Some myths about industrial safety

MINES ParisTech - CRC Technical Report.There are many definitions of safety, but most of them are variations on the theme that safety can be measured by the number of adverse outcomes. This vision has consequences for how industry thinks safety can be achieved. This paper looks at six safety-related assumptions, or safety myths, which impact industry practices. We argue that these practices are littered with fragile beliefs, which in many cases make the safety management flawed and ineffectual. The open acknowledgement of these myths is a necessary first step to genuinely improve industrial safety

Non-conscious errors in the control of dynamic events synchronized with heartbeats: A new challenge for human reliability study

This paper studies the synchronization between dynamic events with heartbeats and its impact on non-conscious errors in the control of dynamic events. It proposes a methodology to compare two groups of subjects: a group for which alarms are synchronized with the heartbeats of the subjects and a group for which they are not. Quantitative and subjective data were recorded during four experimental phases from a low level to a high level of workload. Results showed that there was a significant impact of such a synchronization of events with heartbeat: people produced more errors when this synchronization was present and they were not really conscious about the disruption of their abilities. This study is very promising and shows the interest of developing future on-line or off-line human reliability assessment methods based on unsafe behaviors associated with this synchronization

Human Reliability Analysis: A Review and Critique

Few systems operate completely independent of humans. Thus any study of system risk or reliability requires analysis of the potential for failure arising from human activities in operating and managing this. Human reliability analysis (HRA) grew up in the 1960s with the intention of modelling the likelihood and consequences of human error. Initially, it treated the humans as any other component in the system. They could fail and the consequences of their failure were examined by tracing the effects through a fault tree. Thus to conduct a HRA one had to assess the probability of various operator errors, be they errors of omission or commission. First generation HRA may have used some sophistication in accomplishing this, but in essence that is all they did. Over the years, methods have been developed that recognise human potential to recover from a failure, on the one hand, and the effects of stress and organisational culture on the likelihood of possible errors, on the other. But no method has yet been developed which incorporates all our understanding of individual, team and organisational behaviour into overall assessments of system risk or reliability

Classification and Quantification of Human Error in Manufacturing: A Case Study in Complex Manual Assembly

Manual assembly operations are sensitive to human errors that can diminish the quality of final products. The paper shows an application of human reliability analysis in a realistic manufacturing context to identify where and why manual assembly errors occur. The techniques SHERPA and HEART were used to perform the analysis of human reliability. Three critical tasks were selected for analysis based on quality records: (1) installation of three types of brackets using fasteners, (2) fixation of a data cable to the assembly structure using cushioned loop clamps and (3) installation of cap covers to protect inlets. The identified error modes with SHERPA were: 36 action errors, nine selection errors, eight information retrieval errors and six checking errors. According to HEART, the highest human error probabilities were associated with assembly parts sensitive to geometry-related errors (brackets and cushioned loop clamps). The study showed that perceptually engaging assembly instructions seem to offer the highest potential for error reduction and performance improvement. Other identified areas of action were the improvement of the inspection process and workers’ provision with better tracking and better feedback. Implementation of assembly guidance systems could potentially benefit worker’s performance and decrease assembly errors

A New Evaluation: The Theological Influence of F. D. Maurice on the Imaginative Works of Lewis Carroll.

This thesis will explore how the fictional work of Lewis Carroll was influenced by mid nineteenth century eschatological ideas and controversies, particularly in relation to how eternity was understood and explored by F.D. Maurice and other Broad Church theologians who were friends and acquaintances of Carroll. As such, it is inevitably interdisciplinary in nature covering aspects of theology, Church history and Carrollian studies, and this is reflected in the bibliography. It will be argued that despite the plethora of biographical and literary works on Carroll, the theological aspects of the author’s work have been under researched. Thus, the limited secondary (theological) material available means that this thesis has been significantly guided by the primary sources of the works and letters of Maurice and his contemporaries (including letters to Carroll that have not previously been published in their entirety). It is argued that a deeper consideration of Carroll’s theological influences is a necessary element in understanding Carroll’s works more fully, and that this thesis could inform further study on how the Broad Church eschatology of Maurice may survive most fully not through his own books and sermons, but in the popular imagination through the fictional fantasy writing he inspired in his contemporaries such as Carroll, Kingsley and MacDonald (whose works are considered alongside Carroll’s in one of the chapters of this thesis). Maurice’s eschatology, and its presence in these fictional works, is considered in relation to his understanding of justice, freewill and predestination, Broad Church philology and the relationship between eternity, space and time. The place of dreams and the idealized child in eschatological understanding will also be explored. It is hoped that this thesis will help to broaden the scope of Carrollian studies to consider more fully theological influences in his writing, and that it may have the potential to pave the way for further consideration of the importance of Broad Church theology in the development of British fantasy fiction

