DETRIMENTAL CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF ORGANIZATIONAL INJUSTICE IN THE WORKPLACE: EVIDENCE FROM PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS

This study investigated the causes of organizational injusticeand how this influences employees’ job outcomes in public sectororganizations in Pakistan. Two models were constructed and analyzed to fulfill the research goals. Data were obtained using a simple random sampling technique. Of the sample, 254 employees of public sector organizations filled out self-administered questionnaires. Multiple regression was applied to test direct proposed hypotheses. To evaluatethe organizational injustice’s indirect effect on organizationalperformance due to employees’ job dissatisfaction, the mediation test of Preacher and Hayes (2004) was applied. The results showed that organizational injustice negatively impacts affective commitment and perceived organizational performance. Moreover, job dissatisfaction impacts the relationship in organizational injustice, perceived organizational performance and affective commitment

Effects of debinding and sintering atmosphere on properties and corrosion resistance of powder injection molded 316 L - stainless steel

316L stainless steel is a common biomedical material. Currently, biomedical parts are produced through powder injection molding (PIM). Carbon control is the most critical in PIM. Improper debinding can significantly change the properties of the final product. In this work, thermal debinding and sintering were performed in two different furnaces (i.e. laboratory and commercially available furnaces) to study the mechanical properties and corrosion resistance. Debounded samples were sintered in different atmospheres. The samples sintered in inert gas showed enhanced mechanical properties compared with wrought 316L stainless steel and higher corrosion rate than those sintered in the vacuum furnace. The densification and tensile strength of the hydrogen sintered samples increased up to 3% and 51%, respectively, compared with those of the vacuum-sintered samples. However, the samples sintered in inert gas also exhibited reduced ductility and corrosion resistance. This finding is attributed to the presence of residual carbon in debonded samples during debinding

Determination of Critical Powder Loading of Titanium-Hydroxyapatite with Powder Space Holder for Powder Injection Molding Feedstocks / Mohd Yusuf Zakaria...[et al.]

Binder and powder formulation are crucial for powder injection molding (PIM) process that can be obtained based on critical powder volume percetange (CPVP) method. The binder is the main component for flowability of feedstock and proper composition can influence the feedstock whether can be injected, debinded and sintered without any defect. This study is focused on the determination of critical powder loading for titanium-hydroxyapatite (Ti-HA) with powder space holder for powder injection molding feedstock. The critical powder obtained at 82% of the powder with 90:10 ratios of the titanium and hydroxyapatite with 20% of a space holder. The optimal powder loading selected at 78%, which is 2~5% below to the critical powder loading value. Green part was successfully obtained without any physical defect using the optimal powder loading

Rational Design and Advance Applications of Transition Metal Oxides

An attractive class of transition metal oxides (TMOs) have been freshly concerned with increasing research interest worldwide concerning stoichiometric and non-stoichiometric configurations as well, that usually exhibits a spinel structure. These TMOs will contribute substantial roles in the production of eco-friendly and low-cost energy conversion (storage) devices owing to their outstanding electrochemical properties. The current chapter involves the summary of the latest research and fundamental advances in the effectual synthesis and rational design of TMOs nanostructures with meticulous size, composition, shape, and micro as well as nanostructures. Also applications of TMOs such as effective photocatalyst, gas sensing, biomedical, and as an electrode material that can be utilized for lithium-ion batteries, and photovoltaic applications. Additionally, certain future tendencies and visions for the development of next-generation advanced TMOs for electrochemical energy storage methods are also displayed

Polypyrrole-Fe[sub]2O[sub]3 nanocomposites with high dielectric constant : in situ chemical polymerisation

Novel nanocomposites of polypyrrole (PPy) dispersed with iron oxide (Fe2O3) particles have been synthesised by in-situ chemical oxidative polymerisation of pyrrole in the presence of ammonium persulfate (APS) as an oxidising agent. The concentration of Fe2O3 was varied between 10-50wt% of PPy. The simultaneous polymerisation of pyrrole and oxide addition led to the complete synthesis of nanocomposites. A maximum dielectric constant of ~28500 was observed at 20wt% of Fe2O3. The nanocomposites were characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). XRD analysis confirmed the structure and crystallinity of the nanocomposites, and a strong interaction between PPy and the Fe2O3 nanoparticles was observed by FTIR technique. SEM and TEM images showed that Fe2O3 particles had been coated with PPy by establishing a network during the polymerisation process. The values of dielectric constant were obtained from capacitance measurements. The value of dielectric constant for nanocomposites with 20wt% of Fe2O3 was observed to be almost 12 times that of the pure PPy matrix. The high value of dielectric constant indicated a high packing density of Fe2O3 particles in the PPy matrix. These nanocomposites have potential applications in electronic or biomedical devices

