Search Results (347)

With the evolution from Industry 4.0 to 5.0, flexible assembly scheduling must simultaneously address production efficiency, environmental sustainability, and human factors, while remaining adaptive to real-time disruptions. This study investigates the dynamic green scheduling problem in dual-resource Flexible Assembly Job Shops with worker learning and forgetting, aiming to minimize makespan and total energy consumption. To tackle this problem, a Hierarchical Dual-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithm (HAD-DRL) is proposed. The framework integrates a Heterogeneous Graph Neural Network to extract real-time workshop states and employs two collaborative agents, i.e., a high-level preference decision agent and a low-level scheduling execution agent. The upper agent dynamically adjusts the preference weights between economic and environmental objectives, while the lower agent generates corresponding scheduling actions. Unlike existing multi-agent methods that optimize a single objective at each step, HAD-DRL achieves adaptive coordination and balanced trade-offs among conflicting goals. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms heuristic and baseline DRL approaches in both objectives, validating its effectiveness and practical applicability for intelligent and sustainable manufacturing. Full article

With the continuous development of the construction industry, work pressure faced by construction workers has been increasing, leading to a growing prominence of job burnout that adversely affects workers’ physical and mental health as well as work efficiency. Constantly exposed to high-pressure environments, construction workers are prone to symptoms such as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal accomplishment, which in turn impair their work performance and quality of life. However, existing literature has largely overlooked the potential role of leisure activities such as music in alleviating job burnout. Although music is widely recognized as an effective tool for emotional regulation, its application and impact among construction workers remain underexplored. Based on a sample of 1086 construction workers (71.09% male, 48.99% aged 36–45), this study examines four dimensions of music engagement, including Time Commitment (TC), Economic Spending (ES), Emotional Investment (EI), and Personal Participation (PP), and investigates how these dimensions, through the mediating role of leisure crafting (LC), negatively influence job burnout (JB) among this population. This study employed covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) with a sample of 1086 construction workers (71.09% male, 48.99% aged 36–45) to examine how four dimensions of music engagement, namely Time Commitment (TC), Economic Spending (ES), Emotional Investment (EI), and Personal Participation (PP), influence job burnout through leisure crafting. The results show that: (1) time commitment, economic spending, emotional investment and personal participation all have a negative influence on job burnout; and (2) leisure crafting mediates the effect of music engagement by construction workers on job burnout. This study emphasizes the necessity of incorporating mental health interventions into high-pressure work environments, providing guidance for companies to develop more flexible and effective employee care and welfare policies. This research therefore holds significant theoretical and practical value, as it promotes sustainable development in the construction industry, improves workers’ well-being and enhances the design of related work environments. Full article

This study investigates the development of workwear designed to withstand harsh conditions and support physically demanding tasks. Its central aim is to create garments that enhance workers’ comfort and mobility by optimizing ergonomic and anthropometric factors. First of all, expert surveys were collected, and the importance of posture adaptability and material comfort was highlighted. To investigate realistic body–garment interactions, the 3D body scans of the upper body from 34 participants in common working poses were captured. These scans revealed the zones of high deformation, guiding the placement of elastic inserts to improve flexibility in targeted areas. The redesigned garments underwent a two-stage evaluation process. First, Clo3D virtual fittings provided qualitative insights into overall jacket fit and movement behavior. Next, stress and strain mapping offered quantitative validation, showing that fabric stress levels remained below 120 kPa, providing evidence that the added elasticity effectively reduced mechanical load and improved wearability. Expert reviewers confirmed the enhanced fit and functional performance. Overall, the study demonstrates an integrated design strategy that unites textile behavior, body dimensions and biomechanics. This approach not only improves workwear but also offers a transferable framework for developing specialized clothing across other physically intensive professions. Full article

