The design of hazard risk assessment matrices for ranking occupational health risks and their application in mining and minerals processing

Two hazard risk assessment matrices for the ranking of occupational health risks are described. The qualitative matrix uses qualitative measures of probability and consequence to determine risk assessment codes for hazard-disease combinations. A walk-through survey of an underground metalliferous mine and concentrator is used to demonstrate how the qualitative matrix can be applied to determine priorities for the control of occupational health hazards. The semi-quantitative matrix uses attributable risk as a quantitative measure of probability and uses qualitative measures of consequence. A practical application of this matrix is the determination of occupational health priorities using existing epidemiological studies. Calculated attributable risks from epidemiological studies of hazard-disease combinations in mining and minerals processing are used as examples. These historic response data do not reflect the risks associated with current exposures. A method using current exposure data, known exposure-response relationships and the semi-quantitative matrix is proposed for more accurate and current risk rankings.

Income Ranking and convergence with physical and human capital and income equality

This paper presents an overlapping generations model with physical and human capital and income inequality. It shows that inequality impedes output growth by directly harming capital accumulation and indirectly raising the ratio of physical to human capital. The convergence speed of output growth equals the lower of the convergence speeds of the relative capital ratio and inequality, and varies with initial states. Among economies with the same balanced growth rate but different initial income levels, the ranking of income can switch in favor of those starting from low inequality and a low ratio of physical to human capital, particularly if the growth rate converges slowly. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Document re-ranking by generality in bio-medical information retrieval

Document ranking is an important process in information retrieval (IR). It presents retrieved documents in an order of their estimated degrees of relevance to query. Traditional document ranking methods are mostly based on the similarity computations between documents and query. In this paper we argue that the similarity-based document ranking is insufficient in some cases. There are two reasons. Firstly it is about the increased information variety. There are far too many different types documents available now for user to search. The second is about the users variety. In many cases user may want to retrieve documents that are not only similar but also general or broad regarding a certain topic. This is particularly the case in some domains such as bio-medical IR. In this paper we propose a novel approach to re-rank the retrieved documents by incorporating the similarity with their generality. By an ontology-based analysis on the semantic cohesion of text, document generality can be quantified. The retrieved documents are then re-ranked by their combined scores of similarity and the closeness of documents’ generality to the query’s. Our experiments have shown an encouraging performance on a large bio-medical document collection, OHSUMED, containing 348,566 medical journal references and 101 test queries.

Sausage: protein threading with flexible force fields

Sausage is a protein sequence threading program, but with remarkable run-time flexibility. Using different scripts, it can calculate protein sequence-structure alignments, search structure libraries, swap force fields, create models form alignments, convert file formats and analyse results. There are several different force fields which might be classed as knowledge-based, although they do not rely on Boltzmann statistics. Different force fields are used for alignment calculations and subsequent ranking of calculated models.

The Australian Burden of Disease Study: measuring the loss of health from diseases, injuries and risk factors

This is an overview of the first burden of disease and injury studies carried out in Australia. Methods developed for the World Bank and World Health Organization Global Burden of Disease Study were adapted and applied to Australian population health data. Depression was found to be the top-ranking cause of non-fatal disease burden in Australia, causing 8% of the total years lost due to disability in 1996. Mental disorders overall were responsible for nearly 30% of the non-fatal disease burden. The leading causes of total disease burden (disability-adjusted life years [DALYs]) were ischaemic heart disease and stroke, together causing nearly 18% of the total disease burden. Depression was the fourth leading cause of disease burden, accounting for 3.7% of the total burden. Of the 10 major risk factors to which the disease burden can be attributed, tobacco smoking causes an estimated 10% of the total disease burden in Australia, followed by physical inactivity (7%).

The burden of mental disorders in Victoria, 1996

Background: Between 1998 and 1999, a burden of disease assessment was carried out in Victoria, Australia applying and improving on the methods of the Global Burden of Disease Study. This paper describes the methods and results of the calculations of the burden due to 22 mental disorders, adding 14 conditions not included in previous burden of disease estimates, Methods: The National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing provided recent data on the occurrence of the major adult mental disorders in Australia. Data from international studies and expert advice further contributed to the construction of disease models, describing each condition in terms of incidence, average duration and level of severity, with adjustments for comorbidity with other mental disorders. Disability weights for the time spent in different states of mental ill health were borrowed mainly from a study in the Netherlands, supplemented by weights derived in a local extrapolation exercise. Results: Mental disorders were the third largest group of conditions contributing to the burden of disease in Victoria, ranking behind cancers and cardiovascular diseases. Depression was the greatest cause of disability in both men and women. Eight other mental disorders in men and seven in women ranked among the top twenty causes of disability. Conclusions: Insufficient information on the natural history of many of the mental disorders, the limited information on the validity of mental disorder diagnoses in community surveys and considerable differences between ICD-10 and DSM-IV defined diagnoses were the main concerns about the accuracy of the estimates. Similar and often greater concerns have been raised in relation to the estimation of the burden from common non-fatal physical conditions such as asthma, diabetes and osteoarthritis. In comparison, psychiatric epidemiology can boast greater scientific rigour in setting standards for population surveys.

Globalisation and the technology gap: Regional and time evidence

This chapter examines the relationship between globalisation and technological progress. It computes an annual and country specific measure of technological gap, the technology ratio (TGR), using a recently proposed method known as metafrontiers. The TGR is measured as the distance from a group frontier to the global (or meta) frontier. The TGRs provide a measure to compare technological capability across countries. The ranking obtained from the metafrontiers method is first compared to other methods based on the direct measure of patents, science articles, schooling etc. The TGRs are then related to levels of trade openness and inbound and outbound foreign direct investment within regions and overtime in an effort to identify the relationship between technological gap and outward orientation.

Public choice of species for the ark: Phylogenetic similarity and preferred wildlife species for survival

Humans play a role in deciding the fate of species in the current extinction wave. Because of the previous Similarity Principle, physical attractiveness and likeability, it has been argued that public choice favours the survival of species that satisfy these criteria at the expense of other species. This paper empirically tests this argument by considering a hypothetical ‘Ark’ situation. Surveys of 204 members of the Australian public inquired whether they are in favour of the survival of each of 24 native mammal, bird and reptile species (prior to and after information provision about each species). The species were ranked by percentage of ‘yes’ votes received. Species composition by taxon in various fractions of the ranking was determined. If the previous Similarity Principle holds, mammals should rank highly and dominate the top fractions of animals saved in the hierarchical list. We find that although mammals would be over-represented in the ‘Ark’, birds and reptiles are unlikely to be excluded when social choice is based on numbers ‘voting’ for the survival of each species. Support for the previous Similarity Principle is apparent particularly after information provision. Public policy implications of this are noted and recommendations are given.

Adolescents' perceptions of social status: Development and evaluation of a new indicator

Objective. Eliminating health disparities, including those that are a result of socioeconomic status (SES), is one of the overarching goals of Healthy People 2010. This article reports on the development of a new, adolescent-specific measure of subjective social status (SSS) and on initial exploratory analyses of the relationship of SSS to adolescents' physical and psychological health. Methods. A cross-sectional study of 10 843 adolescents and a subsample of 166 paired adolescent/mother dyads who participated in the Growing Up Today Study was conducted. The newly developed MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (10-point scale) was used to measure SSS. Paternal education was the measure of SES. Indicators of psychological and physical health included depressive symptoms and obesity, respectively. Linear regression analyses determined the association of SSS to depressive symptoms, and logistic regression determined the association of SSS to overweight and obesity, controlling for sociodemographic factors and SES. Results. Mean society ladder ranking, a subjective measure of SES, was 7.2 ± 1.3. Mean community ladder ranking, a measure of perceived placement in the school community, was 7.6 ± 1.7. Reliability of the instrument was excellent: the intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.73 for the society ladder and 0.79 for the community ladder. Adolescents had higher society ladder rankings than their mothers (µteen = 7.2 ± 1.3 vs µmom = 6.8 ± 1.2; P = .002). Older adolescents' perceptions of familial placement in society were more closely correlated with maternal subjective perceptions of placement than those of younger adolescents (Spearman's rhoteens

A methodology for analysis of sugarcane productivity trends - I. Analysis across districts

Historically, few articles have addressed the use of district level mill production data for analysing the effect of varietal change on sugarcane productivity trends. This appears to be due to lack of compiled district data sets and appropriate methods by which to analyse these data. Recently, varietal data on tonnes of sugarcane per hectare (TCH), sugar content (CCS), and their product, tonnes of sugar content per hectare (TSH) on a district basis, have been compiled. This study was conducted to develop a methodology for regular analysis of such data from mill districts to assess productivity trends over time, accounting for variety and variety x environment interaction effects for 3 mill districts (Mulgrave, Babinda, and Tully) from 1958 to 1995. Restricted maximum likelihood methodology was used to analyse the district level data and best linear unbiased predictors for random effects, and best linear unbiased estimates for fixed effects were computed in a mixed model analysis. In the combined analysis over districts, Q124 was the top ranking variety for TCH, and Q120 was top ranking for both CCS and TSH. Overall production for TCH increased over the 38-year period investigated. Some of this increase can be attributed to varietal improvement, although the predictors for TCH have shown little progress since the introduction of Q99 in 1976. Although smaller gains have been made in varietal improvement for CCS, overall production for CCS decreased over the 38 years due to non-varietal factors. Varietal improvement in TSH appears to have peaked in the mid-1980s. Overall production for TSH remained stable over time due to the varietal increase in TCH and the non-varietal decrease in CCS.

Slagging propensities of blended coals

This paper presents the experimental results on the slagging propensity of three pairs of blended coals tested in the Australian Coal Industry Research Laboratory furnace. The results showed that none of the coals or blends produced strongly molten deposit. At worst, the deposits contained some moderately sintered material. Most of the blends have (slightly) worse slagging behavior than the component coals. In order to rank the slagging propensity numerically, we defined the minimum heat flux ratio and total heat flux ratio based on the heat flux profiles. They are better in ranking the slagging propensities than other measures such as the build-up rate and visual physical characteristics. The Fe2O3/CaO molar ratio correlates the slagging propensity for five coals and six blends of this study. The worst slagging occurs when the ratio approaches 1.0. This ratio provides explanation of why the blends had worse slagging than the component coals for the pairs of blends: A-B and C-D. However, we note that there are causes of slagging other than the Fe2O3/CaO molar ratio. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Techniques to determine ignition, flame stability and burnout of blended coals in p.f. power station boilers

The blending of coals has become popular to improve the performance of coals, to meet specifications of power plants and, to reduce the cost of coals, This article reviews the results and provides new information on ignition, flame stability, and carbon burnout studies of blended coals. The reviewed studies were conducted in laboratory-, pilot-, and full-scale facilities. The new information was taken in pilot-scale studies. The results generally show that blending a high-volatile coal with a low-volatile coal or anthracite can improve the ignition, flame stability and burnout of the blends. This paper discusses two general methods to predict the performance of blended coals: (1) experiment; and (2) indices. Laboratory- and pilot-scale tests, at least, provide a relative ranking of the combustion performance of coal/blends in power station boilers. Several indices, volatile matter content, heating value and a maceral index, can be used to predict the relative ranking of ignitability and flame stability of coals and blends. The maceral index, fuel ratio, and vitrinite reflectance can also be used to predict the absolute carbon burnout of coal and blends within limits. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.