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Risk and Causative Factors of Psychological Harm Among Construction Workers: A Systematic Review
No full textBACKGROUND: The construction industry, known for its high-risk environment, increasingly acknowledges the psychological risks to workers. Despite well-documented physical hazards, mental health challenges within this workforce have garnered attention. This systematic review provides a scholarly synthesis of literature on psychological risks and their causative factors affecting construction workers, adhering to PRISMA protocols. METHODS: An exhaustive literature search was conducted across PubMed, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar using relevant keywords. Rigorous screening of selected studies focused on the psychological aspects of construction work, with systematic data extraction and analysis. FINDINGS: From 1992 to 2022, 68 studies met inclusion criteria, identifying key psychological harm factors: job insecurity, long working hours, high demands, poor work-life balance, and workplace bullying. A lack of mental health support and awareness in the sector was noted, with a significant correlation between these factors and increased stress, anxiety, and depression levels among workers. CONCLUSIONS: The review highlights the urgent need for industry recognition of psychological hazards and the relationship between work conditions and mental health issues. It calls for supportive policies, awareness programs, and counseling services, with a suggestion for future longitudinal research on the long-term impacts and intervention efficacy. APPLICATION TO PRACTICE: This study provides an overview of psychological risks in the construction sector from 1994 to 2022, aiming to identify causative factors for mental health issues. It seeks to pave the way for targeted interventions and policy changes to improve mental health outcomes in the industry.</p
Advances in nanoparticle-enhanced paper sensor for detecting toxic metals in water
No full textToxic metals in water pose a serious threat to public health and the environment, especially in regions with limited access to advanced laboratory infrastructure. Traditional methods for detecting toxic metals, such as atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), are accurate but expensive, complex, and unsuitable for on-site use. In contrast, paper-based analytical devices (PADs) offer a low-cost, and user-friendly alternative, especially in resource-limited areas. Recent advancements have significantly improved PAD performance, especially through the integration of nanoparticles and the use of enhanced colorimetric and electrochemical detection methods. These improvements have enabled faster, more sensitive detection while maintaining simplicity and field readiness. This review explores key advancements in PAD technology from 2015 to 2025 including advances in sensitivity, nanoparticle functionalization, and smartphone-based readouts. Unlike previous reviews, this study presents a comparative analysis of PAD detection mechanisms, evaluates commercialization and regulatory challenges, and explores emerging trends such as smartphone integration and microextraction techniques. By addressing these aspects, this review highlights key advancements and optimization strategies to enhance the stability, selectivity, and practical implementation of PADs for water quality monitoring.</p
In the Mood: Research Project Report
No full textLed by the research of the Digital Ethnography Research Center Co-Director and Media and Communication Professor Anette Markham – in 4 cities across 3 countries, we hosted place-based workshops that asked the question: “What is the mood of the city, especially in a time of post-COVID recovery?”We saw this as an experiment to build methods for citizen social science, where researchers and citizens playfully co-created visual impressions of the ‘moods’ of their cities.We designed workshops that focused on mindful interaction techniques, where participants translated tactic experience into discrete units of cultural information to create moodboards.Moodboarding became a method for thinking about datafication in smart cities, and identified what often gets overlooked – the sensory texture of the lived experience.Moodmapping demonstrates that mood matters, and reflects much more depth than can be attained through massive data collection and automated analysis.Together, we’re tackling real-world, urban challenges and seeking innovations that improve liveability, connection, and community resilience; and ultimately evolve spaces into places.</p
Construction Packaging Waste Management: A case study of LDPE packaging waste in Victoria
No full textLow-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) is widely used in the construction industry for packaging, protecting materials, and facilitating their handling and transportation. However, its use typically follows a linear ‘take-make-dispose’ model that results in significant environmental impacts. Properly managing this waste stream is essential, as it can reduce the environmental impacts of construction activities. One key step is ensuring LDPE remains within the economy through effective End of Life (EoL) management to support a Circular Economy (CE).