Background: Nurses, the largest segment of the global health workforce, play vital roles in managing disease outbreaks and boosting community resilience during public health emergencies. Purpose: This study explored the experiences of senior nurses in leading health facilities in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We employed a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive approach and purposive sampling to recruit 30 senior nurses involved in frontline care during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used telephone interviews to examine how nurses’ roles are changing during public health crises. Results: Nurses navigated challenges related to infection prevention and control, team dynamics and social support, resource limitations, stigma against those affected, and leadership. Some of the nurses drew on their prior experience to navigate the complexities of COVID-19. The significance of inter-professional working and the flexible delegation of tasks is reinforced by the current study, which suggests that professional boundaries became more blurred during the crisis. Optimal responses to outbreaks are influenced by professional preparedness and adaptive learning. Conclusions: Nurses displayed extraordinary resilience and determination, yet faced enormous challenges, including PPE shortages, stigmatization from within their own communities and organizations, and a lack of welfare support. The findings from this analysis are intended to support national and global efforts in pandemic preparedness and healthcare worker assistance, highlighting the essential role nurses play in creating more resilient health systems for future crises. Full article

As the manufacturing industry continues to advance its digital transformation, intelligent sensing technology has become a key support for achieving precise, efficient and automated quality control. However, current production line monitoring systems predominantly rely on fixed and costly monitoring equipment and sensors, lacking flexible and interactive first-person perspective perception approaches centered on on-site operators. Meanwhile, factory process monitoring often depends solely on visual expression rather than balancing the capabilities of the simulation model and visual state detection, leading to delayed responses to abnormal systems and hindering the adjustment strategy feedback. To address these limitations, this study provides wearable sensing for key workers, enriching the state perception capabilities in industrial scenarios. Furthermore, to achieve dynamic model and real-time visual representation of production line operations, a multi-source information-enhanced Petri nets model is proposed in terms of engineering and user-friendliness. With the solid mathematical basics of the Petri nets and the enriched human–machine data from the product line, this method provides an intuitive, dynamic and accurate reflection of the production system’s real-time operational status, offering a scientific and reliable basis for operational decision-making. The proposed approach has been implemented in a real-world production system for reinforced concrete civil defense doors, and this engineering application can also be extended to many other scenarios. Full article

The digital economy has reshaped the structure and operation of the labor market through profound technological changes, exerting systematic impacts on the quality of flexible employment. Based on five consecutive periods of data from the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) between 2014 and 2022, a multidimensional, flexible employment quality indicator system is constructed to empirically examine the effects, heterogeneity, and mechanisms of the digital economy on flexible employment quality. This study shows that the digital economy has significantly improved the overall quality of flexible employment. Specifically, male, low-skilled, young, and flexible workers with a low dependency ratio on the northwest side of the Hu-Huan-Yong Line benefit more significantly. Mechanism testing results indicate that industrial structure optimization, human capital accumulation, and improved matching efficiency are important intermediary pathways through which the digital economy enhances the quality of flexible employment. The conclusion indicates that amplifying the positive empowerment effect of the digital economy on the quality of flexible employment, implementing targeted policies, and activating three indirect transmission pathways—industrial structure, human capital, and supply–demand matching efficiency—are key measures to enhance the quality of flexible employment. Full article

The rapid expansion of the gig economy is reshaping work globally, producing both new opportunities and significant challenges for workers across diverse regions. This scoping review mapped global evidence on gig workers’ experiences between 2018 and 2024, following PRISMA-ScR guidelines. A comprehensive search of academic databases (EBSCOhost, Scopus, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Google Scholar) was conducted, yielding 1986 records, of which 26 met the inclusion criteria. Data were charted and synthesised to identify patterns in how gig workers describe their work experiences within broader socioeconomic and platform-based structures. Three interconnected themes emerged. First, freedom and flexibility remain central attractions of gig work, particularly for younger workers who value autonomy, scheduling control, and opportunities for combining multiple income streams. Second, gig work experiences vary significantly across demographic and geographic contexts, revealing unequal pathways shaped by gender, education, skill, migration status, and national labour-market conditions. Third, across all gig-work categories, workers reported precarity, including inconsistent income, job insecurity, algorithmic surveillance, limited benefits, and emotional strain. Taken together, the findings illustrate how autonomy and vulnerability coexist within the gig economy, highlighting the importance of policies and supports that address intersecting forms of inequality and promote safe, stable, and dignified work in a rapidly evolving labour landscape. Full article

