Burnout by Harassment at Work: A Case Study

The syndrome of burnout is defined as a situation of extreme stress when all the individual’s coping strategies have failed. This case study explains the damage evaluation on a manager, who was been diagnosed with depression, but there was the suspicion that an experience of harassment may have generated this dramatic situation

Areas of work-life in Spanish hostelry professionals: explanatory power on burnout dimensions

BackgroundResearchers have studied for decades workplace stress and burnout to identify their relationship to health and wellness. This research has focused on stress levels in people, as well as on environmental and personal factors that contribute to experiencing stress or burnout. In addition to the burnout measurement questionnaires (MBI-GS), Leiter and Maslach designed a model to evaluate the areas of work environment that relate to this construct (Areas of Worklife Scale-AWLS).The goal of the present research was to analyze the psychometric properties of a Spanish translation of the MBI (GS) and the AWLS with a Spanish-speaking population. This work makes a substantial contribution by addressing the need to use validated measures and methods when exploring the positive and negative aspects of organizations. These conditions provide a means to accurately evaluate the impact of interventions aimed to address stress and burnout.MethodCross-sectional study with self-report measures. The sample was comprised of 452 managers and employees (hotels, restaurants, catering) of Aragon (Spain). There were approximately equal numbers of women and men (45, 4% vs. 54, 6%). The average age of participants was 36.6years (SD=10.03). A battery of questionnaires was used: Socio-demographic and work characteristics, Scale of stress and health symptoms, Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS), Areas of Worklife Scale (AWLS).ResultsThe results showed optimal psychometric properties in both questionnaires, especially in terms of the predictive capacity of the AWLS in each of the MBI-GS dimensions.ConclusionsThe best explained dimension is that of emotional exhaustion. The manageable load variable is the one that most contributes to predicting burnout levels. For future interventions, the results confirm the need to verify the levels of each area of work, in order to focus on the most deteriorated ones

An Updated Portrait of the Portuguese Web

This study presents an updated characterization of the Portuguese Web derived from a crawl of 48 million contents belonging to all media types (2.5 TB of data), performed in March, 2008. The resulting data was analyzed to characterize contents, sites and domains. This study was performed within the scope of the Portuguese Web Archive.POSC/EU, UMI

Influence of Terephthalic Acid Substituents on the Catalytic Activity of MIL-101(Cr) in Three Lewis Acid Catalyzed Reactions

[EN] Six isostructural MIL¿101(Cr)¿X (X: H, NO2, SO3H, Cl, CH3, and NH2) materials have been prepared directly by the reaction of CrIII salts and the corresponding terephthalic acid or by postsynthetic treatments of preformed MIL¿101(Cr) following reported procedures. The materials were characterized by using XRD (crystallinity and coincident diffraction pattern), isothermal N2 adsorption (specific surface areas range from 2740¿m2¿g¿1 for MIL¿101(Cr)¿H to 1250¿m2¿g¿1 for MIL¿101(Cr)¿Cl), thermogravimetry (thermal stability up to 400¿°C), and IR spectroscopy (detection of the corresponding substituents), and the results were all in agreement with the reported data for these materials. The MIL¿101(Cr) materials were tested as heterogeneous catalysts for epoxide ring opening by methanol, benzaldehyde acetalization by methanol, and Prins coupling, observing a clear influence of the substituent that in general follows a linear relationship with the Hammett ¿meta constant of the substituent: the catalytic activity increases as the electron¿withdrawing ability of the substituents increases. An up to three orders of magnitude enhancement in the presence of the NO2 substituent was found for some of these reactions. The present study illustrates the versatility that metal¿organic frameworks offer as heterogeneous catalysts that allow the design of actives sites with adequate properties tuned for each reaction.Financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Severo Ochoa and CTQ2015-69153 and CTQ2014-53292-R and Generalitat Valenciana (Prometeo 2013/14) is gratefully acknowledged. S.N. is grateful for financial support from the Fundacion Ramon Areces (XVIII Concurso Nacional para la Adjudicacion de Ayudas a la Investigacion en Ciencias de la Vida y de la Materia, 2016).Santiago-Portillo, A.; Navalón Oltra, S.; Concepción Heydorn, P.; Alvaro Rodríguez, MM.; García Gómez, H. (2017). Influence of Terephthalic Acid Substituents on the Catalytic Activity of MIL-101(Cr) in Three Lewis Acid Catalyzed Reactions. ChemCatChem. 9(13):2506-2511. https://doi.org/10.1002/cctc.201700236S2506251191

Ultrathin composite polymeric membranes for CO2/N2 separation with minimum thickness and high CO2 permeance

