The Dynamics of Income and Neighborhood Context for Population Health: Do Long Term Measures of Socioeconomic Status Explain More of the Black/White Health Disparity than Single-Point-In-Time Measures?

Socioeconomic status, though a robust and strong predictor of health, has generally been unable to fully explain the health gap between blacks and whites in the Untied States. However, at both the individual and neighborhood levels, socioeconomic status is often treated as a static factor with only single-point-in-time measurements. These cross-sectional measures fail to account for possible heterogeneous histories within groups who may share similar characteristics at a given point in time. As such, ignoring the dynamic nature of socioeconomic status may lead to the underestimation of its importance in explaining health and racial health disparities. In this study, I use national longitudinal data to investigate the relationship between neighborhood poverty and respondent-rated health, focusing on whether the addition of a temporal dimension reveals a stronger relationship between neighborhood poverty and health, and a greater explanatory power for the health gap between blacks and whites. Results indicated that long-term neighborhood measures are stronger predictors of health outcomes and explain a greater amount of the black/white health gap than single-point measures

Covariates of turnover intentions of teleworking call center agents in Québec during the COVID-19 pandemic

Les télétravailleurs de plusieurs centres d'appels au Québec ont fourni des données des questionnaires sur leurs diverses demandes au travail (mesurées par les facteurs de stress organisationnels, la charge mentale et la charge émotionnelle), les ressources au travail (mesurées par l'indépendance au travail, la participation et les relations avec les superviseurs) ainsi que pour les mesures des résultats de la satisfaction au travail, de l'engagement organisationnel et de l’intention de quitter. Les hypothèses structurées par le modèle Job Demands-Resources ont été testées à l'aide de méthodes corrélationnelles. Comme prévu, les ressources au travail étaient liées de façon significative à la fois à la satisfaction au travail et à l'engagement organisationnel perçu par l'échantillon. Les demandes au travail prédisaient la satisfaction au travail, mais elles n'étaient pas liées à l'engagement organisationnel. Les implications théoriques et pratiques de ces résultats ont été discutées.Teleworkers from multiple call centers in Québec provided questionnaire data about their various job demands (measured by organizational stressors, mental load, and emotional load), job resources (measured by independence in the work, participation, and relationship with supervisors) as well as for outcome measures of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions. Hypotheses structured by the JD-R model were tested using correlational methods. As predicted, job resources were significantly related to both job satisfaction and organizational commitment perceived by the sample. Job demands predicted job satisfaction, but they did not relate to organizational commitment. The theoretical and practical implications of these results were discussed

Factors Associated with Maternal Perception of Health-related Quality of Life of Vietnamese Preschoolers with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Objectives: To examine the maternal perception of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of Vietnamese preschoolers with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and its related factors, including child gender, sleep disturbance, and parenting stress. Method: This cross-sectional descriptive correlational study recruited a sample of 76 mothers of 2 to 5-year-old children diagnosed with ALL in maintenance treatment phase. Data were collected from July to September 2015 at the Pediatric Ward of the Cancer Hospital, the Pediatric Outpatient Department of the Blood Transfusion and Hematology Hospital, and the Hemato-Oncology Department of the Children Hospital No.2, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Research instruments were 1) a demographic questionnaire, 2) the PedsQLTM cancer module standard version (version 3.0): Parent report for toddlers (ages 2 - 4), 3) the children’s sleep habits questionnaire, and 4) the parental stress scale for mothers. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of questionnaires 2 - 4 were 0.70, 0.74 and 0.81, respectively. Descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and point biserial were used to analyze the data. Results: A mean total HRQoL score of 80.11 (SD = 6.24) indicated a high HRQoL. We found the highest mean score of HRQoL pain and hurt subscale (95.07 8.44) (which meant high HRQoL), and poorest in communication subscale (45.29 20.93). There was significantly negative correlation between sleep disturbance and maternal perception of child’s HRQoL (r = -0.36, P < 0.01). Conclusion: Vietnamese preschoolers with ALL had high HRQoL as perceived by their mothers. It was negatively correlated with sleep disturbance.Keywords: health-related quality of life, sleep disturbance, parenting stress, preschoolers, Vietnam, lymphoblastic leukemi

Forward Kinematics Based Prediction for Bending Motion of Soft Pneumatic Actuators with Various Air Chambers

This study proposes a forward kinematic model for soft actuators that utilize pneumatic control to predict their bending motion, which is simulated using Ansys software. Firstly, a bending motion test is conducted with a 2-air chamber actuator to derive an equation that establishes the relationship between the bending angle and input pressure. Next, a serial model for the overall soft actuator is developed using forward kinematics with the DH method. The angle variables in the soft actuator are then replaced with an equation that relates the deformed angle and compressed air. Finally, the proposed serial model is used to predict the bending motion of 4-air and 6-air chamber actuators, and the results are compared to simulations and real experiments. The comparison shows that the proposed model could accurately predict the bending motion of the real actuators within an acceptable tolerance of 10%