This study employed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions associated with three alternative EoL management scenarios for LDPE used as packaging for construction materials—waste-to-energy, mechanical recycling and chemical recycling—compared to the business-as-usual practice of disposal in landfill.
Mechanical recycling, with total GHG emissions of 6.10 kgCO2-e/kg, emerged as the most favourable option, followed by chemical recycling at 7.46 kgCO2-e/kg. Considering the offset that can be achieved by the avoided virgin polymer production in these scenarios, they present significant advantages compared to disposal in landfill. The suitability of these two pathways, however, depends on waste characteristics, with factors such as contamination, mixing with other waste, and the need for washing and sorting affecting both the choice of pathway and overall emissions. The waste-to-energy scenario resulted in the highest GHG emissions, particularly as the ongoing decarbonisation of national electricity grids diminishes the credit that would otherwise have been attributed to avoided electricity generation. Additionally, among all activities within the life cycle, the production of LDPE packaging from virgin polymer accounted for over 50% of the total GHG emissions across all scenarios, highlighting the significance of this stage.
The findings provide valuable recommendations for practitioners and policymakers in developing best practices for the life cycle management of LDPE packaging in construction, ultimately contributing to a CE and reduced GHG emissions.</p
Out of sight, out of focus: mitigating country-of-origin effects on fashion consumers’ donation behaviour
No full textPurposeThis study investigates how actual donations towards social causes within fashion supply chains can be increased in the face of negative country-of-origin effects.Design/methodology/approachLiterature reports a lack of sustained consumer support for social causes within fashion supply chains. Driven by perceived psychological distance between the manufacturer and the fashion consumer, negative country-of-origin effects have an impact on donation behaviour. Using two online experiments, this study shows that including a garment worker’s image in swing tags mitigates negative country-of-origin effects on actual donations.FindingsFashion consumers’ actual donations towards worker rights increased with the presence of a garment worker’s image. In the higher psychological distance condition, exposure to the image reduced negative country-of-origin effects, increasing actual donations. This increase in actual donations is driven by pleasure-seeking, thus indicating that consumer support for social causes within fashion supply chains is underlined by hedonism.Originality/valueThis study focuses on a visual cue-based mechanism of promoting actual donations towards social causes and the role of pleasure-seeking in this process – two previously under-explored areas in the fashion marketing literature. The use of an incentive-compatible measure that required participants to donate real money allows the demonstration of actual donation behaviour, providing robust evidence of the impact of visual cues and their potential to be applied in the real-world.</p
Corporate Governance in a Crypto-World
No full textThis paper explores the nature of governance both within and by blockchains and the economies they support. There is a widespread assumption that the proper governance model for these economies is political. In this paper, I make an alternative claim, namely that a more accurate model for blockchain governance is as a species of corporate governance. Political and corporate governance are similar, but they solve different problems with different incentives. Political governance, at its base, seeks to create legitimacy for coercive acts. Corporate governance is about solving agency problems with voluntary agreement. I explain why crypto governance is more like the latter, and in so doing draw out some of the lessons of the theory of modern corporate governance that might then usefully apply to the design of blockchain governance mechanisms.</p
Book review: Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior By Olga Touloumi
No full textOlga Touloumi’s Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior is a compelling exploration of how architecture and interior design shape global governance’s operations, identities, and ideologies. The headquarters of the United Nations (UN) was commissioned post-World War II, when architects, diplomats, and political leaders believed that the design of assembly spaces could foster a new model of international cooperation. Assembly by Design presents a nuanced critique of the UN’s architecture as a physical space and a site of ideological, political, and cultural negotiation. In her absorbing and deeply researched book, Touloumi focuses on the interiors of the United Nations Headquarters in New York as physical spaces that intersect with the abstract principles of diplomacy, cooperation, and global order. Touloumi introduces how “global interiors” are political sites of power with under examined dual roles as both spaces of governance and communicative tools.</p
