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Workers on offshore petroleum installations might be exposed to benzene, a carcinogenic agent. Recently, a full-shift benzene exposure model was developed based on personal measurements. This study aimed to validate this exposure model by using datasets not included in the model. The exposure model was validated against an internal dataset of measurements from offshore installations owned by the same company that provided data for the model, and an external dataset from installations owned by another company. We used Tobit regression to estimate GM (geometric mean) benzene exposure overall and for individual job groups. Bias, relative bias, precision, and correlation were estimated to evaluate the agreement between measured exposures and the levels predicted by the model. Overall, the model overestimated exposure when compared to the predicted exposure level to the internal dataset with a factor of 1.7, a relative bias of 73%, a precision of 0.6, a correlation coefficient of 0.72 (p = 0.019), while the Lin's Concordance Correlation Coefficient (CCC) was 0.53. The model underestimated exposure when compared to the external dataset with a factor of about 2, with a relative bias of −45%, a precision of 1.2, a correlation coefficient of 0.31 (p = 0.544), and a Lin's CCC of 0.25. The exposure model overestimated benzene exposure in the internal validation dataset, while the precision and the correlation between the measured and predicted exposure levels were high. Differences in measurement strategies could be one of the reasons for the discrepancy. The exposure model agreed less with the external dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Work on offshore petroleum installations may cause exposure to benzene. Benzene is a carcinogenic agent, and exposure among workers should be as low as reasonably practicable. We aimed to assess short-term (less than 60 min) benzene exposure from the most frequent work tasks on offshore installations on the Norwegian continental shelf and identify determinants of exposure. In addition, we aimed to assess the time trend in task-based benzene measurements from 2002 to 2018. Methods The study included 763 task-based measurements with a sampling duration of less than 60 min, collected on 28 offshore installations from 2002 to 2018. The measurements were categorized into 10 different tasks. Multilevel mixed-effect Tobit regression models were developed for two tasks: sampling and disassembling/assembling equipment. Benzene source, season, indoors or outdoors, design of process area, year of production start, sampling method, and work operation were considered as potential determinants for benzene exposure in the models. Results The overall geometric mean (GM) benzene exposure was 0.02 ppm (95% confidence intervals 95%(CI: 0.01–0.04). The pipeline inspection gauge (PIG) operation task was associated with the highest exposure, with a GM of 0.33 ppm, followed by work on flotation cells, disassembling/assembling, and sampling, with GMs of 0.16, 0.04, and 0.01 ppm, respectively. Significant determinants for the disassembling/assembling task were work operation (changing or recertifying valves, changing or cleaning filters, and breaking pipes) and benzene source. For sampling, the benzene source was a significant determinant. Overall, the task-based benzene exposure declined annually by 10.2% (CI 95%: −17.4 to −2.4%) from 2002 to 2018. Conclusions The PIG operation task was associated with the highest exposure out of the ten tasks, followed by work on flotation cells and when performing disassembling/assembling of equipment. The exposure was associated with the type of benzene source that was worked on. Despite the decline in task-based exposure in 2002–2018, technical measures should still be considered in order to reduce the exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Aims to identify the role of document readability level and the objective complexity of the work task on students' relevance judgment and document ranking. Methods: Quantitative content analysis was utilized to determine the readability level of texts. The statistical population of the research included 2825 graduate students of Shiraz University of Humanities. To determine the sample size, due to time-consuming process of relevance judgment, students' time constraint, and sample size of similar studies, a non-probability sampling method of voluntary type was used. Two work tasks were designed based on Borland's (2000) Repository of Assigned Search Tasks and experts' opinions. After confirming the validity of the work tasks by the experts, searching through the Persian article databases, including SID, Magiran, and Noormags, four relevant, four partially relevant, and two irrelevant articles were selected by five experts The articles were divided into difficult and very difficult levels by determining their readability levels using Flash-Diani readability formula. In the next step, ten articles related to two work tasks were scored by users in a six-level spectrum (from entirely irrelevant to entirely relevant) then ranked based on the relevance degree (from 1 to 10). Data was analyzed using social science statistical software version 23 (SPSS), and T-tests and Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted. Findings: The results showed significant difference between students' relevance judgment with different readability levels. Students rated documents with difficult readability levels more relevant than documents with very difficult readability levels. In addition, considering the role of readability level on the ranking, there was a significant difference between the rankings of relevance in the documents with different readability levels according to the students. Documents with difficult readability levels were ranked lower in terms of relevance. Therefore, students performed finer on rating documents with difficult readability levels. Findings about the role of complexity level of work showed that objective complexity of the work task affected the students' relevance judgment. The retrieved documents related to the simple work task were found to be more relevant than the complex work task. Regarding the role of complexity level of work tasks on ranking, findings revealed that the level of objective complexity of the work task affected the ranking of documents, and the simple work task ranked lower in terms of relevance ranking. Therefore, students performed finer on the simple work task than on the complex work task regarding relevance rating. Conclusion: The role of level of readability of documents and objective complexity of the task affected relevance, judgment, and ranking. Further research on the effect of these indicators on relevance judgment can improve the design of information retrieval systems and increase the quality of the relevance and ranking algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

André Nyberg,1,* Sara Lundell,1,* Ulla-Maija Pesola,1 Åsa Audulv,2 Karin Wadell1,3 1Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Physiotherapy, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; 2Department of Nursing, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; 3Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Division of Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: André Nyberg, Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Physiotherapy, Umeå University, Umeå, 901 87, Sweden, Tel +46 90 786 66 39, Email andre.nyberg@umu.seBackground: Lack of routines and competence among healthcare professionals have been reported as barriers to COPD management in long-term care. Online education could be used as a strategy to make COPD education more accessible.Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate a digital COPD education program for healthcare professionals in long-term care regarding feasibility, knowledge and working procedures.Methods: A randomized controlled feasibility trial with a convergent mixed methods design was conducted. Two municipalities in Sweden were randomized to intervention (n=20) or control (n=17). The intervention was a digital COPD education program accessible for three months. Data was collected through questionnaires on COPD-specific knowledge, conceptual knowledge, feasibility and usage of the COPD Web platform. Repeated individual interviews using a semi-structured interview guide was also performed. Quantitative and qualitative findings were merged using a mixed methods design.Results: The digital COPD education program appears feasible based on the expressed satisfaction of the healthcare workers and their reports that it supported them in their work. Across questionnaires, objective COPD-specific knowledge increased by 14 to 16 percentage points in the intervention group compared to 0 to 6 percentage points in the control group (p=0.001). The objective increase in COPD-specific knowledge was also captured in the interviews, where a perceived increase in knowledge led to increased security and focus on COPD management. Few changes in working procedures were expressed, but participants felt that attention was raised regarding COPD and the importance of preventive healthcare services. In addition, increased knowledge of healthcare services provided by other involved professions was emphasized, leading to discussions with other professions in relation to COPD management.Conclusion: A digital COPD education program is feasible and can increase the COPD-specific knowledge of healthcare professionals in long-term care, leading to increased focus on COPD-related issues. More comprehensive measures, including organizational changes, might be needed to change working procedures.Keywords: e-health, feasibility, work task, qualitative longitudinal research, questionnaire

In recent years, with the rapid development of the economy, in order to stabilize in the market and expand their own business, various companies in the form of various indicators, tangible or intangible to improve the management of the work of workers, speed up the pace of work, take up more work time. This article studies its relationship with stress management from the perspective of psychological capital, in order to achieve prior control of work stress from the perspective of individual positive psychological capital, and provide a new perspective for work stress management in the field of human resource management, and at the same time Enterprises and colleges and universities improve the psychological capital of employees and provide new management models. The unreasonable distribution of work even affects the daily life of management workers and aggravates the working pressure of company management workers. The training process of deep learning is actually the process of repeated forward and reverse calculations of the deep neural network based on the provided data. This process can actually be abstracted, and the deep learning framework is designed to accomplish this task. The existence of a deep learning framework allows users not to fully understand the principles and training process of deep neural networks, but can effectively train the models they want. A long time of high mental state tension leads to a variety of physical and psychological discomfort. If the pressure cannot be alleviated and released, this article extends the health collection equipment of the deep learning to households, continuously records the health status of residents through the mobile Internet, and uses the information resources of the regional residents' health file platform to provide residents with health status evaluation, management and guidance, health care consultation, education and education. A series of personal health management services such as health risk factor assessment. The positive emotion index of managers increased from 18 to 27, and the negative emotion index decreased from 29 to 13. The positive emotion was significantly more than the negative emotion, and the emotional situation was improved.

