More than just 'stressful'? Testing the mediating role of fatigue on the relationship between job stress and occupational crashes of long-haul truck drivers

Introduction: Recent evidence consistently highlights the adverse work environment of long-haul professional drivers, whose task structure typically involves the performance of extensive shifts, driving under stressful working conditions. In this regard, job stress and fatigue - that are highly prevalent in this workforce - seem to play a crucial role in explaining this group's negative traffic safety outcomes. The aim of this study was to assess whether work-related fatigue is a mechanism that mediates the relationship between job stress, health indicators and occupational traffic crashes of long-haul truck drivers (LHTD). Methods: The data used in this study were collected from 521 Spanish long-haul truck drivers (97% males) from all 17 regions of Spain, with a mean age of 47 years. Results: Utilizing structural equation models (SEM), it was found that work-traffic crashes of long-haul truck drivers could be explained through work-related fatigue that exerts a full mediation between job stress (job strain), health-related factors and traffic crashes suffered during the previous two years. Discussion: Overall, the findings of this research support that a) stressful working conditions and health issues of drivers have significant effects on traffic crashes, and b) fatigue is a mechanism relating stress-related factors and work-traffic crashes of long-haul drivers. This study highlights the need of stress- and fatigue-management policies and interventions, in order to reduce the crash risk of long-haul truck drivers

Measuring job stress in transportation workers: psychometric properties, convergent validity and reliability of the ERI and JCQ among professional drivers

Background The accumulated evidence has shown how professional drivers are, in psychosocial terms, among the most vulnerable workforces, and how their crashes (some of them preceded by stressful working conditions) constitute both an occupational and public health concern. However, there is a clear lack of validated tools for measuring stress and other key hazardous issues affecting transport workers, and most of the existing ones, frequently generic, do not fully consider the specific features that properly describe the work environment of professional driving. This study assessed the psychometric properties, convergent validity and consistency of two measures used for researching occupational stress among professional drivers: the Siegrist's ERI (Effort-Reward Imbalance Inventory) and Karasek's JCQ (Job Content Questionnaire). Methods We examined the data collected from 726 Spanish professional drivers. Analyses were performed using Structural Equation Models, thus obtaining basic psychometric properties of both measures and an optimized structure for the instruments, in addition to testing their convergent validity. Results The results suggest that the abbreviated versions of ERI (10 items) and JCQ (20 items) have clear dimensional structures, high factorial weights, internal consistency and an improved fit to the task's dynamics and hazards, commonly faced by of professional drivers; a short set of items with low psychometrical adjustment was excluded, and the root structure of the questionnaires was kept. Conclusions This study supports the value and reliability of ERI-10 and JCQ-20 for measuring job stress among professional drivers. Also, there is a high consistency between both measures of stress, even though they belong to different theoretical conceptions of the phenomenon. In practical settings, these instruments can be useful for occupational researchers and practitioners studying stress-related issues from the perspective of human factors

Optimizing the Curie temperature of pseudo-binary RxR'2-xFe17 (R,R' = rare earth) for magnetic refrigeration

Several pseudo-binary RxR'2-xFe17 alloys (with R = Y, Ce, Pr, Gd and Dy) were synthesized with rhombohedral Th2Zn17-type crystal structure determined from x-ray and neutron powder diffraction. The choice of compositions was done with the aim of tuning the Curie temperature (TC) in the 270 ± 20 K temperature range, in order to obtain the maximum magneto-caloric effect around room temperature. The investigated compounds exhibit broad isothermal magnetic entropy changes, ΔSM(T), with moderate values of the refrigerant capacity, even though the values of ΔSMPeak are relatively low compared with those of the R2Fe17 compounds with R = Pr or Nd. The reduction on the ΔSMPeak is explained in terms of the diminution in the saturation magnetization value. Furthermore, the ΔSM(T) curves exhibit a similar caret-like behavior, suggesting that the magneto-caloric effect is mainly governed by the Fe-sublattice. A single master curve for ΔSM/ΔSMPeak(T) under different values of the magnetic field change are obtained for each compound by rescaling of the temperature axis.España MICINN MAT2011-27573-C04Basque Government IT-347-07CONACYT CB-2010-01-156932Slovak R&D Agency VVCE-0058-0