Aerial Imaging-Based Soiling Detection System for Solar Photovoltaic Panel Cleanliness Inspection
No full textUnmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) integrated with lightweight visual cameras hold significant promise in renewable energy asset inspection and monitoring. This study presents an AI-assisted soiling detection methodology for inspecting solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, using UAV-captured RGB images. The proposed scheme introduces an autonomous end-to-end soiling detection model for common types of soiling in solar panel installations, including bird droppings and dust. Detecting soiling, particularly bird droppings, is critical due to their pronounced negative impact on power generation, primarily through hotspot formation and their resistance to natural cleaning processes such as rain. A dataset containing aerial RGB images of PV panels with dust and bird droppings is collected as a prerequisite. This study addresses the unique challenges posed by the small size and indistinct features of bird droppings in aerial imagery in contrast to relatively large-sized dust regions. To overcome these challenges, we developed a custom model, named SDS-YOLO (Soiling Detection System YOLO), which features a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) and two dedicated detection heads optimized for dust and bird droppings. The SDS-YOLO model significantly improves detection accuracy for bird droppings while maintaining robust performance for the dust class, compared with YOLOv5, YOLOv8, and YOLOv11. With the integration of CBAM, we achieved a substantial 40.2% increase in mean Average Precision (mAP50) and a 26.6% improvement in F1 score for bird droppings. Dust detection metrics also benefited from this attention-based refinement. These results underscore the CBAM’s role in improving feature extraction and reducing false positives, particularly for challenging soiling types. Additionally, the SDS-YOLO parameter count is reduced by 24%, thus enhancing its suitability for edge computing applications.</p
Efficacy of non-surgical, non-pharmacological treatments for congenital muscular torticollis: a systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textBackgroundCongenital Muscular Torticollis (CMT) is the third most common musculoskeletal condition in infancy, and if untreated can lead to significant disability. While a range of conservative treatments are commonly used in the management of CMT, an understanding of their efficacy and safety is limited. This systematic review and meta-analysis, without language or discipline restriction, was conducted to address this knowledge gap.MethodsElectronic searches of CENTRAL, PubMed, 22 other electronic databases, three trials registers and Google Scholar, were conducted for randomised controlled trials, which examined any non-surgical, non-pharmacological interventions, including but not limited to manual treatments, movement therapy, acupuncture, adjunctive therapies and physical support, in children aged 0 to 5 years with CMT. Two reviewers independently assessed the risk of bias of the included studies using the Cochrane Risk of bias 1 tool, rated their certainty of evidence using grading of recommendations assessment, development and evaluation (GRADE) framework, and performed random-effects meta-analyses.ResultsOne hundred studies (80 from China) involving 8125 participants published between 1990 and 2023 were included. Adding manual therapy to an active control resulted in short-term improvements in passive cervical rotation (odds ratio (OR) 9.79, 95%CI 4.26,22.50), passive cervical lateroflexion (OR 2.66, 95%CI 1.17,6.04), active cervical rotation (OR 3.94, 95%CI 1.08,14.35), symmetric head posture (OR 4.55, 95%CI 2.57,8.05), sternocleidomastoid tumour thickness (mean difference (MD) -2.12 mm, 95%CI -2.98,-1.26) and development of symmetrical movement (standardised MD -0.70, 95%CI -0.95,-0.45). The addition of an electrophysical agent to an active control reduced sternocleidomastoid tumour thickness (MD -2.03 mm, 95%CI -2.67,-1.39) and optimised Tuina reduced tumour thickness more than traditional Tuina (MD -1.20 mm, 95%CI -1.80,-0.59). Adverse events were uncommon but poorly reported, with 71 (71%) of studies providing no data. Study heterogeneity limited pooling of data for meta-analysis, and there was very low to low certainty evidence for all results, due to high risk of bias, small sample sizes and study heterogeneity.ConclusionsThis review found that non-surgical, non-pharmacological treatments may be effective for CMT, but the certainty of evidence is very low to low. These findings are important in informing clinical guidelines and management for CMT and highlight an urgent need for large definitive trials that address the limitations of current studies.</p
PRF paper data
No full textThis data repository is prepared for the PRF paper.Copyright © 2025 Junhong Wu, Daniel Lester, Michael Trefry, Guy Metcalfe.</p