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A growing number of studies have demonstrated the efficacy of worksite stress management training for reducing worker psychophysiological arousal and subjective reports of anxiety, depression, and somatic complaints. The role of stress management in the larger context of occupational stress reduction, however, has not been addressed. An application of stress management as one component of an organisational stressor reduction programme is described. Other components in the process which have been completed include the formation of a stress reduction committee and conduct of a stress assessment survey. Future plans include the formulation and implementation of recommendations for reducing organisational stress and repeated evaluations of their efficacy. The purpose is to depict element of the overall process and to report progress to date in this effort.

This study examined whether individuals' coping strategies and their motivations for social media use act as mediators between actual COVID-19-related stress and the perception that social media use can reduce stress.

This study empirically develops and tests a research model with data (N = 503) collected through Amazon Mechanical Turk. A path analysis was used to test the research model.

The path analysis indicated that active coping initiated by individuals under COVID-19-related stress was more likely to be associated with information and social interaction needs, leading the individuals to perceive the use of social media as the cause for stress reduction. The expressive support coping strategy motivated the individuals under stress to seek social interaction, leading individuals to perceive that activities on social media reduced their stress during the pandemic. Emotional venting and avoidance coping strategies significantly impacted escape, social interaction, and entertainment seeking by allowing individuals to get absorbed in social media activities and forget unpleasant thoughts associated with the pandemic.

No previous study has explored the relationship between decisions around the type of coping strategy used and motivations for media usage, which leads to stress reduction. Understanding how stress-induced coping strategies influence social media users' specific motivations and reduce users' stress levels would help communicators understand how users' can encourage individuals to cope with stress by presenting individuals with more effective social media, resulting in stress reduction and improved well-being.

High levels of stress reported at college campuses has led to the need for stress management interventions. College students often do not know how to deal with the increase in stress during college which may lead to ineffective ways to manage stress, such as drugs, alcohol, and under the worst circumstance, suicide. Several universities have implemented stress relieving centers where students can participate in various modalities to relax and reduce symptoms of stress. The purpose of this paper is to compare four stress reduction modalities on the amount of physiologic and perceived stress (PS) reduction in a stress relief center.

Archival information of 5,526 students (2,759 female, 2,767 male) were analyzed. During their time at the relaxation center, these students would participate in one of four relaxation modalities (massage chair, chi machine, rejuvenation lounger, or sitting meditation). Upon entering and exiting the center, PS, systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) were measured. The dependent variables were compared from pre- to post-relaxation with paired tests. Gain scores were calculated for each dependent variable and compared between modalities with an ANOVA and post hoc independent t-tests. The α was set at=0.05 for statistical significance.

Results indicated that all four modalities showed an overall decrease in stress-related symptoms for both men and women (p<0.05). There was no statistical difference in dependent variable gain scores between the relaxation modalities (p>0.05) for men. There was no statistical difference in dependent variable gain scores between the relaxation modalities (p>0.05) for women except for SBP and DBP where the massage chair, chi machine, and sitting meditation all reduced SBP and DBP to a greater degree than the rejuvenation lounger (p<0.05).

The results of this study suggest that the use of these stress reduction modalities (massage chair, chi machine, rejuvenation lounger, or sitting meditation) is effective at transiently reducing physiologic and perceived measures of stress of college students. Universities should recognize the importance of stress relief centers in order to help students manage stress symptoms and effectively manage their daily stress levels.

A career in entrepreneurship is stressful, especially during the start-up phase. Training programs for these nascent entrepreneurs are designed to improve entrepreneurial competencies and, more generally to generate learnings. Although learning outcomes can reduce stress, the conditions under which this can happen are not fully understood. The study looks particularly at the effect of learning, interaction with other participants and gender.

A six-month three-wave longitudinal study of 120 nascent entrepreneurs has been conducted to investigate the before-and-after effects of training on stress reduction. The training is specially designed to develop competencies, share knowledge about business creation and support the development of the project, not to reduce per se stress.

The training has no direct effect on stress levels. However, results indicate that interacting with others has a positive moderating effect on training as stress reduction, just as gender has. Specifically, women reduce their stress through training while men see theirs increasing. The authors conclude that breaking isolation through training is a relevant way to reduce entrepreneurial stress for nascent entrepreneurs.

Training programs offer different ways to deliver the learning content (online, in cohorts, in the continuous entrance, etc.). The findings of this study suggest ensuring that the participants will have opportunities to interact with others as it reduces the stress on nascent entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, the authors cannot demonstrate that this has a long-term effect as our timeframe is limited to six months.

This research investigates the stress-reduction effect of training, which is not a common outcome studied related to training. This highlights the importance of looking at other more distal outcomes as nascent entrepreneurs may seek other peripheral outcomes from training, like seeking a sense of belonging or wanting to break isolation.

The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the relationship between self-reported levels of acute stress, perceived social support and interactions with robot animals in an academic library. The authors hypothesized that (1) participants would report lower stress and higher positive affect after their interaction with a robot support animal and (2) perceived supportiveness of the robot support animal would positively predict the amount of stress reduction the participants reported.

The authors hosted a robot petting zoo in the main library at a mid-sized Midwestern university during finals week. Participants were asked to rate their stress level prior to interacting with the robot pets (T1) and then after their interaction they were asked about their current stress level and the perceived supportiveness of the robot animal (T2). Data were analyzed using paired samples t-tests for the pretest and post-test scores.

The results showed a significant decrease in acute stress between T1 to T2, as well as a significant increase in happiness and relaxation. Participants reported feeling less bored and less tired after their interactions with the robot support animals. The findings also reveal that the degree to which individuals experienced a reduction in stress was influenced by their perceptions of the robot animal's supportiveness. Libraries could consider using robot pet therapy.

