Stress Management Systems Research Articles

Unraveling the customer orientation paradox

Purpose This study aims to examine the roles of customer orientation (CO) and two distinct stress coping strategies – problem-focused (PC) and emotion-focused (EC) – in the positive relationship between customer incivility (CI) and job stress (JS). Design/methodology/approach Data were collected via a survey of casino dealers in South Korea. Common method variance was assessed using an unmeasured latent method construct, confirming both convergent and discriminant validity. Collinearity diagnostics were conducted to evaluate potential multicollinearity among independent variables. Hypotheses were tested using PROCESS Macro Models 1 and 3 to examine moderating effects and three-way interactions. Findings CI is positively related to JS. Employees with high CO experience greater JS when faced with CI compared to those with low CO. Highly customer-oriented employees with low coping strategies encounter significant JS when dealing with uncivil casino patrons. Practical implications Casino practitioners should balance CO strategies with effective stress management and support systems. This finding calls for a reevaluation of training programs and policies to maintain high service quality while ensuring employee well-being. Originality/value This study challenges the traditional view of CO as merely a stress-buffering factor by revealing its paradoxical role. It identifies individuals more susceptible to JS and demonstrates how the interaction between CI, CO and coping strategies (i.e. PC or EC) can escalate JS.

The Impact of Gaokao High-Stakes Testing on Student Mental Health in China: An Analysis of Stress Levels and Coping Mechanisms Among Senior High School Students

The Gaokao, China’s National College Entrance Examination, is a high-stakes test that significantly impacts students’ academic futures and career opportunities. This paper examines the mental health implications of the Gaokao, focusing on stress levels and coping mechanisms among senior high school students. It explores the societal and educational significance of the Gaokao, identifies specific stressors related to its preparation and performance, and analyzes the correlation between stress levels and academic performance. Additionally, the paper discusses the short-term and long-term effects of stress on students’ overall well-being and offers recommendations for immediate and long-term interventions. These strategies aim to reduce the adverse effects of stress, enhance students’ mental health, and improve academic outcomes. The findings highlight the need for a balanced approach to stress management and support systems to ensure students’ success and well-being in the face of high-stakes examinations.

Perceived Stress, Well-Being, Institutional Stress Management Systems and Work Performance of Women Lecturers: Conditional Process Analysis

Perceived Stress, Well-Being, Institutional Stress Management Systems and Work Performance of Women Lecturers: Conditional Process Analysis

Stress Detection Using Machine Learning

Stress management systems are essential to identify and address stress levels that can disrupt our socioeconomic functioning. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in four people experience stress, which can result in mental and socioeconomic issues, poor work relationships, and depression, and in severe cases, suicide. Counselling is crucial to help people cope with stress, and while stress cannot be avoided, preventive measures can be taken to mitigate its effects. Currently, only medical and physiological experts can determine whether someone is experiencing stress. Traditional stress detection methods rely on self-reported answers, which can be unreliable. Automated stress detection can minimize health risks and improve societal welfare. Therefore, there is a need for a scientific tool that can automate stress detection using physiological signals. Stress detection is an important social contribution that potential to improve quality of life. As IT industries bring new technologies and products to the market, stress levels in employees are also increasing. While some organizations offer mental health services to their employees, more needs to be done to address this issue. Keywords: Machine Learning, Stress Detection, Haar cascade algorithm, Convolutional Neural Network

A Systematic Review of Technology-Aided Stress Management Systems: Automatic Measurement, Detection and Control

A Systematic Review of Technology-Aided Stress Management Systems: Automatic Measurement, Detection and Control

Misurata Ulusal Kanser Enstitüsü Ameliyathanesindeki Libyalı Hemşireler Arasında İş İle İlişkili Stres: Temel Bir Değerlendirme

Aim: In this the job-related stress among Libyan nurses working at the operating room in Misurata National Cancer Institute and explored the occupational stressors in terms of frequency and severity.
 Method: The retrospective study was carried out on Libyan nurses, who work in the operating room at Misurata National Cancer Institute. The researcher used purposive sampling wherein all Libyan nurses who had been working as nurses in the operating room in Misurata National Cancer Institute have been defined as participants. There were 14 Libyan Nurses currently working at Misurata Cancer Institute, and all respondents participated.
 Results: The occupational stressors have appeared with the most frequent level to be “Workload”, while much severity level of occupational stressors, appears to be “Conflict with other nurses” followed by “workload” and “Insufficient preparation”. The much frequency occurred for occupational stressors item, which appears to be “Lack of medications and equipment, which required for nursing care”, and yet the much occupational stressors severity item appears to be “Conflict with supervisor”, followed by “Performing procedures that patients experience as painful” and “Criticism by a physician” and last item “feeling helpless regarding a patient who had failed to improve”.
 Conclusions and Suggestions: From these findings conclude that Libyan nurses required much attention to deal with their social and psychological conditions. This should provide a suitable pathway and help in designing effective stress management systems, that improve the stress level of nurses and thus enable them to provide gentleness patient care.

