Reducing explicit and implicit prejudice toward disabled colleagues: Effects of contact and membership salience in the workplace

In the present study, membership salience was tested as a moderator of the effects of contact on emotions and explicit and implicit attitudes toward the disabled. Participants were non-disabled employees of firms and cooperative societies; they worked in contact with colleagues with psychiatric problems. Results indicated that quantity and quality of contact improved outgroup evaluations, both within and outside the contact situation. Consistent with intergroup contact theory (Brown & Hewstone, 2005), the positive effects of contact on anxiety and empathy toward disabled colleagues generalized to the whole category of the disabled when group distinctions were salient within the contact setting. Notably, frequent and cooperative contact also reduced implicit prejudice toward the general disabled category. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed

Alkali activation for management of construction and demolition wastes coming from earthquake

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Solution of a practical Vehicle Routing Problem for monitoring Water Distribution Networks

In this work, we introduce a generalisation of the Vehicle Routing Problem for a specific application in the monitoring of a Water Distribution Network (WDN). In this problem, multiple technicians must visit a sequence of nodes in the WDN and perform a series of tests to check the quality of water. Some special nodes (i.e., wells) require technicians to first collect a key from a key centre. The key must then be returned to the same key centre after the test has been performed, thus introducing precedence constraints and multiple visits in the routes. To solve the problem, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model and an Iterated Local Search have been implemented. The efficiency of the proposed methods is demonstrated by means of extensive computational tests on randomly created and real-world instances

Editorial: Challenging injustice: Understanding upstanding, civic action, and bystander intervention to promote justice

Throughout history, individuals and communities have come together to challenge injustice in the local community and across the globe. In recent years, we have seen communities rally together to advocate for changes in policy and practice to address injustices faced by marginalized and disenfranchised groups of people. For instance, communities have taken action through the Movement for Black Lives in the United States, the women's uprising in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, and the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. These challenges to social injustices are not only led by adults. Rather, youth engage in civic action to amplify the voices of those who are marginalized, isolated, or victimized and frequently organize to protest injustice and foster collective action through social media or other technology. These challenges to injustice often arise from community-led efforts, rooted in the unique contexts and histories of the local community. This special issue considers challenging injustice broadly to include bystander intervention in instances of bullying, harassment, or aggression, political and civic engagement, anti-racist or anti-oppression activism, and resistance to injustice in institutions and communities. Three overarching themes are featured in this special issue: (1) work examining bullying experiences and factors that motivate bystander intervention in response to bullying; (2) scholarship exploring identity, socialization, and critical action and (3) research focused on collective action and challenging inequalities

A Survey of Attended Home Delivery and Service Problems with a Focus on Applications

The research field on Attended Home Delivery (AHD) and Attended Home Service (AHS) problems has experienced fast growing interest in the last two decades, with the rapid diffusion of online platforms and e-commerce transactions. The COVID-19 pandemic has just fostered that interest, raising further challenges, opportunities and shortcomings that have to be tackled to answer the need for innovative methodologies as well as new policy actions. The aim of this work is to provide an extensive literature review on the state of the art for AHD and AHS problems, with a particular focus on real-world applications. A discussion of promising future research directions is also provided

Solution of a practical Vehicle Routing Problem for monitoring Water Distribution Networks

In this work, we introduce a generalization of the Vehicle Routing Problem for a specific application in the monitoring of a Water Distribution Network (WDN). In this problem, multiple technicians must visit a sequence of nodes in the WDN and perform a series of tests to check the quality of water. Some special nodes (i.e., wells) require technicians to first collect a key from a key center. The key must then be returned to the same key center after the test has been performed, thus introducing precedence constraints and multiple visits in the routes. To solve the problem, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model and an Iterated Local Search have been implemented. The efficiency of the proposed methods is demonstrated by means of extensive computational tests on randomly created and real-world instances

Reflecting a… “Bit”. What relationship between metacognition and ICT?

Abstract Using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in educational environments has become widespread in latest years. Since research underlined the important role played by metacognition and self-regulation abilities in fostering learning outcomes, the relationship between these aspects appears to be particularly worthy of investigation. In this review, we present 14 studies that have deepened the relationship between ICT, metacognitive skills and learning outcomes by identifying two main categories. Some articles investigated the effects of ICT environments combined with metacognitive aspects of learning outcomes, while others investigated the reciprocal relationship between ICT and metacognition. In general, from our review, the interaction between ICT and metacognition in producing better learning outcomes appears well established and the results highlight a bi-directional relationship between metacognition and ICT, but also allow to draw attention to gaps requiring further research

Feeling like a group after a natural disaster: Common ingroup identity and relations with outgroup victims among majority and minority young children

We conducted a field study to test whether the common ingroup identity model (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000, reducing intergroup bias: The common ingroup identity model. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press) could be a useful tool to improve intergroup relations in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Participants were majority (Italian) and minority (immigrant) elementary school children (N = 517) living in the area struck by powerful earthquakes in May 2012. Results revealed that, among majority children, the perceived external threat represented by the earthquake was associated with greater perceptions of belonging to a common ingroup including both ingroup and outgroup. In turn, heightened one-group perceptions were associated with greater willingness to meet and help outgroup victims, both directly and indirectly via more positive outgroup attitudes. Among immigrant children, perceived disaster threat was not associated with any of the dependent variables; one-group perceptions were positively associated with outgroup attitudes, helping and contact intentions towards outgroup victims. Thus, onegroup perceptions after a natural disaster may promote more positive and supporting relations between the majority and the minority group. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings

Supplier Selection for Global Service Providers: a Decision Support System

In this paper, we develop a decision support system (DSS) aimed at solving a real-world supplier selection problem (SSP) for a global service provider (GSP) operating in the facility management industry. The GSP provides its customers with facility management services, which are subcontracted to external suppliers selected on the basis of multiple criteria, like economic soundness, quality of service, capacity, and closeness. The SSP is formulated as a multi-objective generalized assignment problem, where the quality and the closeness of the selected suppliers are maximized, whereas a penalty produced by overcapacity assignments is minimized. The quality of each supplier is computed by applying a weighted sum method, resulting from a multi criteria decision analysis in which the criteria weights are determined through an Analytic Hierarchy Process. The DSS is developed using a modular architecture with a relational database, a supplier evaluator, and a simulator, as well as an additional user-friendly interface. The simulator relies on a rolling horizon algorithm and three alternative configurations to assign contracts to suppliers. The effectiveness of the DSS is assessed by means of extensive computational experiments on historical data from the GSP. The results show a significant average improvement of at least 25% in terms of objective function value compared to the solution adopted by the company and prove the advantage of using the DSS

BESPORT. Sport e benessere a 360 gradi

“BeSport: Sport e Benessere a 360 gradi” è un’iniziativa di public engagement promossa dall’Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Unimore) per condividere con un pubblico non accademico studi, ricerche e interventi nell’ambito della promozione del benessere attraverso lo sport