scholarly journals Ergonomic analysis of biomechanical overloading: external coating activity using mortar

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. e51335
Author(s):  
Juliano Prado Stradioto ◽  
Ariel Orlei Michaloski

The economic growth of a country is directly linked to the growth of several sectors, in which the construction sector is prominent. The objective was to investigate by means of ergonomic analysis the external coating activity performed on building façades, due to its high degree of difficulty. The methodological approach was composed by a review of the literature and quantitative research using the OCRA checklist method, highlighting the biomechanical overload risk analysis of the external coating activity in mortar based on International Standard ISO 11228-3: 2009. The data collection took place in construction sites in Brazil in the cities of Ponta Grossa-PR and Porto Alegre-RS applying the mentioned method. The results of demand illustrate the concepts presented in the review, as well as the confirmation of the incidence of pain and lesions in the upper limbs and the repetitiveness in the analyzed activities. The results indicate that: a) the analysis of the chosen activity resulted in a high level of risk applying the immediate intervention, with improvements; b) proof by calculating the risk of biomechanical overload to implement improvements in the company; c) evidence that the improvements resulted in a reduction of ergonomic risks by more than 50%, with improvement in posture and strength requirements. In turn, the relevance of this work is highlighted, as it enables the development of public and private policies in the area of ergonomics with the purpose of developing the sector. In the end, the work opens up possibilities for the continuity of the research on the addressed topic.  

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. e14053
Author(s):  
Neireana Florencio Vieira ◽  
Denismar Alves Nogueira ◽  
Fábio De Souza Terra

Objetivo: avaliar o estresse entre os enfermeiros de instituições hospitalares públicas e privadas. Método: pesquisa descritiva, analítica, transversal e quantitativa. Desenvolvida com 100 enfermeiros de quatro hospitais de um município do sul de Minas Gerais. Para a coleta de dados foi utilizado um questionário contendo variáveis sóciodemográficas e a Escala Bianchi de Stress. Foram realizados o testes Qui-quadrado de Person ou Exato de Fisher, com determinação de Alfa de Cronbach e odds ratio das variáveis independentes com o estresse. Projeto aprovado pelo comitê de ética da insituição, CAAE: 27795814.7.0000.5142. Resultados: encontrou-se um nível de estresse médio entre os enfermeiros, destacando nível alto em três domínios da escala: as atividades relacionadas ao funcionamento da unidade, administração de pessoal e coordenação das atividades da unidade. Conclusão: o estresse está presente entre os enfermeiros, principalmente em funções relacionadas às atividades administrativas da unidade em que atuam.ABSTRACT: Objective: to evaluate the stress among nurses working in public and private hospitals. Method: descriptive, analytical, transversal and quantitative research, with 100 nurses from four hospitals in a city in the south of Minas Gerais, Brazil. For data collection, a questionnaire containing socio-demographic variables and the Bianchi Stress scale were used. The Chi-square test of Person or Fisher’s Exact were conducted, determining Cronbach’s Alpha and odds ratio for independent variables associated with stress. Research protocol approved by Research Ethics Committee, CAAE: 27795814.7.0000.5142. Results: a mean level of stress was found among nurses, highlighting a high level in three areas of the scale: activities related to unit functioning, personnel administration and coordination of unit activities. Conclusion: stress is present among nurses, especially in functions related to the administrative activities of the unit that express their functioning.RESUMEN: Objetivo: evaluar el estrés entre los enfermeros de instituciones hospitalarias públicas y privadas. Método: investigación descriptiva, analítica, transversal y cuantitativa, desarrollada con 100 enfermeros de cuatro hospitales de un municipio del sur de Minas Gerais, Brasil. Para la recolección de datos se utilizó un cuestionario que contenía variables sociodemográficas y la escala Bianchi de Stress. Se realizaron las pruebas Qui-cuadrado de Person o Exacto de Fisher, con determinación del Alfa de Cronbach y del odds ratio de las variables independientes con el estrés. Proyeto aprobado por el comité de ética, CAAE: 27795814.7.0000.5142. Resultados: se encontró un nivel de estrés medio entre los enfermeros, destacando un estrés alto en tres dominios de la escala: las actividades relacionadas al funcionamiento de la unidad, administración de personal y coordinación de las actividades de la unidad. Conclusión: el estrés está presente entre los enfermeros, principalmente en funciones relacionadas con las actividades administrativas de la unidad que expresan su funcionamiento. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/reuerj.2017.14053


