Reallocation of seafood freight flows from road to sea

Confidential until 24-may-201

The Value Aspect of Reallocating Seafood Freight from Road to Sea Transport

A case study elaborates on the project organization promoting change of transport mode in a food chain from a value perspective. This project organization may perspectively be viewed as a supply chain with value conceptions different from the everyday seafood supply chain it is meant to develop. Value is in this project context revealed as an intersubjective complex phenomenon, founded in that value conceptions by actors located at different locations in the supply chain. This renders customer value as one of many dynamic value components in this project organization. Value embedded in a supply chain is therefore always a source of uncertainty, a subjective perspective; it cannot be considered as a clear functional purpose in projects aimed at developing food supply. The route to reallocate seafood freight should therefore focus on organizing interconnectivity to support networking and the project members accepting that the project outcome is emergent

Geological Multi-scenario Reasoning

In the oil and gas industry, during exploration prospect assessment, explorationists rely on ad hoc manual work practices and tools for developing and communicating multiple hypothetical geological scenarios of the prospect. This leaves them with little efficient means to make the fullest use of state of the art digital technologies to communicate and systematically compare and assess different hypothetical geological scenarios before deciding which scenario to pursue. In this paper, we present a formal framework for geological multi-scenario reasoning, a novel tool-based method for geologically oriented subsurface evaluation. The methodology applies formal methods and logic-based techniques to subsurface evaluation and expresses interpretive uncertainty as discrete scenarios with branches of potential alternatives. This framework consists of (i) a proto-scenario generator that takes user observations and geological evidence as input and generates semantically valid initial states based on formalized geological knowledge in first-order logic (ii) geological processes formalized as a rewrite theory that are executable in Maude. By applying geological rewrite rules onto the proto-scenarios, we are able to assist explorationists with multi-scenario generation and reasoning beyond human capacity

