Work environment: a study on satisfaction

Jobs define part of our everyday lives. In some societies, work is a defining role of your whole life. Governments and economists have stressed out, throughout the years, the importance of jobs for the common good of a country and its economy. In certain countries, jobs have such a central role in people’s lives that expressions such as “workaholic” become part of everyday vocabulary and become part of people’s reality. That being said, certain fields of investigation such as organizational behavioral have come to study different aspects of how people behave while at work such as performance of employees and job satisfaction. Although job satisfaction is one of the most studied thematic of organizational behavior, little has been said about the impact that lighting and temperature has on satisfaction levels while performing a certain task. It is recognized that ergonomic factors do affect peoples’ response to their work but there are very few studies that explore the impact it has on satisfaction. Although job satisfaction measurement tools include a question (and it is generally a question only) about work environment, it is in this query that everything about work environment is included: disposition of furniture, lighting, temperature, privacy, natural lighting, comfort of furniture, etc. For this reason, the main research question of this dissertation is: can temperature and luminosity impact satisfaction levels while performing a task? This research question was explored in different ways: through a literature review that resumed investigation on job satisfaction and physical environment of the office and through an empirical study with recourse to a questionnaire in order to test the different hypotheses

Characterisation of microbial attack on archaeological bone

As part of an EU funded project to investigate the factors influencing bone preservation in the archaeological record, more than 250 bones from 41 archaeological sites in five countries spanning four climatic regions were studied for diagenetic alteration. Sites were selected to cover a range of environmental conditions and archaeological contexts. Microscopic and physical (mercury intrusion porosimetry) analyses of these bones revealed that the majority (68%) had suffered microbial attack. Furthermore, significant differences were found between animal and human bone in both the state of preservation and the type of microbial attack present. These differences in preservation might result from differences in early taphonomy of the bones. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved