An Ergonomic Analysis on Working Postures of Construction Site Workers

Risk factors related to work activity and ergonomics can enhance the probability that some persons may develop a MSD (musculoskeletal disorder). Usually the MSD develops due to high task repetition, forceful exertion, and repetitive/sustained awkward postures. MSD is also found in some cases where workers are engaged with working in awkward postures, cold temperatures, contact stress, heavy load, static postures, and vibration, etc. Many studies explain the problems for MSD, but in this chapter an effort is taken to rank the maximum body movement and body parts as per the different types of work flow system such that ergonomics design can be planned. Physical disorders can be avoided by finding and ranking the difficult task and the affected body part due to that kind of work. The prioritization of task will help the organization to think of sustainable designs of working procedure or instruments or machines to provide maximum comfort to humankind. It may also help to frame policies for occupational safety and hazards in workplace.

Critical Insight into Defects in Malaysia Hospital Buildings Maintenance Management

Healthcare buildings require efficient maintenance management to afford patients, visitors, and other users of hospital buildings such as healthcare professionals a serene and safe environment that accelerates wellbeing and provides maximum comfort. To achieve this goal, hospital buildings must adopt effective maintenance management approaches and services. Apart from ensuring the safety of the environment, users of the buildings must be satisfied with the quality of available services, particularly, those offered to patients. Against this backdrop, this study assesses the effects of defects on hospital buildings and analyzes the practicality of maintenance best practices such as sufficient allocations of funds and appropriate management of resources (including time and labor) towards the improvement of the prevalent status quo. This is important because the maintenance practices employed in hospitals intrinsically impact the performance of the hospital buildings as a result of defects. Survey questionnaires were administered to users of hospital buildings in Malaysia. The most significant defects reported concerned Algae on concrete floors, weather and climate conditions, and sanitary appliance & fittings damages. These defects depreciate the appearance, functionality and utility of hospital buildings thereby lessening their performance and efficiency. Therefore, this study asserts the pertinence of reevaluating the maintenance management approaches employed towards the rectification of the highlighted defects in hospital buildings across Malaysia. The study posits the adoption of systemic proactive maintenance procedures to preempt decay, causalities and reduce cost implications.

SMART SAFETY SHOES: INTERNET OF THINGS BASED ANTI FATIGUE SENSORS TO PREVENT MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS

Background: Occupational injuries in Indonesia increase every year where one of the causes is fatigue. Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) is the most common occupational injuries that happen. This problem can be caused by ergonomic factors such as standing position for long periods of time. Purpose: Safety shoes can be personal protective equipment to prevent MSDs complaints on the feet. Method: Additional designs and features are needed to increase the effectiveness of safety shoes. Smart Safety Shoes are shoes equipped with anti-fatigue sensors where there is a pulse detector and a heating sensor and apply Internet of Things technology by focusing attention to ergonomic concepts. The sensor system in the shoes is connected to the android application via wifi network. The application displays pulse rate, temperature, oxygen saturation, warning and recommendation information, as well as heating sensor control. Result: From the results of trials using a random sample, the levels of comfort and safety of these shoes are 83,3% and 83,3%, so they are quite effective to use. Conclusion: Foot fatigue can be relieved by turning on the heating sensor for about 5-10 minutes for maximum comfort so that MSDs can be prevented as early as possible.

Efficiency of using our own bus fleet in multimodal door-to-door service

In the passenger transportation segment, there is a trend towards door-to-door travel planning. This direction, which is relevant in the world practice of passenger transportation, with a correctly proposed approach, can also be used in the cities of the Russian Federation.The use of a multimodal method of passenger transportation together with MaaS technologies in case of maximum involvement of carrier operators will allow passengers to significantly reduce travel time and find a way to reduce travel costs.Sophisticated logistics of commuter rail transport routes for all time periods will attract additional passenger traffic, increasing the profitability of passenger traffic.The conducted research on the example of the transport-interchange complex of the city of N showed the possibility of organizing a passenger's trip "from door to door" with minimal costs and maximum comfort. The passenger railway company receives direct profit from this service, which makes it possible to recoup the project in a short time. Conclusions are made about the dependence of the profitability of the bus fleet on the number of seats, distance and popularity of the route direction. The organization of additional services on the territory as close as possible to the places of embarkation and disembarkation of passengers will increase the attractiveness of the transport and interchange complex for the passenger traffic of N.

Custom made ocular prosthesis: A case report

Physical defects that compromise appearance or function, which prevent an individual from leading a normal life, usually prompt the individual to seek treatment that will reinstate acceptable normalcy. The loss of an eye impairs the patient’s visual function, yet also results in a noticeable deformity. Prosthesis should be provided as soon as possible to raise the spirits and ease the mind of the afflicted. An ocular prosthesis is a maxillofacial prosthesis that artificially replaces an eye missing as a result of trauma, surgery, or congenital absence. A custom ocular prosthesis has advantage of close adaptation to the tissue bed, provides maximum comfort and restores full physiological function to the accessory organs of the eye.

Phytodecoration of interiors of the Government House of Ukraine: analysis and proposals

The article presents the features of bioaesthetic characteristics of decorative elements of phytodesign of the closed environment. The analysis of groups of plants by functional and aesthetic purpose in the room is carried out and on their basis project offers on improvement of features of an interior of the House of the Government of Ukraine were developed. When decorating the premises with the help of ornamental plants, the specifics of the interior design of the building and the carefully selected range of plants were taken into account, taking into account the optimal options for their placement. Aesthetic design of free space in the premises is created in order to achieve maximum comfort and coziness and the phytodesign of the closed environment copes with it best. It actively influences the nature of comfort and perception of the interior and is an important component in the design of the environment, and with its help you can increase the artistic expressiveness of the interior, improve its functional organization and, importantly, improve sanitation. The interior design of modern public office buildings is characterized by the predominance of ideas of rationalism and functionality over the aesthetic appearance of the premises. The Government House of Ukraine is the administrative building of our capital, so phytodecoration of its interiors requires careful selection of the range of plants of future phytocompositions. Today, the use of plants in the formation of interiors of various premises is due to the need of man to be closer to nature due to large-scale urbanization of cities and local man-made pollution. To successfully solve these problems requires a comprehensive approach to the wide range of uses and applications of beneficial properties of plants: volatile therapy, color therapy, aesthetic therapy, aromatherapy, ionization and many other functions. Keywords: closed space, public buildings, phytocomposition, phytodesign, phytoergonomics, project proposals.

Development of a flexible wearable thermal textile accessory for winter sports

In pursuit of a healthy lifestyle, people are paying more attention to sports activities, even in winter. They are thus seeking high function and maximum comfort to improve their performance. However, cold weather may result in a higher risk of injuries. It is of prime importance to perform warm-up, which can increase body temperature to relieve muscle stiffness and allow improvement of performance. Unfortunately, the traditional approach of wearing multiple thick layers of clothing to keep warm can prevent the easy movement of the body. Therefore, the integration of flexible textile and wearable thermal technology has become a major research initiative in both sports and textile fields. Current attempts by high-tech start-ups and wearable textile enterprises are not able to overcome the hurdle of transforming wearable technology into a fashionable and marketable product. Hence, this paper introduces a design-driven method to develop a flexible wearable thermal textile accessory for winter sports usage. The relationships between thermal textiles, electrical resistance, thermal performance, stretchability, energy consumption, and function stability were evaluated to optimize the thermal textile fabrication. Then, a prototype was produced and its specification was defined. These enable the realization of mass production and provide a blueprint for the future development of wearable textiles.

