Comfort model for automobile seat

Comfort on automobile seats is lived daily by thousands of drivers. Epistemologically, comfort can be understood under the theory of complexity, since it emerges from a chain of interrelationships between man and several elements of the system. This interaction process can engender extreme comfort associated to the feeling of pleasure and wellbeing or, on the other hand, lead to discomfort, normally followed by pain. This article has for purpose the development of a theoretical model that favours the comfort feature on automobile seats through the identification of its facets and indicators. For such, a theoretical study is resorted to, allowing the mapping of elements that constitute the model. The results present a comfort model on automobile seats that contemplates the (physical, psychological, object, context and environment) facets. This model is expected to contribute with the automobile industry for the development of improvements of the ergonomic project of seats to increase the comfort noticed by the users.     

Assessment of physical workload in boiler operations

The use of boiler wood-fired is fairly common equipment utilized in steam generation for energy production in small industries. The boiler activities are considered dangerous and heavy, mainly due to risks of explosions and the lack of mechanization of the process. This study assessed the burden of physical labor that operators of boilers are subjected during the workday. Assessment of these conditions was carried out through quantitative and qualitative measurements. A heart rate monitor, a wet-bulb globe thermometer (WBGT), a tape-measure and a digital infrared camera were the instruments used to collect the quantitative data. The Nordic Questionnaire and the Painful Areas Diagram were used to relate the health problems of the boiler operator with activity. With study, was concluded that the boiler activity may cause pains in the body of intensity different, muscle fatigue and diseases due to excessive weight and the exposure to heat. The research contributed to improve the boiler operator's workplace and working conditions.     

Evaluation of thermal overload in boiler operators

The Brazilians educational institutions need a large energy demand for the operation of laundries, restaurants and accommodation of students. Much of that energy comes from steam generated in boilers with wood fuel. The laboral activity in boiler may present problems for the operator's health due to exposure to excessive heat, and its operation has a high degree of risk. This paper describes an analysis made the conditions of thermal environment in the operation of a B category boiler, located at a Higher Education Institution, located in the Zona da Mata Mineira The equipments used to collect data were Meter WBGT of the Heat Index; Meter of Wet Bulb Index and Globe Thermometer (WBGT); Politeste Instruments, an anemometer and an Infrared Thermometer. By the application of questionnaires, the second phase consisted of collecting data on environmental factors (temperature natural environment, globe temperature, relative humidity and air velocity). The study concluded that during the period evaluated, the activity had thermal overload.     

The Organization of Wariness of Heights in Experienced Crawlers

Most infants with more than 6 weeks of crawling experience completely avoid the deep side of a visual cliff ( Campos, Bertenthal, & Kermoian, 1992 ; Gibson & Walk, 1960 ). However, some experienced crawlers do move onto the transparent surface suspended several feet above the ground. An important question is whether these nonavoiders lack wariness of heights or whether they have a qualitatively different way of showing their wariness than do avoiders of the deep side. The current study addressed this question by measuring heart rate (HR) acceleration upon being lowered on the deep and shallow sides of the visual cliff, latency to crawl toward the mother, and tactile exploration of the cliff surface. Nonavoiders and avoiders had indistinguishable patterns of HR acceleration, showing greater HR acceleration when lowered onto the deep than when lowered onto the shallow side of the cliff. Nonavoiders also showed more tactile exploration and longer latencies than did a comparable group of infants tested on the shallow side. This study illustrates how the same emotion, wariness of heights, can be shown by qualitatively different behaviors, all serving the same function of protecting the individual from falling over a drop‐off.     

On the Transgressiveness of Ambiguity: Richard Bruce Nugent and the Flow of Sexuality and Race

The study focuses on the slender corpus of literary work by Harlem Renaissance poet, author and visual artist Richard Bruce Nugent (1906–1987), arguably America’s foremost Black aesthete. As an individualist in the footsteps of post-Hegelian and pre-Nietzschean philosopher Max Stirner (1806–1856), Nugent sought to re-think sexuality and race beyond fixed schemes of categorial distribution. To this end, Nugent deployed a strategy of sexual and racial ambiguity that aimed at situating the uniquely sexed and raced individual within the continuities of ever-diversifying Nature. Nugent’s deconstructive approach of sexuality and race proves to be convergent with (but not genealogically dependent on) the universalization of sexual intermediariness and racial miscegenation postulated by German-Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld during the first third of the twentieth century. Nugent’s non-identitarian conception of sex acts anticipated by more than a decade comparable insights propounded by Alfred Kinsey.     

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Irregular Transmigrants’ Journeys and Mental Mapping Methodology

The development of border clusters and transit control regimes aiming to detain irregular migrants before they reach their destination countries is constructed upon a multidimensional geopolitical narrative driven by border security agreements. The Mexican Transit Control Regime illustrates that 16 years of trying to control migration in transit to the United States has not reduced it but has only succeeded in pushing migrants into dangerous routes and risky practices. Using mental maps as a technique to approach transmigrants’ voices, this article aims to contribute to the understanding of the ways irregular migrants in transit live and represent their journey.