Collaborative robots (cobots) can work cooperatively alongside humans, while contributing to task automation in industries such as manufacturing. Designed with enhanced safety features, cobots can safely assist a range of users, including those with no previous robotics experience. Despite the human-centric design of cobots, programming them can be challenging for novice operators, who may lack the skills and understanding of robotics. If left with a choice between major worker upskilling or replacement and investing in expensive and complex precision cobot positioning and object-detection systems, business owners may be reluctant to embrace cobot ownership. Furthermore, if a cobot’s primary intended tasks were simple Pick-and-Place operations, the tenuous return on investment, compared to retaining current manual processes, could make cobot adoption financially impracticable. This paper proposes a low-cost cobot control system (LCCS), an intuitive cobot solution for Pick-and-Place tasks, designed for novice cobot operators. Off-the-shelf vision-based positioning solutions, priced at around $US20,000, are typically designed to be assigned to a single cobot. The LCCS comprises a Raspberry Pi, a standard USB webcam and ArUco fiducial markers, which can easily be incorporated into a multi-cobot operation, with a combined total hardware cost of around $US100. The system scales simply and economically to support an expanding operation and it is easy to use It allows a user to specify a target pick location by positioning a portable localisation scanner upon an object to be grasped by the cobot end-effector. The scanner’s integrated webcam captures the location and orientation perspective from ArUco markers affixed to predefined positions outside the cobot workspace. By pressing a switch mounted on the scanner, the user relays the captured information, converted to 3D coordinates, to the cobot controller. Finally, the cobot’s integrated processor calculates the corresponding pose using inverse kinematics, which allows the cobot to move to the target position. Subsequent actions can be pre-programmed as required, as part of the initial system configuration. Preliminary testing indicates that the proposed system provides accurate and repeatable localisation information, with a mean positional error below 3.5 mm and a mean standard deviation less than 1.8. With a hardware investment just 0.3% of the UR5e purchase price, an easy to use, customisable, and easily scalable vision-based Pick-and-Place localisation system for cobots can be implemented. It has the potential to be a reliable and robust system that significantly lowers cobot operation barriers for novice operators by alleviating the programming requirement. By reducing the reliance on experienced programmers in a production environment, cobot tasks could be deployed more rapidly and with greater flexibility. Full article

Background: Street sex workers (SSWs) experience some of the highest levels of health inequality in the UK, yet face persistent barriers to accessing NHS healthcare. These barriers are shaped by structural disadvantage, stigma, and the complex realities of their lives. Despite significant health needs, engagement with services remains low, and existing models of care often fail to accommodate the lived experiences of this population. Aims: This study explores how SSWs access, experience, and navigate NHS healthcare. It aims to understand the barriers and enablers of access, identify areas for improvement, and offer recommendations to inform the development of more inclusive service provision. Methods: An ethnographic approach was undertaken within a South Yorkshire charitable organisation. Data collection involved participant observation and an arts-based scrapbook intended to facilitate trauma-informed, flexible engagement. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, organised around a dynamic, processual approach using the candidacy framework. Findings: Barriers to care were present across all stages of healthcare engagement, including minimisation of health needs, administrative exclusion, lack of continuity, and stigma from professionals. Participants frequently described systems as inaccessible. Key enablers included supportive organisational staff and consistent, trusted relationships with specific providers. Areas for Improvement and Recommendations: Findings highlight the need to simplify registration processes, provide in-person options, and reduce reliance on digital communication. Greater continuity of care and gender-sensitive, trauma-informed approaches were consistently requested. Services should not be evaluated solely by uptake but by how well they accommodate marginalised users. Healthcare settings that prioritise safety, trust, and consistency were shown to improve engagement. SWs spoke of the work of accessing care, which for many was too hard to gain. Conclusions: SSWs are not disengaged from healthcare but are routinely excluded by systems that fail to meet their needs. Service redesign must begin from the realities of those who are most marginalised, through co-production, to reduce health inequity and build meaningful access. Full article