Carbon Nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are referred to as carbon nano-architecture allotropes, with wrapped graphene sheets forming a cylindrical structure. CNTs are either developed by metals or narrow-band semiconductors with rolling graphene sheets in various ways. Researchers have dedicated a great deal of attention to understanding the fascinating properties of CNTs over the years, and possess certain peculiar properties, such as a high degree of stiffness, a wide ratio of length to diameter, and remarkable toughness, and are employed in a number of applications. These properties can be enhanced by scheming the diameter, nature of walls, chirality, length of CNTs which is rolled up, and depending on the synthesis process. This chapter extensively covers the various properties of CNTs and how it influences to desired applications and also explains numerous methods of synthesis and processing of CNTs with advantages and some drawbacks

High Temperature Superconductors

One of the pioneers who introduced superconductivity of metal solids was Kamerlingh Onnes (1911). Researchers always struggled to make observations towards superconductivity at high temperatures for achieving goals of evaluating normal room temperature superconductors. The physical properties are based entirely on the behavior of conventional and metal superconductors as a result of high-temperature superconductors. Various synthetic approaches are employed to fabricate high-temperature superconductors, but solid-state thermochemical process which involves mixing, calcinating, and sintering is the easiest approach. Emerging novel high-temperature superconductors mainly engaged with technological applications such as power transmission, Bio-magnetism, and Tokamaks high magnetic field. Finally, in this chapter, we will discuss a brief outlook, future prospects, and finished with possible science fiction and some opportunities with high-temperature superconductors

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Summary Background Congenital anomalies are the fifth leading cause of mortality in children younger than 5 years globally. Many gastrointestinal congenital anomalies are fatal without timely access to neonatal surgical care, but few studies have been done on these conditions in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared outcomes of the seven most common gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries globally, and identified factors associated with mortality. Methods We did a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of patients younger than 16 years, presenting to hospital for the first time with oesophageal atresia, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, intestinal atresia, gastroschisis, exomphalos, anorectal malformation, and Hirschsprung’s disease. Recruitment was of consecutive patients for a minimum of 1 month between October, 2018, and April, 2019. We collected data on patient demographics, clinical status, interventions, and outcomes using the REDCap platform. Patients were followed up for 30 days after primary intervention, or 30 days after admission if they did not receive an intervention. The primary outcome was all-cause, in-hospital mortality for all conditions combined and each condition individually, stratified by country income status. We did a complete case analysis. Findings We included 3849 patients with 3975 study conditions (560 with oesophageal atresia, 448 with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, 681 with intestinal atresia, 453 with gastroschisis, 325 with exomphalos, 991 with anorectal malformation, and 517 with Hirschsprung’s disease) from 264 hospitals (89 in high-income countries, 166 in middleincome countries, and nine in low-income countries) in 74 countries. Of the 3849 patients, 2231 (58·0%) were male. Median gestational age at birth was 38 weeks (IQR 36–39) and median bodyweight at presentation was 2·8 kg (2·3–3·3). Mortality among all patients was 37 (39·8%) of 93 in low-income countries, 583 (20·4%) of 2860 in middle-income countries, and 50 (5·6%) of 896 in high-income countries (p<0·0001 between all country income groups). Gastroschisis had the greatest difference in mortality between country income strata (nine [90·0%] of ten in lowincome countries, 97 [31·9%] of 304 in middle-income countries, and two [1·4%] of 139 in high-income countries; p≤0·0001 between all country income groups). Factors significantly associated with higher mortality for all patients combined included country income status (low-income vs high-income countries, risk ratio 2·78 [95% CI 1·88–4·11], p<0·0001; middle-income vs high-income countries, 2·11 [1·59–2·79], p<0·0001), sepsis at presentation (1·20 [1·04–1·40], p=0·016), higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score at primary intervention (ASA 4–5 vs ASA 1–2, 1·82 [1·40–2·35], p<0·0001; ASA 3 vs ASA 1–2, 1·58, [1·30–1·92], p<0·0001]), surgical safety checklist not used (1·39 [1·02–1·90], p=0·035), and ventilation or parenteral nutrition unavailable when needed (ventilation 1·96, [1·41–2·71], p=0·0001; parenteral nutrition 1·35, [1·05–1·74], p=0·018). Administration of parenteral nutrition (0·61, [0·47–0·79], p=0·0002) and use of a peripherally inserted central catheter (0·65 [0·50–0·86], p=0·0024) or percutaneous central line (0·69 [0·48–1·00], p=0·049) were associated with lower mortality. Interpretation Unacceptable differences in mortality exist for gastrointestinal congenital anomalies between lowincome, middle-income, and high-income countries. Improving access to quality neonatal surgical care in LMICs will be vital to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3.2 of ending preventable deaths in neonates and children younger than 5 years by 2030