Hacer frente a los desafíos de una fuerza laboral que envejece con el uso de tecnologías usables y la auto-cuantificación

The world's population is aging at an unprecedented rate, this demographic shift will change all aspects of life, including work. The aging of the worforce and a higher percentage of workers who will work past traditional retirement years presents significant challenges and opportunities for employers. Older workers are a valuable resource, but in order to ensure they stay in good health, prevention will be key. Wearable technologies are quickly becoming ubiquitous, individuals are turning to them to monitor health, activities and hundreds of other quantifiable occurences. Wearable technologies could provide a new means for employers to tackle the challenges associated with an aging workforce by creating a wide spectrum of opportunities to intervene in terms of aging employees and extend their working lives by keeping them safe and healthy through prevention. Employers are already making standing desks available, and encouraging lunch time exercise, is it feasible for Wearables to make the jump from a tool for individuals to a method for employers to ensure better health, well-being and safety for their employees? The aim of this work is to lay out the implications for such interventions with Wearable technologies (monitoring health and well-being, oversight and safety, and mentoring and training) and challenges (privacy, acceptability, and scalability). While an ageing population presents significant challenges, including an aging work force, this demographic change should be seen, instead, as an opportunity rethink and innovate workplace health and take advantage of the experience of older workers. The Quantified-Self and Wearables can leverage interventions to improve employees’ health, safety and well-being.La población mundial está envejeciendo a un ritmo sin precedentes. El envejecimiento y un mayor porcentaje de trabajadores que trabajan más allá de los años de jubilación presentan importantes desafíos y oportunidades. Los trabajadores mayores son un recurso valioso, pero a fin de garantizar que permanezcan en buen estado de salud, la prevención será la clave. Tecnologías portátiles, ó wearables, están proporcionando un medio para hacer frente a el envejecimiento mediante la creación de un amplio espectro de oportunidades para intervenir y para prolongar la vida laboral de los colaboradores, mantenendoles seguros y saludables. El objetivo de este trabajo es exponer las implicaciones de este tipo de intervenciones con wearables (Control de salud, vigilancia, seguridad, y formación) y los desafíos (privacidad, aceptabilidad y escalabilidad). Los wearables pueden aprovechar y fortalecer las intervenciones para mejorar la salud, seguridad y el bienestar de los empleados.Martin Lavallière was supported by a postdoctoral research grant - Recherche en sécurité routière : Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC), Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ), Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQS). This work was partially developed with the financial support of the Luso-American Development Foundation - FLAD, through the research grant ref. rv14022, and of the MIT Portugal Program

Implementing an analog speedometer in STISIM Drive using Parallax BSTAMP microcontroller

In a non-instrumental cab, STISIM Drive software normally projects the speed of the vehicle through a dashboard presented on the simulation screen. The simulated dashboard can be displayed with several graphical options. In all cases, there is a loss of information arising from the road. A solution is to integrate the speedometer into a dashboard and to disable the simulated projection. This solution increases the virtual immersion of the driver and presents speed in a more realistic way. We are proposing a simple solution based on Parallax Inc. Basic Stramp microcontroller. In addition to its low cost and simplicity, this solution allows integration of other technical elements of the driving experience (e.g., activation of turn signals, horn, etc.)

Identify successful restrictions in suppressing the early outbreak of COVID-19 in Arizona, United States: Interrupted time series analysis

COVID-19 was responsible for many deaths and economic losses around the globe since its first case report. Governments implemented a variety of policies to combat the pandemic in order to protect their citizens and save lives. Early in 2020, the first cases were reported in Arizona State and continued to rise until the discovery of the vaccine in 2021. A variety of strategies and interventions to stop or decelerate the spread of the pandemic has been considered. It is recommended to define which strategy was successful for disease propagation prevention and could be used in further similar situations. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of people's contact interventions strategies which were implemented in Arizona State and their effect on reducing the daily new COVID-19 cases and deaths. Their effect on daily COVID-19 cases and deaths were evaluated using an interrupted time series analysis during the pandemic's first peaks to better understand the onward situation. Canceling the order of staying at home (95% CI, 1718.52 to 6218.79; p<0.001) and expiring large gatherings (95% CI, 1984.99 to 7060.26; p<0.001) on June 30 and August 17, 2020, respectively, had a significant effect on the pandemic, leading to the daily cases to grow rapidly. Moreover, canceling the stay at home orders led to an increase in the number of COVID-19 daily deaths by 67.68 cases (95% CI, 27.96 to 107.40; p<0.001) after about 21 days while prohibiting large gatherings significantly decreased 66.76 (95% CI: 20.56 to 112.96; p = 0.004) the number of daily deaths with about 21 days' lag. The results showed that strategies aimed at reducing people's contact with one another could successfully help fight the pandemic. Findings from this study provide important evidence to support state-level policies that require observance of social distancing by the general public for future pandemics. Copyright: This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Dealing with aging and multigeneration workforce topics at top global companies: evidence from public disclosure information

