This paper addresses the issue of how intermittent work performances - now increasingly enabled by new technologies - affect remuneration, and how such work contributes to in-work poverty. The analysis takes platform-based work as a model, considering it a prototype of a productive organisation relying on intermittent performances. It begins by examining whether there are legal mechanisms that allow for periods of inactivity between tasks to be taken into account when calculating remuneration. This part of the analysis first focuses on hetero-organised work, with reference to both the rules established by law under Article 2, paragraph 1, of Legislative Decree 81/2015, and the provisions of national collective labour agreements under Article 2, paragraph 2, of the same Decree. It then turns to the concept of intermittent subordinate employment as regulated by Articles 13 et seq. of Legislative Decree 81/2015. The paper concludes that the current legal framework is inadequate to ensure that workers performing intermittent tasks receive remuneration that is nonetheless adequate under Article 36 of the Constitution, and puts forward several corrective proposals.
Lukas J. Fiderer, Paul C. Barth, Isaac D. Smith
et al.
Predicting future observations plays a central role in machine learning, biology, economics, and many other fields. It lies at the heart of organizational principles such as the variational free energy principle and has even been shown -- based on the second law of thermodynamics -- to be necessary for reaching the fundamental energetic limits of sequential information processing. While the usefulness of the predictive paradigm is undisputed, complex adaptive systems that interact with their environment are more than just predictive machines: they have the power to act upon their environment and cause change. In this work, we develop a framework to analyze the thermodynamics of information processing in percept-action loops -- a model of agent-environment interaction -- allowing us to investigate the thermodynamic implications of actions and percepts on equal footing. To this end, we introduce the concept of work capacity -- the maximum rate at which an agent can expect to extract work from its environment. Our results reveal that neither of two previously established design principles for work-efficient agents -- maximizing predictive power and forgetting past actions -- remains optimal in environments where actions have observable consequences. Instead, a trade-off emerges: work-efficient agents must balance prediction and forgetting, as remembering past actions can reduce the available free energy. This highlights a fundamental departure from the thermodynamics of passive observation, suggesting that prediction and energy efficiency may be at odds in active learning systems.
Many years have passed since the conception of the quintessential method of shortcut to adiabaticity known as counterdiabatic driving (or transitionless quantum driving). Yet, this method appears to be energetically cost-free and thus continually challenges the task of quantifying the amount of energy it demands to be accomplished. This paper proposes that the energy cost of controlling a closed quantum system using the counterdiabatic method can also be assessed using the instantaneous excess work during the process and related quantities, as the time-averaged excess work. Starting from the Mandelstam-Tamm bound for driven dynamics, we have shown that the speed-up of counterdiabatic driving is linked with the spreading of energy between the eigenstates of the total Hamiltonian, which is necessarily accompanied by transitions between these eigenstates. Nonetheless, although excess work can be used to quantify energetically these transitions, it is well known that the excess work is zero throughout the entire process under counterdiabatic driving. To recover the excess work as an energetic cost quantifier for counterdiabatic driving, we will propose a different interpretation of the parameters of the counterdiabatic Hamiltonian, leading to an excess work different from zero. We have illustrated our findings with the Landau-Zener model.
Baptiste Caramiaux, Kate Crawford, Q. Vera Liao
et al.
Generative AI has gained a significant foothold in the creative and artistic sectors. In this context, the concept of creative work is influenced by discourses originating from technological stakeholders and mainstream media. The framing of narratives surrounding creativity and artistic production not only reflects a particular vision of culture but also actively contributes to shaping it. In this article, we review online media outlets and analyze the dominant narratives around AI's impact on creative work that they convey. We found that the discourse promotes creativity freed from its material realisation through human labor. The separation of the idea from its material conditions is achieved by automation, which is the driving force behind productive efficiency assessed as the reduction of time taken to produce. And the withdrawal of the skills typically required in the execution of the creative process is seen as a means for democratising creativity. This discourse tends to correspond to the dominant techno-positivist vision and to assert power over the creative economy and culture.
This article presents the first field deployment of a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) based variable speed limit (VSL) control system on Interstate 24 (I-24) near Nashville, Tennessee. We design and demonstrate a full pipeline from training MARL agents in a traffic simulator to a field deployment on a 17-mile segment of I-24 encompassing 67 VSL controllers. The system was launched on March 8th, 2024, and has made approximately 35 million decisions on 28 million trips in six months of operation. We apply an invalid action masking mechanism and several safety guards to ensure real-world constraints. The MARL-based implementation operates up to 98% of the time, with the safety guards overriding the MARL decisions for the remaining time. We evaluate the performance of the MARL-based algorithm in comparison to a previously deployed non-RL VSL benchmark algorithm on I-24. Results show that the MARL-based VSL control system achieves a superior performance. The accuracy of correctly warning drivers about slowing traffic ahead is improved by 14% and the response delay to non-recurrent congestion is reduced by 75%. The preliminary data shows that the VSL control system has reduced the crash rate by 26% and the secondary crash rate by 50%. We open-sourced the deployed MARL-based VSL algorithm at https://github.com/Lab-Work/marl-vsl-controller.
Abstract This article examines the large and modern sugar factories established in Egypt in the 1870s as multi-phased production sites that combined coerced peasant labor with the deployment of state of the art steam technology. These factories possessed the capacity to produce 7.5% of global sugar output from sugarcane at the time. Yet their scale, combined with their reliance on forced labor, have been neglected in Egypt’s labor historiography. The article argues that the forms of resistance enacted by coerced workers on these worksites co-shaped the emergence of peasant wage labor in subsequent decades. Drawing on the analytical perspectives of sugar history and Global Labor History (GLH), it demonstrates how wage labor took shape on industrial worksites in rural regions—challenging earlier labor histories that treat urban wage labor as the starting point of modern Egypt’s labor history. In doing so, it shows that rural labor strikes predated the conventional periodization of labor strikes and working-class formation in Egypt’s cities during the 1880s–90s. Finally, this global microhistory argues that the materiality and temporality of sugar production, when combined with the resources-demanding and labor-intensive technology of the factories, complicate Egypt’s late nineteenth-century position as a commodity frontier for Europe’s industrial capitalism.
Maiken Skovrider Aaskoven, Jørgen T. Lauridsen, Trine Kjær
Abstract Publicly funded pension systems are facing the challenge of remaining financially sustainable without lowering pensions. Raising the statutory retirement age gradually in line with the increase in life expectancy has been a key measure to solve the problem. The implicit assumption is that the additional years of life are lived in good health, or as a minimum that health status is compatible with work. However, some individuals may not have the ability to work. Furthermore, a uniform retirement age ignores the different exposures to morbidity and mortality risks across social groups. Consequently, it is important to examine whether the health of older individuals will allow them to continue working and whether there is significant heterogeneity in the ability to work. Combining the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with data from the Danish registers enables us to create a composite health index that includes an extensive range of health indicators. Utilising the health capacity to work approach, we estimate the health capacity to work among Danes aged 55 and above. We divide health capacity into physical and mental health. We investigate heterogeneity in health capacity across educational and occupational attainment. Substantial additional work capacity is found for older Danes. Depending on the type of health index applied, the health capacrk varies. There is evidence of a socio-economic gradient in work capacity. Results thereby show that policies that intend to utilise the additional work capacity should consider heterogeneity in health. Highlights We provide new evidence of the health capacity work in Denmark. The combination of survey and register data allow for comprehensive health indices. There is substantial additional health capacity to work. There is variation across health indices. There is variation across educational and occupational attainment.
RUKHSAR SARDAR, SHAKIR ULLAH, SYED ZAIN UL ABIDIN
et al.
BACKGROUND:
Balance issues, which are more prevalent in older persons than in younger people, are one of the obstacles that come with ageing. Falls are a major public health concern because they are a primary cause of death and functional disability in older people. Dual-task training (DTT) have been showed that have satisfying effects on older adults.
OBJECTIVES:
To find the effect of dual task training on balance limitations in geriatric population.
METHODOLOGY:
A total of 66 patients were selected based on the inclusion criteria of both male and female participants, age more than 65 years, past one year fall history and no neurological problem. 61 out of 66 completed the research, with 5 people dropping out of the study. Out of these 61 patients (28 were males and 33 were females with a mean age of 69 years±4.073). The Timed Up and Go Test (TUGT) and the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) scores were checked pre and post exercise application for any improvement in all the 61 patients. Data of 61 participants after a period of 4 weeks was obtained. The data was analysed using SPSS version 22. Wilcoxon signed ranks test was applied to compare baseline TUGT and BBS with follow up score.
RESULTS:
The mean pre TUGT was 16.98 seconds and mean post TUGT was 15.77 seconds and the mean pre BBS was 41 and post BBS was 50 at 95% confidence interval. The results were clinically not significant because the effect size was very small to be noticed, but were statistically significant as was shown p < 0.05.
CONCLUSION:
After comparison of the results of this study with other research studies, it was concluded that though the results were statistically significant, they lacked clinical significance.
