Smoothing parameter selection methods for nonparametric regression with spatially correlated errors

When spatial data are correlated, currently available data‐driven smoothing parameter selection methods for nonparametric regression will often fail to provide useful results. The authors propose a method that adjusts the generalized cross‐validation criterion for the effect of spatial correlation in the case of bivariate local polynomial regression. Their approach uses a pilot fit to the data and the estimation of a parametric covariance model. The method is easy to implement and leads to improved smoothing parameter selection, even when the covariance model is misspecified. The methodology is illustrated using water chemistry data collected in a survey of lakes in the Northeastern United States.     

Mobility and accessibility in historic cities

The historic cities of Brazil, despite its colonial structure, don't fail to go through transformations that affect contemporary cities, which is the main source of problems, leading to new approaches to urban issues such as mobility and accessibility. The uncontrolled growth of tourism in the historic cities can be considered as a big problem, because at the same time, they have committed to the conservation of its built heritage and demand control of the activities that occur in their areas without harm. Then, a permanent dialogue between conservatives and planners could be accomplished by joining the various sectoral policies. The study of urban mobility in historical sites was in fact the focus of this work because of their peculiarities, such as its specific characteristics of urban structure, morphology and occupation. In fact, the development of tourism in historic centers generates specific demands, such as adaptation to new uses of the houses, intensive movement of people and vehicles, illegal parking, among others. Beyond threatening the city preservation, does not provide mobility and accessibility to tourists, because these cities were not designed for the tourism conditions and needs of contemporary life. Characteristic features of Brazilian baroque cities, such as topography , the narrow streets, narrow or nonexistent sidewalks, steep turns and ramps strong, are not suitable for heavy vehicles, traffic and pedestrian circulation. Thus, studies concerning conservation urban integrated are aimed at an approach to interaction between historic preservation of the environment with the dynamic socio-economic of the local.     

Anthropometric data of adult wheelchair users for Mexican population

The aim of the study was to obtain anthropometric data of adult wheelchair users at Mexico. This study count with 108 disabled people (56 men and 52 women) using the wheelchair and having the upper extremities sufficiently efficient to perform professional activities. The subjects were aged 18-60. From the measurements obtained, it can be said that in each of these measures was observed that men have larger dimensions than women, except for body depth, in which women had a slightly greater difference. When comparing the data in this study against other studies it shows that there is a significant difference between the averages of these studies. Similar results were obtained when comparing our data against data of standard population. Anthropometric data obtained through this study appear to be the only of this kind in Mexico and showed significant differences between measures of disabled persons and standard persons. the use of these data may be helpful for the proper design of workstations designed for use by adults who use.     

A study of automotive workers anthropometric physical characteristics from Mexico Northwest

Due to the lack of anthropometric information in northwest Mexico, we did an anthropometric study that represents the population physical characteristics and that is reliable for the design or redesign of workstations. The study was divided in two phases. The first one was the anthropometric study of 2900 automotive industry workers in northwest of Mexico. The study includes 40 body dimensions of 2345 males and 555 females personalized to be used in future researches. Second phase includes compared anthropometric characteristics of population reported in four Mexican studies and a Colombian study against the current study. Benefits of this project are: a reliable database of anthropometric characteristic of automotive industry population for workstations design or redesign that match with the users, increase product quality and reduce economic, medical and union complains.     

Construction and application of an indicator system to assess the ergonomic performance of large and medium-sized construction companies

This article proposes a system of indicators to evaluate the performance of companies in ergonomics for buildings. The system was developed based primarily on studies related to the performance evaluation of the construction industry and on Brazilian standards of ergonomics and work safety and had also the contribution of national and international indicators related to ergonomics, work safety, quality, sustainability, quality of work life and to organizational behavior. The indicators were named, classified and their components were assigned to compose the theoretical model SIDECE--System of Performance Indicators in Ergonomics for Building Construction (as for the Portuguese acronym), serving the major goals of ergonomics: health, safety and workers' satisfaction and production efficiency. The SIDECE is being validated along with the building construction companies in the city of Natal, Brazil, whose practical results, deriving from the application of instruments to collect field data, are under process, to be presented on the occasion of the 18th World Congress on Ergonomics. It is intended that the SIDECE be used by building construction companies as a support tool for excellence management.     

Selection of a voice for a speech signal for personalized warnings: the effect of speaker's gender and voice pitch

There is an increasing interest in multimodal technology-based warnings, namely those conveying speech-warning statements. This type of warning may be tailored to the situation as well as to the target user's characteristics. However, more information is needed on how to design these warnings in a way that ensures intelligibility, promotes compliance and reduces the potential for annoyance. In this context, this paper reports an exploratory study whose main purpose was to assist the selection of a synthesized voice for a subsequent compliance study with personalized (i.e., using the person's name) technology-based warnings using Virtual Reality. Participants were requested to listen to speech signals, gathered from a speech synthesizer and post-processed in order to change the pitch perception, and then these were evaluated by fulfilling the MOS-X questionnaire. After that, the participants ranked the voices according to their preference. The effects of the speaker's gender and voice pitch, on both ratings and ranking were assessed. The preference of the male and female listeners for a talker's voice gender was also investigated. The results show that participants mostly prefer as first choice the high-pitched female voice, which also gathered the highest overall score in the MOS-X questionnaire. No significant influence of the participants' gender was found on the assessed measures.     

A method for work modeling at complex systems: towards applying information systems in family health care units

Work in organizations requires a minimum level of consensus on the understanding of the practices performed. To adopt technological devices to support the activities in environments where work is complex, characterized by the interdependence among a large number of variables, understanding about how work is done not only takes an even greater importance, but also becomes a more difficult task. Therefore, this study aims to present a method for modeling of work in complex systems, which allows improving the knowledge about the way activities are performed where these activities do not simply happen by performing procedures. Uniting techniques of Cognitive Task Analysis with the concept of Work Process, this work seeks to provide a method capable of providing a detailed and accurate vision of how people perform their tasks, in order to apply information systems for supporting work in organizations.     

The use software ERGOSHOW in the education of health and safety at work to regardin the safety to children

It is believed that health and safety of workers should be worked with children and early teenagers, the perspective that adults are more aware of these issues by providing them with health and quality of life in their daily lives, this is want the ERGOSHOW. The choice of media means for transmitting content of Ergonomics, Health and Safety (OSH) is justified because of the great popularity of computer games are among the public of the study, thereby providing a greater assimilation of the content worked. Therefore, the aim of this study was to work with OSH issues related to children between 08 and 12 years old, city of, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. To achieve this we used the software ERGOSHOW, quizzes, and lecture. One can see that the use of multimedia tools in the learning, especially when considering the reports of mothers according to the different behavior of children after the development of activities, such as parents in correcting posture in relation to computer use.     

A program to support the construction and evaluation of resilience indicators

The main objective of this work is to propose a method and a tool to support the development of indicators able to inform an organization about the state of its resilience through a cyclical process of identifying its resilience factors, proposing resilience indicators, assessing its organizational resilience followed by assessing and improving the resilience indicators. The research uses concepts from complex adaptive systems and from resilience engineering to establish an initial set of indicators able to assess elements that contribute to organizational resilience, and structures them temporarily as a hierarchy. A software application to support indicator definition and structuring, questionnaire generation, and result assessment activities was built to assist in speeding up the experiment-adjust cycle. Prototype indicators were instantiated with helicopter operating companies in mind, and were reviewed by a domain expert.     

Using environmental affordances to direct people natural movement indoors

Understanding and predicting people's displacement movement is particularly important for professionals involved in planning complex buildings (e.g., hospitals, convention centers, subway stations and university campus). Some decisions taken by the visitors while choosing what route to follow can be influenced by some environmental cues which can act as a factor of attraction, influencing the wayfinding process. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the hypotheses that, in the context of a simulated emergency egress, people prefer to move along either a wider and with more lighting corridor or to bear right. To collect the users' responses, a constant stimulus method was used, combined with a two forced choices method, involving the projection of stereoscopic images in a wall-screen. Results suggest that, in a "T-type" intersection, users randomly chose which direction to follow. However, if there is an increment in the width of the side corridor, users tend to follow the wider corridor. When light is inserted, users also prefer to choose the corridors with more lighting. In situations where the variables corridor width and existence of lighting are concurrent, the corridors with light are the most chosen by the users.