The way organizations deal with aging employees and the way they manage the existence of a multigenerational gap within the workforce falls well within the scope some public information reporting practices, such as corporate responsibility. The aim of this study is to ascertain the level and characteristics of reporting practices on aging and multigenerational workforce among the top 50 global companies. The analysis of the public information disclosure was carried out using a quantitative approach by applying a three-stage data collection procedure. It can be concluded that companies' information disclosure about aging workforce topics is markedly low and, accordingly, it appears at a low level of relevancy on their institutional websites structure/content, as well as in their public reports. The main finding pointed out to the fact that top global companies do not widely report the way they take actions to deal with aging and multigenerational workforce challenges

Effect of terminal accuracy requirements on temporal gaze-hand coordination during fast discrete and reciprocal pointings

Background\ud \ud Rapid discrete goal-directed movements are characterized by a well known coordination pattern between the gaze and the hand displacements. The gaze always starts prior to the hand movement and reaches the target before hand velocity peak. Surprisingly, the effect of the target size on the temporal gaze-hand coordination has not been directly investigated. Moreover, goal-directed movements are often produced in a reciprocal rather than in a discrete manner. The objectives of this work were to assess the effect of the target size on temporal gaze-hand coordination during fast 1) discrete and 2) reciprocal pointings.\ud \ud Methods\ud \ud Subjects performed fast discrete (experiment 1) and reciprocal (experiment 2) pointings with an amplitude of 50 cm and four target diameters (7.6, 3.8, 1.9 and 0.95 cm) leading to indexes of difficulty (ID = log2[2A/D]) of 3.7, 4.7, 5.7 and 6.7 bits. Gaze and hand displacements were synchronously recorded. Temporal gaze-hand coordination parameters were compared between experiments (discrete and reciprocal pointings) and IDs using analyses of variance (ANOVAs).\ud \ud Results\ud \ud Data showed that the magnitude of the gaze-hand lead pattern was much higher for discrete than for reciprocal pointings. Moreover, while it was constant for discrete pointings, it decreased systematically with an increasing ID for reciprocal pointings because of the longer duration of gaze anchoring on target.\ud \ud Conclusion \ud \ud Overall, the temporal gaze-hand coordination analysis revealed that even for high IDs, fast reciprocal pointings could not be considered as a concatenation of discrete units. Moreover, our data clearly illustrate the smooth adaptation of temporal gaze-hand coordination to terminal accuracy requirements during fast reciprocal pointings. It will be interesting for further researches to investigate if the methodology used in the experiment 2 allows assessing the effect of sensori-motor deficits on gaze-hand coordination

Training driving ability in a traumatic brain-injured individual using a driving simulator: a case report