Essential¿but also vulnerable? Work intensification, effort/reward imbalance, fatigue and psychological health of Spanish cargo drivers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Objective: This study investigates the combined effect of the Effort/Reward Imbalance (ERI) model of stress and work intensification within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological health (general and work-related fatigue, and psychological strain) of cargo drivers, one of the most demanded workforces during the first year of this pandemic. Methods: For this cross-sectional research, the data provided by n = 1,013 professional drivers from the different 17 autonomous communities (regions) of Spain were analyzed. Participants answered a questionnaire composed of the short version of the Effort Reward Imbalance (ERI) questionnaire, a Work Intensification Scale (WIS) designed for this study, the fatigue subscale of the Checklist Individual Strength (CIS), the Need for Recovery after Work Scale (NFR), and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Results: Hierarchical regression analyses show that both (ERI and work intensification) models significantly predict driver's fatigue and psychological strain. The effect of work intensification exists above and beyond the effect of effort/reward imbalance, which has been previously related to the safety performance of cargo drivers. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the ERI and work intensification models can be complementarily used, especially in scenarios introducing substantial changes in the work environment, such as the COVID-19 crisis. Also, the results of this study support the need to intervene in the working conditions of professional drivers in order to improve their psychological health and well-being during both pandemic and post-pandemic times, as crisis-related management interventions are necessar

Magnetocaloric properties of rapidly solidified Dy3Co alloy ribbons

"The magnetic and magnetocaloric (MC) properties of melt-spun ribbons of the Dy3Co intermetallic compound were investigated. Samples were fabricated in an Ar environment using a homemade melt spinner system at a linear speed of the rotating copper wheel of 40 ms(-1). X-ray diffraction analysis shows that ribbons crystallize into a single-phase with the Fe3C-type orthorhombic crystal structure. The M(T) curve measured at 5mT reveals the occurrence of a transition at 32K from a first to a second antiferromagnetic (AFM) state and an AFM-to-paramagnetic transition at T-N = 43 K. Furthermore, a metamagnetic transition is observed below T-N, but the magnetization change Delta M is well below the one reported for bulk alloys. Below 12 K, large inverse MC effect and hysteresis losses are observed. This behavior is related to the metamagnetic transition. For a magnetic field change of 5 T (2 T) applied along the ribbon length, the produced ribbons show a peak value of the magnetic entropy change Delta S-M(peak) of -6.5 (-2.1) Jkg(-1) K-1 occurring close to TN with a full-width at half-maximum delta T-FWHM of 53 (37) K, and refrigerant capacity RC = 364 (83) Jkg(-1) (estimated from the product vertical bar Delta S-M(peak)vertical bar x delta T-FWHM).

Automatic linguistic reporting of customer activity patterns in open malls

In this work, we present a complete system to produce an automatic linguistic reporting about the customer activity patterns inside open malls, a mixed distribution of classical malls joined with the shops on the street. These reports can assist to design marketing campaigns by means of identifying the best places to catch the attention of customers. Activity patterns are estimated with process mining techniques and the key information of localization. Localization is obtained with a parallelized solution based on WiFi fingerprint system to speed up the solution. In agreement with the best practices for human evaluation of natural language generation systems, the linguistic quality of the generated report was evaluated by 41 experts who filled in an online questionnaire. Results are encouraging, since the average global score of the linguistic quality dimension is 6.17 (0.76 of standard deviation) in a 7-point Likert scale. This expresses a high degree of satisfaction of the generated reports and validates the adequacy of automatic natural language textual reports as a complementary tool to process model visualization. © 2021, The Author(s)

Magnetovolume and magnetocaloric effects in Er2Fe17

Combining different experimental techniques, investigations in hexagonal P63/mmc Er2Fe17 show remarkable magnetovolume anomalies below the Curie temperature, TC. The spontaneous magnetostriction reaches 1.6×10−2 at 5 K and falls to zero well above TC, owing to short-range magnetic correlations. Moreover, Er2Fe17 exhibits direct and inverse magnetocaloric effects (MCE) with moderate isothermal magnetic entropy ΔSM, and diabatic temperature ΔTad changes [ΔSM∼−4.7 J(kgK)−1 and ΔTad∼2.5 K near the TC, and ΔSM∼1.3 J(kgK)−1 and ΔTad∼−0.6 K at 40 K for ΔH=80 kOe, respectively, determined from magnetization measurements]. The existence of an inverse MCE seems to be related to a crystalline electric field-level crossover in the Er sublattice and the ferrimagnetic arrangement between the magnetic moments of the Er and Fe sublattice. The main trends found experimentally for the temperature dependence of ΔSM and ΔTad as well as for the atomic magnetic moments are qualitatively well described considering a mean-field Hamiltonian that incorporates both crystalline electric field and exchange interactions. ΔSM(T) and ΔTad(T) curves are essentially zero at ∼150 K, the temperature where the transition from direct to inverse MCE occurs. A possible interplay between the MCE and the magnetovolume anomalies is also discussed.Financial support from Spanish MICINN (MAT2011-27573-C04-02) and from the Basque Government (IT-347- 07) is acknowledged. J.L.S.Ll. acknowledges the support received from CONACYT, Mexico, under the project CB2010-01-156932, and Laboratorio Nacional de Investigaciones en Nanociencias y Nanotecnología (LINAN, IPICyT). J.A.R.V. acknowledges the support from the research project MAT2007-61621. We thank ILL and CRG-D1B for allocating neutron beamtime, and ESRF for synchrotron beamtime. The SCTs at the University of Oviedo and the technical support received from M.Sc. G. J. Labrada-Delgado and B. A. Rivera-Escoto (DMA, IPICyT) are also acknowledged