Accounting For The Situational Context Of Accountability

Accountability is often presented as a panacea for behavioral ailments. This one-size-fits-all approach to a multi-dimensional construct ignores a key component of the effectiveness of accountability systems: situational context. Situational contexts such as highly stochastic environments (e.g., financial markets, world politics) and politically-charged domains (e.g., national security decision-making, domestic policy) form accountability boundary conditions, beyond which previous experimental effects may not generalize. In a series of studies, I explore the relatively under-explored frontiers of accountability effects, including those that apply to highly stochastic environments; politically-charged outcomes, where the tendency towards motivated reasoning dominates; and rapidly evolving states of information, where one’s ability to update one’s beliefs has serious implications for the quality of one’s judgments and decisions. In this series of studies, I find that accountability effects only appeared under certain conditions. In general, holding people accountable for their judgments did not improve performance on highly stochastic or politically-charged tasks—in fact, it sometimes made performance worse. However, certain types of accountability were able to boost performance in some contexts. These studies demonstrate the value of incorporating situational context into accountability experiments

A New Evaluation: The Theological Influence of F. D. Maurice on the Imaginative Works of Lewis Carroll.

This thesis will explore how the fictional work of Lewis Carroll was influenced by mid nineteenth century eschatological ideas and controversies, particularly in relation to how eternity was understood and explored by F.D. Maurice and other Broad Church theologians who were friends and acquaintances of Carroll. As such, it is inevitably interdisciplinary in nature covering aspects of theology, Church history and Carrollian studies, and this is reflected in the bibliography. It will be argued that despite the plethora of biographical and literary works on Carroll, the theological aspects of the author’s work have been under researched. Thus, the limited secondary (theological) material available means that this thesis has been significantly guided by the primary sources of the works and letters of Maurice and his contemporaries (including letters to Carroll that have not previously been published in their entirety). It is argued that a deeper consideration of Carroll’s theological influences is a necessary element in understanding Carroll’s works more fully, and that this thesis could inform further study on how the Broad Church eschatology of Maurice may survive most fully not through his own books and sermons, but in the popular imagination through the fictional fantasy writing he inspired in his contemporaries such as Carroll, Kingsley and MacDonald (whose works are considered alongside Carroll’s in one of the chapters of this thesis). Maurice’s eschatology, and its presence in these fictional works, is considered in relation to his understanding of justice, freewill and predestination, Broad Church philology and the relationship between eternity, space and time. The place of dreams and the idealized child in eschatological understanding will also be explored. It is hoped that this thesis will help to broaden the scope of Carrollian studies to consider more fully theological influences in his writing, and that it may have the potential to pave the way for further consideration of the importance of Broad Church theology in the development of British fantasy fiction

Time will tell:Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, attention and timing functioning in adults

The focus of this dissertation project is on Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT), a clinical phenomenon that might be related to objective attentional and timing deficits. By studying it, we aim to learn more about attention and timing processes in human cognition in general. A literature review on previous studies on SCT showed that SCT is still understudied, and that a consensus on how to measure SCT is missing. In response to this, we conducted a validation study of previously used SCT items, in non-clinical adults. The thereby obtained SCT scale and subscales were further tested for their likely associations with self-rated attentional and timing functioning, in order to provide evidence for the construct validity of SCT. It was shown that our newly constructed measure of SCT was associated with self-rated everyday attentional and timing functioning. In the final study, both clinical- and non-clinical adults completed the newly validated SCT scale and were also tested with a well validated computerized neurocognitive test battery. Contrary to expectation, we did not find convincing evidence for a relation between SCT scores and cognitive functioning. The fact that SCT symptoms related to self-rated attentional deficits and self-rated deficits in everyday timing behavior but not to objective cognitive performance lets us assume that SCT might solely show its effects on higher order (reflective) processes and not so much on basic cognitive processes