Using fuzzy logic approach to predict work-related musculoskeletal disorders among automotive assembly workers

Background: Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are considered an important health concern, particularly in automotive assembly industries. Evaluation of the effects of all MSDs risk factors is difficult due to its multifactorial nature. In addition, the risk factors cannot be detected accurately when they are only based on individual opinions. Thus, in this study, fuzzy logic tool was used to evaluate the combined effects of all risk factors on MSDs. Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted on 100 male workers in an automotive industry. Job satisfaction, job stress, job fatigue, and body posture were evaluated by a self-reported questionnaire. Body posture was evaluated using Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA). Primary data analysis on extracting the input variables of MATLAB was performed by SPSS 22, with a significant level of 0.05. T test, one-way Anova, and Pearson correlation analysis were used to extract the input variables for the fuzzy logic model. The results obtained from the Nordic questionnaire was selected as the output of the fuzzy model. Fuzzy logic assessment was performed using MATLAB software version 7.0. Results: There were significant differences between WMSDs factors, including job fatigue, strain, working posture, and the REBA final score, and pain in all limbs of the body (p<0.05). A significant difference was also found between working posture with wrist score (p<0.05). The findings on defuzzification showed a strong correlation between real and modelling results. Conclusion: The results showed that many factors such as posture, fatigue, and strain affect MSDs. Based on the obtained results, all categories of risk factors, including personal, psychosocial, and occupational, should be considered to predict MSDs, which can be achieved by a modeling approach. Keywords: Automotive industry; Fuzzy logic; Work-related musculoskeletal disorders

Dexamethasone Blunts Lung Inflammation in Cholestatic Mice

Cholestasis/cirrhosis is a multifaceted clinical complication that influences many organs, including the liver, kidney, heart, skeletal muscle, and lung. Cirrhosis-associated lung injury could lead to severe and lethal consequences, including acute respiratory syndrome and patient dearth. Unfortunately, there is no specific pharmacological intervention to manage cholestasis-induced lung injury. It has been revealed that severe inflammation and its associated complications, such as oxidative stress, are involved in the pathogenesis of cholestasis-associated pulmonary damage. The current study was designed to evaluate the role of dexamethasone (DXM) on lung inflammation in cholestatic mice. For this purpose, bile duct ligated (BDL) mice received DXM (1 and 2.5 mg/kg, i.p, 2 times/week) for 14 days. On day 15, the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was prepared. Several markers, including inflammatory cell infiltration, TNF-α, and IgG, were assessed in the BALF of BDL animals. Significant infiltration of inflammatory cells along with increased TNF-α and IgG were detected in the BALF of BDL mice (14 days after surgery). Moreover, significant ROS formation, glutathione depletion, lipid peroxidation, and protein carbonylation were evident in the lung tissue of the BDL group. It was found that DXM (1 and 2.5 mg/kg) significantly blunted inflammation and oxidative stress in the lung of cholestatic mice. Moreover, lung tissue histopathological changes, including inflammatory cell infiltration, were significantly mitigated in DXM-treated mice. These data offer the potential therapeutic effects of DXM against cholestasis-related complications. Therefore, patients with cholestasis-induced lung injury might benefit from repurposing DXM in clinical settings

Global, regional, and national burden of colorectal cancer and its risk factors, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Funding: F Carvalho and E Fernandes acknowledge support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT), in the scope of the project UIDP/04378/2020 and UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences UCIBIO and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy i4HB; FCT/MCTES through the project UIDB/50006/2020. J Conde acknowledges the European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-StG-2019-848325). V M Costa acknowledges the grant SFRH/BHD/110001/2015, received by Portuguese national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), IP, under the Norma Transitória DL57/2016/CP1334/CT0006.proofepub_ahead_of_prin

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

A study of clinicians' views on medical gloves size in Iran: A challenge and solutions

Aims: Glove fitting is an essential factor that affects health-care workers' performance. This study aimed to evaluate health-care workers' opinion about medical gloves fitting. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted on 525 health-care workers in the hospitals of five cities in Iran (response rate was 95.45%). The Medical Gloves Assessment Tool was used for collecting the required data. The data were analyzed using the SPSS 22 software. Results: The results showed that the health-care workers were not satisfied with the size of medical gloves in different areas of fingertips, between fingers, and the wrist. Accordingly, more than 70% of the participants were <50% satisfied with medical gloves fitting. Conclusion: Due to the importance of medical gloves fitting and the lack of sufficient information in this field, it is necessary to check the compatibility of hand dimensions of the Iranian health-care workers with the existing glove size systems. If necessary, a glove sizing system should be developed based on the anthropometric dimensions of health-care workers in Iran

Developing a model for strategic agility in knowledge-based companies using a mixed methods approach

Purpose: In a global supply chains and complex market environment, companies have to improve performance and gain competitive advantages, thus the need for strategic agility. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate systematic application of grounded theory to understand strategic agility in knowledge-based companies (KBCs) in Iran and to explain relationships between them. Methodology: This study uses mixed methods research to explore the determinants of strategic agility in KBCs. This study uses mixed methods approach. Qualitative analysis using “Paradigm model” of grounded theory for data analysis. In Quantitative stage, Structural equation modeling with partial least square is used. Findings: The results of the first phase of the study revealed that causal conditions affecting strategic agility were organizational and environmental factors. As well, intervening conditions included Facilitating and Deterring role of intrinsic attributes of companies; and contextual conditions encompassed Limiting and Encouraging factors. Moreover, strategies and practices were comprised of Extra-organizational and Intra-organizational practices and consequences of strategic agility were consequences at macro and organizational level. The results of the quantitative study, as the second phase, correspondingly confirmed factors identified at the qualitative phase and demonstrated that the casual conditions explain 79.7% of the variance in strategic agility, the three independent constructs explain 57.5% of the variance in strategies, and the strategies explains 55.4% of the variance of consequences. Research limitations: This study was developed on the basis of opinions of a limited number of individuals which could reduce theoretical generalizability of the results. Another limitation is that the research data are limited to KBCs in Iran. Value: The results of this study would theoretically complement the body of knowledge about KBCs which can be cited in future research. Furthermore, the mixed methods approach offers a better insight in understanding strategic agility in KBCs vs the use of either a qualitative or quantitative method alonePeer Reviewe