Muscle fatigue is a risk factor for developing musculoskeletal disorders during low-load repetitive tasks. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of muscle fatigue on power spectrum changes of upper limb and trunk acceleration and angular velocity during a repetitive pointing task (RPT) and a work task. Twenty-four participants equipped with 11 inertial measurement units, that include acceleration and gyroscope sensors, performed a tea bag filling work task before and immediately after a fatiguing RPT. During the RPT, the power spectrum of acceleration and angular velocity increased in the movement and in 6–12 Hz frequency bands for sensors positioned on the head, sternum, and pelvis. Alternatively, for the sensor positioned on the hand, the power spectrum of acceleration and angular velocity decreased in the movement frequency band. During the work task, following the performance of the fatiguing RPT, the power spectrum of acceleration and angular velocity increased in the movement frequency band for sensors positioned on the head, sternum, pelvis, and arm. Interestingly, for both the RPT and work task, Cohens' d effect sizes were systematically larger for results extracted from angular velocity than acceleration. Although fatigue-related changes were task-specific between the RPT and the work task, fatigue systematically increased the power spectrum in the movement frequency band for the head, sternum, pelvis, which highlights the relevance of this indicator for assessing fatigue. Angular velocity may be more efficient to assess fatigue than acceleration. The use of low cost, wearable, and uncalibrated sensors, such as acceleration and gyroscope, in industrial settings is promising to assess muscle fatigue in workers assigned to upper limb repetitive tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warehousing management is a specialized core curriculum in the logistics management major. The curriculum not only teaches strong theoretical concepts, but also practical skills. Traditional teaching mode emphasizes on theoretical teaching due to the lack of sufficient practical conditions; hence, students' practical abilities cannot be developed comprehensively. Therefore, this study proposed teaching reform measures, such as reconstructing the curriculum content, implementing modularized teaching, and creating a buildtask-exercise-evaluation teaching mode by introducing virtual reality (VR) simulation technology and improving the teaching method. With these measures, students could finish their tasks and realize their learning objectives in the virtual intelligent warehouse environment by combining the knowledge and skills they have learned. Moreover, students were asked to design a warehouse layout by using the simulation software according to enterprise case data. Results show that the task-driven teaching reform for warehousing management curriculum based on VR technology improves the efficiency and quality of students' skill training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muscle fatigue is a risk factor for developing musculoskeletal disorders during low-load repetitive tasks. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of muscle fatigue on power spectrum changes of upper limb and trunk acceleration and angular velocity during a repetitive pointing task (RPT) and a work task. Twenty-four participants equipped with 11 inertial measurement units, that include acceleration and gyroscope sensors, performed a tea bag filling work task before and immediately after a fatiguing RPT. During the RPT, the power spectrum of acceleration and angular velocity increased in the movement and in 6–12 Hz frequency bands for sensors positioned on the head, sternum, and pelvis. Alternatively, for the sensor positioned on the hand, the power spectrum of acceleration and angular velocity decreased in the movement frequency band. During the work task, following the performance of the fatiguing RPT, the power spectrum of acceleration and angular velocity increased in the movement frequency band for sensors positioned on the head, sternum, pelvis, and arm. Interestingly, for both the RPT and work task, Cohens’ d effect sizes were systematically larger for results extracted from angular velocity than acceleration. Although fatigue-related changes were task-specific between the RPT and the work task, fatigue systematically increased the power spectrum in the movement frequency band for the head, sternum, pelvis, which highlights the relevance of this indicator for assessing fatigue. Angular velocity may be more efficient to assess fatigue than acceleration. The use of low cost, wearable, and uncalibrated sensors, such as acceleration and gyroscope, in industrial settings is promising to assess muscle fatigue in workers assigned to upper limb repetitive tasks.

