Search

BACKGROUND: There is little published research about managers’ views about implementing and embedding workplace health promotion interventions. OBJECTIVE: To shed light on research-to-practice challenges in implementing workplace health promotion interventions in the Australian road transport industry. METHODS: In this Participatory Action Research project, managers from small-to-midsized companies in the Australian road transport industry were asked their views about enablers and barriers to implementing nutrition and physical activity interventions in their workplace. RESULTS: Managers identified practical assistance with resources, ideas, and staffing as being key enablers to implementation. Barriers included time restraints, worker age and lack of interest, and workplace issues relating to costs and resources. CONCLUSION: Manager perspectives add new insights about successful implementation of workplace health promotion. A Participatory Action Research approach allows managers to develop their own ideas for adapting interventions to suit their workplace. These findings add to a small body of knowledge about managers’ views regarding implementing workplace health promotion in small-to-midsized road transport companies – a relatively unexplored group. Managers highlight the importance of time constraints and worker availability when designing interventions for the road transport industry. Managers require a good understanding of the workplaces’ socio-cultural context for successful health promotion and health behaviour change.

Purpose Workplaces are challenging environments which place workers at the risk of obesity. This is particularly true for Australian road transport industry workplaces. The Analysis Grid for Environments Linked to Obesity (ANGELO) framework is a public health tool which can be used to conceptualise obesogenic environments. It suggests that workplaces have a variety of roles (in the physical, economic, political and sociocultural domains) in responding to obesity in transport industry workplaces. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings which explore this idea. Design/methodology/approach The project used a mixed-methods approach located within a participatory action research framework, to engage workplace managers and truck drivers in the implementation and evaluation of workplace health promotion strategies. The project involved six transport industry workplaces in Queensland, Australia. Findings This study found that transport industry workplaces perceive themselves to have an important role in addressing the physical, economic, political and sociocultural aspects of obesity, as per the ANGELO framework. However, transport industry employees – specifically, truck drivers – do not perceive workplaces to have a major role in health; rather, they consider health to be an area of personal responsibility. Practical implications Balancing the competing perceptions of truck drivers and workplace managers about the workplace’s role in health promotion is an important consideration for future health promotion activities in this hard-to-reach, at-risk population. Originality/value The use of the ANGELO framework allows the conceptualisation of obesity in a novel workplace context.

Research on concepts associated with risk management and theoretical frameworks associated with safety culture and safety citizenship behavior are reviewed, along with their practical application within the work driving safety setting. A model incorporating safety citizenship behavior as a complementary paradigm to safety culture is proposed. It is suggested that this model provides a theoretical framework to inform future research directions aimed at improving safety within the work driving setting.

Background: Workers in the road transport industry, and particularly truck drivers, are at increased risk of chronic diseases. Innovative health promotion strategies involving technologies such as social media may engage this “hard-to-reach” group. There is a paucity of evidence for the efficacy of social media technologies for health promotion in the Australian transport industry. Objective: This study analyzed qualitative data from interviews and focus group discussions to evaluate a social media health promotion intervention, the Truckin’ Healthy Facebook webpage, in selected Australian transport industry workplaces. Methods: We engaged 5 workplace managers and 30 truck drivers from 6 transport industry organizations in developing workplace health promotion strategies, including a social media intervention, within a Participatory Action Research approach. Mixed methods, including a pre- and postintervention manager survey, truck driver survey, key informant semistructured interviews, truck driver focus groups, and focused observation, were used to evaluate the social media intervention. We asked questions about workplace managers’ and truck drivers’ opinions, engagement, and satisfaction with the intervention. This paper focuses on qualitative data. Results: Of the workplace managers who reported implementing the social media intervention at their workplace, all (3/3, 100%) reported satisfaction with the intervention and expressed a keen interest in learning more about social media and how it may be used for workplace health promotion and other purposes. Truck drivers were poorly engaged with the intervention because (1) many believed they were the “wrong age” and lacked the necessary skills; (2) the cost of smartphone technology was prohibitive; (3) they confined their use of social media to nonwork-related purposes; and (4) many workplaces had “no Facebook” policies. Conclusions: The use of social media as a health promotion intervention in transport industry workplaces has potential. Workplace interventions using social media can benefit from a Participatory Action Research approach. Involving managers and workers in the design of social media health promotion interventions and developing strategies to support and deliver the interventions helps to facilitate their success. The workers’ profile, including their age and familiarity with social media, and work, workplace, and family context is important to consider in this process. Much more research needs to be undertaken to better understand the effective use of social media to engage “hard-to-reach” groups.

BACKGROUND Australia's mineral, resource and infrastructure sectors continues to expand as operations in rural and remote locations increasingly rely on fly-in, fly-out or drive-in, drive-out workforces in order to become economically competitive. The issues in effectively managing these workforces are becoming more apparent with reported high amounts of turnover and concerns for safety and performance. The issues presented include a range of physical, mental, psychosocial, safety and community challenges. OBJECTIVES This review aims to consolidate a range of research conducted to communicate potential challenges for industry in relation to a wide variety of issues when engaging and using FIFO/DIDO workforces which includes compressed working schedule design (work schedules), working hours, fatigue, safety performance, employee wellbeing, turnover, psychosocial relationships and community concerns. METHODS A comprehensive literature review was performed using EBSCOhost, PubMed and google scholar, with a focus on FIFO or DIDO workforces engaged within the resources sector. Search terms were kept broad in order to capture all national and international research conducted and included: "fly-in, fly-out" "FIFO" "DIDO" "drive-in, drive-out" "mining". There was no date restriction included in the search. RESULTS Many of the studies were focused on sleep quality, fatigue and the influence of lowered safety performance while at work, presenting an increased risk for health and safety. These issues may be exacerbated for the FIFO workforce when linked to additional research surrounding the extended periods of absence from families influencing workers personal relationships, psychological wellbeing, job satisfaction and the reported high amounts of turnover within the industry. Taken together, this presents a unique implication for the management and continued use of FIFO workforces when considering balancing safety and performance with economic viability of production and operations. CONCLUSIONS The issues of long working hours, fatigue, turnover and job satisfaction are not new to the management of workers. However, FIFO workforces appear to be at an increased risk physically and mentally due to a culmination of other influences, such as extended and frequent periods of absence from friends and families which contribute to feelings of isolation and lowered psychological wellbeing. FIFO workers and their families, engage in a unique lifestyle, rarely are other workers subjected to long hours and compressed work weeks while separated or isolated from their families for extended periods of time. Recently, FIFO interest has shifted to understanding the influences on employee engagement, satisfaction, retention and safety. Considering the management of FIFO workforces from a holistic perspective incorporating all of the issues impacting on these workers may assist to ensure the challenges associated with FIFO employment are understood, addressed and communicated to workers and their families is crucial for safety and health.

Reversing vehicle incidents is a significant but often overlooked issues in organisations. Utilising three Australian organisations, this study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of reversing aids and a behaviour-change program in reducing reversing-related crashes in fleet settings. Reversing-related incidents increased from Time 1 to Time 2 in the organisation that did not implement a specific strategy to reduce their reversing-related crashes and in the organisation that implemented the reversing aids intervention. However, the increase was only statistically significant in the organisation that utilised the reversing aids technology. In this organisation, the odds of its drivers getting involved in a reversing incident has almost doubled from Time 1 and Time 2. In contrast, the frequency of reversing incidents in the organisation implementing the behaviour-change program has significantly decreased, with less than 50 % chance of its drivers being involved in a reversing incident from Time 1 to Time 2. The implications associated with these results will be discussed.

A concept of tunable electric-LC (ELC) resonators is presented in this work. The voltage-controlled tunability is achieved by using liquid crystal in a micro-fluidic channel running through the central capacitive gaps. To attain the largest tunability, the structure is optimized through a parametric analysis using full-wave electromagnetic simulations. The simulation results predict a 6% continuous frequency tuning for this ELC resonator around the frequency of 4.5 GHz. The achieved results demonstrate the possibility of using these ELC resonators in an array to form a tunable frequency selective surfaces (FSS). The principle can be scaled for operation at higher microwave frequencies, where the dissipation of liquid crystal is low.

An overview of liquid crystal technology for microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies is presented. The potential of liquid crystals as reconfigurable materials arises from their ability for continuous tuning with low power consumption, transparency, and possible integration with printed and flexible circuit technologies. This paper describes physical theory and fundamental electrical properties arising from the anisotropy of liquid crystals and overviews selected realized liquid crystal devices, throughout four main categories: resonators and filters, phase shifters and delay lines, antennas, and, finally, frequency-selective surfaces and metamaterials.