The effect of increasing the illumination on operators’ visual performance in the control-room of a combined cycle power plant

Abstract Background Lighting is one of the environmental factors affecting the performance of the control room operators. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the control room operators’ visual performance in two different illumination conditions at a combined cycle power plant through field-work. Methods Sixteen operators in day shift were evaluated with the Freiburg Visual Acuity test (FrACT) software at two lighting systems with different intensities. It includes the first phase with fluorescent illumination system (Power: 40 W, Color Temperature: 4000 Kelvin, Luminous Flux: 2780 Lumen and Model: Pars Shahab) and the second phase with a combined illumination system includes fluorescent and LED (Power: 48 W, Color Temperature: 4000 Kelvin, Luminous Flux: 5400 Lumen and Model: Mazinoor). Results Based on the results, visual performance index and visual acuity significantly increased after the intervention (p < 0.001). As to contrast, more lighting significantly reduced the percentage of recognized contrast (p < 0.001) and increased the contrast performance index (p < 0.001). Conclusions The results of this study showed that increasing the intensity of light from the values below the allowable limit to the values above the allowable limit would increase the visual indicators in individuals

The effect of increasing the illumination on operators’ visual performance in the control-room of a combined cycle power plant

Abstract Background Lighting is one of the environmental factors affecting the performance of the control room operators. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the control room operators’ visual performance in two different illumination conditions at a combined cycle power plant through field-work. Methods Sixteen operators in day shift were evaluated with the Freiburg Visual Acuity test (FrACT) software at two lighting systems with different intensities. It includes the first phase with fluorescent illumination system (Power: 40 W, Color Temperature: 4000 Kelvin, Luminous Flux: 2780 Lumen and Model: Pars Shahab) and the second phase with a combined illumination system includes fluorescent and LED (Power: 48 W, Color Temperature: 4000 Kelvin, Luminous Flux: 5400 Lumen and Model: Mazinoor). Results Based on the results, visual performance index and visual acuity significantly increased after the intervention (p < 0.001). As to contrast, more lighting significantly reduced the percentage of recognized contrast (p < 0.001) and increased the contrast performance index (p < 0.001). Conclusions The results of this study showed that increasing the intensity of light from the values below the allowable limit to the values above the allowable limit would increase the visual indicators in individuals

Comparison of mental workload with N-Back test: A new design for NASA-task load index questionnaire

Aims: A most widely used tool for measuring the workload is the NASA-task load index (TLX) questionnaire, in which various studies have reported numerous problems. The present study aimed to improve the NSAS-TLX mental workload questionnaire using the fuzzy linguistic variables instead of the virtual rating scale, and multicriteria decision-making Fuzzy Best-Worst method (FBWM) instead of pair-wise comparison. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out among students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. In order to compare the traditional NASA-TLX and FBWM NASA-TLX questionnaire, participants performed a standard N-Back task with three low, medium, and high workload, subsequently, they completed the two questionnaires. Finally, results were examined using the researcher-made software and SPSS 16. Results: With regard to the reaction time to response the N-Back test, the mean of correct responses were 107.43 and 85.86 responses at levels 1 and 3, respectively. The mean score of the subscales and the final score in the two questionnaires at different levels of the N-Back test were independent as follows: the two questionnaires had a significant difference on mental demand at level 3 with a mean (standard deviation [SD]) of 18.09 (6.39) in the FBWM-NASA-TLX questionnaire and mean (SD) of 22.64 (8.15) in the NASA-TLX questionnaire ( P < 0.05). Conclusion: In this study, the FBWM-NASA-TLX questionnaire was designed and studied with regard to the problems and limitations of the NASA-TLX questionnaire. Results of this study showed that the FBWM-NASA-TLX questionnaire can estimate more realistic scores and decisions of workload in the studied task

Ergonomic interventions for improving working postures associated with manual materials handling (case study: a mineral processing plant)

Introduction: A high percentage of musculoskeletal disorders in workplaces occur due to awkward posture and non-ergonomic design of the work stations for lifting and carrying of materials. To avoid these injuries, jobs should be designed in a way that ergonomics risk factors are controlled properly. The aim of this study was to utilize ergonomics interventions to minimize ergonomics risk factors in bag packing unit in a mineral processing plant. Material and Method: This cross sectional study was carried out among 20 workers of bag packing unit. Camera recording of working postures, evaluation of medical records, interview, and REBA technique were used to identify the ergonomic risk factors. Interventions included changing the conveyor belt height and the use of spring pallets (spring table). Data were analyzed using Paired T-Test by SPSS software version 18. Result: Before implementing ergonomics intervention, a total of 75% of evaluated postures by REBA technique obtained score of 8-10 (very high risk level) and 25% had score of 11-15 (very high risk level) that correspond to the action level 3 and 4, respectively. Following the implementation of ergonomics interventions, a total of 90% of the analyzed postures showed action level 2 (moderate risk level) and the remainder 10 percent of evaluated postures showed high risk level. Comparison of REBA technique scores before and after implementing interventions showed a significant difference (P-value < 0.05). Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, the implementation of ergonomics interventions has remarkably decreased the required action level and it may be able to improve work-related postures