Members of the human body prone to musculoskeletal damages: a comparison between the sector of transportation and footwears production

This study present areas of the body more prone to develop diseases by musculoskeletal efforts, ie, RTD, in two companies of Paraiba, Brazil. To this end, was made a comparative analysis with respect to the type of work performed (standing, sitting) and the parts that suffer most discomfort after a day's work in a footwear industry and a bus transportation company. The quanti-qualitative research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with 227 employees in the period 2008 to 2009, having as methodological the tool diagram of painful areas of Corlett and Manenica. It was concluded that the areas most affected by musculoskeletal disorders are located in the neck (9,2%), backs (23,6%), shoulders (14,5%) and legs (11,3%), being usually caused by inappropriate postures, repetitive movements and work station no adequate the anthropometry of the users. Thus, we recommend the adoption of ergonomic measures that enable a healthy and safe environment for workers.     

The ambivalence of the work of the hotel managers: an approach to ergonomics

This article uses the contributions of ergonomics to understand the work performed by hotel managers. The concern to understand the job of managers is something new in the ergonomics and few studies address this issue, especially in what concerns the work of hotel managers and its aspects of performance and health, which is the focus of this article. Through a literature review on the subject, it is sought to understand the managers' work activity, the impacts on their health and their organizational performance, as managers take an ambivalent position in organizations, since they have to deal directly with the demands of upper and lower hierarchies in a context of high competition, organizational changes and user requirements. It is then inferred there is a risk of increased work density for managers, bringing negative consequences to their health and organizational performance. This phenomenon, still poorly covered by ergonomics, contributes to a certain invisibility of the manager's work in society as a whole, when the manager may suffer from health problems, which are also common in certain populations of workers who do not take the managerial function.     

The construction of ergonomic demands: application on artisan fishing using jangada fishing rafts in the beach of Ponta Negra

The present article seeks the process of construction of ergonomics demand referring to the artisan fishing activityfound in Ponta Negra beach located in the city of Natal, Brazil. The instruction/construction of demands correspond to the first stage of Work Ergonomic Analysis and allows the understanding of real issues existent in a work situation, rank them and route the providences. The demand presented on this study, features itself as a induced demand, process which some potential demands or hypothetical demands are taken to an organization, after a preview analysis of the work aimed by the study, resulting from a theoretical research (state of the art) and/or from analysis of a reference situation (state of practice), where demands hypothesis are taken in consideration about the pretended work. The demands construction process using interactional methods and techniques, observation methods and techniques and bibliographic research, researches in state of reference or document. This article demonstrates the efficiency of the methodological choice to construct real ergonomic demands and highlights the importance of social construction on that process, which main goal is to refer the ergonomic actions that allow the improvement of work and life conditions for the fishers and sustainability to Jangadeira activity.     

Design and ergonomics of package inserts of drugs in Brazil: a reality in construction

This research deals with the design of leaflets of medicines, evidencing the problems resulting from the lack of Brazilian normalization to promote the use of the graphical representation of instructional texts warnings. It approaches studies related to the effectiveness and efficiency of information systems, highlighting the semiotics and the cultural and informational ergonomics. The analysis of the context uses as method, an analytical study on selected warnings of thirty leaflets of medicines, followed by interviews lead with the public managers involved with the regulation of the pharmaceutical companies, and two experiments with users performed in city of Recife, in State of Pernambuco: one aiming at to identify how they interact with the leaflets of medicines, and the second one testing their understanding concerning standardized illustrations in the United States and the South Africa. The results show the need for improvements in presentation and graphic representation of leaflets of medicines, powering them to the role of communication, to ensure the consumption of medicine safely by its users. The conclusion congregates parameters and recommendations for the graphic representation of warnings in leaflets of medicines in Brazil.     

Managing Migration,Managing Motherhood: The Moral Economy of Gendered Migration

For the past two decades, women have been migrating from Mexico to the United States on temporary work visas to pick meat from blue crabs in small coastal factories. Within a theoretical framework that argues for the relevance of a moral economic perspective to gendered migration, we examine the how participating in this migration influences migrants' families, including their abilities to produce higher‐quality lives. Specifically, we focus on the various factors that feed into the decision to migrate, the immediate consequences of those decisions for the relations among migrants, children, spouses and other family and community members, and the longer‐term consequences in terms of gender relations, the restructuring of parent–child relationships and the material benefits of work abroad. We find that women negotiate a variety of contradictions and paradoxes to participate in the programme, many of which directly influence their quest to reaffirm their abilities, as mothers, to produce quality human beings. These findings reflect more general global appeals for valuing human life by measures other than those of conventional political economy.     

Total training load may explain similar strength gains and muscle hypertrophy seen in aged rats submitted to resistance training and anabolic steroids

This study aimed to quantify training parameters and analyze the morphological response of aged muscles submitted to resistance training and anabolic steroids. Aged Wistar rats were divided into groups: C – initial control; CF – final control; CAS – control with anabolic steroid, RT – resistance training, and RTA – resistance training with anabolic steroid. Maximum carried load, absolute and relative loads increased significantly in RT and RTA. RTA demonstrated greater relative load than RT. Average total volume, total climbing volume, relative total volume, relative total climbing volume, and mean climbing volume were similar between groups RT and RTA. For soleus, CAS, RT, and RTA enlarged cross-sectional area of type I fibers and nuclear ratio. As for type II fibers, RTA was higher than C and CF. For plantaris, RT and RTA showed significant increases in myofibers type I compared to C and CF. For type II fibers, RTA showed a significant increase compared to C and CF. Regarding the nuclear ratio, RT and RTA showed a higher ratio than C, CF, and CAS. Our results demonstrated that both RT and RTA were not different among the analyzed morphological parameters. This fact can be explained by the absence of differences found in the training variables analyzed.     

Classification Rules for Multivariate Repeated Measures Data with Equicorrelated Correlation Structure on Both Time and Spatial Repeated Measurements

We study the problem of classification for multivariate repeated measures data with structured correlations on both time and spatial repeated measurements. This is a very important problem in many biomedical as well as in engineering field. Classification rules as well as the algorithm to compute the maximum likelihood estimates of the required parameters are given.     

Modeling population density guided by land use-cover change model: a case study of Bogotá

Population and Environment - Population densities provide valuable spatial information to identify populations at risk, quantify mobility, and improve our understanding of future urban settlements....     

Inferences in dichotomous classifications with misclassifications based on sequential repetitive classifications

To create inferences in dichotomous classifications with misclassifications and possibly perform repeated classifications, the maximum likelihood method is commonly used, mainly because of its efficiency in obtaining parameter estimators of a mixture of two binomial distributions. One simpler alternative that is operationally easier is to consider the simple majority method. In this method, each of n items are classified r times as conforming or non-conforming. The final classification of the item is determined by the most frequent class. This method yielded lower mean squared errors than the maximum likelihood and the moments estimators and is asymptotically efficient. In this paper, we introduce a new approach in which the realization of all r repeated classifications of each item may not be needed. Each of n items is sequentially classified as conforming or nonconforming, and the process ceases when the frequency of conforming or non-conforming classification reaches the integer a. We show that, by a Monte Carlo simulation, the last procedure presents a lower mean squared error than the simple majority results for a similar number of r repeated classifications.