Sambandet mellan ociviliserat beteende på arbetsplatser och psykisk hälsa

This master thesis in psychology is part of a research project financed by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE). The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between workplace incivility and mental health. It was also of importance if the instigator of incivility was a superior or a colleague and whether this affected the relationship between incivility and mental health. Furthermore, the purpose was to investigate if women and men differed in the amount of reported incivility and if sex had an influence on the relationship between incivility and mental health. The third purpose was to evaluate the reliability of Workplace Incivility Scale (WIS) and the hybrid scale General Mental Health (GPH). To answer the research questions a quantitative survey including 225 participants was conducted. The results showed a negative relationship between incivility and mental health and this relationship was stronger if superiors were the instigators of incivility. However, the sex of the participants was of no importance for the reported amount of incivility or the relationship between incivility and mental health. The reliability of WIS and GPH was psychometrically sound with alpha values of .89 and .91. One important conclusion was the identification of the difficulty to distinguish incivility from bullying. More central is the conclusion that incivility has a negative influence on people’s mental health and that superiors have an important role for the psychosocial workplace environment.Denna psykologexamensuppsats ingår i ett forskningsprojekt som finansieras av Forskningsrådet för hälsa, arbetsliv och välfärd (FORTE). Den aktuella studiens syfte var att undersöka sambandet mellan arbetsplatsrelaterat ociviliserat beteende och psykisk hälsa. Vidare undersöktes om det för sambandet mellan ociviliserat beteende och psykisk hälsa spelade roll om utövaren var chef eller kollega. Syftet var också att undersöka om kvinnors och mäns skattade ociviliserade beteende skilde sig åt och om könstillhörighet spelade roll för sambandet mellan ociviliserat beteende och psykisk hälsa. En utvärdering av reliabilitet för Workplace Incivility Scale (WIS) och hybridskalan Generell Psykisk Hälsa (GPH) var det tredje syftet. Studiens frågeställningar besvarades med en kvantitativ enkätundersökning med 225 respondenter. Resultaten visade att sambandet mellan ociviliserat beteende och psykisk hälsa var negativt och var starkare om det var chefer som utövade det ociviliserade beteendet. Respondenternas kön var däremot inte av betydelse för skattningen av det ociviliserade beteendet eller för sambandet mellan ociviliserat beteende och psykisk hälsa. WIS och GPH hade tillfredställande reliabilitet med alfavärden på 0,89 respektive 0,91. En viktig slutsats var att det är svårt att skilja ociviliserat beteende från mobbning. Viktigare ändå är att ociviliserat beteende påverkar människors psykiska hälsa och att chefer har en betydande roll för den psykosociala arbetsmiljön

Calcium adsorption and displacement: characterization of lipid monolayers and their interaction with membrane-active peptides/proteins

BACKGROUND: The first target of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) is the bacterial membrane. In the case of Gram-negative bacteria this is the outer membrane (OM), the lipid composition of which is extremely asymmetric: Whereas the inner leaflet is composed of a phospholipid mixture, the outer leaflet is made up solely from lipopolysaccharides (LPSs). LPS, therefore, represents the first target of AMPs. The binding and intercalation of polycationic AMPs is driven by the number and position of negatively charged groups of the LPS. Also, proteins other than cationic AMPs can interact with LPS, e.g. leading eventually to a neutralization of the endotoxic effects of LPS. We compared different biophysical techniques to gain insight into the properties of the electrical surface potentials of lipid monolayers and aggregates composed of LPSs and various phospholipids and their interaction with peptides and proteins. RESULTS: The net negative charge calculated from the chemical structure of the phospholipid and LPS molecules is linearly correlated with the adsorption of calcium to two-dimensional lipid monolayers composed of the respective lipids. However, the ζ-potentials determined by the electrophoretic mobility of LPS aggregates can only be interpreted by assuming a dependence of the plane of shear on the number of saccharides and charged groups. Various peptides and proteins were able to displace calcium adsorbed to monolayers. CONCLUSION: To characterize the electrical properties of negatively charged phospholipids and LPSs and their electrostatic interaction with various polycationic peptides/proteins, the adsorption of calcium to and displacement from lipid monolayers is a suitable parameter. Using the calcium displacement method, the binding of peptides to monolayers can be determined even if they do not intercalate. The interpretation of ζ-potential data is difficulty for LPS aggregates, because of the complex three-dimensional structure of the LPS molecules. However, the influence of peptides/proteins on the ζ-potential can be used to characterize the underlying interaction mechanisms

Tracking the fate of digesta 13C and 15N compositions along the ruminant gastrointestinal tract: Does digestion influence the relationship between diet and faeces?

