Loving-kindness and compassion meditations in the workplace: A meta-analysis and future prospects.

Loving-kindness and compassion meditation (LKCM) have been well applied among employees to improve their health and well-being. Existing studies on LKCM have also provided supportive evidence of its benefits and effectiveness under organizational contexts. The current meta-analytical study aimed to systematically summarise the effects of LKCM in the workplace and to outline directions for future research and practice. Among 327 empirical studies on LKCM published until March 2022, 21 trials focussed on employees and provided sufficient information, which were included in the following meta-analysis. The results showed that LKCM benefited eight categories of workplace outcomes. Specifically, LKCM effectively decreased employees' burnout (g = 0.395, k = 10) and stress (g = 0.544, k = 10) and facilitated their mindfulness (g = 0.558, k = 14), self-compassion (g = 0.646, k = 12), personal mental health (g = 0.308, k = 13), job attitudes (g = 0.283, k = 4), interpersonal relationships (g = 0.381, k = 12), and psychological resources (g = 0.406, k = 6). The results of moderation analyses further indicated that the participants' job type, gender, and the focus of LKCM might differentially fluctuate the magnitude of LKCM effects. To advance research and best practice, we finally pointed out several issues that deserve attention, such as long-term effects, underlying mechanisms, potential moderators, and outcomes or influential factors at the organizational level.

Meditation Quality Matters: Effects of Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditations on Subjective Well-being are Associated with Meditation Quality.

Loving-kindness and compassion meditations (LKCM) are considered a promising practice for increasing long-term well-being. While previous studies have mainly focused on meditation practice quantity, the current study provides an initial exploration of the quality of meditation during multiweek LKCM training. Data were collected through offline (Study 1; N = 41) and online (Study 2; N = 243) LKCM interventions. Quality of meditation was measured using two kinds of difficulties experienced during LKCM each week/unit (i.e., difficulty in concentration and difficulty in generating prosocial attitudes). Subjective well-being (SWB) was assessed by life satisfaction before and after training as well as positive and negative emotions each week/unit. Two studies consistently suggested that meditation quality was significantly associated with changes in SWB. Study 1 even showed that quality had a stronger association with SWB than did meditation quantity. Moreover, both short-term (measured each week/unit) and long-term (measured across the entire training period) associations between the quality of meditation and SWB were significant. Focusing on meditation quality, our findings provide theoretical and methodological pathways for understanding the contribution of meditation practice to LKCM training, which is helpful for guiding future research and best practices. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10902-022-00582-7.

The effects of loving-kindness and compassion meditation on life satisfaction: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Loving-kindness and compassion meditation (LKCM) was a promising intervention for improving life satisfaction, but previous findings have been inconsistent. The current study provides a systematic review and meta-analysis, including 23 empirical studies on LKCM with life satisfaction as an outcome variable. The primary meta-analysis indicated that LKCM significantly enhanced life satisfaction in pre-post design (g = 0.312, k = 15, n = 451), but the significance disappeared in the additional meta-analysis based on randomized controlled trials (g = 0.106, k = 6, n = 404). Moderator analyses found significant effects for type of control (i.e., the effects of LKCM were inferior to active control group, but superior to waitlist condition), but not for other moderators (i.e., participant type, previous meditation experience, specific protocol, components of LKCM, combination with mindfulness mediation, and intervention length). Narrative review identified self-compassion and positive emotions as important mediators. The practice time of LKCM had indirect but not direct association with life satisfaction. The findings supported that LKCM is promising in increasing life satisfaction, but more studies are needed to investigate the effects with more rigorous designs. Future studies should investigate other potential mechanisms and clarify whether LKCM change the reality or the perception of life.

Roles of nitrate recycling ratio in the A2/O - MBBR denitrifying phosphorus removal system for high-efficient wastewater treatment: Performance comparison, nutrient mechanism and potential evaluation.

