A simple tool for preliminary hazard identification and quick assessment in craftwork and small/medium enterprises (SME)

During the last Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), Beijing, August 2009, an international group was founded aimed at developing a "toolkit for MSD prevention" within IEA and in collaboration with World Health Organization (WHO). Possible users of toolkits are: members of health and safety committees, health and safety representatives, line supervisors; labor inspectors; health workers implementing basic occupational health services; occupational health and safety specialists.According to ISO standard 11228 series and the new Draft CD ISO 12259-2009: Application document guides for the potential user, a computer software ( in Excel?) was create dealing with hazard "mapping" in handicraft The proposed methodology, using specific key enters and quick assessment criteria, allows a simple ergonomics hazard identification and risk estimation. Thus it makes possible to decide for which professional hazards a more exhaustive risk assessment will be necessary and which professional consultant should be involved (occupational physician, safety engineer, industrial hygienist, etc.).     

IEA/WHO toolkit for WMSDs prevention: criteria and practical tools for a step by step approach

When studying WMSDs, several determinants and their interrelationship are considered as relevant. Hence the necessity of an "holistic" approach to prevention, especially when preparing technical rules and strategic plans. There is a strong request, from OSH agencies and operators, for developing "simple" tools for risk assessment and management. In this context WHO asked IEA to develop a "Toolkit for WMSD prevention". The paper presents one of the main contribution to this WHO project, focused on selecting tools at different level for hazard identification, risk estimation and management. Proposals are based on two essential criteria: Acting on a step-by-step approach; Taking into account the presence of multiple influencing factors. The proposals consider: A Basic Step devoted to hazard identification by operative "key-enter" questions, that can be operated also by non-experts. A First Step, (quick assessment), for identifying 3 possible conditions: acceptable; high risk present; more detailed analysis (via tools presented at second step) necessary. This step can be operated by non-experts with only some specific training. A Second Step, where recognized (i.e. from international standards or guidelines) tools for risk estimation are used. This step can be operated only by persons with some specific training.     

Theoriegeleitetes Sampling für international vergleichende Mixed-Methods-Forschung

The paper motivates a mixed design for investigating the gender division of labour at the life course transition to parenthood and describes how the design has been realised. The focus is on the sampling strategy which aims to combine two longitudinal methods. Each method is applied in international comparative perspective. The sampling is crucial, for both facilitating the comparison and integrating the research findings. The complementary research design aims at systematically linking social structure to the re-production of gendered divisions of labour and its subjective meanings for dual earner parents. Context-related analysis of qualitative interviews in an explicit comparative design, combined with an analysis of structural patterns of action shows that the agency of expectant parents rises with congruence of dominant gender ideologies and family policies.     

Organizational Wellbeing in CSOs in Morelos (Mexico): Findings from a Qualitative Study

In recent years, civil society organizations (CSOs) have become a significant aspect of Mexican reality given the number of people involved in them and their contribution to the services sector. These entities are organizations where voluntary and paid workers may experience wellbeing conditions that are inherent in empowerment processes, feelings of usefulness, and the satisfaction associated with participating in decision-making. At the same time, contradictory dynamics related to governance, power relations, leadership, and decision-making may be activated in CSOs and create uncertainty and psychosocial malaise. In this research, based on a grounded theory approach, 11 interviews and 89 questionnaires were realized in 14 service-providing CSOs in the Mexican State of Morelos, highlighting the wellbeing/malaise dimensions and psychosocial factors that are relevant for their members.     

Markov random field-based image subsampling method

The use of Bayesian models for the reconstruction of images degraded by both some blurring function H and the presence of noise has become popular in recent years. Making an analogy between classical degradation processes and resampling, we propose a Bayesian model for generating finer resolution images. The approach involves defining resampling, or aggregation, as a linear operator applied to an original picture to produce derived lower resolution data which represent our available experimental infor-mation. Within this framework, the operation of making inference on the orginal data can be viewed as an inverse linear transformation problem. This problem, formalized through Bayes' theorem, can be solved by the classical maximum a posteriori estimation procedure. Image local characteristics are assumed to follow a Gaussian Markov random field. Under some mild assumptions, simple, iterative and local operations are involved, making parallel 'relaxation' processing feasible. experimental results are shown on some images, for which good subsampling estimates are obtained.     

Anonymous and neutral majority rules

In the standard arrovian framework and under the assumption that individual preferences and social outcomes are linear orders on the set of alternatives, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of anonymous and neutral rules and for the existence of anonymous and neutral majority rules. We also determine a general method for constructing and counting these rules and we explicitly apply it to some simple cases.     

Schlägt Wissen Funken? Zu den Effekten des politischen Steuerungsinstruments Sparkling Science

Although knowledge is attributed a high societal value, its traditional ‘production’ in academia as well as its traditional ‘consumption’ in education have increasingly become problematic. Austrian politics have launched a rather unconventional political steering instrument to solve this problem: Sparkling Science. Based on the equal involvement of pupils and scientists in research projects, this program aims to create ‘sparks of enthusiasm’ as well as ‘sparks of innovation’ between academia and education. We inquire into the effects of this political steering instrument on the level of individual actors. Drawing on qualitative data from a case study, our analyses identify a structural composition that alters the two explicit objectives, which are: To increase pupil’s enthusiasm for science and to stimulate innovative research based on multiple perspectives.     

Roundoff error for floating point representation of real data

In the present paper we define aprobabilistic model for the study ofthe relative roundoff error in the floating point representation ofreal data. In particular, starting from the assumption that real data is uniformly distributed in the interval (0,1), each floating point is assigned aprobability value corresponding to the proportion of real data assigned this floating point value. For each real number x～ U(0,1), we compute the relative roundoff error in the floating point representation and we calculate i t s expected value and variance.