Interrelation between Stress Management and Secretion Systems of Ralstonia solanacearum: An In Silico Assessment.

Ralstonia solanacearum (Rs), the causative agent of devastating wilt disease in several major and minor economic crops, is considered one of the most destructive bacterial plant pathogens. However, the mechanism(s) by which Rs counteracts host-associated environmental stress is still not clearly elucidated. To investigate possible stress management mechanisms, orthologs of stress-responsive genes in the Rs genome were searched using a reference set of known genes. The genome BLAST approach was used to find the distributions of these orthologs within different Rs strains. BLAST results were first confirmed from the KEGG Genome database and then reconfirmed at the protein level from the UniProt database. The distribution pattern of these stress-responsive factors was explored through multivariate analysis and STRING analysis. STRING analysis of stress-responsive genes in connection with different secretion systems of Rs was also performed. Initially, a total of 28 stress-responsive genes of Rs were confirmed in this study. STRING analysis revealed an additional 7 stress-responsive factors of Rs, leading to the discovery of a total of 35 stress-responsive genes. The segregation pattern of these 35 genes across 110 Rs genomes was found to be almost homogeneous. Increasing interactions of Rs stress factors were observed in six distinct clusters, suggesting six different types of stress responses: membrane stress response (MSR), osmotic stress response (OSR), oxidative stress response (OxSR), nitrosative stress response (NxSR), and DNA damage stress response (DdSR). Moreover, a strong network of these stress responses was observed with type 3 secretion system (T3SS), general secretory proteins (GSPs), and different types of pili (T4P, Tad, and Tat). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on overall stress response management by Rs and the potential connection with secretion systems.

ВИЗНАЧЕННЯ СТРЕСОВИХ ЧИННИКІВ У РОБОТІ ПРАЦІВНИКІВ ЗА ДОПОМОГОЮ НОРМУВАННЯ ПРАЦІ

The questions related to warning of stress factors’ strengthening in the workplace by means of rationing of labor s are investigated in the article. Realization of the sociological questioning by the Ukrainian platform of Gradus Research and Advisory Board, set that over 70% polled are in permanent stress. The ponderable factor of stress are professional difficulties in the workplace. It is considered to distribute professional stress on six categories by factors: personal, physical, social, description tasks, structural, role-play. In accordance with the questioning of “Deloitte” company the most stressful factors for respondents are the amount of work (overload, overstrain) and vagueness with the pandemic of Covid-19 ‒ production reorganization, passing to remote work or change of work terms. The least stress for the workers of the enterprise is the relationship with colleagues, organization management, using of out-of-date technique and technologies of decision making indicators. The research of different generations’ answers (Y, Z) in relation to mental health in working environment in the edge of the whole world and Ukraine is analyzed. By means of application of the methods of rationing of labor of business hours’ photo and time-study it is possible to discover or warn the stress factors’ strengthening in workers at the workplace. The photo of business hours allows watching the implementation of productive operation and setting the factors that influence on the worker, worsening of his behavior and labour discipline, his emotional attitude of different types of production tasks, to watch lances of overload and tiredness during the working day. The factors of direct and indirect influence on forming and use of stress management systems was offered by M.F. Honchar are analyzed. It is considered that the stress management system of the enterprise needed to be equated to management of pessimistic variant that will take into account possible problems and threats, and how to follow them for the removal of unfavorable consequences. Events in relation to the development of stress management system and introduction of wellbeing-programs in activity of the enterprise are offered.

Decoding a Music-Modulated Cognitive Arousal State using Electrodermal Activity and Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy Measurements.

Biofeedback systems sense different physiological activities and help with gaining self-awareness. Understanding music's impact on the arousal state is of great importance for biofeedback stress management systems. In this study, we investigate a cognitive-stress-related arousal state modulated by different types of music. During our experiments, each subject was presented with neurological stimuli that elicit a cognitive-stress-related arousal response in a working memory experiment. Moreover, this cognitive-stress-related arousal was modulated by calming and vexing music played in the background. Electrodermal activity and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements both contain information related to cognitive arousal and were collected in our study. By considering various fNIRS features, we selected three features based on variance, root mean square, and local fNIRS peaks as the most informative fNIRS observations in terms of cognitive arousal. The rate of neural impulse occurrence underlying EDA was taken as a binary observation. To retain a low computational complexity for our decoder and select the best fNIRS-based observations, two features were chosen as fNIRS-based observations at a time. A decoder based on one binary and two continuous observations was utilized to estimate the hidden cognitive-stress-related arousal state. This was done by using a Bayesian filtering approach within an expectation-maximization framework. Our results indicate that the decoded cognitive arousal modulated by vexing music was higher than calming music. Among the three fNIRS observations selected, a combination of observations based on root mean square and local fNIRS peaks resulted in the best decoded states for our experimental settings. This study serves as a proof of concept for utilizing fNIRS and EDA measurements to develop a low-dimensional decoder for tracking cognitive-stress-related arousal levels.