2020 ◽  
pp. 016001762093417
Author(s):  
José Miguel Giner-Pérez ◽  
María Jesús Santa-María

The food industry is the most important industrial activity in Spain in terms of production and employment; its spatial concentration is considerable. However, there is a lack of quantitative research on its agglomerations, especially at high levels of spatial and sectorial disaggregation. With the study presented, this deficit is addressed, using systematic and quantitative methods to examine the spatial agglomeration in the subsectors that the food industry is specialized. Spanish food industry clusters have been identified by applying a top-down quantitative methodological approach—the cluster index—and following a high level of territorial and sectorial disaggregation. Clusters were identified at the three- and four-digit sectorial disaggregation. The number of four-digit-level relevant clusters was higher than three-digit disaggregation. This evidence was verified using nonparametric statistical tests (Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Furthermore, the analysis of four significant three-digit subsectors allows us to advance two alternative explanations for the divergent results at the different levels of the analysis (three digits vs. four digits). This partly explains the potential competitiveness of Spain in the food industry and shows the possibility of establishing policies for the development of clusters.


Author(s):  
Mudiono ◽  
Ika Nurul Qamari ◽  
Heru Kurnianto Tjahjono

A family business is a type of entrepreneurship and an important feature of economic development and transformation that provides jobs and riches to family members and those involved in the business. As a result, the founders and successors will make every effort to ensure the family business's long-term viability. This study aims to examine work-life enrichment and employee turnover intentions. The method utilized was systematic review, which entailed searching the literature using a Google Scholar database. From 2011 to 2021, a literature search was done—findings from a study on work-life enrichment. There were 19 publications with quantitative research and three articles with qualitative research. Several studies have been conducted have shown that when the work environment is good, the organization pays more attention to the family, so that employees show a high level of work-life enrichment. A rich work life indicates that employees have a high degree of trust in their organization. Trust works as a managerial or organizational resource that drives the intention to leave the organization.


Author(s):  
Georgi Derluguian

The author develops ideas about the origin of social inequality during the evolution of human societies and reflects on the possibilities of its overcoming. What makes human beings different from other primates is a high level of egalitarianism and altruism, which contributed to more successful adaptability of human collectives at early stages of the development of society. The transition to agriculture, coupled with substantially increasing population density, was marked by the emergence and institutionalisation of social inequality based on the inequality of tangible assets and symbolic wealth. Then, new institutions of warfare came into existence, and they were aimed at conquering and enslaving the neighbours engaged in productive labour. While exercising control over nature, people also established and strengthened their power over other people. Chiefdom as a new type of polity came into being. Elementary forms of power (political, economic and ideological) served as a basis for the formation of early states. The societies in those states were characterised by social inequality and cruelties, including slavery, mass violence and numerous victims. Nowadays, the old elementary forms of power that are inherent in personalistic chiefdom are still functioning along with modern institutions of public and private bureaucracy. This constitutes the key contradiction of our time, which is the juxtaposition of individual despotic power and public infrastructural one. However, society is evolving towards an ever more efficient combination of social initiatives with the sustainability and viability of large-scale organisations.


Author(s):  
Bugero N.V. ◽  
Ilyina N.A. ◽  
Aleksandrova S.M.

In addition to the classical pathogens, which are well understood and well identified, new pathogens with the potential to spread epidemiologically are being identified. Some of these little-known organisms are the simplest Blastocystis spp. blastocystostosis. The clinical significance of Blastocystis spp. and its pathogenicity are still under discussion. This parasite belongs to a group of single-celled eukaryotic organisms living in the colon of the human intestine. Blastocystis spp. is known to be found both in people with reduced immune status and in individuals without any clinical manifestation. It has been established that a sufficiently high degree of invasiveness is observed in persons with gastrointestinal tract diseases, dermatosis, allergic reactions, in patients with carriers of the human immunodeficiency virus, etc. Possessing persistence factors, protozoa blastocysts contribute to the inactivation of host defensive mechanisms, providing a stable anthogonistic effect. In recent years, many works have been devoted to the characteristics of the persistent properties of Blastocystis spr., however, individual properties of blastocysts, in particular, anticytokine activity (ACA), have not yet been studied. In this regard, the work studied the anticytokine activity of microorganisms isolated from healthy subjects and patients with gastrointestinal tract diseases. A high prevalence of the studied characteristic in the subjects was shown. The expression of anticytokine activity in the obtained isolates of blastocysts was the highest in the group of persons with gastric ulcer disease, which decreased in the order of duodenal ulcer, chronic cholecystitis, chronic gastritis, etc. The data obtained in this work on the high level of ACA expression in blastocyst isolates obtained from individuals with gastrointestinal diseases as compared with the control group enables to conclude that their exometabolites may influence the local cytokine balance [1], which supports the inflammatory process.