State of the climate in 2018

In 2018, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth’s atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—continued their increase. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth’s surface was 407.4 ± 0.1 ppm, the highest in the modern instrumental record and in ice core records dating back 800 000 years. Combined, greenhouse gases and several halogenated gases contribute just over 3 W m−2 to radiative forcing and represent a nearly 43% increase since 1990. Carbon dioxide is responsible for about 65% of this radiative forcing. With a weak La Niña in early 2018 transitioning to a weak El Niño by the year’s end, the global surface (land and ocean) temperature was the fourth highest on record, with only 2015 through 2017 being warmer. Several European countries reported record high annual temperatures. There were also more high, and fewer low, temperature extremes than in nearly all of the 68-year extremes record. Madagascar recorded a record daily temperature of 40.5°C in Morondava in March, while South Korea set its record high of 41.0°C in August in Hongcheon. Nawabshah, Pakistan, recorded its highest temperature of 50.2°C, which may be a new daily world record for April. Globally, the annual lower troposphere temperature was third to seventh highest, depending on the dataset analyzed. The lower stratospheric temperature was approximately fifth lowest. The 2018 Arctic land surface temperature was 1.2°C above the 1981–2010 average, tying for third highest in the 118-year record, following 2016 and 2017. June’s Arctic snow cover extent was almost half of what it was 35 years ago. Across Greenland, however, regional summer temperatures were generally below or near average. Additionally, a satellite survey of 47 glaciers in Greenland indicated a net increase in area for the first time since records began in 1999. Increasing permafrost temperatures were reported at most observation sites in the Arctic, with the overall increase of 0.1°–0.2°C between 2017 and 2018 being comparable to the highest rate of warming ever observed in the region. On 17 March, Arctic sea ice extent marked the second smallest annual maximum in the 38-year record, larger than only 2017. The minimum extent in 2018 was reached on 19 September and again on 23 September, tying 2008 and 2010 for the sixth lowest extent on record. The 23 September date tied 1997 as the latest sea ice minimum date on record. First-year ice now dominates the ice cover, comprising 77% of the March 2018 ice pack compared to 55% during the 1980s. Because thinner, younger ice is more vulnerable to melting out in summer, this shift in sea ice age has contributed to the decreasing trend in minimum ice extent. Regionally, Bering Sea ice extent was at record lows for almost the entire 2017/18 ice season. For the Antarctic continent as a whole, 2018 was warmer than average. On the highest points of the Antarctic Plateau, the automatic weather station Relay (74°S) broke or tied six monthly temperature records throughout the year, with August breaking its record by nearly 8°C. However, cool conditions in the western Bellingshausen Sea and Amundsen Sea sector contributed to a low melt season overall for 2017/18. High SSTs contributed to low summer sea ice extent in the Ross and Weddell Seas in 2018, underpinning the second lowest Antarctic summer minimum sea ice extent on record. Despite conducive conditions for its formation, the ozone hole at its maximum extent in September was near the 2000–18 mean, likely due to an ongoing slow decline in stratospheric chlorine monoxide concentration. Across the oceans, globally averaged SST decreased slightly since the record El Niño year of 2016 but was still far above the climatological mean. On average, SST is increasing at a rate of 0.10° ± 0.01°C decade−1 since 1950. The warming appeared largest in the tropical Indian Ocean and smallest in the North Pacific. The deeper ocean continues to warm year after year. For the seventh consecutive year, global annual mean sea level became the highest in the 26-year record, rising to 81 mm above the 1993 average. As anticipated in a warming climate, the hydrological cycle over the ocean is accelerating: dry regions are becoming drier and wet regions rainier. Closer to the equator, 95 named tropical storms were observed during 2018, well above the 1981–2010 average of 82. Eleven tropical cyclones reached Saffir–Simpson scale Category 5 intensity. North Atlantic Major Hurricane Michael’s landfall intensity of 140 kt was the fourth strongest for any continental U.S. hurricane landfall in the 168-year record. Michael caused more than 30 fatalities and $25 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages. In the western North Pacific, Super Typhoon Mangkhut led to 160 fatalities and$6 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages across the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Tropical Storm Son-Tinh was responsible for 170 fatalities in Vietnam and Laos. Nearly all the islands of Micronesia experienced at least moderate impacts from various tropical cyclones. Across land, many areas around the globe received copious precipitation, notable at different time scales. Rodrigues and Réunion Island near southern Africa each reported their third wettest year on record. In Hawaii, 1262 mm precipitation at Waipā Gardens (Kauai) on 14–15 April set a new U.S. record for 24-h precipitation. In Brazil, the city of Belo Horizonte received nearly 75 mm of rain in just 20 minutes, nearly half its monthly average. Globally, fire activity during 2018 was the lowest since the start of the record in 1997, with a combined burned area of about 500 million hectares. This reinforced the long-term downward trend in fire emissions driven by changes in land use in frequently burning savannas. However, wildfires burned 3.5 million hectares across the United States, well above the 2000–10 average of 2.7 million hectares. Combined, U.S. wildfire damages for the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons exceeded $40 billion (U.S. dollars)

Subjective and objective demands on different types of differential stress inventory

Purpose To validate the differential stress inventory (DSI) by evaluating the objective and subjective stress differences in the five DSI types in the occupational setting. Methods A total of 119 German participants working as medical assistants (n = 40) or in a bank (n = 79) were recruited. They completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory–General Survey, the DSI, and wore ECG measuring devices for 24 h to measure heart rate variability. The DSI was used to group people into one of five types according to how they perceived and coped with stress: normal, overstressed, stress-resistant, low stress/high coping, or high stress/high coping. Results The overstressed type had significantly more burnout symptoms than the other types. The high stress/high coping type also had more symptoms of emotional exhaustion and total burnout compared to the other types, while the low stress/high coping and the stress-resistant types generally had the lowest levels of burnout. There were no differences on the HRV parameters among the DSI types. Conclusion Categorising people into types like in the DSI can help make workers aware of unhealthy stress and coping patterns before they turn into more severe pathology. Proper application and targeted preventive measures can save the individual’s health and the company’s budget. While the DSI picked up on differences in burnout symptoms as a long-term consequence of stress, there is evidence that it cannot pick up on short-term stress or physical stress as measured by HRV from the 24 h recording

Students' experience of stress with different framework conditions and different origins

