The University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland (German: Fachhochschule Ostschweiz, FHO) is a governing body of the four Universities of Applied Science in Eastern Switzerland. They are located in St. Gallen, Rapperswil, Chur and Buchs..
On February 6, 2023, two significant seismic events with moment magnitudes (Mw) of 7.8 and 7.5 struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, centered near Pazarcık and Elbistan in KahramanmarasProvince. These earthquakes affected over 15 million people and severely damaged reinforced concrete (RC) buildings across ten major cities, including Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, and Gaziantep, resulting in over 817,000 residential units either collapsed or heavily damaged. This study evaluates the seismic vulnerabilities highlighted by these earthquakes, focusing on structural deficiencies, such as inadequate shear reinforcement, poor beam-column joint detailing, insufficient confinement, and substandard construction practices. Additionally, geotechnical issues, particularly liquefaction and differential settlement, along with architectural irregularities, such as soft stories and short columns, significantly exacerbated structural failures. This research identifies critical gaps in construction code enforcement, professional training, and regulatory oversight, emphasizing the urgent need for enhanced seismic vulnerability assessments and more rigorous regulatory frameworks.
The coordination of a large number of flexibility providing units across various grid layers requires innovative control concepts. This is needed, e.g., to allow active distribution systems to provide ancillary services for the transmission system. A cascaded control structure based on Online Feedback Optimization (OFO) can be used to meet flexibility requests at the point of common coupling by tracking an active power set point at the point of common coupling. This paper investigates the practical influence of the parameterization of the individual controllers on the performance of the hierarchical flexibility provision in three case studies. One case study includes a two-level controller cascade acting on one medium and two low voltage grids, and the other one includes a three-level cascade acting on low to high voltage levels. The results show that the behavior of one controller is highly dependent on the choice of control parameters of the other controllers in the cascade. Additionally, the choice of parametrization has a significant impact on the accuracy and speed of flexibility provision. A third case study investigates the effects of model mismatch and measurement noise on the appropriate selection of parameters. Overall, careful tuning enables the efficient vertical coordination of flexibility providing units with a cascaded structure based on OFO.
Bodily Distress Disorder (BDD) is a newly introduced diagnosis in the International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision (ICD-11) that aims to capture the interplay between somatic symptoms and psychological distress. Existing diagnostic tools based on the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and the ICD-10 do not fully encompass BDD as defined in ICD-11, highlighting the need for a psychometrically robust assessment tool. To address this issue, the present study examines the psychometric properties of the newly constructed Bodily Distress Disorder Scale (BoDI) in continuously trauma exposed individuals.Data were collected from 3,000 Israeli general population participants under conditions of collective trauma. The validation of the 10-item BoDI included factor analysis to test the BoDI’s factor structure. In addition, tests of internal consistency, convergent, and discriminant validity were conducted to assess the psychometric properties of the scale. A two-factor structure was identified and showed excellent fit. The two factors - Persistent Preoccupation (cognitive-affective component) and Medical Reassurance-Seeking (behavioral component) showed adequate internal consistency. The BoDI exhibited high convergent validity with established measures of somatic symptoms and good discriminant validity, showing moderate correlations with measures of depression, anxiety, and adjustment disorder, and weaker associations with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Complex PTSD.These findings provide initial support for the BoDI as a psychometric tool for assessing BDD. While the findings highlight the potential of the BoDI in trauma-exposed general populations, its practical application in general populations with no collective trauma in the background remains to be explored. The present results provide a valuable foundation for future studies to evaluate its real-world utility in guiding assessment and intervention.
Mental health impacts during the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of real-time assessment methods to capture population-level changes (e.g., longitudinal changes in quality of life). This dataset contains questionnaire responses collected with the Corona Health app, a multilingual mHealth app available on Android and iOS platforms. The dataset includes baseline from 2,704 participants (i.e., adults aged 18 years and older, living in Germany) and 11,541 repeated ecological momentary assessment (EMA) responses, providing longitudinal mental health data throughout various phases during the pandemic period (i.e., data collected between July, 2020 and January, 2025). The questionnaires assessed domains such as quality of life, psychological well-being, coping mechanisms, and pandemic-related concerns. In addition to questionnaire responses, the dataset includes sensor data such as GPS location information and app usage statistics collected with participant consent. The described dataset enables researchers to examine mental health trajectories during and after COVID-19, analyze relationships between psychological factors and pandemic experiences, and investigate patterns in longitudinal mental health data.
Loneliness is associated with premature mortality risk. Less is known about the mechanisms that may explain this association. Given its consequential health associations and relation to loneliness, purpose in life may be one such mechanism. In a prospective rotating split-sample design from 2008-2010 to 2012-2014 with 11 years of mortality status follow-up, we tested purpose in life as an indirect pathway between loneliness and future risk of death. Participants were from the Health and Retirement Study in the United States (N = 8351; M[SD] = 67.9 [9.19] years; range: 50-101; 60 % female; n = 1191 deceased). Purpose in life explained an estimated 88 % of the association between loneliness and mortality risk, with the majority of the mediated association appearing to reflect changes in purpose in life over time. These effects were independent of loneliness change during follow-up and initial levels of purpose in life. This indirect path was robust to sensitivity analyses, and further adjustment for conceptually similar constructs, such as depression, social isolation, and neuroticism. A supplemental model that tested purpose in life as the antecedent and loneliness as the indirect pathway indicated substantially smaller effects. Much of loneliness-mortality relation operated through purpose in life. Purpose in life appears to be a critical factor in the context of loneliness. It may prove fruitful to pay particular attention to the individual, community, and broader societal sources of purpose in life when looking to ameliorate the effect of loneliness on health.
