3,007 research outputs found
Looking and learning: using participatory video to improve health and safety in the construction industry
Construction health and safety (H&S)is usually managed using a top-down approach of regulating workers' behaviour through the implementation and enforcement of prescriptive rules and procedures. This management approach privileges technical knowledge over knowledge based on workers' tacit and informal ways of knowing about H&S. The aim is to investigate the potential for participatory video to: (1) identify areas in which formal policies and procedures do not reflect as practised by workers; (2) encourage creative thinking and elicit workers' ideas for H&S improvements; and (3) provide an effective mechanism for capturing and sharing tacit H&S knowledge in construction organizations. Interviews were conducted in two case study organizations (CSOs) in the Australian construction industry. The results suggest reflexive participatory video enabled workers and managers to view their work practices from a different perspective. Workers identified new hazards, reflected about the practical difficulties in performing work in accordance with documented procedures and reframed their work practices and developed safer ways of working. Workers described how the participatory video capturing the way they work enabled them to have more meaningful input into H&S decision-making than they had previously experienced. Workers also expressed a strong preference for receiving H&S information in a visual format and commented that video was better suited to communicating H&S 'know how' than written documents. The research is significant in providing initial evidence that participatory video has the potential to improve H&S in construction
Occupational lead neurotoxicity: Improvement in behavioural effects after reduction of exposure.
To evaluate critical exposure levels and the reversibility of lead neurotoxicity a group of lead exposed foundry workers and an unexposed reference population were followed up for three years. During this period, tests designed to monitor neurobehavioural function and lead dose were administered. Evaluations of 160 workers during the first year showed dose dependent decrements in mood, visual/motor performance, memory, and verbal concept formation. Subsequently, an improvement in the hygienic conditions at the plant resulted in striking reductions in blood lead concentrations over the following two years. Attendant improvement in indices of tension (20% reduction), anger (18%), depression (26%), fatigue (27%), and confusion (13%) was observed. Performance on neurobehavioural testing generally correlated best with integrated dose estimates derived from blood lead concentrations measured periodically over the study period; zinc protoporphyrin levels were less well correlated with function. This investigation confirms the importance of compliance with workplace standards designed to lower exposures to ensure that individual blood lead concentrations remain below 50 micrograms/dl
ATLAST detector needs for direct spectroscopic biosignature characterization in the visible and near-IR
Are we alone? Answering this ageless question will be a major focus for
astrophysics in coming decades. Our tools will include unprecedentedly large
UV-Optical-IR space telescopes working with advanced coronagraphs and
starshades. Yet, these facilities will not live up to their full potential
without better detectors than we have today. To inform detector development,
this paper provides an overview of visible and near-IR (VISIR;
) detector needs for the Advanced Technology
Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST), specifically for spectroscopic
characterization of atmospheric biosignature gasses. We also provide a brief
status update on some promising detector technologies for meeting these needs
in the context of a passively cooled ATLAST.Comment: 8 pages, Presented 9 August 2015 at SPIE Optics + Photonics, San
Diego, C
Absence of the Rashba effect in undoped asymmetric quantum wells
To an electron moving in free space an electric field appears as a magnetic
field which interacts with and can reorient the electron spin. In semiconductor
quantum wells this spin-orbit interaction seems to offer the possibility of
gate-voltage control in spintronic devices but, as the electrons are subject to
both ion-core and macroscopic structural potentials, this over-simple picture
has lead to intense debate. For example, an externally applied field acting on
the envelope of the electron wavefunction determined by the macroscopic
potential, underestimates the experimentally observed spin-orbit field by many
orders of magnitude while the Ehrenfest theorem suggests that it should
actually be zero. Here we challenge, both experimentally and theoretically, the
widely held belief that any inversion asymmetry of the macroscopic potential,
not only electric field, will produce a significant spin-orbit field for
electrons. This conclusion has far-reaching consequences for the design of
spintronic devices while illuminating important fundamental physics.Comment: 7 pages, 5 fig
Patterns of plant naturalization show that facultative mycorrhizal plants are more likely to succeed outside their native Eurasian ranges
