The Effects of Working Hours on Nerve Conduction Test in Computer Operators

BACKGROUND: Long hours of work at a computer can result in potential adverse effects such as pain, paraesthesia, and subjective weakness of upper extremities with associated decreased nerve conduction velocities of peripheral nerves (median and ulnar). Objective: To determine whether repetitive tasks performed for long hours by computer operators can lead to peripheral neuropathy as measured by nerve conduction studies of upper extremities. Material And METHODS: We performed nerve conduction tests on 50 computer operators in two study groups. Group I consisted of computer operators who worked a minimum of 6 hours per day at the computer while Group II worked a maximum of 2 hours per day. RESULTS: Significant differences were observed between groups for most physical signs. In addition, there were significant differences between the groups for nerve conduction velocities of the medial (motor & sensory) and ulnar (motor & sensory) nerves. CONCLUSION: We found symptoms of pain, paraesthesia and subjective weaknesses as well as decreased conduction velocities of peripheral nerves in computer operators who work long hours. Further nerve conduction studies are needed to confirm predictive value for the development of carpal tunnel syndrome

HUMS: An Autonomous Moving Strategy for Mobile Sinks in Data-Gathering Sensor Networks

Sink mobility has attracted much research interest in recent years because it can improve network performance such as energy efficiency and throughput. An energy-unconscious moving strategy is potentially harmful to the balance of the energy consumption among sensor nodes so as to aggravate the hotspot problem of sensor networks. In this paper, we propose an autonomous moving strategy for the mobile sinks in data-gathering applications. In our solution, a mobile sink approaches the nodes with high residual energy to force them to forward data for other nodes and tries to avoid passing by the nodes with low energy. We performed simulation experiments to compare our solution with other three data-gathering schemes. The simulation results show that our strategy cannot only extend network lifetime notably but also provides scalability and topology adaptability