Background: South Africa faces the world’s highest HIV burden, disproportionately affecting women, alongside rising Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). Weight gain associated with preferred dolutegravir (DTG)-based antiretroviral therapy may worsen obesity and T2D risk. This process evaluation explored the implementation of a 12-month time-restricted eating (TRE) intervention for weight management in women with HIV and overweight/obesity in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Methods: Using the RE-AIM framework, the study investigated the implementation journey. Data were collected from three groups: RCT participants, healthcare workers (n = 21), and fieldworkers (n = 3). Methods included structured informal interviews with TRE participants throughout the intervention and semi-structured in-depth interviews (IDIs) with a subset (n = 19) at 12 months. IDIs and focus group discussions were conducted with healthcare staff. Results: Implementation faced significant contextual challenges, including high food insecurity, economic constraints, and high crime levels. Cultural norms around food hospitality also posed barriers. Despite this, TRE was highly feasible and acceptable. Participants reported positive behavioural changes, establishing eating routines and consuming healthier foods. Perceived health benefits included improved appetite control, wellbeing, sleep, and weight management. Key facilitators were the intervention’s flexibility and, importantly, the non-judgmental, empathetic support from fieldworkers, which drove engagement and retention. Healthcare workers expressed willingness to integrate TRE into existing HIV counsellor-led services, and nearly all participants desired to continue TRE post-intervention. Conclusions: This process evaluation demonstrates that TRE is a contextually suitable and acceptable intervention from an implementation perspective. Its success in practice, however, depends on mitigating complex multi-level barriers through a flexible program design and high-quality, relationship-focused support integrated into existing healthcare infrastructure. Trial registration: PACTR202302484999720, 8 February 2023. Full article

This article examines the persistence of structural racism and the process of ethno-stratification affecting immigrants from the Global South in Spain. Drawing on national survey data and recent research, it analyses the socio-economic incorporation of immigrants in the aftermath of the Great Recession and subsequent economic recovery, emphasising both their rootedness in Spanish society and their continued segregation. The findings indicate that immigrants remain disproportionately concentrated in low-wage and temporary employment, positioned beneath the native-born precariat and distant from average living standards. This persistent segmentation cannot be explained solely by immigrants’ qualifications or cultural adaptation, but rather by an interplay of structural, institutional, social, and ethnic factors. At the core lies the Spanish “Mediterranean” development model, characterised by a low-productivity economy dependent on cheap labour, a limited welfare state, and strong family-based social protection, which together generate continuous demand for flexible immigrant workers. Additional drivers include migration and labour policies, gendered labour segmentation, and ethnic discrimination, all reinforcing immigrants’ vulnerability. The article concludes that immigrant labour has become essential to Spain’s economic and demographic model, yet its enduring segregation underscores the need for renewed public policies that promote social cohesion and intercultural integration. Full article

Nestmate recognition is the primary defense mechanism maintaining the integrity of eusocial insect colonies. While social parasitism is widespread in Hymenoptera, it is rarely documented in termites, and the behavioral boundaries preventing interspecific infiltration remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the potential for interspecific integration between two closely related termite species under laboratory conditions. We introduced Reticulitermes labralis workers and reproductives (queens and kings) into orphaned groups of R. aculabialis. We found that host workers exhibited caste-dependent aggression: introduced workers were immediately attacked and eliminated, whereas alien reproductives were partially tolerated. Surviving alien reproductives successfully integrated into host group, receiving allogrooming and trophallactic care from host workers. Crucially, these integrated pairs produced viable eggs and larvae. Molecular analysis confirmed that the brood reared by the host workers were the genetic offspring of the introduced R. labralis pair, demonstrating successful “cuckoo-like” reproduction. These findings reveal that termite colony recognition is sufficiently flexible to permit the acceptance of heterospecific reproductives when native royals are absent. While field evidence remains to be discovered, our results demonstrate that the behavioral and physiological prerequisites for social parasitism exist in termites, supporting the hypothesis that close phylogenetic relatedness (Emery’s rule) facilitates the breach of social barriers. Full article