The naturalization of an introduced species is a key stage during the invasion process. Therefore, identifying the traits that favor the naturalization of non-native species can help understand why some species are more successful when introduced to new regions. The ability and the requirement of a plant species to form a mutualism with mycorrhizal fungi, together with the types of associations formed may play a central role in the naturalization success of different plant species. To test the relationship between plant naturalization success and their mycorrhizal associations we analysed a database composed of mycorrhizal status and type for 1981 species, covering 155 families and 822 genera of plants from Europe and Asia, and matched it with the most comprehensive database of naturalized alien species across the world (GloNAF). In mainland regions, we found that the number of naturalized regions was highest for facultative mycorrhizal, followed by obligate mycorrhizal and lowest for non-mycorrhizal plants, suggesting that the ability of forming mycorrhizas is an advantage for introduced plants. We considered the following mycorrhizal types: arbuscular, ectomycorrhizal, ericoid and orchid mycorrhizal plants. Further, dual mycorrhizal species were those that included observations of arbuscular mycorrhizas as well as observations of ectomycorrhizas. Naturalization success (based on the number of naturalized regions) was highest for arbuscular mycorrhizal and dual mycorrhizal plants, which may be related to the low host specificity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and the consequent high availability of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal partners. However, these patterns of naturalization success were erased in islands, suggesting that the ability to form mycorrhizas may not be an advantage for establishing self-sustaining populations in isolated regions. Taken together our results show that mycorrhizal status and type play a central role in the naturalization process of introduced plants in many regions, but that their effect is modulated by other factorsFil: Moyano, Jaime. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; ArgentinaFil: Dickie, Ian. University of Canterbury; Nueva ZelandaFil: Rodriguez Cabal, Mariano Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; ArgentinaFil: Nuñez, Martin Andres. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentin
Constraints on Three-Neutrino Mixing from Atmospheric and Reactor Data
Observations of atmospheric neutrinos are usually analyzed using the
simplifying approximation that either or
two-flavor mixing is relevant. Here we
instead consider the data using the simplifying approximation that only one
neutrino mass scale is relevant. This approximation is the minimal three-flavor
notation that includes the two relevant two-flavor approximations. The
constraints in the parameter space orthogonal to the usual, two-flavor analyses
are studied.Comment: 15 pages, preprint IUHET-26
Solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillations with three flavours
We analyze the solar and the atmospheric neutrino problems in the context of
three flavour neutrino oscillations. We assume a mass hierarchy in the vacuum
mass eigenvalues , but make no approximation
regarding the magnitudes of the mixing angles. We find that there are small but
continuous bands in the parameter space where the constraints imposed by the
current measurements of , and Kamiokande
experiments are satisfied at level. The allowed parameter space
increases dramatically if the error bars are enlarged to . The
electron neutrino survival probability has different energy dependence in
different regions of the parameter space. Measurement of the recoil electron
energy spectrum in detectors that use scattering may distinguish
between some of the allowed regions of parameter space. Finally we use the
results for the parameter space admitted by the solar neutrinos as an input for
the atmospheric neutrino problem and show that there exists a substantial
region of parameter space in which both problems can be solved.Comment: 25 pages plus eight figures. Uses Revtex. Postcript files for figures
sent separately as a uuencoded fil
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Genetic variation in the HLA region is associated with susceptibility to herpes zoster.
Herpes zoster, commonly referred to as shingles, is caused by the varicella zoster virus (VZV). VZV initially manifests as chicken pox, most commonly in childhood, can remain asymptomatically latent in nerve tissues for many years and often re-emerges as shingles. Although reactivation may be related to immune suppression, aging and female sex, most inter-individual variability in re-emergence risk has not been explained to date. We performed a genome-wide association analyses in 22,981 participants (2280 shingles cases) from the electronic Medical Records and Genomics Network. Using Cox survival and logistic regression, we identified a genomic region in the combined and European ancestry groups that has an age of onset effect reaching genome-wide significance (P>1.0 Ă 10(-8)). This region tags the non-coding gene HCP5 (HLA Complex P5) in the major histocompatibility complex. This gene is an endogenous retrovirus and likely influences viral activity through regulatory functions. Variants in this genetic region are known to be associated with delay in development of AIDS in people infected by HIV. Our study provides further suggestion that this region may have a critical role in viral suppression and could potentially harbor a clinically actionable variant for the shingles vaccine
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