Author(s):  
Luke E. Harlow

Any discussion of nineteenth-century religious Dissent must look carefully at gender. Although distinct from one another in important respects, Nonconformist congregations were patterned on the household as the first unit of God-given society, a model which fostered questions about the relationship between male and female. Ideas of gender coalesced with theology and praxis to shape expectations central to the cultural ethos of Nonconformity. Existing historiographical interpretations of gender and religion that use the separate spheres model have argued that evangelical piety was identified with women who were carefully separated from the world, while men needed to be reclaimed for religion. Despite their virtues, these interpretations suppose that evangelicalism was a hegemonic movement about which it is possible to generalize. Yet the unique history and structures of Nonconformity ensured a high degree of particularity. Gender styles were subtly interpreted and negotiated in Dissenting culture over and against the perceived practices and norms of the mainstream, creating what one Methodist called a ‘whole sub-society’ differentiated from worldly patterns in the culture at large. Dissenting men, for instance, deliberately sought to effect coherence between public and private arenas and took inspiration from the published lives of ‘businessmen “saints”’. Feminine piety in Dissent likewise rested on integration, not separation, with women credited with forming godly communities. The insistence on inherent spiritual equality was important to Dissenters and was imaged most clearly in marriage, which transcended the public/private divide and supplied a model for domestic and foreign mission. Missionary work also allowed for the valorization and mobilization of distinctive feminine and masculine types, such as the single woman missionary who bore ‘spiritual offspring’ and the manly adventurer. Over the century, religious revivals in Dissent might shift these patterns somewhat: female roles were notably renegotiated in the Salvation Army, while Holiness revivals stimulated demands for female preaching and women’s religious writing, making bestsellers of writers such as Hannah Whitall Smith. Thus Dissent was characterized throughout the Anglophone world by an emphasis on spiritual equality combined with a sharpened perception of sexual difference, albeit one which was subject to dynamic reformulation throughout the century.


Author(s):  
Alessandro Pollini ◽  
Tiziana C. Callari ◽  
Alessandra Tedeschi ◽  
Daniele Ruscio ◽  
Luca Save ◽  
...  

AbstractComputer and Information Security (CIS) is usually approached adopting a technology-centric viewpoint, where the human components of sociotechnical systems are generally considered as their weakest part, with little consideration for the end users’ cognitive characteristics, needs and motivations. This paper presents a holistic/Human Factors (HF) approach, where the individual, organisational and technological factors are investigated in pilot healthcare organisations to show how HF vulnerabilities may impact on cybersecurity risks. An overview of current challenges in relation to cybersecurity is first provided, followed by the presentation of an integrated top–down and bottom–up methodology using qualitative and quantitative research methods to assess the level of maturity of the pilot organisations with respect to their capability to face and tackle cyber threats and attacks. This approach adopts a user-centred perspective, involving both the organisations’ management and employees, The results show that a better cyber-security culture does not always correspond with more rule compliant behaviour. In addition, conflicts among cybersecurity rules and procedures may trigger human vulnerabilities. In conclusion, the integration of traditional technical solutions with guidelines to enhance CIS systems by leveraging HF in cybersecurity may lead to the adoption of non-technical countermeasures (such as user awareness) for a comprehensive and holistic way to manage cyber security in organisations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
David Sanan ◽  
Yongwang Zhao ◽  
Shang-Wei Lin ◽  
Liu Yang