The characterization of a tunable band-pass filter based on stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) is presented in this work. The designed filter uses a half-wavelength resonator patch above a multi-layer substrate, with liquid crystal as its central layer, making it continuously tunable at frequencies around S-band. Two liquid crystal samples are considered for three different approaches: lumped-element circuit simulation, full-wave electromagnetic simulations and prototype measurements. The results demonstrate the possibility of using a simple lumped-element circuit simulation for rapid calculation of the performances of liquid crystal devices at microwave frequencies.

Liquid crystals have potential applications in the design of tunable microwave devices. Polyimide films are commonly incorporated in designs to achieve reproducible molecule alignment in the unbiased state. In this investigation two separate resonator elements are designed and investigated: One is fabricated with polyimide layers and one without. Experimental results obtained with a patch resonator illustrate that about half of the maximum tuning range is achieved without polyimide layers. Since substrates able to sustain a temperature range of 180–300 °C are required for the polyimide film curing process, avoiding polyimide enables using even lower heat resistant substrates for various tunable microwave applications and can lead to faster fabrication processes.

Two 6 GHz microstrip patch antennas made from conducting polymers with relatively low DC conductivity such as PEDOT (10000 S/m) and PPy (2000 S/m) are presented. The performance of these patch antennas is compared with a similar copper patch antenna. The results indicate that it is possible to obtain reasonable performance albeit with modest radiation efficiencies. The PEDOT antenna achieved a maximum gain of 2.2 dB, while the PPy antenna reached a gain of 3.8 dB, as against 6.0 dB for a corresponding Cu patch antenna The results confirm the potential of polymer materials for microwave antennas and suggest that CPs may be of use in other passive microwave circuit applications.

Getsinger's Longitudinal Section Electric model describing the propagation characteristics of a single layer microstrip line is modified to cater for ‘n’ layers. An accurate closed-form expression for two and three layered structures is presented and validated against full-wave numerical results. The computed effective permittivity for a randomly selected two and three layer dielectric microstrip line is presented. In the selected examples, for the modified Getsinger model, the dispersion of effective permittivity is within 2–3% relative error for two-layer and within 6–7% relative error for three-layer dielectric microstrip lines for frequency up to 50 GHz. In contrast, for the same structures, the relative errors in previously reported works are above 10% for two layers and above 15% for three-layer dielectric substrates.

th Generation Flash Ladar system which produces real-time, 3-dimensional (3D) video in all lighting conditions has been demonstrated to be a significant enabler to enhance the mission capabilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). These new capabilities include enhanced Intelligence, Reconnaissance and Surveillance (ISR), Automated Target Recognition (ATR), improved situational awareness, GPS denied (terrain relative) navigation, 3D surface mapping, surface change detection (detection of buried improvised explosive devices), camouflage penetration, autonomous aerial refueling and autonomous landing. Ball Aerospace 5 th Generation Flash Ladar system has benefited from over 6 years of development, is compact, modular, and has been demonstrated to be easily integrated and flight-tested on both fixed-wing and rotorcraft with different optical configurations. This paper presents the results of airborne test activities and sample imagery of our 5 th Generation system and discusses options for repackaging and integrating the system into UAV platforms. I. Introduction all Aerospace has significant experience in providing ladar systems for remote sensing applications. NASA’s CALIPSO lidar was built by Ball and has celebrated a number of operational milestones, including an extension of the 3-year initial mission lifetime and over 1 billion laser firings and associated atmospheric measurements. Further, Ball Aerospace is developing the flash ladar navigation system for NASA’s space exploration missions. These programs leverage Ball’s extensive understanding of ladar systems, real time image processing algorithms, guidance, navigation and control algorithms, laser system engineering, and the phenomenology being exploited. 1