Background. Students are exposed to numerous stress factors. The large number of demands and high strain can lead to a higher drop-out rate. For this reason, the aim of the study is to examine and comparing the experience of stress among German and international students during their studies under adaptation to generally stressful conditions. The international students performed a complete study program in Germany. Methods. Data from 194 students (41.8% women, 58.2% men) were evaluated. The average age of the participants was 23.0±3.44 years. Our sample consisted of 80 international students. The questionnaire on strains during the study (and at the workplace) was used. We registered the frequency and the intensity of the stress factors in everyday study life. We factor analysed the 34 stress items, which gave five main stress factors. We then looked at the differences between German and international students on these factors, while adjusting for generally stressful conditions. Results. The most important stressors were unfavourable working hours, incompatibility of tasks, climate, excessive demands, high responsibility, lack of information, social isolation, emotional strain and financial problems. The stressors differed in 17 out of 34 stressors in the groups of students of different origin. The international students experienced more physical and psychosocial strain and they experienced resources less often than German students did, but if they felt them, it was more intense. Conclusions. Strains during studies and their individual demands vary. German and international students have different perceptions of stress during study programs. There is a need for health promotion and prevention programs, which should be integrated during study

Geological Multi-scenario Reasoning

In the oil and gas industry, during exploration prospect assessment, explorationists rely on ad hoc manual work practices and tools for developing and communicating multiple hypothetical geological scenarios of the prospect. This leaves them with little efficient means to make the fullest use of state of the art digital technologies to communicate and systematically compare and assess different hypothetical geological scenarios before deciding which scenario to pursue. In this paper we present a formal framework for geological multi-scenario reasoning, a novel tool-based method for geologically oriented subsurface evaluation. The methodology applies formal methods and logic-based techniques to subsurface evaluation and expresses interpretive uncertainty as discrete scenarios with branches of potential alternatives. This framework consists of (i) a proto-scenario generator that takes user observations and geological evidence as input and generates semantically valid initial states based on formalized geological knowledge in first-order logic (ii) geological processes formalized as a rewrite theory that are executable in Maude. By applying geological rewrite rules onto the proto-scenarios, we are able to assist explorationists with multi-scenario generation and reasoning beyond human capacity

Mental health and work-related behaviors in management of work requirements of university lecturers in Ukraine—An age group comparison

Background: There are only a few national and international studies on the health of third-level professor lecturers at universities and colleges. Work-related diseases are important and relevant for occupational medicine. The aim of the study was to examine the mental health and work-related behavior and experience patterns of Ukrainian university lecturers in age group comparisons. Methods: Data were collected from 81 Ukrainian university lecturers (General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), Questionnaire on Work-Related Behavior and Experience Patterns (AVEM)). The university lecturers were split into 4 age groups. Results: 9.9% of higher education lecturers reported impaired mental health (GHQ-12). In all, 64.8% of the total sample showed AVEM risk patterns. There were differences in age groups (third age group scoring lower than the first age group on the GHQ total score). The first age group had significantly lower opinions of the subjective importance of work on their personal lives compared to the third and fourth age group, while the second age group had significantly lower opinions compared to the fourth age group. All individuals with impaired mental health in GHQ-12 had AVEM risk patterns. Conclusions: These results offer novel insights into the health of Ukrainian university lecturers. Occupational healthcare practitioners should take them into consideration in order to initiate appropriate interventions

Post-Vaccination and Post-Infection Immunity to the Hepatitis B Virus and Circulation of Immune-Escape Variants in the Russian Federation 20 Years after the Start of Mass Vaccination

A neonatal vaccination against the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection was initiated in Russia 20 years ago, with catch-up immunization for adolescents and adults under the age of 60 years launched in 2006. Here, we have assessed the humoral immunity to HBV in different regions of Russia, as well as the infection frequency following 20 years of a nationwide vaccination campaign. We have also evaluated the role of immune-escape variants in continuing HBV circulation. A total of 36,149 healthy volunteers from nine regions spanning the Russian Federation from west to east were tested for HBV surface antigen (HBsAg), antibodies to HBV capsid protein (anti-HBc), and antibodies to HBsAg (anti-HBs). HBV sequences from 481 chronic Hepatitis B patients collected from 2018–2022 were analyzed for HBsAg immune-escape variants, compared with 205 sequences obtained prior to 2010. Overall, the HBsAg detection rate was 0.8%, with this level significantly exceeded only in one study region, the Republic of Dagestan (2.4%, p p > 0.05). The population dynamics of immune-escape variants predicted by Bayesian analysis have remained stable over the last 20 years, indicating the absence of vaccine-driven positive selection. In contrast, the wild-type HBV population size experienced a rapid decrease starting in the mid-1990s, following the introduction of mass immunization, but it subsequently began to recover, reaching pre-vaccination levels by 2020. Taken together, these data indicate that it is gaps in vaccination, and not virus evolution, that may be responsible for the continued virus circulation despite 20 years of mass vaccination