Slaughterhouse workers exposed to cold: proposal of reference thermography values for hands

The cold environment is an indispensable for slaughtering and processing in the poultry industry In field studies it was observed that a large percentage of workers of this sector have hand contact with the cold chicken and / or frozen, have high complaints prevalence of pain and discomfort, mostly in the hands. The contact of human skin with a cold surface may cause pain, numbness and risk of skin damage. Currently, although the use of infrared thermal imaging has been useful in identifying normal and abnormal patterns of heat distribution on the surface of the body. However your use for work tasks and to assess the potential development of injuries related to it has been limited. Based on the physiological responses can be objectively evaluate the effects of the task demands of work and thus contribute to the development of effective strategies for ergonomic intervention. The methodology will be used to evaluate the subjective thermal sensation with analogue scale of ASHRAE and the infrared thermography in the dorsal and palmar hands. Thus the objective of this research is to propose reference values for thermographic hands within limits of comfort.     

Usability analysis of 2D graphics software for designing technical clothing

With the advent of technology, the computer became a working tool increasingly present in companies. Its purpose is to increase production and reduce the inherent errors in manual production. The aim of this study was to analyze the usability of 2D graphics software in creating clothing designs by a professional during his work. The movements of the mouse, keyboard and graphical tools were monitored in real time by software Camtasia 7? installed on the user's computer. To register the use of mouse and keyboard we used auxiliary software called MouseMeter?, which quantifies the number of times they pressed the right, middle and left mouse's buttons, the keyboard and also the distance traveled in meters by the cursor on the screen. Data was collected in periods of 15 minutes, 1 hour and 8 hours, consecutively. The results showed that the job is considered repetitive and high demands physical efforts, which can lead to the appearance of repetitive strain injuries. Thus, the goal of minimizing operator efforts and thereby enhance the usability of the examined tool, becomes imperative to replace the mouse by a device called tablet, which also offers an electronic pen and a drawing platform for design development.     

Biomechanical strain of goldsmiths

The work of the goldsmiths consists in the manufacture of jewelry. The piece, be it an earring, bracelet or necklace, is hand-assembled. This task requires precision, skill, kindness and patience. In this work, we make use of tools such as cuticle clippers and rounded tip, beads or precious stones and also pieces of metal. This type of activity requires a biomechanical stress of hands and wrists. In order to quantify the biomechanical stress, we performed a case study to measure the movements performed by an assembly of pieces of jewelry. As method for research, filming was done during assembly of parts to a paste, using a Nikon digital camera, for 1 (one) hour. The film was edited by Kinovea software, and the task was divided into cycles, each cycle corresponds to a complete object. In one cycle, there are four two movements of supination and pronation movements of the forearm. The cycle lasts approximately sixteen seconds, totaling 1800 cycles in eight hours. Despite the effort required of the wrists, the activity shows no complaints from the employees, but this fact does not mischaracterizes the ability of employees to acquire repetitive strain injuries and work-related musculoskeletal disorders.     

Oil and gas depletion: Diffusion models and forecasting under strategic intervention

Crude oil and natural gas depletion may be modelled by a diffusion process based upon a constrained life-cycle. Here we consider the Generalized Bass Model. The choice is motivated by the realistic assumption that there is a self-evident link between oil and gas extraction and the spreading of the modern technologies in wide areas such as transport, heating, cooling, chemistry and hydrocarbon fuels consumption. Such a model may include deterministic or semi-deterministic regulatory interventions. Statistical analysis is based upon nonlinear methodologies and more flexible autoregressive structure of residuals. The technical aim of this paper is to outline the meaningful hierarchy existing among the components of such diffusion models. Statistical effort in residual component analysis may be read as a significant confirmation of a well-founded diffusion process under rare but strong deterministic shocks. Applications of such ideas are proposed with reference to world oil and gas production data and to particular regions such as mainland U.S.A., U.K., Norway and Alaska. The main results give new evidence in time-peaks location and in residual times to depletion.     

