'The Value of Rude Health': Employees' Well Being, Absence and Workplace Performance

This paper brings new evidence on the relationship between employees' well being, sickness absence and four dimensions of workplace performance i.e. productivity, efficiency, quality of service and profitability. It uses a new panel dataset with monthly observations over two years for 48 local units of a large multi-site organisation in the logistics sector. It finds that good consultation and communication at the local level are associated with lower absenteeism. It also finds that lower absence is associated with higher efficiency, productivity, quality of the service and profitability of the firm. Finally, the authors suggest that the link between workers' absence and this firm's profitability runs through the increased use of replacement labour which raises short-run costs and reduces quality of service.Time Allocation, absenteeism, Safety, Accidents, Industrial Health

Ex-ante methods to assess the impact of social insurance policies on labor supply with an application to Brazil

This paper solves and estimates a stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to assess how changes in the design of the unemployment benefits and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings rates, the share of time that individuals spend outside of the formal sector, and retirement decisions. Dynamics depend on five main parameters: preferences regarding consumption and leisure, preferences regarding formal versus informal work, attitudes towards risks, the rate of time preference, and the distribution of an exogenous shock that affects movements in and out of the social insurance system (given individual decisions). The yearly household survey is used to create a pseudo panel by age-cohorts and estimate the joint distribution of model parameters based on a generalized version of the Gibbs sampler. The model does a good job in replicating the distribution of the members of a given cohort across states (in or out of the social insurance / active or retired). Because the parameters are related to individual preferences or exogenous shocks, the joint distribution is unlikely to change when the social insurance system changes. Thus, the model is used to explore how alternative policy interventions could affect behaviors and through this channel, benefit levels and fiscal costs. The results from various simulations provide three main insights: (i) the Brazilian social insurance system today might generate unnecessary distortions (lower savings rates and less formal employment) that increase the costs of the system and can induce regressive redistribution; (ii) there are important interactions between the unemployment benefits and pension systems, which calls for joint policy analysis when considering reforms; and (iii) current distortions could be reduced by creating an actuarial link between contributions and benefits and then combining matching contributions and anti-poverty targeted transfers to cover individuals with limited or no savings capacity.Pensions&Retirement Systems,Emerging Markets,Labor Policies,Labor Markets,Debt Markets

Inspection scheduling based onreliability updating of gas turbinewelded structures

This article presents a novel methodology for the inspection scheduling of gas turbine welded structures, based on reliability calculations and overhaul findings. The model was based on a probabilistic crack propagation analysis for welds in a plate and considered the uncertainty in material properties, defect inspection capabilities, weld geometry, and loads. It developed a specific stress intensity factor and an improved first-order reliability method. The proposed routine alleviated the computational cost of stochastic crack propagation analysis, with accuracy. It is useful to achieve an effective design for manufacturing, to develop structural health monitoring applications, and to adapt inspection schedules to airplane fleet experience.We are grateful to the Mechanical Technology Department of ITPAero (R) for supporting and helping us with this study. The invaluable guidance and feedback from Jose Ramon Andujar is recognized with great appreciation

Desk study of the possible impact of fisheries and other human activities on the marine environment in Mauritania. An exploration

Wageningen IMARES has been contracted by Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality with funding from the “BO PPP”-programme to make an inventory of existing and expected future human activities in that part of the Eastern Atlantic Ocean that forms the Economic Exclusive zone of Mauritania with respect to their possible impact on the marine ecosystem. The inventory will mainly be focused on the different fisheries in the area, but will not be restricted to these. Based on this inventory of activities this report will consider data needed to properly assess the impacts on the ecosystem arising from these and the studies required to gather that data

Disability: Discourse, Experience and Identity

Produced by The Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, Hawaii and The School of Social Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, Texas for The Society for Disability Studies

Investigating Associations between Consumption of Unprocessed and Ultra Processed Foods and Maternal and Neonatal Health Outcomes—Secondary Outcomes of LIFT Trial

