scholarly journals The Felling of Hung Up Trees—A Work Safety and Productivity Issue

Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1225
Author(s):  
Răzvan V. Câmpu ◽  
Mihai A. Bratu ◽  
Mihai Ciocirlan

Research Highlights: The felling of hung up trees is considered by literature in the field as an activity with a high injury risk. The low work productivity in the felling of hung up trees is wrongly cited by workers in order to justify various more or less safe work techniques. Background and objectives: The purpose of this paper was to determine work productivity in the felling of hung up trees when this activity has a well-defined structure with stages and specific activities that would allow workers to assess injury risk correctly. In addition, this paper aims to identify the moment when workers should give up the manual felling of hung up trees with a hand winch and start using specialized logging equipment. Materials and methods: The research was conducted in the Eastern Carpathians in a spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.) tree stand where clear cutting normally takes place. A single team of workers was used consisting of two chainsaw operators—a main one and a secondary one. This team had a high level of qualification and experience in the operations performed. For the felling of hung up trees, the technique based on rotating the tree around a pivot with a hand winch was used. Time was measured in seconds by using the continuous time study method. Results: The results indicated that work productivity decreases with the number of times the traction line needs to be repositioned. It decreases from 3.477 trees·h−1 (in trees where no repositioning is necessary) to 1.402 trees·h−1 (when the repositioning takes place twice). In trees that needed the repositioning of the traction line, safety rules were broken in the following ways: crossing over the tensioned cable of the traction line, the main chainsaw operator being positioned inside the triangle formed by the hung up trees and the anchorage points of the pulley and the hand winch as well as the operator being positioned very close to the hung up tree stem base while the latter is being tied. That is why, if the repositioning of the traction line is necessary, the question is—would it be better to give up the manual felling of hung up trees and start using specialized equipment? Conclusion: The felling of hung up trees must be regarded and understood, first and foremost, through the perspective of reducing injury risk and protecting workers. Thus, the work productivity of 3.477 trees·h−1 can be considered acceptable for trees that need no extra repositioning of the traction line or when the time consumed does not go over 17 min·tree−1.

Author(s):  
J. S. Wall

The forte of the Scanning transmission Electron Microscope (STEM) is high resolution imaging with high contrast on thin specimens, as demonstrated by visualization of single heavy atoms. of equal importance for biology is the efficient utilization of all available signals, permitting low dose imaging of unstained single molecules such as DNA.Our work at Brookhaven has concentrated on: 1) design and construction of instruments optimized for a narrow range of biological applications and 2) use of such instruments in a very active user/collaborator program. Therefore our program is highly interactive with a strong emphasis on producing results which are interpretable with a high level of confidence.The major challenge we face at the moment is specimen preparation. The resolution of the STEM is better than 2.5 A, but measurements of resolution vs. dose level off at a resolution of 20 A at a dose of 10 el/A2 on a well-behaved biological specimen such as TMV (tobacco mosaic virus). To track down this problem we are examining all aspects of specimen preparation: purification of biological material, deposition on the thin film substrate, washing, fast freezing and freeze drying. As we attempt to improve our equipment/technique, we use image analysis of TMV internal controls included in all STEM samples as a monitor sensitive enough to detect even a few percent improvement. For delicate specimens, carbon films can be very harsh-leading to disruption of the sample. Therefore we are developing conducting polymer films as alternative substrates, as described elsewhere in these Proceedings. For specimen preparation studies, we have identified (from our user/collaborator program ) a variety of “canary” specimens, each uniquely sensitive to one particular aspect of sample preparation, so we can attempt to separate the variables involved.


2021 ◽  
pp. bjsports-2020-103131
Author(s):  
Celeste Geertsema ◽  
Liesel Geertsema ◽  
Abdulaziz Farooq ◽  
Joar Harøy ◽  
Chelsea Oester ◽  
...  

ObjectivesThis study assessed knowledge, beliefs and practices of elite female footballers regarding injury prevention.MethodsA survey was sent to players participating in the FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019. Questions covered three injury prevention domains: (1) knowledge; (2) attitudes and beliefs; (3) prevention practices in domestic clubs. Additionally, ACL injury history was assessed.ResultsOut of 552 players, 196 women responded (35.5%). More than 80% of these considered injury risk to be moderate or high. Players listed knee, ankle, thigh, head and groin as the most important injuries in women’s football. The most important risk factors identified were low muscle strength, followed by poor pitch quality, playing on artificial turf, too much training, reduced recovery and hard tackles. In these elite players, 15% did not have any permanent medical staff in their domestic clubs, yet more than 75% had received injury prevention advice and more than 80% performed injury prevention exercises in their clubs. Players identified the two most important implementation barriers as player motivation and coach attitude. Two-thirds of players used the FIFA 11+ programme in their clubs.ConclusionsThis diverse group of elite players demonstrated good knowledge of risk level and injury types in women’s football. Of the risk factors emphasised by players, there was only one intrinsic risk factor (strength), but several factors out of their control (pitch quality and type, training volume and hard tackles). Still players had positive attitudes and beliefs regarding injury prevention exercises and indicated a high level of implementation, despite a lack of medical support.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 2107
Author(s):  
Briyan Artha Ginting ◽  
I Wayan Suana