Prediction of Behavioral T/C Levels in Cochlear Implant Patients Based Upon Analysis of Electrode Impedances

Background Fitting cochlear implants in babies and noncooperative patients is cumbersome and time consuming. Therefore, objective parameters have been sought in order to predict the subjective threshold (T) and maximum comfort (C) levels. Measurements of the electrically evoked compound action potentials (ECAPs) have been widely used for this purpose, yet the correlation between these objective measures and the subjective T/C levels is weak to moderate. Purpose This article aims (1) to evaluate correlations between the subjective parameters of the fitting maps such as thresholds (T level) and maximum comfort levels (C level), the impedance of the electrode contacts, and the ECAP thresholds, and (2) to compare the value of the electrode impedances and the ECAP measures for prediction of the T/C levels. Research Design Case review study in a quaternary otologic referral center. Study Sample Ninety-eight consecutive CI patients were enrolled. The average age of the patients was 49 years. All patients were users of the Nucleus 24RECA (Freedom, Contour Advance-of-Stylet electrode) cochlear implant. Data Collection and Analysis Data on impedance of the electrode contacts and the behavioral T/C levels at the first fitting session (2–5 weeks after surgery) and at the 5th fitting session (4–6 months after surgery) have been retrospectively collected in 98 consecutive CI patients. Additionally, the intraoperative impedance values and the ECAP thresholds (tNRT) have been recorded. Results Impedances of electrode contacts show significant strong negative correlations with the stabilized T/C levels at 4 to 6 months after implantation and are an important predictor for the behavioral T/C levels. They can explain R 2 = 28 to 41% of the variability of the behavioral T/C levels. In multiple regression analysis electrode contact impedances can explain twice as much of the variability of the stabilized T/C levels than the tNRT values. The electrode impedances together with the tNRT values are able to explain R 2 = 37 to 40% of the global variability of the T/C levels while the tNRT thresholds solely are able to explain only R 2 = 5 to 14% of the T/C levels variability. Conclusion Impedances of electrode contacts correlate strongly with the stabilized behavioral T/C levels and may be used as an objective measure for fitting of cochlear implants.

Dynamic Time- and Load-Based Preference toward Optimal Appliance Scheduling in a Smart Home

In this paper, the household appliance scheduling based on the user predefined preferences is addressed. Previous works generally deal with this problem without integration of renewable energy sources (RESs) in smart home. The present paper proposes a new demand side management (DSM) technique considering time-varying appliance preferences and solar panel generation. The branch and bound (B&B) algorithm is developed based on three postulations that allow the time-varying preferences to be quantified in terms of time- and load-based features. Based on the input data including the load’s power rating, the absolute comfort derived from time- and load-preferences, the total energy available from the solar panels as well as the energy purchased from the utility grid, the (B&B) algorithm is run to generate the optimal energy consumption model that would give maximum comfort to the householder based on the mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) technique. To test the performance of the proposed mechanism, three scenarios are considered with local energy production and limited budget for purchasing the energy from the utility grid to cover the user needs. The simulation results reveal that the proposed DSM mechanism based on the MILP method offers maximum level of comfort for all the scenarios within the available energy limitation.

Naïve Bayes classifier enabled home energy management scheme for cost-effective end-user comfort

Under demand response enabled demand-side management, the home energy management (HEM) schemes schedule appliances for balancing both energy and demand within a residence. This scheme enables the user to achieve either a minimum electricity bill (EB) or maximum comfort. There is always the added burden on a HEM scheme to obtain the least possible EB with comfort. However, if a time window that contains comfortable time slots of the day for an appliance operation, is identified, and if the cost-effective schedule-pattern gets generated from these windows autonomously, then the burden can be reduced. Therefore, this paper proposes a two-level method that can assist the HEM scheme by generating a cost-effective schedule-pattern for scheduling home appliances. The first level uses a classifier to identify the comfortable time window from past ON and OFF events. The second level uses pattern generation algorithms to generate a cost-effective schedule-pattern from the identified window. The generated cost-effective schedule-pattern is applied to a HEM scheme as input to demonstrate the proposed two-level approach. The simulation results exhibit that the proposed approach helps the HEM scheme to schedule home appliances cost-effectively with a satisfactory user-comfort between 90% and 100%.