In de afgelopen jaren groeide het besef dat veel inwoners die een beroep doen op de publieke dienstverlening de nodige stress en zorgen ervaren. Werkloosheid, hoge schulden of problemen in de opvoeding kunnen eraan bijdragen dat het leven van mensen meer vraagt dan zij aankunnen. Het besef dat chronische stress een wissel trekt op het functioneren heeft een groeiende groep publieke dienstverleners geïnspireerd om in de ondersteuning die zij inwoners bieden, (meer) rekening te houden met de doorwerking van de stress op gedrag. Dat een aanhoudend stroom van zorgen verklaart waarom inwoners die hulp nodig hebben te vaak niet in staat blijken om de processtappen te zetten die van hen worden gevraagd: stukken aanleveren, geen afspraken missen, solliciteren, rondkomen van weekgeld, et cetera. Een van de belangrijkste middelen voor professionals om inwoners te motiveren en te ondersteunen de processtappen toch te zetten is het gesprek. Veel professionals (en hun management) hebben de neiging om vooral aandacht te besteden aan de inhoud van die gesprekken. Een verkenning van studies naar de impact van inrichting op ervaren stress leert dat ook de inrichting van een gebouw kan bijdragen aan stress-sensitieve dienstverlening. Op verzoek van de gemeente Utrecht en in nauwe samenwerking met Studio Sociaal Centraal heeft het lectoraat Schulden en Incasso een literatuurverkenning uitgevoerd om de gemeente Utrecht en andere uitvoerders van publieke dienstverlening op weg te helpen bij het inrichten van ontmoetingsruimten voor professionals die uitvoering geven aan onder meer de schuldhulpverlening, re-integratie, Wmo, jeugdhulpverlening en jeugdgezondheidszorg.
The present study focuses on the level of stress male and female teachers perceive when dealing with the most behaviorally challenging student in his or her classroom. To measure stress in Dutch elementary classrooms, a sample was drawn of 582 teachers. First, they rated the most challenging student in their classroom on six different behavioral components: Against the grain, Full of activity/Easily distractible, Needs a lot of attention/Week student, Easily upset, Failuresyndrome/Excessively perfectionist, and Aggressive/Hostile. Teachers then scored perceived stress as a result of this challenging behavior. Two questions concerning gender relations in class rooms will be addressed. Do female and male teachers select the same type of behaviorally challenging students as the most challenging? And: do they perceive the same level of stress? Our data shows that female teachers do indeed report significantly more incidence of challenging behavior, but no evidence is found for differences between stress levels of male and female teachers.
Stress is increasingly being recognized as one of the main factors that is negatively affecting our health, and therefore there is a need to regulate daily stress and prevent long-term stress. This need seems particularly important for adults with mild intellectual disabilities (MID) who have been shown to have more difficulties coping with stress than adults without intellectual disabilities. Hence, the development of music therapy interventions for stress reduction, particularly within populations where needs may be greater, is becoming increasingly important. In order to gain more insight into the practice-based knowledge on how music therapists lower stress levels of their patients with MID during music therapy sessions, we conducted focus group interviews with music therapists working with adults with MID (N = 13) from different countries and clinical institutions in Europe. Results provide an overview of the most-used interventions for stress reduction within and outside of music. Data-analysis resulted in the further specification of therapeutic goals, intervention techniques, the use of musical instruments, and related therapeutic change factors. The main findings indicate that music therapists used little to no receptive (e.g., music listening) interventions for stress reduction, but preferred to use active interventions, which were mainly based on musical improvisation. Results show that three therapy goals for stress relief could be distinguished. The goal of “synchronizing” can be seen as a sub goal because it often precedes working on the other two goals of “tension release” or “direct relaxation,” which can also be seen as two ways of reaching stress reduction in adults with MID through music therapy interventions. Furthermore, the tempo and the dynamics of the music are considered as the most important musical components to reduce stress in adults with MID. Practical implications for stress-reducing music therapy interventions for adults with MID are discussed as well as recommendations for future research.