Working remotely during the pandemic changed workplace culture for millions of employees and managers, fueling a desire for more flexible work arrangements. About 75 percent of companies now support hybrid work, meaning managers often oversee workers both in and out of the office. Two large-sample surveys on these new work models reveal three management challenges: creating a consistent culture that includes both hybrid and in-office employees, strengthening connections among staff regardless of their location, and implementing effective performance management for both groups. In the management literature, existing research on each of these topics is limited. This article recommends solutions to each of these challenges based on available evidence, while exploring related topics such as new-hire and virtual onboarding, strategies to combat loneliness at work, proximity bias, and employee monitoring. The article concludes with a set of research questions that emerge from the topics reviewed. Full article

In the context of the digital transition, office environments are increasingly shaped by flexibility, technological integration, and occupant-centered design. These transformations influence not only building operations but also the social dynamics and well-being of workers, thereby intersecting with the broader goals of socially sustainable design. To address this complexity, Building Management Systems (BMS) and Digital Twins must evolve from static automation to adaptive frameworks that recognize and respond to diverse workplace activities and social interactions. This study proposes a standardized taxonomy of office activities as a foundation for activity recognition and environment adaptation. A systematic literature review identified key activity categories and defining attributes, which were refined and validated through direct observations, diary logs, and semi-structured interviews in small, shared offices with open-plan workspaces. The resulting taxonomy comprises four main classes—Focused Work, Meetings, Shallow Work, and Resting—each defined by contextual attributes such as plannability, social interaction, number of participants, posture, modality, location, and duration. The framework supports the development of human-centric, situationally aware BMS capable of dynamically adjusting environmental conditions to promote comfort, well-being, and energy efficiency. By integrating user agendas and feedback, this approach contributes to more inclusive and socially sustainable work environments, aligning with the emerging paradigm of adaptive, human-oriented architecture. Full article

Temporary agency work (TAW) has expanded globally as organizations seek flexibility amid skill shortages and demand volatility. In 2015 the United Nations recognized ‘decent work’ as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 8), emphasizing sustainable economic growth, fair employment opportunities accessible to all without discrimination, environmental responsibility, and social inclusiveness. This study examines why user organizations (clients) adopt TAW and how these drivers materialize in stakeholder practices that align—or fail to align—with SDG-8 dimensions of decent work. Within a qualitative-dominant, explanatory sequential mixed-methods case study, documentary and statistical analyses were combined with 19 semi-structured interviews across agencies, clients, agency workers, trade unions, and relevant authorities. Inductive thematic analysis identified seven demand-side driver categories and assessed their effects using the SDG-8 pillars as an analytical lens (employment creation, rights at work, social protection, social dialogue). Findings indicate that TAW is primarily deployed to buffer volatility and labour shortages, accelerate hiring, and shift HR administration and parts of risk to agencies, with limited integration of SDG-8–consistent practices. Three cross-cutting gaps emerged: (i) social dialogue is narrow and compliance-oriented, with little strategic focus on decent-work outcomes; (ii) agency-worker voice and representation are weak, and agencies are not consistently recognised as social partners; and (iii) social-sustainability efforts are sparse and ad hoc, with few structured measures for skill development, equal treatment, or clear conversion pathways, while environmentally friendly initiatives are almost completely absent. In Slovenia, TAW fills systemic labour gaps but remains weakly integrated with SDG-8 practices. The study links demand-side drivers to specific decent-work shortfalls and proposes a multi-level policy roadmap—regulatory, industry, TAW agency, and social-dialogue platforms—to advance progress toward social sustainability and environmental responsibility. Full article