To make feasible and scalable the verification of large and complex concurrent systems, it is necessary the use of compositional techniques even at the highest abstraction layers. When focusing on the lowest software abstraction layers, such as the implementation or the machine code, the high level of detail of those layers makes the direct verification of properties very difficult and expensive. It is therefore essential to use techniques allowing to simplify the verification on these layers. One technique to tackle this challenge is top-down verification where by means of simulation properties verified on top layers (representing abstract specifications of a system) are propagated down to the lowest layers (that are an implementation of the top layers). There is no need to say that simulation of concurrent systems implies a greater level of complexity, and having compositional techniques to check simulation between layers is also desirable when seeking for both feasibility and scalability of the refinement verification. In this article, we present CSim 2 a (compositional) rely-guarantee-based framework for the top-down verification of complex concurrent systems in the Isabelle/HOL theorem prover. CSim 2 uses CSimpl, a language with a high degree of expressiveness designed for the specification of concurrent programs. Thanks to its expressibility, CSimpl is able to model many of the features found in real world programming languages like exceptions, assertions, and procedures. CSim 2 provides a framework for the verification of rely-guarantee properties to compositionally reason on CSimpl specifications. Focusing on top-down verification, CSim 2 provides a simulation-based framework for the preservation of CSimpl rely-guarantee properties from specifications to implementations. By using the simulation framework, properties proven on the top layers (abstract specifications) are compositionally propagated down to the lowest layers (source or machine code) in each concurrent component of the system. Finally, we show the usability of CSim 2 by running a case study over two CSimpl specifications of an Arinc-653 communication service. In this case study, we prove a complex property on a specification, and we use CSim 2 to preserve the property on lower abstraction layers.


2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Batel

SummaryEpidemiologic studies in the general population and those based on the clinical assessment of schizophrenic populations have revealed a high degree of overlap between schizophrenia and addictive disorders. The abuse of psychoactive substances (including alcohol) throughout life is so frequent (50%) that the possibility of a specific link inevitably arises. Various hypotheses have been suggested to explain the high co-morbidity between schizophrenia and addiction: 1) The social-environmental hypothesis has been developed but studies have provided poor evidence to validate it. 2) The possible shared biological vulnerability between schizophrenia and addictions led researchers to explore common genetic determinants and study the involvement of the dopaminergic and opioid systems in the aetiology of both schizophrenia and the abuse of and dependence on psychoactive drugs. 3) Finally, the theory of self-medication suggests that schizophrenics may be attempting to counter the deficit linked to their disorders by using the substances they take or their dependency-type behaviour to cope with their emotional problems. The clinical profile of schizophrenic addicts does seem to display some distinctive features, such as the high level of depressive co-morbidity, very high nicotine and alcohol dependence, with a very poor prognosis. These patients are difficult to manage; the possibility of pharmacologic interactions between the substances they are taking and neuroleptic medication calls for prudence, and their compliance is also poor. Addictive disorders in schizophrenics are currently a topic of active research intended to lead to identifying specific treatments. The early identification of addictive disorders in schizophrenics should make it possible to limit their development and improve the prognosis.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 140-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Collicutt

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report a pilot study that evaluated an innovative practice in a faith community context designed to help older people live well at the end of life and prepare for death. Design/methodology/approach – A simple audit of the intervention using a contemporaneous journal kept by the author, and a follow up questionnaire completed by participants. Findings – Rich findings on the process are reported. These indicate a high degree of engagement by participants, the establishment of a high degree of group intimacy and trust, a high level of articulation of wisdom, the emergence of significant anxiety in some isolated cases, and the use made of tea and cake to manage the transition between the existentially demanding nature of the discussions and normal life. The outcome indicated very high levels of appreciation and increased confidence in relation to issues of death and dying. Practical implications – The findings of the pilot have been used to inform training of clergy in the principles of working in this area (e.g. in ways of managing group dynamics and anxiety, pacing, tuning in to archetypes and the natural symbols that people use to talk about death and dying, self-care and supervision of the programme leader/facilitator). Originality/value – The paper adds to knowledge in terms of an in depth description of processes at work in a group of older people working on spiritual and practical issues in relation to death, and offers ideas for supporting older people in this process, some of which are specific to the Christian tradition, and some of which are more widely applicable to people of all faiths and none. It gives a specific worked example of what “spiritual care” in this area might look like.


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