University of Greenwich

About: University of Greenwich is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 3749 authors who have published 9958 publications receiving 234340 citations.

Evaluating the evidence on employee engagement and its potential benefits to NHS staff: a narrative synthesis of the literature

Abstract: Background : Recent studies have suggested engagement is linked with beneficial outcomes for individuals and organisations. Despite growing demand for resources and advice on engagement within the NHS, there has been no systematic evaluation of how engagement strategies can be developed and operationalised within the NHS. Objectives and research questions : To evaluate evidence and theories of employee engagement within the NHS and the general workforce to inform policy and practice. Four research questions focused on definitions and models of engagement; the evidence of links between engagement and staff morale and performance; approaches and interventions that have the greatest potential to create and embed high levels of engagement within the NHS; and the most useful tools and resources for NHS managers in order to improve engagement. Review methods : Evidence was evaluated using a narrative synthesis approach involving a structured search of relevant academic databases and grey literature. The search yielded a final data set of 217 items, comprising 172 empirical papers, 38 theoretical articles, four meta-analyses and three books. From the grey literature, only 14 items were used in the analysis. Main findings : There is no one agreed definition or measure of engagement. Existing approaches were grouped under three headings: a psychological state; a composite attitudinal and behavioural construct; and employment relations practice. Most fell under the first category, with the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale being the most prevalent. Most theorising around engagement used the job demands–resources framework. Thirty-five studies considered engagement and morale, and the most consistent finding was a positive link between engagement and life satisfaction, and a negative link between engagement and burnout. Some studies suggested that engagement was positively associated with organisational commitment and job satisfaction and negatively linked to turnover intentions. Of 42 studies that looked at performance and engagement, the strongest support was found for a link between engagement and individual in-role performance and a negative link between engagement and counterproductive performance outcomes. A link between engagement and higher-level performance outcomes was also found. Of 155 studies that explored approaches and interventions that promote engagement, the strongest support was found for the following: positive psychological states including resilience; job-related resources and job design features; positive leadership; perceived organisational support; team-level engagement; training and development. Only a small proportion of studies were based in health-care settings, making the application of evidence to wider contexts limited. Studies identified in the grey literature suggested that the focus of practitioner material was more on wider managerial issues than on psychological factors. Conclusions The synthesis highlights the complex nature of the engagement evidence base. The quality of evidence was mixed. Most studies were cross-sectional, self-report surveys, although the minority of studies that used more complex methods such as longitudinal study designs or multiple respondents were able to lend more weight to inferences of causality. The evidence from the health-care sector was relatively sparse. Only a few studies used complex methods and just two had taken place in the UK. The evidence synthesis suggests that employers might consider several factors in efforts to raise levels of engagement including development and coaching to raise levels of employee resilience, the provision of adequate job resources, and fostering positive and supportive leadership styles. Funding : This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research (HSDR) programme.

Threshold conditions for integrated pest management models with pesticides that have residual effects.

Abstract: Impulsive differential equations (hybrid dynamical systems) can provide a natural description of pulse-like actions such as when a pesticide kills a pest instantly. However, pesticides may have long-term residual effects, with some remaining active against pests for several weeks, months or years. Therefore, a more realistic method for modelling chemical control in such cases is to use continuous or piecewise-continuous periodic functions which affect growth rates. How to evaluate the effects of the duration of the pesticide residual effectiveness on successful pest control is key to the implementation of integrated pest management (IPM) in practice. To address these questions in detail, we have modelled IPM including residual effects of pesticides in terms of fixed pulse-type actions. The stability threshold conditions for pest eradication are given. Moreover, effects of the killing efficiency rate and the decay rate of the pesticide on the pest and on its natural enemies, the duration of residual effectiveness, the number of pesticide applications and the number of natural enemy releases on the threshold conditions are investigated with regard to the extent of depression or resurgence resulting from pulses of pesticide applications and predator releases. Latin Hypercube Sampling/Partial Rank Correlation uncertainty and sensitivity analysis techniques are employed to investigate the key control parameters which are most significantly related to threshold values. The findings combined with Volterra’s principle confirm that when the pesticide has a strong effect on the natural enemies, repeated use of the same pesticide can result in target pest resurgence. The results also indicate that there exists an optimal number of pesticide applications which can suppress the pest most effectively, and this may help in the design of an optimal control strategy.

The Adulteration of Drugs: What Dealers Do to Illicit Drugs, and What They Think is Done to Them

Abstract: The notion that street drugs have been adulterated/diluted by all sorts of dangerous substances such as Vim, Ajax, ground-glass, brick-dust and even rat-poison is a common one. Moreover, it is in fact a practice believed to be true by those involved with the researching of drug issues, the treatment and rehabilitation of drug users, the policing of drug users and the educating of drug users (if. Coomber 1996) as well as by the users themselves. As this paper will show it is also thought to happen and be perpetrated by those who are deemed to be responsible for such adulteration/dilution, the dealers themselves. This however does not accord with the forensic evidence, or, as are the concerns of this paper with the practice or experience of individual drug dealers. This paper suggests, on the evidence of interviews with drug dealers at different levels of the drug distribution chain that less adulteration/dilution actually occurs than previously thought and that when it does happen 'on the street' it is of ...

Decision tree-based detection of denial of service and command injection attacks on robotic vehicles

Abstract: Mobile cyber-physical systems, such as automobiles, drones and robotic vehicles, are gradually becoming attractive targets for cyber attacks This is a challenge because intrusion detection systems built for conventional computer systems tend to be unsuitable They can be too demanding for resource-restricted cyber-physical systems or too inaccurate due to the lack of real-world data on actual attack behaviours Here, we focus on the security of a small remote-controlled robotic vehicle Having observed that certain types of cyber attacks against it exhibit physical impact, we have developed an intrusion detection system that takes into account not only cyber input features, such as network traffic and disk data, but also physical input features, such as speed, physical jittering and power consumption As the system is resource-restricted, we have opted for a decision tree-based approach for generating simple detection rules, which we evaluate against denial of service and command injection attacks We observe that the addition of physical input features can markedly reduce the false positive rate and increase the overall accuracy of the detection