A Microstrip Patch Antenna (MPA) has been fabricated using a Conducting Polymer (CP), Polypyrrole (PPy) as radiating patch on a transparent 3mm thick Plexiglas™ substrate. The bulk DC conductivity of the PPy patch is 2000 S/m and its thickness 120 µm. The MPA was designed for operating at 2 GHz. A similar antenna with Copper (Cu) patch on Plexiglas™ was also fabricated for validating the simulation of PPy antenna and comparing its performance. The results show that the PPy antenna reaches a gain of 5.01 dB at 2.18 GHz as against 6.26 dB at 2.2 GHz for a corresponding Cu patch antenna. The conduction efficiency of Cu-patch antenna is around 80% while that of PPy-patch antenna is around 60%. The results suggest that it might be possible to use CPs in other passive microwave circuit applications.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems are part of modern life. They are revolutionizing the way companies run their businesses, cars pay tolls and employees access an office in a building. RFID devices are also making their way quickly into other industries including health care where they are used in remote of monitoring equipment, as tiny chips that identify items in inventory, or are even embedded in surgical sponges for tracking during an operation. Although in many regions RFID regulations are very strict and operators must adhere to the standard, the unpredictable environmental effects on radio propagation can change the way that these devices operate. This paper offers a review of important EMC information relevant to RFID system deployment. It also examines the sources of error in simulations reported in some other publications.

Crash data involving taxis indicates that such drivers are over represented in crashes and are one to two times more likely to be involved in a fatality crash. This study reports on the pre intervention survey to provide a baseline measure of the self-reported attitudes and corresponding driving behaviours of a sample of taxi drivers. Results indicate that some taxi drivers willingly admit to engaging in unsafe driving practices. In addition, preliminary results of a post intervention survey revealed that taxi drivers’ safety perceptions, attitude and behaviours improved after completing a Driving Diary intervention.

Sparse array imaging systems (developed in ultra sound medical imaging) using a co array can be deployed on small UAVs to eliminate grating lobes on a wideband radar. This allows the use of thin film antennas under the aircraft wing using a split transmit and receive aperture. Simulations show side lobes equivalent to an array of 2 times the linear dimension. Apodization reduces sidelobes to -100 dB, but a secondary lobe is apparent at 0.5-0.8 π. Z transform apodization will reduce the secondary lobe. It can be eliminated entirely using sub kernel convolution with the Z transform. (5 pages)

Radar requirements differ from commercial Radio-Over-Fibre (ROF) systems. High signal to noise ratio (SNR) and spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) in a photonic beam forming architecture are paramount. The architecture described in this paper uses phase modulation to overcome previous limitations. It provides high SNR, low-distortion mixing, enabling optical systems to be used in radar, beamforming and similar applications. (5 pages)

We introduce the Network Photonics' Crosswave as the first commercially-available, MEMS-based wavelength selective switch. The CrossWave combines the functionality of signal demultiplexing, switching and re-multiplexing in a single all-optical operation using a dispersive element and 1-D MEMS. 1-D MEMS, where micronurrors are configured in a single array with a single mirror per wavelength, are fabricated in a standard surface micromachining process. In this paper we present three generations of micromirror designs. With proper design optimization and process improvements we have demonstrated exceptional mirror flatness (

Thy monolithic integration of MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) with the driving, controlling, and signal processing electronics promises to improve the performance of micromechanical devices as well as lower their manufacturing, packaging, and instrumentation costs. Key to this integration is the proper interleaving, combining, and customizing of the manufacturing processes to produce functional integrated micromechanical devices with electronics. We have developed a MEMS-first monolithic integrated process that first seals the micromechanical devices in a planarized trench and then builds the electronics in a conventional CMOS process. To date, most of the research published on this technology has focused on the performance characteristics of the mechanical portion of the devices, with little information on the attributes of the accompanying electronics. This work attempts to reduce this information void by presenting the results of SPICE Level 3 and BSIM3v3.1 model parameters extracted for the CMOS portion of the MEMS-first process. Transistor-level simulations of MOSFET current, capacitance, output resistance, and transconductance versus voltage using the extracted model parameters closely match the measured data. Moreover, in model validation efforts, circuit-level simulation values for the average gate propagation delay in a 101-stage ring oscillator are within 13 - 18% of the measured data. These results establish the following: (1) the MEMS-first approach produces functional CMOS devices integrated on a single chip with MEMS devices and (2) the devices manufactured in the approach have excellent transistor characteristics. Thus, the MEMS-first approach renders a solid technology foundation for customers designing in the technology.