September 22, 2022
For their outstanding science communication, Carsten Watzl from the Leibniz Institute for Labour Research at TU Dortmund University (IfADo) and Stefan Schwark from the German Professional Association for Nursing Professions Nordwest e.V. won the BdKom Award in the category “Smart Budget” from the German Association of Communicators with their format “Watzl Weekly”.
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September 12, 2022
At this year’s German Rheumatology Congress, Silvia Capellino and her team were awarded the Rudolph Schoen Award of the Foundation of the German Society for Rheumatology for their research on the neurotransmitter dopamine and its role in rheumatoid arthritis. The Rudolf Schoen Award is awarded every year by the German Society for Rheumatology to young scientists in the field of rheumatism research.
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September 1, 2022
Carsten Watzl from IfADo and Stefan Schwark from the German Professional Association for Nursing Professions DBfK Nordwest e. V. were nominated for the BdKom Award (award for outstanding communication) with the project “Watzl Weekly went viral – video updates on vaccinations @ social media”. They are among the three finalists in the category for the best smart budget communication. Today the projects were presented to the jury and at the end of September the winners will be announced at the Communication Congress.
We are keeping our fingers crossed for you!
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August 29, 2022
In everyday working life, people are often interrupted in their tasks. After the phone has rung, for example, it is difficult to concentrate on the original task again. The selection of working memory content is impaired after an interruption. Observations show that the performance deficit after such task interruptions is often bigger in older people. With the help of EEG evaluations, researchers from the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors in Dortmund (IfADo) have studied attentional selection during the resumption of primary tasks in younger and older persons in more detail.
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August 23, 2022
Women make up almost 50% of the workforce in the labor market. However, it is noteworthy that the labor force of women is not evenly distributed across all occupational groups. Certain professions and positions are still strongly gendered, especially STEM professions. The gender gap in STEM fields can already be observed in school, increasing at university and culminating during later careers. Moreover, structural factors and gender stereotypes are most significant reasons for the gender gap in STEM.
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August 22, 2022
Cancer is the third most common cause of death in people with spinal cord injury (SCI), with bladder cancer being the second most common cancer after lung cancer. It is not uncommon for bladder cancer in SCI patients to be discovered only as an advanced variant, muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), which is a very aggressive form. In these cases, only a radical cystectomy, the removal of the urinary bladder including the lymph nodes in the pelvic cavity, offers a chance of cure. Since the surgery of SCI patients with bladder cancer is associated with an increased risk, a team of researchers, including Prof. Dr. Klaus Golka from the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors in Dortmund (IfADo), has compiled a list of recommendations for action to minimise the risk.
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August 15, 2022
Research with stem cells is becoming increasingly important, because stem cells can develop into any body cell – skin cells, nerve cells or organ cells such as liver cells, the so-called hepatocytes. Stem cells can therefore be used, for example, in the therapy of organ damage or as an alternative to animal experiments. However, there are still major differences between hepatocytes obtained from a liver and those obtained from stem cells. Researchers at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environments and Human Factors in Dortmund (IfADo) have successfully identified an important reason for this difference, so that the two cell variants can be more similar in the future.
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August 4, 2022
At the 13th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics and its Affiliated Conferences in New York, USA, Georgios Athanassiou from the Ergonomics Department won the Best Paper Award for the paper on “A micro-moment recommendation framework in industrial environments” together with Michail Maniadakis and Iraklis Varlamis. Micro-moments are behavioural points in time and indicate in real time the current state of the users in order to derive current and future needs and to send appropriate recommendations for corrective or preventive actions.
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August 1, 2022
Acetaldehyde occurs naturally in many foods and is also used as a flavouring substance due to its fruity aroma. The Senate Commission on the Food Safety (German SKLM) of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft-DFG) has reviewed the current data situation for assessing the health risk of the use of acetaldehyde as a flavouring substance. In view of numerous data gaps that need to be closed for a complete risk assessment and the resulting uncertainties, the commission concludes that there are doubts about the safety of acetaldehyde as a flavouring substance. In the opinion of the SKLM, the deliberate addition of acetaldehyde as a flavouring substance should therefore be re-evaluated for reasons of precautionary consumer protection.
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July 27, 2022
Modern living and working environments are increasingly characterised by the simultaneous execution of locomotion and sensory – mostly visual – processing. Also, many job profiles require the simultaneous processing of visual information while walking. For example, a worker in warehouse logistics has to go to the right aisle to pick up a package, while visual information about the next order is already presented to him via data glasses. Researchers at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environments and Human Factors in Dortmund (IfADo) have studied the interaction of human locomotion with increasing movement complexity and visual processing in more detail using EEG recordings.
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