Testing Covariance Stationarity

In this paper, we show that the widely used stationarity tests such as the Kwiatkowski Phillips, Schmidt, and Shin (KPSS) test have power close to size in the presence of time-varying unconditional variance. We propose a new test as a complement of the existing tests. Monte Carlo experiments show that the proposed test possesses the following characteristics: (i) in the presence of unit root or a structural change in the mean, the proposed test is as powerful as the KPSS and other tests; (ii) in the presence of a changing variance, the traditional tests perform badly whereas the proposed test has high power comparing to the existing tests; (iii) the proposed test has the same size as traditional stationarity tests under the null hypothesis of stationarity. An application to daily observations of return on U.S. Dollar/Euro exchange rate reveals the existence of instability in the unconditional variance when the entire sample is considered, but stability is found in subsamples.     

Measuring and understanding trade in service tasks

The revolution in information and communications technologies has put service tasks with strong tradability characteristics at high risk of being offshored. This article reviews studies proposing indicators of service tradability, exploring the labour market implications of service offshoring and developing theories to rationalize the facts. It suggests that both skill intensity and tradability are determinants of wage and employment effects. Nonetheless, the lack of widely accepted definitions of tradability, the absence of high‐quality data on service trade flows and the difficulty of measuring import competition at higher disaggregation levels pose difficulties in achieving further progress, pointing to areas for future research.     

Labour Market Policies: Welfare,Incomes, Employment

The — in some ways innovative — objective of this paper is the study of the dynamics of the disequilibria provoked by the emergence of involuntary unemployment in the labour market, and the role of the economic policy authorities (through welfare, incomes and employment policies), with the aim of discovering if there is an explicit or implicit consistency between the role of these authorities, their actions and the pursuit of maximum employment (or elimination of the disequilibria). We seek to show, in other words, whether the actions of the government authorities conform to their accepted meaning (the aim of reducing the disequilibria) or whether, on the contrary, it may not be possible to put forward a different interpretation, if sociopolitical variables are introduced into the analysis, thus placing in the foreground different and alternative objecties such as “conflict control” and/or the reaching of a consensus between the different social partners. The paper therefore begins by analysing separately the historical-theoretical characteristics of the individual policies considered — welfare, incomes and employment — in their evolution (with particular reference to the last two decades), and then attempts an interpretative key in synthesis, by resorting to a specific model derived from the theories of disequilibria.     

Labour Economics: History and Theory

Abstract. In recent years, labour economics has been the area of study of most interest to economists, both from the theoretical and practical perspectives. The new field of labour microeconomics and the resultant new approaches that have arisen are a fundamental part of what has recently been called ‘microeconomic foundations’. Despite the newness of this topic, recent developments are in fact the result of phenomena recognized throughout the history of economic thought. This paper begins by analyzing the historical and theoretical origins of labour economics, and provides an overview of labour economics theory during the 1960s. 1970s and 1980s. It goes on to examine the relation between the labour market and technological innovation, and labour policy measures at the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. Finally, it underscores the need for a theoretical construct that sets Keynesian and neoclassical explanations of unemployment in the same framework as demographic, social, institutional, time and economic factors.     

Methodological proposal for occupational health and safety actions in research laboratories with nanotechnologies activities

Nanotechnologies is a multidisciplinary set of techniques to manipulate matter on nanoscale level, more precisely particles below 100 nm whose characteristic due to small size is essentially different from those found in macro form materials. Regarding to these new properties of the materials there are knowledge gaps about the effects of these particles on human organism and the environment. Although it still being considered emerging technology it is growing increasingly fast as well as the number of products using nanotechnologies in some production level and so the number of researchers involved with the subject. Given this scenario and based on literature related, a comprehensive methodology for health and safety at work for researching laboratories with activities in nanotechnologies was developed, based on ILO structure guidelines for safety and health at work system on which a number of nanospecific recommendations were added to. The work intends to offer food for thought on controlling risks associated to nanotechnologies.