Recycling of plastics plays an important role to reach a climate neutral industry. To come to a sustainable circular use of materials, it is important that recycled plastics can be used for comparable (or ugraded) applications as their original use. QuinLyte innovated a material that can reach this goal. SmartAgain® is a material that is obtained by recycling of high-barrier multilayer films and which maintains its properties after mechanical recycling. It opens the door for many applications, of which the production of a scoliosis brace is a typical example from the medical field. Scoliosis is a sideways curvature of the spine and wearing an orthopedic brace is the common non-invasive treatment to reduce the likelihood of spinal fusion surgery later. The traditional way to make such brace is inaccurate, messy, time- and money-consuming. Because of its nearly unlimited design freedom, 3D FDM-printing is regarded as the ultimate sustainable technique for producing such brace. From a materials point of view, SmartAgain® has the good fit with the mechanical property requirements of scoliosis braces. However, its fast crystallization rate often plays against the FDM-printing process, for example can cause poor layer-layer adhesion. Only when this problem is solved, a reliable brace which is strong, tough, and light weight could be printed via FDM-printing. Zuyd University of Applied Science has, in close collaboration with Maastricht University, built thorough knowledge on tuning crystallization kinetics with the temperature development during printing, resulting in printed products with improved layer-layer adhesion. Because of this knowledge and experience on developing materials for 3D printing, QuinLyte contacted Zuyd to develop a strategy for printing a wearable scoliosis brace of SmartAgain®. In the future a range of other tailor-made products can be envisioned. Thus, the project is in line with the GoChem-themes: raw materials from recycling, 3D printing and upcycling.
Currently, many novel innovative materials and manufacturing methods are developed in order to help businesses for improving their performance, developing new products, and also implement more sustainability into their current processes. For this purpose, additive manufacturing (AM) technology has been very successful in the fabrication of complex shape products, that cannot be manufactured by conventional approaches, and also using novel high-performance materials with more sustainable aspects. The application of bioplastics and biopolymers is growing fast in the 3D printing industry. Since they are good alternatives to petrochemical products that have negative impacts on environments, therefore, many research studies have been exploring and developing new biopolymers and 3D printing techniques for the fabrication of fully biobased products. In particular, 3D printing of smart biopolymers has attracted much attention due to the specific functionalities of the fabricated products. They have a unique ability to recover their original shape from a significant plastic deformation when a particular stimulus, like temperature, is applied. Therefore, the application of smart biopolymers in the 3D printing process gives an additional dimension (time) to this technology, called four-dimensional (4D) printing, and it highlights the promise for further development of 4D printing in the design and fabrication of smart structures and products. This performance in combination with specific complex designs, such as sandwich structures, allows the production of for example impact-resistant, stress-absorber panels, lightweight products for sporting goods, automotive, or many other applications. In this study, an experimental approach will be applied to fabricate a suitable biopolymer with a shape memory behavior and also investigate the impact of design and operational parameters on the functionality of 4D printed sandwich structures, especially, stress absorption rate and shape recovery behavior.
Worldwide, coral reefs are rapidly declining due to increased sea water temperatures and other environmental stresses (Figure 1). To counter the extinction of major coral reef building species on the island of Bonaire, the non-profit organization Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire is restoring degraded reef sites using corals that are grown in local nurseries. In these nurseries, corals are propagated on artificial trees using fragmentation. After 6-8 months of growth in the nursery, the corals are transplanted to degraded reef sites around the island. Over the years more than 21.000 corals have been outplanted to reef restoration sites in this way. These corals show high survivorship under natural reef conditions but remain under threat by environmental disturbances, such as increased water temperatures, diseases, and competition with macroalgae. A promising intervention to increase reef persistence and resilience is to manipulate the coral-associated microbiome. At present, the composition of the microbiome in nursery-reared and outplanted corals on Bonaire is unknown. The aim of the current project is to identify and isolate naturally occurring beneficial bacteria that may stimulate the resilience of these corals. Our key objectives are: 1) to assess the presence of functionally beneficial bacteria in corals in nursery and restoration sites on Bonaire using metagenomic screening. 2) to design culture strategies to isolate these functionally beneficial bacteria. In the future, a selection of these beneficial bacteria can be applied to the corals to increase their resilience against environmental disturbances.