Sarah Imhoff,1,2 Martin Lavalli&egrave;re,3,4 Mathieu Germain-Robitaille,5 Normand Teasdale,5&ndash;7 Philippe Fait,1,2,8 1Department of Human Kinetics, 2Research Group on Neuromusculoskeletal Dysfunctions (GRAN), Universit&eacute; du Qu&eacute;bec &agrave; Trois-Rivi&egrave;res, Trois-Rivi&egrave;res, QC, Canada; 3Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab, Cambridge, MA, USA; 4Department of Health Sciences, Program of Kinesiology, Universit&eacute; du Qu&eacute;bec &agrave; Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi, 5Facult&eacute; de M&eacute;decine, D&eacute;partement de Kin&eacute;siologie, 6Groupe de recherche en analyse du mouvement et ergonomie, Universit&eacute; Laval, 7CHU de Qu&eacute;bec &ndash; Universit&eacute; Laval, Centre d&rsquo;excellence sur le vieillissement de Qu&eacute;bec, 8Research Center in Neuropsychology and Cognition (CERNEC), Montr&eacute;al, QC, Canada Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) causes functional deficits that may significantly interfere with numerous activities of daily living such as driving. We report the case of a 20-year-old woman having lost her driver&rsquo;s license after sustaining a moderate TBI.Objective: We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an in-simulator training program with automated feedback on driving performance in a TBI individual.Methods: The participant underwent an initial and a final in-simulator driving assessment and 11 in-simulator training sessions with driving-specific automated feedbacks. Driving performance (simulation duration, speed regulation and lateral positioning) was measured in the driving simulator.Results: Speeding duration decreased during training sessions from 1.50 &plusmn; 0.80&nbsp;min (4.16 &plusmn; 2.22%) to 0.45 &plusmn; 0.15&nbsp;min (0.44 &plusmn; 0.42%) but returned to initial duration after removal of feedbacks for the final assessment. Proper lateral positioning improved with training and was maintained at the final assessment. Time spent in an incorrect lateral position decreased from 18.85&nbsp;min (53.61%) in the initial assessment to 1.51&nbsp;min (4.64%) on the final assessment.Conclusion: Driving simulators represent an interesting therapeutic avenue. Considerable research efforts are needed to confirm the effectiveness of this method for driving rehabilitation of individuals who have sustained a TBI. Keywords: traumatic brain injury, rehabilitation, driving, simulator, assessmen

The influence of age on fatal work accidents and lost days in Chile between 2015 and 2019

The workforce ageing and the relationship between workers’ age and work accidents are factors of great concern worldwide. The aim of this article is twofold: to explore the association between workers’ age and work accidents registered by one mutual insurance company between 2015 and 2019; and to analyze the odds ratio (OR) trend of fatal accidents and accidents causing lost workdays over the same period. The odds for fatal accidents and for accidents causing lost workdays were calculated for younger and older workers through a logistic regression stratified by gender. The Prais-Winsten regression was used to evaluate the OR evolution trend in the study period. During 2015–2019, a total of 625,050 work accidents were registered. Workers aged between 45 and 99 years old in the event of a work accident are more likely to die (OR = 1.92) and be temporarily disabled (OR = 1.21) than workers aged between 18 and 44 years. In the comparison between workers aged 18–29 and 60–99, the OR for the latter increases up to 3.43 in the case of death in a work-related accident, and to 1.46 for temporary disability. Older workers are more likely to have fatal and disabling accidents than younger workers and the accidents are associated with higher costs. Furthermore, during the analyzed period, the observed OR trend was stable. Therefore, we conclude that strategic actions are needed to decrease the observed trends.This work was supported by the Mutual de Seguridad de la C.Ch.C in the framework of the fund, "Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación SUSESO" (SUSESO Research and Innovation Projects). This work was selected in the 2020 Call for Research and Innovation Projects for the Prevention of Occupational Accidents and Diseases of the Superintendent of Social Security (Chile), and was financed by "Mutual de Seguridad de la C.Ch.C." with resources from the Social Security of Ley N°. 16.744 on Occupational Accidents and Diseases

Product Packaging Evaluation Through the Eyes of Elderly People: Personas vs. Aging Suit vs. Virtual Reality Aging Simulation

In the content of Universal Design, various methods and techniques are used to allow designers to step into elderly users’ shoes to understand their specific characteristics and needs and design elderly-friendly products. Examples include the use of personas, aging suits and virtual reality aging simulation. However, there is no comparison that documents the advantages and disadvantages of each method. In the present study, the use of personas, aging suit and a virtual reality-based approach are compared in the evaluation stage of a product design process. According to the results, both the aging suit and the virtual reality aging simulation have important advantages compared to personas in terms of effectiveness. Virtual reality is advantageous in terms of helpfulness and embodiment of the designer, while aging suit precedes in terms of easiness to use