KEYWORDS:
Core Stability, Geriatrics, Postural balance, Treatment Effectiveness
Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities, Therapeutics. Psychotherapy
What happens when employers value worker welfare in frictional labor markets? We show this "responsibility" creates an endogenous wedge in the marginal labor cost -- akin to a hiring subsidy -- altering wage and vacancy incentives rather than only changing the surplus split. The wedge is strongest when outside options are weak and separations rare, implying larger wage premia in slack, low-mobility markets. In a wage-posting model with on-the-job search, responsible firms may occupy the high-wage segment even when less productive. In a DMP model, responsible firms commit to higher worker bargaining power, raising the value of unemployment and thereby wages at regular firms.
This paper provides new evidence on spot gig work platforms for unemployed workers searching for occupations with minimal educational or experience requirements in Japan. Using proprietary data from a private online spot work matching platform, Timee, it examines trends in key variables such as the numbers of unemployed users, vacancies, hires, and labor market tightness. The study compares these trends with part-time worker data from the public employment platform, Hello Work. The private platform shows a significant market expansion from December 2019 to December 2023. Applying a novel nonparametric approach, the paper finds greater variability in efficiency and higher elasticity, with elasticity with respect to the number of users fluctuating from below 0.7 to above 1.5, and elasticity with respect to the number of vacancies often exceeding 1.0, which is higher than Hello Work. Lastly, the study highlights less geographical heterogeneity of the spot work compared to Hello Work.
Large language models can generate factually inaccurate content, a problem known as hallucination. Recent works have built upon retrieved-augmented generation to improve factuality through iterative prompting but these methods are limited by the traditional RAG design. To address these challenges, we introduce EWE (Explicit Working Memory), a novel approach that enhances factuality in long-form text generation by integrating a working memory that receives real-time feedback from external resources. The memory is refreshed based on online fact-checking and retrieval feedback, allowing EWE to rectify false claims during the generation process and ensure more accurate and reliable outputs. Our experiments demonstrate that Ewe outperforms strong baselines on four fact-seeking long-form generation datasets, increasing the factuality metric, VeriScore, by 2 to 6 points absolute without sacrificing the helpfulness of the responses. Further analysis reveals that the design of rules for memory updates, configurations of memory units, and the quality of the retrieval datastore are crucial factors for influencing model performance.
Sisca Mayang Phuspa, Umi Cahyantari, Hikmawani Anas
Introduction: The findings of a systematic review indicate that only a quantitative or qualitative approach was used in studies about the anxiety of health professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research that aims to examine the level of anxiety experienced by Indonesian health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the signs and their causes will fill the scientific gap. Methods: A sequential explanatory design was used in this study. In the quantitative phase, the COVID-19 Anxiety Scale instrument was used to perform a survey on 731 healthcare workers, which was then descriptively examined. To further support its findings, 30 informants were involved to in-depth interviews, and qualitative content analysis was performed. Results: According to the poll, 15% of healthcare workers reported having high anxiety, 61% had moderate, 19% had low, and 5% had no anxiety at all. According to a qualitative content analysis, the signs of anxiety included overthinking, psychosomatic complaints, and worry about exposed to and transmit the virus at work. This is a result of managerial issues with managing pandemic, social changes, adjustments in interpersonal connection patterns, an unfriendly society, a large number of health workers who suffer with COVID-19, as well as personal variables. Conclusion: Preventive action for future health crisis situations is to improve systemic physical and non-physical preparedness in healthcare institutions. Psychosocial training programs such as cognitive coping and stress adaptation need to be carried out to improve the mental health condition of health workers so they don't ‘collapse' when dealing crisis situations.
Artem Petryshchev, Sergiy Semyriahyn, Oleksiy Smirnov
et al.
Мета роботи: попередження професійних ризиків та зниження шкідливого впливу на здоров'я працівників промислових димових газів разом із підвищенням екологічної безпеки завдяки математичному моделюванню щодо оптимізації технологічних показників сіркоочищення на металургійних підприємствах.
Метод дослідження: в якості основного методу дослідження використовували регресійний аналіз.
Результати дослідження: на основі промислових даних побудовано багатофакторну математичну модель залежності ступеня сіркоочищення від технологічних параметрів процесу фільтрації димових газів на металургійному підприємстві. Це дає можливість оптимізувати технологічні показники із подальшим регулюванням процесу сіркоочищення щодо підвищення його ефективності. Досягнення зниження забруднення димових газів діоксидом сірки сприяє запобіганню професійних ризиків та зменшенню шкідливого впливу на здоров'я працівників, а також підвищенню рівня екологічної безпеки.