Early maternal and paternal caregiving moderates the links between preschoolers' reactivity and regulation and maturation of the HPA-immune axis.

While early caregiving and child's temperamental dispositions work in concert to shape social-emotional outcomes, their unique and joint contribution to the maturation of the child's stress and immune systems remain unclear. We followed children longitudinally from infancy to preschool to address the buffering effect of early parenting on the link between temperamental dysregulation and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-immune axis in preschool-aged children. Participants included 47 typically developing children and their 94 parents in both mother-father and two-father families followed across the first 4-years of family formation. In infancy, we observed parent-infant synchrony and measured parental oxytocin; in preschool, we observed temperamental reactivity and self-regulation and assessed children's cortisol and secretory Immunoglobulin A (s-IgA), biomarkers of the stress and immune systems. Greater self-regulation and lower negative emotionality were associated with lower baseline s-IgA and cortisol, respectively. However, these links were defined by interactive effects so that preschoolers with low self-regulation displayed higher s-IgA levels only in cases of low parent-infant synchrony and negative emotionality linked with greater baseline cortisol levels only when parental oxytocin levels were low. Results emphasize the long-term stress-buffering role of the neurobiology of parental care, demonstrate comparable developmental paths for mothers and fathers, and delineate the complex developmental cascades to the maturation of children's stress-management systems.

Exploring Students' Perceptions of the Educational Environment in a Caribbean Veterinary School: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Educational environment has a significant impact on students' learning and academic achievement. The aim of this article was to explore the perception of veterinary school students' regarding their educational environment at the University of the West Indies. In this cross-sectional study, the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) was administered to veterinary undergraduate students from year 2 to year 5. The DREEM questionnaire consists of 50 items with five subscales: students' perceptions of learning, students' perceptions of teachers, students' academic self-perceptions, students' perceptions of atmosphere, and students' social self-perceptions. Each item was scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (0) to strongly agree (4). The Cronbach's alpha for the overall DREEM score was 0.92, and for the five subscales, it ranged from 0.66 to 0.83. A total of 99 students responded (response rate: 86%). The students' overall DREEM mean score was 106.59 out of the global mean score of 200, indicating that students' perception of the educational environment was generally more positive than negative. In the five DREEM subscales, students were found to have a more positive perception of learning (55.15%); students' perception of teachers was generally positive (61.41%); and their perception of academic atmosphere was also positive (57.75%). Conversely, students' academic self-perception (51.41%) and social self-perception (42.61%) trended negatively. The findings suggest that improvement is needed in significant areas in the veterinary school, including curriculum review, faculty development, provision of sports and cultural facilities, stress management, and academic support systems.

Fuzzy vault-based biometric security method for tele-health monitoring systems

This study proposed an efficient fuzzy vault-based security method that adopts time-domain parameters extracted from physiological signals for tele-healthcare applications, including rehabilitation and stress management systems among others. One of the main challenges of the existing fuzzy vault-based approaches is that they depend on frequency-domain parameters of bio-signals to generate entities identifiers which require more processing time and energy consumption. Hence, we firstly designed a wearable platform for bio-signals collection, and later extracted time-domain features from the signals to generate efficient and distinctive identifiers for securing medical data in tele-healthcare applications. The statistical tests and hamming distances were applied to verify the performance of the generated identifiers regarding their uniqueness and randomness, respectively. This research work considered a total of 30 subjects data and the experimental results reveal that the proposed approach has better performance in WBSNs regarding processing time (0.168 ms) and energy consumption (1.423 mJ) than the traditional techniques.

Spatio-temporal dynamics of maize yield water constraints under climate change in Spain.

