Ergonomic Planned Supply in an Automotive Assembly Line

The objective of this research is to identify the benefits of ergonomic improvements in workstations and in planned parts supply in an automotive assembly line. Another aim is to verify to what extent it is possible to create competitive advantages in the manufacturing area with reduction in vehicle assembly time by using technological investments in ergonomics with benefits to the worker and to the company. The Methods Time Measurement (MTM) methodology is chosen to measure the process time differences. To ensure a reliable comparison, a company in Brazil that has two different types of assembly line installations in the same plant was observed, and both assembly lines were under the same influences in terms of human resources, wages, food, and educational level of the staff. In this article, the first assembly line is called ""new"" and was built 6 years ago, with high investments in ergonomic solutions, in the supply system, and in the process. The other is called ""traditional"" and was built 23 years ago with few investments in the area. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Survey of Listeria spp. in matched clinical, food and refrigerator samples at home level in Brazil

Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterial pathogen that represents a serious threat during pregnancy and several cases of listeriosis have been linked to the consumption of contaminated foods worldwide. In Brazil, there is no report of foodborne listeriosis, despite some sporadic cases of infection by this bacterium occur. In general in our country, there is no awareness of medical personnel to instruct moms-to-be to avoid high risk foods. In the present study, a total of 141 samples were surveyed for the presence of Listeria spp., including cervicovaginal samples of patients, foods and home refrigerators. No clinical sample was positive for Listeria spp., but it was isolated from two refrigerators. L. monocytogenes was detected in two food samples out of five positive ones for Listeria spp. In conclusion, it was shown the presence of contaminated food items at home level and the lack of information on the risks of listeriosis, indicating the need of implementation of food safety education programs. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Go home fascist

Girls with placard during visit of former South Vietnamese vice president Nguyen Cao Ky to Brisbane, Australia in January 1967. Placard reads Go home fascist

Go home fascist 2

Girl with placard Go home fascist during visit of former South Vietnamese vice president Nguyen Cao Ky to Brisbane, Australia in January 1967.

Bringing Us Home: Cohousing and the Environmental Possibilities of Reuniting People with Neighbourhoods

Cohousing is a form of intentional community which has made a significant contribution to urban environmentalism by recreating the neighbourhood as the setting for engagement with the world beyond the front door.

Spectral properties of the tandem Jackson network, seen as a quasi-birth-and-death process

Quasi-birth-and-death (QBD) processes with infinite “phase spaces” can exhibit unusual and interesting behavior. One of the simplest examples of such a process is the two-node tandem Jackson network, with the “phase” giving the state of the first queue and the “level” giving the state of the second queue. In this paper, we undertake an extensive analysis of the properties of this QBD. In particular, we investigate the spectral properties of Neuts’s R-matrix and show that the decay rate of the stationary distribution of the “level” process is not always equal to the convergence norm of R. In fact, we show that we can obtain any decay rate from a certain range by controlling only the transition structure at level zero, which is independent of R. We also consider the sequence of tandem queues that is constructed by restricting the waiting room of the first queue to some finite capacity, and then allowing this capacity to increase to infinity. We show that the decay rates for the finite truncations converge to a value, which is not necessarily the decay rate in the infinite waiting room case. Finally, we show that the probability that the process hits level n before level 0 given that it starts in level 1 decays at a rate which is not necessarily the same as the decay rate for the stationary distribution.

The relationship between multiple birth children's early phonological skills and later literacy

Previous studies have shown that multiple ; birth children (MBC) are prone to early phonological ;difficulties and later literacy problems. However, to date, ;there has been no systematic long-term follow-up of MBC with phonological difficulties in the preschool years to determine whether these difficulties predict later literacy problems. In this study, 20 MBC whose early speech and language skills had been previously documented were compared to normative data and 20 singleton controls on tasks assessing phonological ; processing and literacy. The major findings indicated that MBC performed significantly more poorly on some tasks :df phonological processing than singleton controls did. Further, the early phonological skills of MBC (i.e., the number of inappropriate phonological processes used) correlated with poor performance on visual rhyme recognition, word repetition, and phoneme detection tasks 5 years later. There was no significant relationship between early biological factors (birth weight and gestation period) and performance on the phonological processing and literacy-related subtests. These results cl-support the hypothesis that MBC's early speech and language difficulties are not merely a transient phase;of; development, but a real disorder, with consequences for later academic achievement.

Opioid overdose mortality in Australia, 1964-1997: birth-cohort trends

Objective: To examine trends in rates of opioid overdose deaths from 1964 to 1997 in different birth cohorts. Design: Age-period-cohort analysis of national data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Main outcome measures: Annual population rates of death attributed to opioid dependence or accidental opioid poisoning in people aged 15-44 years, by sex and birth cohort tin five-year intervals, 1940-1944 to 1975-1979). Results: The rate of opioid overdose deaths increased 55-fold between 1964 and 1997, from 1.3 to 71.5 per million population aged 15-44 years. The rate of opioid overdose deaths also increased substantially over the eight birth cohorts, with an incidence rate ratio of 20.70 (95% confidence interval, 13.60-31.46) in the 1975-1979 cohort compared with the 1940-1944 cohort. The age at which the cumulative rate of opioid overdose deaths reached 300 per million fell in successive cohorts (for men, from 28 years among those born 1955-1959 to 22 years among those born 1965-1974; for women, from 33 years among those born 1955-1959 to 27 years among those born 1965-1969). Conclusions: Heroin use in Australia largely began in the early 1970s and rates of heroin use have markedly increased in birth cohorts born since 1950.

Women's health Australia: On the progress of the main cohort studies

More than 41,000 women aged 18-23, 45-50, and 70-75 years in 1996 are participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (Women's Health Australia). Baseline surveys were conducted for all three cohorts in 1996, and the first follow-up survey of the mid-age group in 1998 has achieved a response rate exceeding 90%. The main findings so far reflect the large differences in the life experiences of the three cohorts. The young women report high levels of stress. The physical and mental health of those with young children is worse than for those without children, but confounding by sociodemographic characteristics may account for the differences. Two thirds of young women in the healthy weight or underweight range would like to weigh less, and early onset of dieting is associated with poorer physical and mental health. Most of the women in the mid-age group have multiple roles-in paid work, home duties, and caring for children and other dependents. The potential of the study to investigate the long-term impact of such busy lives on health outcomes is considerable. At this stage, the main health issues for these women relate to tiredness, weight gain, and menopause. The older cohort presents a picture of positive aging. These women are heavier users of health services than the mid-age and younger women, and they are also more satisfied with these services. Although their physical health is poorer, their mental health is better, and they report less stress than women in the other two cohorts. The follow-up survey of this group, planned for 1999, will focus on the coping strategies used by these women. An overall goal of the project is to understand the interactions among social roles, life events, and women's health in order to provide a basis for improved health policies and services. Analysis of these interactions, which relies on both quantitative and qualitative data, poses many challenges that will be addressed as the longitudinal data become available.