Практична цінність дослідження: на основі промислових даних визначено залежність, що дозволяє регулювати значення ступеня сіркоочищення димових газів при зміні технологічних параметрів фільтрації із встановленням найбільш раціональних показників. Отримані результати можуть бути враховані у налагодженні виробничого процесу як металургійної галузі, так і інших промислових підприємств, наприклад, теплоелектростанцій.
Цінність дослідження: побудовано математичну модель залежності ступеня сіркоочищення від технологічних параметрів процесу фільтрації димових газів в промислових умовах. Отримані результати представлено у вигляді рівняння багатофакторної регресії. Для більшої показовості на основі отриманої залежності побудовано та графічно наведено тривимірні графіки відповідно деяким із розглянутих технологічних параметрів.
Майбутні дослідження: розвиток майбутніх досліджень можливий в напрямку оптимізації побудованої математичної моделі.
Тип статті: розрахунково-практичний та аналітичний.
Federico Cerisola, Franco Mayo, Augusto J. Roncaglia
In this article we introduce a quasiprobability distribution of work that is based on the Wigner function. This construction rests on the idea that the work done on an isolated system can be coherently measured by coupling the system to a quantum measurement apparatus. In this way, a quasiprobability distribution of work can be defined in terms of the Wigner function of the apparatus. This quasidistribution contains the information of the work statistics and also holds a clear operational definition. Moreover, it is shown that the presence of quantum coherence in the energy eigenbasis is related with the appearance of characteristics related to non-classicality in the Wigner function such as negativity and interference fringes. On the other hand, from this quasiprobability distribution it is straightforward to obtain the standard two-point measurement probability distribution of work and also the difference in average energy for initial states with coherences.
Purpose: The aim of this study was to present a model for the impact of e-government’s readiness and trust on quality of services with regard to the mediating role of e-government acceptance from the view point of IT managers and experts of West Azerbaijan agencies.
Methodology: The present study was applied in terms of type and descriptive-correlational in terms of method. The statistical population consisted of 314 IT managers and experts of West Azerbaijan Province agencies. Applying stratified random sampling method and Cochran’s formula, 173 individuals were selected. Data were collected by administering questionnaires and were tested using SMART PLS software as well as structural equation modeling to reach the casual model.
Findings: The results of the study show that the following impacts are positive and significant: e-government readiness on e-government acceptance, e-government trust on e-government acceptance, e-government acceptance on quality of e-services, e-government readiness on quality of e-services, and e-government trust on quality of e-services. In addition, e-government acceptance plays a mediating role in the relation between e-government readiness and trust, on the one hand, and quality of e-services, on the other.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Unnati Akhouri, Sarah Shandera, Gaukhar Yesmurzayeva
An interesting class of physical systems, including those associated with life, demonstrates the ability to hold thermalization at bay and perpetuate states of high free-energy compared to a local environment. In this work, we study quantum systems with no external sources or sinks for energy, heat, work, or entropy, that allow for high free-energy subsystems to form and persist. We initialize systems of qubits in mixed, uncorrelated states and evolve them subject to a conservation law. We find that four qubits make up the minimal system for which these restricted dynamics and initial conditions allow an increase in extractable work for a subsystem. On landscapes of eight co-evolving qubits, interacting in randomly selected subsystems at each step, we demonstrate that restricted connectivity and an inhomogeneous distribution of initial temperatures both lead to landscapes with longer intervals of increasing extractable work for individual qubits. We demonstrate the role of correlations that develop on the landscape in enabling a positive change in extractable work.
José Luis Cuesta Gómez, Sergio Sánchez Fuentes, Santiago Santos Vázquez
et al.
Digital leisure and specifically videogames are increasingly entrenched in all segments of society. Making appropriate use of them implies a challenge for users, families, and professionals. In the present study, the use that people with Autism Spectrum Disorders make of this sort of entertainment is specifically approached, and a series of recommendations are presented that take the characteristics of this population into account. A questionnaire was prepared ad hoc for data-collection purposes and administered to 67 people with ASD of different ages. The results reflect that videogames are a very popular type of game among people with ASD, are perceived as highly attractive and motivating and can help to lower anxiety levels. Among the undesired aspects, the physical problems arising from the use of videogames may be highlighted, and the problems of addiction and isolation that their continual use can provoke. The widespread acceptance of this type of leisure among people with ASD calls for new studies of a qualitative nature for the analysis of the relevant variables.
Psychology, Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities