Study of activities of postmen motorcyclists: a look at motorcycle accidents

This article presents the steps of transforming the material and organizational aspects in the work environment, beyond the social order for the proper development of activities in the Household Distribution Center, the Postmen Motorcyclists. The demand was made by managers from the accident records, establishing the need to identify the working conditions of postmen motorcyclists, regarding motorcycle accidents occurring on public roads. Method: Based on the characteristics of the steps required by the methodology, was necessary to realize internal and external observations, with the aim of identifying the dynamics of the accident and the collective dimensions of activity which requires a strategy for monitoring the work on the street.     

Ergonomic factors and production target evaluation in eucalyptus timber harvesting operations in mountainous terrains

There are several forest operations involved in Eucalyptus timber harvesting. This study was carried out during brush-cutting; tree felling, bucking, delimbing, piling and manual extraction operations, with the following objectives: a) analyzing, ergonomically, two systems of brush-cutting: one manual and the other semi-mechanized, using two different machines; b) ergonomically evaluating three different brands of pruner machines used in delimbing felled trees. c) determining the feasible target of productivity as a function of ergonomic factors relevant to establish the time of resting pauses for workers in manual and semi-mechanized timber harvesting systems in mountainous terrain. Brush-cutting, either manual or semimechanized, is an activity carried out prior to timber harvesting. It is usually a hard work, with low productivity when compared with mechanized systems. Pruner machines have been used by forest companies, due to the great possibilities to improve productivity, quality and the health of workers. Ergonomics is a discipline that promotes the adequacy of work to the physical and mental characteristics of human beings, seeking to design production systems and products considering relevant aspects, including social, organizational and environmental factors. Companies should consider the ergonomic factor in the determination of daily worker production targets.     

Hayter and Tsui's test with double sampling for the vector mean of multivariate normal population

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a version of Hayter and Tsui's statistical test with double sampling for the vector mean of a population under multivariate normal assumption. A study showed that this new test was more or as efficient than the well-known Hotelling's T² with double sampling. Some nice features of Hayter and Tsui's test are its simplicity of implementation and its capability of identifying the errant variables when the null hypothesis is rejected. Taking that into consideration, a new control chart called HTDS is also introduced as a tool to monitor multivariate process vector mean when using double sampling.     

Harassment at work? Empowerment and autonomy as coping strategies of young workers

There is a considerable number of researches about workplace violence, but few relate young workers and work harassment. This study aimed to investigate the reported perceptions of young apprentices and trainees about moral harassment at work and related coping strategies. Forty adolescent workers (22 men and 18 women) between 15 and 20 years old who received training by a non-governmental organization in S?o Paulo, Brazil, participated in the study. Data collection included individual and collective interviews. It was used an in-depth semi structured interview protocol. The discourses were analyzed using the hermeneutic-dialectic frame. Results showed that young workers reported little or no knowledge of strategies to cope with moral harassment at work, showing vulnerability to the effects of aggression. Effective coping strategies at work should embrace two important concepts of health promotion: empowerment and autonomy.     

Ergonomic evaluation of processes and products in the manufacture of upholstery

This study aimed to perform an ergonomic evaluation of industrial processes and products - upholstered sofas - produced in the furniture cluster of Ubá-MG. The used material was collected from two sofas upholstered industries associated with the union of the furniture industries of Ubá region, located in Minas Gerais estate, Brazil. As for the product were evaluated dimensionally 29 upholstered sofas, with 12 being produced by industry "A" and 17 being produced by industry "B". As for the process, were evaluated: the socioeconomic profile of the worker and environmental factors of lighting and noise. The main results of this study showed that the upholstered sofas produced by industries, in general, fulfilled to the recommendations set out in the work in relation to the backrest height and useful seat depth. All the sofas, however, proved to be inadequate in relation to the seat height to the floor and the dimensions of the armrests Regarding environmental aspects, it was observed that in both industries, the activities in most jobs are performed under adverse conditions to the health and safety of workers and nonconformity with the limits set by Brazilian regulatory standard used in this work.     

Diversity of vascular plants growing on walls of a Brazilian city

City walls are very specialized environments, conditioned by human activities. There is little information about plants that invade human-made habitats, and no study done in Brazil with plants growing up on walls. The aim of the present study was to survey the wall vascular flora of a Brazilian city, comparing the diversity found in its downtown and neighborhoods. Fieldwork was done in Jundiaí, São Paulo State, where data was collected in downtown and in five neighborhoods. In each place, three transects of 1 km were established and every plant individual was registered. Twenty-eight species were identified, all of them on the downtown transect and most also on the neighborhood transects. Five species were the most frequent, although none were dominant. The diversity indicies of the six transects were not significantly different, with an overall diversity of H′ = 2.93.     

Bayesian outlier analysis in binary regression

We propose alternative approaches to analyze residuals in binary regression models based on random effect components. Our preferred model does not depend upon any tuning parameter, being completely automatic. Although the focus is mainly on accommodation of outliers, the proposed methodology is also able to detect them. Our approach consists of evaluating the posterior distribution of random effects included in the linear predictor. The evaluation of the posterior distributions of interest involves cumbersome integration, which is easily dealt with through stochastic simulation methods. We also discuss different specifications of prior distributions for the random effects. The potential of these strategies is compared in a real data set. The main finding is that the inclusion of extra variability accommodates the outliers, improving the adjustment of the model substantially, besides correctly indicating the possible outliers.     

Bayesian nonparametric clustering for large data sets

We propose two nonparametric Bayesian methods to cluster big data and apply them to cluster genes by patterns of gene–gene interaction. Both approaches define model-based clustering with nonparametric Bayesian priors and include an implementation that remains feasible for big data. The first method is based on a predictive recursion which requires a single cycle (or few cycles) of simple deterministic calculations for each observation under study. The second scheme is an exact method that divides the data into smaller subsamples and involves local partitions that can be determined in parallel. In a second step, the method requires only the sufficient statistics of each of these local clusters to derive global clusters. Under simulated and benchmark data sets the proposed methods compare favorably with other clustering algorithms, including k-means, DP-means, DBSCAN, SUGS, streaming variational Bayes and an EM algorithm. We apply the proposed approaches to cluster a large data set of gene–gene interactions extracted from the online search tool “Zodiac.”

     

Structure of the public relations/communication department: Key findings from a global study

This paper reports on some of the core findings from a program of research focused on examining the structure of public relations/communication departments. It draws on a recent major global study that was sponsored by the former Research Foundation of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). Analyzing the results from interviews with 26 Chief Communication Officers (CCOs) located in each of the five continents and from a survey sample of some 278 CCOs based in organizations headquartered across the globe, the study found quite notable variations in the type of departmental structures. No one dominant structural model emerged. In effect, each organization appeared to adopt a structural design to suit their individual circumstances, although there were nevertheless some reasonably common component functional elements within each department. CCOs identified those variables that they believed most influenced the design of the public relations department structure. While recognizing department structure is situation dependent, the evidence suggests that CCOs create hybrid structures unique to the circumstances. What was perhaps most surprising was that department structure did not appear to be strongly influenced by department size, other than in terms of the vertical structural design. In short, there do not appear to be any common formulas or prescribed solutions for how organizations should or do orchestrate the design of the public relations department structure, rather CCOs appear to be able to exercise a degree of latitude in determining what works best for them.     

Hypothesis testing for the dispersion parameter of the hyper-Poisson regression model

The Poisson distribution is widely used to deal with count data, however, it is unable to capture the dispersion problems. The hyper-Poisson distribution is a particular case of the extended Conway–Maxwell distribution which takes into account the dispersion phenomena of the count data. The main motivation to consider this model is the possibility to link the mean to the regressor variables in very natural way to solve testing problems. So, this paper will be focalized in the gradient statistics to detect dispersions and to compare with the classical likelihood ratio statistic. Two illustrative applications are considered.