredation, perceived competition for shared game, risks to pets and humans, and social conflicts often lead to demands for reduction of predator numbers from a range of stakeholder groups. Nearly 100 years ago, Vito Volterra predicted that increased mortality on both prey and predators results in increased abundance of prey and decreased abundance of predators. This principle appears to be robust and often consistent with the objectives of wildlife management. Although seldom recognized, and rarely tested in the field, the Volterra principle is a fundamental outcome of ecological theory with important implications for conservation.
Background
The concept of thriving at work (TAW) has received increased interest within health services research in recent years. TAW embraces employees’ experience of being energized and feeling alive when employed in an organization. However, previous research has been limited mainly to the investigation of factors that promote TAW. Consequently, there is a lack of research linking TAW to potential outcomes. Based on this knowledge gap, this study aimed to examine links between TAW and two potential outcomes: employees’ individual innovative behavior (IIB) and employee ambidexterity (EA). Thus, the study contributes to a relatively neglected area, homecare, within the domain of health services research.
Methods
In this cross-sectional study, N = 258 Norwegian homecare professionals in nine municipalities were selected through convenience sampling. The conceptual model's results were analyzed using partial least-squares structural equation modeling with SmartPLS 3 software. The study tested both direct and indirect relationships. Indirect relationships were achieved through bootstrap.
Results
The main results from the empirical study can be summarized as follows: (i) TAW was found to be positively linked to both EA (b = 0.46) and IIB (b = 0.22); (ii) TAW and EA explained about 30% (R2 = 0.29) the variance in IIB; (iii) The relationship between TAW and IIB was found to be mediated by the EA; (iv) TAW was positively linked to each of the two dimensions that constitute EA. However, when comparing the individual strength of linkages, TAW was found to be most strongly linked to the exploitation dimension of EA (b = 0.50) and less strongly linked to the exploration dimension of EA (b = 0.35).
Conclusions
Employees’ level of TAW in homecare services is linked to desirable outcomes, as represented by EA and IIB in this study. Managers should be aware of the development and changes in their employees' TAW levels. Consequently, continuously monitoring and cultivating the TAW of individual employees to determine whether they experience a sense of being energized and feeling alive as members of the organization is an important practical implication. TAW is a key to essential outcomes. Managers should, therefore, strive to let all of their employees thrive.
Wildlife populations are not static. Intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect individuals, which lead to spatiotemporal variation in population density and range. Yet, dynamics in density and their drivers are rarely documented, due in part to the inherent difficulty of studying long-term population-level phenomena at ecologically meaningful scales. We studied the spatiotemporal density dynamics in a recolonizing large carnivore population, the wolverine Gulo gulo, across the Scandinavian Peninsula over nine years. We fitted open-population spatial capture-recapture models to noninvasive genetic sampling data collected across Norway and Sweden to estimate annual density surfaces and their drivers. This approach allowed us to model sex-specific changes in wolverine density and the effect of landscape-level environmental determinants over time. Our results revealed that, as wolverines successfully recolonized many parts of their historical range in Scandinavia, the relationship with spatial determinants of density has changed over time. We also found support for sex-specific responses of the Scandinavian wolverine to the environmental determinants of density and differences in the temporal dynamics of their relationships, indicating disproportionate recolonization ability and anthropogenic pressures. We observed significant changes in the relationship of female wolverine density with several determinants during the study period, suggesting still ongoing expansion of female wolverines whereas males might have already reached the range limits. These findings show that the Scandinavian wolverine population is still recovering from centuries of persecution and severe range contraction. Our study sheds light on the dynamics and challenges of recolonizing large carnivores in human-dominated landscapes across time and space.
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