The ultra-processing of food has become a much more important aspect of dietary patterns and dietary quality in terms of its impact on body weight, diet related diseases, health, and well-being in the past decades. NOVA is a set of guidelines developed that classifies diet quality by degree of food processing. The NOVA guidelines distinguish four categories: unprocessed /minimally processed foods; culinary ingredients; processed foods; and ultra-processed foods. Numerous studies have found an association of ultra-processed foods and health conditions such as obesity and metabolic syndrome. This study analyzed the associations between maternal diet quality as measured by NOVA and maternal anthropometric and neonatal body composition outcomes. The optimal method of nutrition intervention and education for this special population remains unknown; using NOVA may provide researchers with a different lens to assess diet quality and health care professionals with additional vocabulary to convey more tailored messages regarding optimal nutrition strategies for mother and offspring. Using data collected from a large randomized controlled intervention trial at pre and post intervention, this study aimed to compare the NOVA guidelines assessment of maternal diet quality to the parent study assessment of diet quality, the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), using statistical correlations. Secondly, this study aimed to look at the relationship of ultra-processed food intake to the maternal gestational weight gain experience using a logistic regression. Thirdly, this dissertation aimed to explore the relationship between maternal ultra-processed food intake and neonatal lean mass as measured by quantitative magnetic resonance (QMR) and fat free mass as measured by air displacement plethysmography (ADP: PEAPOD). In terms of maternal outcomes, the study found that NOVA and HEI were significantly correlated at pre intervention but not at post intervention. The odds of gaining excessive gestational weight decreased as maternal ultra-processed food intake increased - which was not in the hypothesized direction - when using study participant data. However, the odds of gaining excessive gestational weight increased as maternal ultra-processed food intake increased - which was in the hypothesized direction - when using the Institute of Medicine weight gain recommendations. Also, while obesity did not predict excessive gestational weight gain, those with obesity ultra-processed food intake did predict gestational weight gain. These various inconsistencies are likely due to the instability of the dietary intake data because only one 24 -hour dietary recall was obtained from mother. In addition, the mothers’ diets were very healthy to begin with, where ultra-processed food intake formed about 45% of calories both pre and post intervention, when the national average is 57%. Race was also significant predictors of gestational weight gain for the mothers. Being non-white significantly increased the odds of gaining excessively as did the interaction of having obesity and eating more ultra-processed foods. In terms of neonatal outcomes, findings from this study suggest that length and fat mass are significant predictors of lean mass in neonates. In terms of the impact of maternal ultra-processed food intake, the higher the consumption of ultra-processed food, the greater the neonatal lean mass, which this was not in the hypothesized direction. However, the association was minimal with very small beta weights and regression line, when plotted was quite flat, so that the finding is not clinically meaningful. It remains important to know whether maternal ultra-processed food intake influences gestational weight gain and the body composition of the neonate. Thus, future research should include using similar data analyses on a population with a more nationally representative diet, a larger sample size, and a more robust measure of dietary intake such as three 24-hour recalls. Given that a similar recent study found ultra-processed food to be highly predictive of maternal and neonatal outcomes, and many other studies have demonstrated that ultra-processed food is related to several health conditions in many countries that this study did not measure, it seems prudent for healthcare providers to take advantage of prenatal visits as a window of opportunity to encourage the consumption of unprocessed and minimally foods and help women make informed decisions regarding ultra-processed foods

Bird Abundance at Bird Feeders in Response to Temperature, Wind Speed and Precipitation During the Winter Season

The goal of this project is to explore how 23 different bird species respond to 3 climatic attributes. These attributes are lower than average temperatures, wind speed and precipitation level. Information about the bird species and all of the data associated with them is provided by Project FeederWatch (PFW). This is a citizen based survey study that provides key information about bird species abundance through the use of backyard and community feeders. The study volunteers from across the United States and Canada monitor these bird feeders and note important information about the species such as the number of individuals seen. Other standard information is also included such as location data and date. An original data collection pipeline was developed for this study to append climate data from Weather Underground (WU) to the PFW bird feeder data. The final dataset helped to explore how exactly the birds are reacting to winter temperatures, wind speeds and rain levels. Our results indicate that birds species in general visit the bird feeders more often as temperatures dip below average. We found that the body mass of the bird plays no role in the number of visits. Birds don\u27t seem to be significantly affected by precipitation or wind speed as our results indicate no relationship between these climatic factors and abundance at the feeders

A comparison of two techniques for bibliometric mapping: Multidimensional scaling and VOS

VOS is a new mapping technique that can serve as an alternative to the well-known technique of multidimensional scaling. We present an extensive comparison between the use of multidimensional scaling and the use of VOS for constructing bibliometric maps. In our theoretical analysis, we show the mathematical relation between the two techniques. In our experimental analysis, we use the techniques for constructing maps of authors, journals, and keywords. Two commonly used approaches to bibliometric mapping, both based on multidimensional scaling, turn out to produce maps that suffer from artifacts. Maps constructed using VOS turn out not to have this problem. We conclude that in general maps constructed using VOS provide a more satisfactory representation of a data set than maps constructed using well-known multidimensional scaling approaches