Faecal stable isotope compositions reflect wildlife diets, if digestive processes along the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) do not alter diet-faeces isotopic relationships in an unpredictable way. We investigated 13C and 15N compositions of digesta along the ruminant GIT, using Saanen dairy goats kept on pure grass hay or browse for >20days. Isotopic changes occurred in the ventral rumen, and in the small intestine, where digesta had significantly higher δ13C and δ15N (associated with lower C or higher N content, respectively) values relative to other GIT sites. However, effects on isotope fractionation were small (∼1.0‰ for δ13C and ∼ 2.0‰ for δ15N), and were reversed in the hindgut such that faecal isotope compositions did not differ from the foregut. No other substantial isotopic changes occurred across GIT sites, despite the morphophysiological complexity of the ruminant GIT. We found similarly small differences across GIT components of rheem gazelles (Gazella leptoceros) fed a mixture of C3 lucerne and C4 grass, although in this case faeces were 15N-depleted relative to other GIT components. Along with differences in δ15N between goats fed browse or grass, this result implies a systematic difference in diet-faeces δ15N relationships, contingent on the botanical composition of ruminant diets. Thus, while our results support faecal δ13C as a reliable proxy for wildlife diets, further work on factors influencing faecal 15N abundance is needed. Finally, we note high levels of isotopic variability between individuals fed the same diets, even accounting for the relatively short duration of the experiments, suggesting an important influence of stochasticity on isotope fractionatio

Dark-adapted versus bleached state in fluorescence lifetime imaging ophthalmoscopy

Purpose: The (early) detection of diseases based on metabolic changes in the retina is the goal of the novel autofluorescence lifetime ophthalmoscopy (FLIO) technique. These metabolic changes can be detected as alterations in the fundus autofluorescence (FAF) lifetimes. The influences of the photopigment bleaching and photobleaching on the FAF lifetimes are unknown. Thus, we performed a volunteer study to investigate these influences. Methods: In 21 healthy volunteers (23.6±3.8 years) time-resolved FAF was measured with a FLIO device (30° of fundus, excitation at 473nm, detection in two spectral channels: 500-560nm (ch1) and 560-720nm (ch2), time-correlated single photon counting method). All subjects had a crystalline lens. The pupil was dilated with 0.5% Tropicamid. After volunteers adapted to the dark using a custom-made lightproof eyewear over a period of 30 min, the first FLIO measurement was recorded (dark-adapted state). Subsequently, one eye was bleached for 1 min using a luminance of 3200cd/m2, followed by a FLIO measurement (bleached state). The fluorescence lifetimes were estimated from the FAF decays, based on three exponential functions, using the software FLIMX (www.flimx.de). Average values from the central region, and the inner and outer rings of the ETDRS grid were utilized to compare both bleaching states using analysis of variance, Friedman, and post hoc tests. Results : Only ch2 yielded significant changes (p<0.05) for the fluorescence lifetime τ2 from all ETDRS regions (+19-28ps), for the fluorescence lifetime τ1 (+6ps) and the mean fluorescence lifetime (+6ps) in the central area that were less than 10% in magnitude. Additionally, the acquisition time in the bleached state was significantly reduced by approximately 20% on average, compared to the dark-adapted state. The fluorescence lifetime differences caused by bleaching were much smaller than pathological states known from literature. Conclusions: We conclude that bleaching is not relevant for current clinical FLIO applications because of the small magnitude of the elicited fluorescence lifetime changes. Thus, it is advisable to instruct patients to wait in a bright room before FLIO measurements. If the expected changes in the fluorescence lifetime in a specific experimental paradigm are small, FLIO users should follow a strict acquisition protocol in terms of the photopigment bleaching state of the patients to obtain the most reliable results

R-Droid: Leveraging Android App Analysis with Static Slice Optimization

Today’s feature-rich smartphone apps intensively rely on access to highly sensitive (personal) data. This puts the user’s privacy at risk of being violated by overly curious apps or libraries (like advertisements). Central app markets conceptually represent a first line of defense against such invasions of the user’s privacy, but unfortunately we are still lacking full support for automatic analysis of apps’ internal data flows and supporting analysts in statically assessing apps’ behavior. In this paper we present a novel slice-optimization approach to leverage static analysis of Android applications. Building on top of precise application lifecycle models, we employ a slicing-based analysis to generate data-dependent statements for arbitrary points of interest in an application. As a result of our optimization, the produced slices are, on average, 49% smaller than standard slices, thus facilitating code understanding and result validation by security analysts. Moreover, by re-targeting strings, our approach enables automatic assessments for a larger number of use-cases than prior work. We consolidate our improvements on statically analyzing Android apps into a tool called R-Droid and conducted a large-scale data-leak analysis on a set of 22,700 Android apps from Google Play. R-Droid managed to identify a significantly larger set of potential privacy-violating information flows than previous work, including 2,157 sensitive flows of password-flagged UI widgets in 256 distinct apps

Sustainability and Trust for Artificial Intelligence Technologies

Hammer B, van der Aalst W, Bauckhage C, et al. Sustainability and Trust for Artificial Intelligence Technologies.; 2020