The use of ultrathin films as selective layers in composite membranes offers significant advantages in gas separation for increasing productivity while reducing the membrane size and energy costs. In this contribution, composite membranes have been obtained by the successive deposition of approximately 1 nm thick monolayers of a polymer of intrinsic microporosity (PIM) on top of dense membranes of the ultra-permeable poly[1-(trimethylsilyl)-1-propyne] (PTMSP). The ultrathin PIM films (30 nm in thickness) demonstrate CO2 permeance up to seven times higher than dense PIM membranes using only 0.04 % of the mass of PIM without a significant decrease in CO2 /N2 selectivity.The research leading to these results has received funding from the EU FP7 Programme (FP7/2007–2013), under grant agreement number 608490, project M4CO2, Spanish MINECO and FEDER (MAT2016-77290-R) and the Aragon Government (T05 and E54). J. S.-L. thanks the Spanish Education Ministry Program FPU2014 for a Ph.D. grant.Peer reviewe

Design of stable mixed-metal MIL-101(Cr/Fe) materials with enhanced catalytic activity for the Prins reaction

This work highlights the benefit of designing mixed-metal (Cr/Fe) MOFs for enhanced chemical stability and catalytic activity. A robust and stable mixed-metal MIL-101(Cr/Fe) was prepared through a HF-free direct hydrothermal route with Fe3+ content up to 21 wt%. The incorporation of Fe3+ cations in the crystal structure was confirmed by 57Fe Mössbauer spectrometry. The catalytic performance of the mixed metal MIL-101(Cr/Fe) was evaluated in the Prins reaction. MIL-101(Cr/Fe) exhibited a higher catalytic activity compared to MIL-101(Cr), improved chemical stability compared to MIL-101(Fe) and a higher catalytic activity for bulky substrates compared to MIL-100(Fe). In situ infra-red spectroscopy study suggests that the incorporation of Fe3+ ions in MIL-101 structure leads to an increase in Lewis acid sites. It was thus concluded that the predominant role of Cr3+ ions was to maintain the crystal structure, while Fe3+ ions enhanced the catalytic activity

Influence of functionalization of terephthalate linker on the catalytic activity of UiO-66 for epoxide ring opening

[EN] A series of five isostructural zirconium terephthalate UiO-66 metal organic frameworks bearing different functional groups on the terephthalate linker (UiO-66-X; X = H, NH2, NO2, Br, Cl,) have been successfully prepared and characterized. UiO-66-X materials were evaluated as heterogeneous catalysts for the epoxide ring opening of styrene oxide by methanol, observing an increase in the initial reaction rate from UiO-66-H to UiO-66-Br, over one order of magnitude. The reactivity order, however, does not follow a linear relationship between the Hammett constant value of the substituent and the initial reaction rate. UiO-66-Br exhibits a wide scope, its activity depending on the structure of epoxide and nucleophile. The absence of Zr leaching to the solution together with the preservation of the UiO-66-X crystallinity confirms the stability of the framework under the reaction conditions. Nevertheless, UiO-66 undergoes a progressive deactivation upon reuse that was attributed to a strong adsorption of the reaction product.Financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Severo Ochoa and CTQ2015-69153 and CTQ2014-53292-R and Generalitat Valenciana (Prometeo 2013/14) and is grateful acknowledged. We also thank EU under the Being Energy contract for partial funding. J.F.B. thanks the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia for a postgraduate scholarship. S.N. thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte for Jose Castillejo mobility programme (CAS14/00067).Blandez, JF.; Santiago-Portillo, A.; Navalón Oltra, S.; Gimenez Marques, M.; Alvaro Rodríguez, MM.; Horcajada, P.; García Gómez, H. (2016). Influence of functionalization of terephthalate linker on the catalytic activity of UiO-66 for epoxide ring opening. Journal of Molecular Catalysis A Chemical. 425:332-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molcata.2016.10.022S33233942

Les Houches 2011: Physics at TeV Colliders New Physics Working Group Report

We present the activities of the "New Physics" working group for the "Physics at TeV Colliders" workshop (Les Houches, France, 30 May-17 June, 2011). Our report includes new agreements on formats for interfaces between computational tools, new tool developments, important signatures for searches at the LHC, recommendations for presentation of LHC search results, as well as additional phenomenological studies.Comment: 243 pages, report of the Les Houches 2011 New Physics Group; fix three figure

Chagas Cardiomiopathy: The Potential of Diastolic Dysfunction and Brain Natriuretic Peptide in the Early Identification of Cardiac Damage

Chagas disease remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in several countries of Latin America and has become a potential public health problem in countries where the disease is not endemic as a result of migration flows. Cardiac involvement represents the main cause of mortality, but its diagnosis is still based on nonspecific criteria with poor sensitivity. Early identification of patients with cardiac damage is desirable, since early treatment may improve prognosis. Diastolic dysfunction and elevated brain natriuretic peptide levels are present in different cardiomyopathies and in advanced phases of Chagas disease. However, there are scarce data about the role of these parameters in earlier forms of the disease. We conducted a study to assess the diastolic function, regional systolic abnormalities and brain natriuretic peptide levels in the different forms of Chagas disease. The main finding of our investigation is that diastolic dysfunction occurs before any cardiac dilatation or motion abnormality. In addition, BNP levels identify patients with diastolic dysfunction and Chagas disease with high specificity. The results reported in this study could help to early diagnose myocardial involvement and better stratify patients with Chagas disease