Many studies have analyzed the impact of climate change on crop productivity, but comparing the performance of water management systems has rarely been explored. Because water supply and crop demand in agro-systems may be affected by global climate change in shaping the spatial patterns of agricultural production, we should evaluate how and where irrigation practices are effective in mitigating climate change effects. Here we have constructed simple, general models, based on biological mechanisms and a theoretical framework, which could be useful in explaining and predicting crop productivity dynamics. We have studied maize in irrigated and rain-fed systems at a provincial scale, from 1996 to 2009 in Spain, one of the most prominent “hot-spots” in future climate change projections. Our new approach allowed us to: (1) evaluate new structural properties such as the stability of crop yield dynamics, (2) detect nonlinear responses to climate change (thresholds and discontinuities), challenging the usual linear way of thinking, and (3) examine spatial patterns of yield losses due to water constraints and identify clusters of provinces that have been negatively affected by warming. We have reduced the uncertainty associated with climate change impacts on maize productivity by improving the understanding of the relative contributions of individual factors and providing a better spatial comprehension of the key processes. We have identified water stress and water management systems as being key causes of the yield gap, and detected vulnerable regions where efforts in research and policy should be prioritized in order to increase maize productivity.

Influence of mechanical loading on static and dynamic CO2 efflux on differently textured and managed Luvisols

Mechanical disturbance of soil structure is commonly related to altered physical changes in pore systems, which control CO2 effluxes e.g. by changes in gas transport properties and in microbial activity. Soil compaction mostly leads to reduced CO2 fluxes. In contrast, structured soils can also release physically entrapped CO2 or give access to protected carbon sources inside aggregates due to aggregate breakdown by disruptive forces. In this study it was investigated how far arable soil management affects structure- and compaction-related CO2-releases using incubation experiments and CO2 gas analysis under standard matric potentials (−6kPa). CO2 efflux was analyzed before, during and after mechanical loading using the alkali trap method (static efflux) and a gas flow compaction device (GaFloCoD, dynamic efflux). Intact soil cores (236 and 471cm3) were collected from a Stagnic Luvisol with loamy sand (conservation and conventional tillage systems) and a Haplic Luvisol with clayey silt (under different fodder crops) from the topsoil (10–15cm) and subsoil (35–45cm). Mechanical stability was reflected by the pre-compression stress value (Pc) and by the tensile strength of aggregates (12–20mm). Changes in pore systems were described by air conductivity as well as air capacity and total porosity. While CO2-releases varied highly during the compaction process (GaFloCoD) for different stress magnitudes, soil depths and management systems, basal respiration rates were generally reduced after mechanical loading by almost half of the initial rates irrespective of soil management. For both methods (dynamic and static efflux) restriction in gas transport functionality was proved to have major influence on inhibition of CO2 efflux due to mechanical loading. GaFloCoD experiments demonstrated that decreases in CO2 efflux were linked to structural degradation of pore systems by exceeding internal soil strength (Pc). Otherwise, re-equilibrating matric potentials to −6kPa and re-incubating offset inhibition of soil respiration suggest a re-enhancement of microbial activity. At this state, physical influences were apparently overlapped by biological effects due to higher energy supply to microbes, which could be offered by spatial distribution changes of microorganisms and organic substrates within a given soil structure. This implies the susceptibility of physical protection mechanism for carbon by disruption of soil structure. In future, special focus should be given on a clear distinction between physical and microbiological effects controlling CO2 fluxes in structured soils.

Stressing Out: Handling Change in a Digital World

Living in a world of rapid change and increased use of technologies can lead to an increase in personal levels of stress. Each person needs to find their own stress management systems. This article makes a few suggestions about recognizing stress sources and potential coping strategies.

Critical Incident Stress Management

Recent studies have indicated implementation of the CISM Program has impacted and reduced the cost of workers' compensation claims for stress related conditions and the number of lost work days (Ott, 1997; Western Management Consultants, 1996). Occupational health professionals need to be ready to develop and implement a comprehensive critical incident stress management process in anticipation of a major event. The ability to organize, lead, or administer critical incident stress debriefings for affected employees is a key role for the occupational health professional. Familiarity with these concepts and the ability to identify a critical incident enhances value to the business by mitigating the stress and impact to the workplace. Critical Incident Stress Management Systems have the potential for decreasing stress and restoring employees to normal life function--a win/win situation for both the employees and the organization.

Body building goes high-tech

The improvement in technology and the increased preoccupation-at least in the US-with personal fitness is evident in four basic categories of home equipment: electronic exercise machines, such as bicycles and rowing machines; bodily function monitors that measure blood pressure and pulse; pain control devices that use ultrasound and vibration; and stress management systems that depend on biological feedback from the skin. The newest so-called smart machines rely on electronics to calculate in real time and to display digitally and in LED graphics the rate of pedaling or running (speedometer), the elapsed time (clock) and/or distance (odometer), the amount of work being done (ergometer), and the number calories expended (calorimeter). Often these microprocessor-controlled machines can vary the intensity of a workout, remember prerecorded workout patterns, and record and print workout performances. A number of currently available products are described.