High-magnetic field characterization of magnetocaloric effect in FeZrB(Cu) amorphous ribbons

"The magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of a series of Fe-rich FeZrB(Cu) amorphous ribbons were investigated under magnetic field values up to mu H-0 of 8 T. A correlation between the saturation magnetization and the maximum magnetic entropy change vertical bar Delta S-M(peak)vertical bar is clearly evidenced. Although these metallic glasses show relatively low vertical bar Delta S-M(peak)vertical bar values (from 3.6 to 4.4 J kg(-1) K-1 for mu(0)Delta H - 8 T), the Delta S-M(T) curve broadens upon the increase in mu(0)Delta H, giving rise to a large refrigerant capacity RC (above 900 J kg(-1) for mu(0)Delta H-8 T). Using the universal curve method for rescaling the Delta S-M(T, mu(0)Delta H) curves, we found a collapse of the curves around the Curie temperature. However, in the low-temperature range the curves do not match into a single one due to the existence of magnetic frustration.

Tumor targeted 4-1BB agonist antibody-albumin fusions with high affinity to FcRn induce anti-tumor immunity without toxicity

17 p.-4 fig.-1 tab.-1 grph. abst.Costimulation of tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes by anti-4-1BB monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) has shown anti-tumor activity in human trials, but can be associated with significant off-tumor toxicities involving FcγR interactions. Here, we introduce albumin-fused mouse and human bispecific antibodies with clinically favorable pharmacokinetics designed to confine 4-1BB costimulation to the tumor microenvironment. These Fc-free 4-1BB agonists consist of an EGFR-specific VHH antibody, a 4-1BB-specific scFv, and a human albumin sequence engineered for high FcRn binding connected in tandem (LiTCo-Albu). We demonstrate in vitro cognate target engagement, EGFR-specific costimulatory activity, and FcRn-driven cellular recycling similar to non-fused FcRn high-binding albumin. The mouse LiTCo-Albu exhibited a prolonged circulatory half-life and in vivo tumor inhibition, with no indication of 4-1BB mAb-associated toxicity. Furthermore, we show a greater therapeutic effect when used in combination with PD-1-blocking mAbs. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of tumor-specific LiTCo-Albu antibodies for safe and effective costimulatory strategies in cancer immunotherapy.Financial support for this work was obtained from the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (SAF2017-89437-P and PDC2021-121711-100 to LA-V, PID2019-104544GB-I00 to CA, and PID2020-113225GB-I00 to FJB), partially supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF); the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) (PI19/00132 to LS; PI20/01030 to BB), partially supported by the ERDF; the ISCIII-RICORS within the Next Generation EU program (plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resilencia); the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC 19084 to LA-V); the CRIS Cancer Foundation (FCRIS-2018-0042 and FCRIS-2021-0090 to LA-V), the BBVA Foundation (Ayudas Fundación BBVA a Equipos de Investigación Científica SARS-CoV-2 years COVID-19 to LA-V); and the Fundació “La Caixa” (HR21-00761 project IL7R_LungCan to LA-V). AD, OAM, and KAH were funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Grant; CEMBID (Center for Multifunctional Biomolecular Drug Design, Grant Number: NNF17OC0028070). OH was supported by an industrial PhD fellowship from the Comunidad de Madrid (IND2020/BMD-17668). AE-L was supported industrial PhD fellowship from the Carlos III Health Institute (IFI18/00045). CD-A was supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science Innovation and Universities (PRE2018-083445). LR-P was supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the Immunology Chair, Universidad Francisco de Vitoria/Merck. LD-A was supported by a Rio Hortega fellowship from the Carlos III Health Institute (CM20/00004).Peer reviewe