This paper analyzes work activity in the home, e.g., cleaning, performed by two actors, a human and a robot. Nowadays, there are attempts to automate this activity through the use of robots. However, the activity of cleaning, in and of itself, is not important; it is used instrumentally to understand if and how robots can be integrated within current and future homes. The theoretical framework of the paper is based on empirical work collected as part of the Multimodal Elderly Care Systems (MECS) project. The study proposes a framework for the division of work tasks between humans and robots. The framework is anchored within existing research and our empirical findings. Swim-lane diagrams are used to visualize the tasks performed (WHAT), by each of the two actors, to ascertain the tasks’ temporality (WHEN), and their distribution and transitioning from one actor to the other (WHERE). The study presents the framework of various dimensions of work tasks, such as the types of work tasks, but also the temporality and spatiality of tasks, illustrating linear, parallel, sequential, and distributed tasks in a shared or non-shared space. The study’s contribution lies in its foundation for analyzing work tasks that robots integrated into or used in the home may generate for humans, along with their multimodal interactions. Finally, the framework can be used to visualize, plan, and design work tasks for the human and for the robot, respectively, and their work division. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Wildland firefighters conducting prescribed burns are exposed to a complex mixture of pollutants, requiring an integrated measure of exposure. Objective: We used urinary mutagenicity to assess if systemic exposure to mutagens is higher in firefighters after working at prescribed burns versus after non-burn work days. Other biomarkers of exposure and oxidative stress markers were also measured. Methods: Using a repeated measures study design, we collected urine before, immediately after, and the morning after a work shift on prescribed burn and non-burn work days from 12 healthy subjects, and analyzed for malondialdehyde (MDA), 8-isoprostane, 1-hydroxypyrene (OH-pyrene), and mutagenicity in Salmonella YG1041 +S9. Particulate matter (PM2.5) and carbon monoxide (CO) were measured by personal monitoring. Light-absorbing carbon (LAC) of PM2.5 was measured as a surrogate for black carbon exposure. Linear mixed-effect models were used to assess cross-work shift changes in urinary biomarkers. Results: No significant differences occurred in creatinine-adjusted urinary mutagenicity across the work shift between burn days and non-burn days. Firefighters lighting fires had a non-significant, 1.6-fold increase in urinary mutagenicity for burn versus non-burn day exposures. Positive associations were found between cross-work shift changes in creatinine-adjusted urinary mutagenicity and MDA (p = 0.0010), OH-pyrene (p = 0.0001), and mass absorption efficiency which is the LAC/PM2.5 ratio (p = 0.2245), respectively. No significant effect of day type or work task on cross-work shift changes in MDA or 8-isoprostane was observed. Conclusion: Urinary mutagenicity may serve as a suitable measure of occupational smoke exposures among wildland firefighters, especially among those lighting fires for prescribed burns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: human-information interactions must be considered in order to be able to interactively design Information Retrieval Systems (IRS). In this regard, study of users’ interactions must be based on their socio-cultural context (specifically work tasks). Accordingly, this paper aims to explore the use of information-interaction criteria among students in the information searching process according to different kinds of their work tasks. Methodology: This research is applied qualitative method using exploratory study. The research population consisted of MSc students of Ferdowsi university of Mashhad enrolled in 2012-13 academic year. In 3 stages of sampling (random stratified, quota, and voluntary sampling), 30 cases were selected. Each of these cases searched 6 different types of simulated work tasks. Interaction criteria were extracted ? Content analysis of aloud thinking reports. Validity of tools was verified through Faculties of KIS at Ferdowsi university of Mashhad. Also,0.78 Kripendorff’s alpha ratio based on an agreement between the inter – coder indicates the Dependability of content analysis. Findings: The findings show that in addition to ‘topic’ criteria, other interaction criteria impact on information- interaction of users, such as: ‘search results ranking’, ‘domain knowledge of user’, ‘layout’, ‘type of information resource’ and etc. based on the level of objective complexity and product of work tasks, information-interaction criteria change. Conclusion: the users pay attention to different information-interaction criteria in process of information searching, considering to variety of work tasks (level of objective complexity and product). So, it is necessary to pay attention to work task characteristics in order to design interactive and personalized IR systems.

This paper analyzes work activity in the home, e.g., cleaning, performed by two actors, a human and a robot. Nowadays, there are attempts to automate this activity through the use of robots. However, the activity of cleaning, in and of itself, is not important; it is used instrumentally to understand if and how robots can be integrated within current and future homes. The theoretical framework of the paper is based on empirical work collected as part of the Multimodal Elderly Care Systems (MECS) project. The study proposes a framework for the division of work tasks between humans and robots. The framework is anchored within existing research and our empirical findings. Swim-lane diagrams are used to visualize the tasks performed (WHAT), by each of the two actors, to ascertain the tasks’ temporality (WHEN), and their distribution and transitioning from one actor to the other (WHERE). The study presents the framework of various dimensions of work tasks, such as the types of work tasks, but also the temporality and spatiality of tasks, illustrating linear, parallel, sequential, and distributed tasks in a shared or non-shared space. The study’s contribution lies in its foundation for analyzing work tasks that robots integrated into or used in the home may generate for humans, along with their multimodal interactions. Finally, the framework can be used to visualize, plan, and design work tasks for the human and for the robot, respectively, and their work division.