The long-term effect of nitrate recycling ratios (R = 100%-500%) on the denitrifying phosphorus removal (DPR) characteristics was studied in a novel two-sludge system, which coupled Anaerobic Anoxic Oxic (A2/O) with Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR) for simultaneous nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) removals. During the 220 days' operation, effluent COD (30.87-45.15 mg/L) can meet the discharge standard completely, but N and P removals were significantly affected by the R-value, including CODintra removal efficiency (CODintra-Re: 56.09-85.98%), TN removal (TN-Re: 52.06-80.50%), anaerobic PO43- release (PO43--An: 10.66-29.02 mg/L) and oxic PO43- absorption (PO43--O: 2.22-6.26 mg/L). Meanwhile, N and P displayed close correlation with the ΔPO43-/ΔNO3- ratio of 4.20-4.41 at R = 300%-400%, resulting in the high-efficient anoxic poly-ß-hydroxyalkanoates (PHA) utilization (ΔPHAA: 64.88 mgCOD/gVSS). Based on the stoichiometry methodology, at R of 300%-400%, the percentages of phosphorus accumulation organisms (PAOs) and glycogen accumulating organisms (GAOs) contributed to ΔPHAAn (ΔGlyAn) were 71.7%, 28.3% (61.3%, 38.7%) in the anaerobic stage, respectively, while N denitrification rate (NDRA: 3.91-3.93 mg N/(gVSS·h)) and P uptake rate (PURA: 3.76-3.90 mg P/(gVSS·h)) reached the peak, suggesting superior DPR performance with higher contribution of denitrifying PAOs (DPAOs) (70%) than denitrifying GAOs (DGAOs) (30%) in the anoxic stage. Microbial community analysis showed that Accumulibacter (27.66-30.01%) was more enriched than Competibacter (13.41-14.34%) and was responsible for the improved C, N, P removals and DPR characteristics. For optimizing operation, the combined effect of nitrate recycling ratio with other process parameters especially economic evaluation should be considered.

Elucidating sludge characteristic, substrate transformation and microbial evolution in a two-sludge denitrifying phosphorus removal system under the impact of HRT.

Granule formation has been recognized as a promising biotechnology in denitrifying phosphorus removal (DPR) systems by facilitating phosphorus accumulation organisms (PAOs) especially denitrifying PAOs (DPAOs), and hydraulic selection made this a more difficult task in continuous operation. This study aimed at exploring the microscopic mechanism and putting forward an effective strategy for DPR granulation under the impact of hydraulic retention time (HRT) (12 h, 10 h, 8 h) in a novel Anaerobic Anoxic Oxic - Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (A2/O - MBBR) system. With the reduction of intracellular carbon storage (CODintra) efficiency (88.58%-78.53%), nitrogen (N) (85.45%-79.11%) and phosphorus (P) (96.55%-92.47%) removals both dropped, but it exhibited a growth of anoxic phosphorus uptake rate (PURA) (3.79-5.68 mg P/(gMLVSS·h)). The batch tests associating with substrate transformation of poly-ß-hydroxyalkanoates (PHA), glycogen (Gly) agreed well with the corresponding stoichiometry of phosphorus release rate (PRR) (4.83-7.53 mg P/(gMLVSS·h)), PURA (3.55-5.43 mg P/(gMLVSS·h)), oxic phosphorus uptake rate (PURO) (6.08-6.21 mg P/(gMLVSS·h)), and DPAOs/PAOs ratios (57.17%-89.31%), indicating a shift of microbial community. DPR granules gradually stabilized with low sludge volume index (SVI5/SVI30 ratio = 1.1-1.2), dense and compact structure, higher P content (11.63%), more extracted extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) (111.40-160.31 mg/gMLVSS) as proteins/polysaccharides (PN/PS) ratios (1.70-3.47) increased, leading to better sludge settleability and cell hydrophobicity. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) results showed that PAOs (mainly Cluster I: 20.20%) were the dominant bacteria in the A2/O reactor although a small amount of Defluviicoccus (3.18-3.48%) was responsible for nitrite accumulation, while ammonium-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) (mainly Nitrosomonas: 10.75%) and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) (mainly Nitrospira: 15.06%) were enriched in the MBBR.