This study reveals the benefit of robot support animals to reduce stress and increase happiness of those experiencing acute stress in a library setting. The authors also introduce the concept of socially supportive contact as a type of unidirectional social support.

In this article, a novel hybrid composite patch consisting of unidirectional carbon fiber and glass fiber is considered for repair of the aircraft structure. The purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of hybrid composite patch repair of cracked structure and propose an optimized solution to a designer for selection of the appropriate level of a parameter to ensure effective repair solution.

Elastic properties of the hybrid composites are estimated by micromechanical modeling. Performance of hybrid composite patch repair is evaluated by numerical analysis of stress intensity factor (SIF), shear stress, and peel stress. Design of experiment is used to determine responses for a different combination of design parameters. The second-order mathematical model is suggested for SIF and peel stress. Adequacy of the model is checked by ANOVA and used as a fitness function. Multiobjective optimization is carried out with a genetic algorithm to arrive at the optimal solution.

The hybrid composite patch has maintained equilibrium between the SIF reduction and rise of the peel stress. The repair efficiency and repair durability can be ensured by selection of an optimum value of volume fraction of glass fiber, applied stress, and adhesive thickness.

The composite patch with varying stiffness is realized by hybridization with different volume fraction of fibers. Analysis and identification of optimum parameter to reduce the SIF and peel stress for hybrid composite patch repair are presented in this article.

The maintenance of aircraft structure with lower cost is one of the prime concerns to regulatory authorities. The carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) patches are widely used to repair the cracked structure. The demands and application of CFRP compel its price to increase in the near future. A distinct perspective of repairing the cracked aluminum panel with the hybrid composite patch is presented in this paper. The purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative patch material in the form of a hybrid composite patch which can provide economical repair solution.

The patch hybridization is performed by preparing the hybrid composite from tows of carbon fiber and glass fiber. Rule of hybrid mixture and modified Halpin–Tsai’s equation are used to evaluate the elastic constant. The stress intensity factor and interfacial stresses are determined using finite element analysis. The debonding initiation load is evaluated after testing under mode-I loading condition.

The hybrid composite patch has rendered the adequate performance for reduction of stress intensity in the cracked panel and control of interfacial stresses in the adhesive layer. The repair efficiency and repair durability of the composite patch repair was ensured by incorporation of the hybrid composite patch.

The studies involving patch hybridization for the application of composite patch repair are presently lacking. The influence of the patch stiffness, methodology to prepare the hybrid composite patch and effects of hybridization on the performance of composite patch repair is presented in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, the effects of residual stress and microstructure on the corrosion behaviour of carburised 18CrNiMo7-6 steel in a 3.5% NaCl aqueous solution.

The electrochemical tests were conducted using an electrochemical workstation with a three-electrode system in a 3.5% NaCl aqueous solution, the residual stress of each working face was measured by a high-speed residual stress analyser, and microstructure of different carburised layers were observed scanning electron microscopy. Finally, the effect of carbon content, microstructure and residual stress on the corrosion behaviour of the steel was discussed.

The results showed that the residual compressive stress in the carburised layer initially increased and subsequently decreased with increasing depth of the carburised layer, reaching stability in the matrix layer. The electrochemical tests before and after stress reduction showed that the electrochemical impedance and the electrochemical potential increased with the reduction of residual compressive stress.

The residual compressive stress in the carburised layer initially increases and subsequently decreases with increasing carburised layer depth. The electrochemical impedance and the electrochemical potential increased with the reduction of residual compressive stress. The general relationship between electrochemical potential and residual stress was established.

Mental ill‐health in the workplace is estimated to cost UK employers £6.2b each year in lost working days. This concern to employers and employees alike was recently highlighted by the Health Education Board for Scotland (HEBS) needs assessment study of workplace health promotion, which identified stress as a major issue. A Health and Safety Executive review (1993) of the stress literature proposed the incorporation of stress within the framework of the assessment and control cycle already introduced to minimise physical health and safety risks. This was supported by the HEBS study that identified health and safety as the predominant health‐related culture in Scottish workplaces. It is therefore appropriate to include stress control with other health and safety issues. The Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) had already developed a risk assessment approach, entitled the Organisational Stress Health Audit (OSHA), and the feasibility of this was tested in the pilot study commissioned by HEBS. This paper presents the background to this organisational approach, its feasibility in controlling stress across different types of organisation and future plans for development of the approach. The views presented are those of the researchers and not the commissioning body.

Inverse distance weighted (IDW) functions are utilized to make models of heterogenous materials such as functionally graded materials (FGM) in computer aided design (CAD). However, the use of IDW function based FGM for stress concentration reduction is scarcely available in the literature. The present work aims to analyze and reduce the stress concentration around a circular hole in IDW function-based finite FGM panel under biaxial loading.

Extended finite element method (XFEM) model was prepared using MATLAB to investigate the effect of geometrical and material parameters on the stress concentration factor (SCF). The obtained results of IDW FGM are compared with homogeneous material as well as two different FGMs based on the power-law function.

It was observed that the IDW function based FGM is simple in material modeling, conformal with all domain boundaries and shows lower stress concentration in comparison with the homogeneous material case. While comparing IDW FGM with power-law based FGMs, it was observed that the IDW FGM has least values of stress concentration for low d/W (diameter of the hole to panel width ratio) and is comparable with power-law based FGMs for high d/W.

It can be stated that IDW FGM is highly suitable for stress concentration reduction in finite panels with d/W = 0.5, which can further be intended for obtaining optimum hole and panel designs.