Productivity is the ability to achieve certain tasks in accordance with predetermined standards. Companies must create safe work environment to motivate employees so that they can increase overall company productivity. Purpose of the study is to explain the effect of work discipline, occupational health and safety on the work productivity of Sariasih Garment employees with 51 people as samples, using saturated sample method. Data collected through observation, interviews and questionnaires and analyzed by multiple linear regression. Based on the results, work discipline, occupational health and work safety have  positive and significant effect on employee work productivity. It is expected that company pays attention to employees' compliance with regulations in doing their jobs and the company is able to create a safe, comfortable and clean work environment. Employees have enthusiasm and protection while working so that employees are able to increase work productivity in order to create maximum work results. Keywords: work productivity, work discipline, work health and safety


Author(s):  
Mark Reybrouck

Musical sense-making relies on two distinctive strategies: tracking the moment-to-moment history of the actual unfolding and recollecting actual and previous sounding events in a kind of synoptic overview. Both positions are not opposed but complement each other. The aim of this contribution, therefore, is to provide a comprehensive framework that provides both conceptual and operational tools for coping with the sounds. Five major possibilities are proposed in this regard: (i) the concepts of perspective and resolution, which refer to the distance the listener takes with respect to the sounding music and the fine-grainedness of his/her discriminative abilities; (ii) the continuous/discrete dichotomy which conceives of the music as one continuous flow as against a division in separate and distinct elements; (iii) the in time/outside-of-time distinction, with the former proceeding in real time and the latter proceeding outside of the time of unfolding; (iv) the deictic approach to musical sense-making, which conceives of an act of mental pointing to the music, and (v) the levels of processing, which span a continuum between primitive sensory reactivity to actual sounding stimuli and high-level symbolic processing.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eckhardt Fuchs ◽  
Marcus Otto

Cultures of remembrance or memory cultures have constituted an interdisciplinary field of research since the 1990s. While this field has achieved a high level of internal differentiation, it generally views its remit as one that encompasses “all imaginable forms of conscious remembrance of historical events, personalities, and processes.” In contrast to this comprehensive and therefore rather vague definition of “culture of remembrance” or “memory culture”, we use the term “politics of memory” here and in what follows in a more specific sense, in order to emphasize “the moment at which the past is made functional use of in the service of present-day purposes, to the end of shaping an identity founded in history.” Viewing the issue in terms of discourse analysis, we may progress directly from this definition to identify and investigate politics of memory as a discourse of strategic resignifications of the past as formulated in history and implemented in light of contemporary identity politics. While the nation-state remains a central point of reference for the politics of memory, the field is by no means limited to official forms of the engagement of states with their past. In other words, it does not relate exclusively to the official character of a state’s policy on history. Instead, it also encompasses the strategic politics of memory and identity pursued by other stakeholders in a society, a politics that frequently, but not always, engages explicitly with state-generated and state-sanctioned memory politics. Thus, the politics of memory is currently unfolding as a discourse of ongoing, highly charged debate surrounding collective self-descriptions in modern, “culturally” multilayered, and heterogeneous societies, where self-descriptions draw on historical developments and events that are subject to conflict.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross Armstrong ◽  
Christopher M Brogden ◽  
Debbie Milner ◽  
Debbie Norris ◽  
Matt Greig

OBJECTIVE: Dance is associated with a high risk of injury, with fatigue identified as a contributing factor. Functional movement screening (FMS) has been used to identify alterations in normal movement which may contribute to injury risk, though this test is not normally performed in a fatigued state. The aim of this study was to determine whether fatigue induced by the dance aerobic fitness test (DAFT) results in changes in FMS scores with implications for performance and injury risk. METHODS: Forty-one university dancers completed the FMS before and immediately after completion of the DAFT. Rate of perceived exertion and heart rate were quantified as measures of fatigue. RESULTS: Post-DAFT, the mean FMS composite score (15.39±1.86) was significantly less (p≤0.01) than the pre-exercise score (16.83±1.83). Element-specific analysis revealed that the deep squat, non-dominant lunge, and dominant inline lunge scores were all significantly impaired post-DAFT (all p≤0.01). CONCLUSION: The identification of changes in quality of movement in a fatigued state suggests that movement screening should also be performed post-exercise to enhance screening for injury risk. The influence of dance-specific fatigue was FMS element-specific. Specifically, the deep squat and inline lunge were most susceptible to fatigue, with implications for injury risk and performance and reflective of the high level of neuromuscular control required.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 281-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Serrano ◽  
Eleftherios Archavlis ◽  
Elke Januschek ◽  
Pavel Timofeev ◽  
Peter Ulrich

Intracranial glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) constitutes the most frequent and unfortunately aggressive primary central nervous system malignancy. Despite the high tendency of these tumors to show local relapse within the brain after primary therapy, dissemination into the spinal axis is an infrequent event. If spinal metastases occur they are leptomeningeal in the vast majority of cases and always in the context of intracranial progressive disease. Spinal intramedullary metastases of intracranial GBM have rarely been described to date. We report the unique case of a young woman with subacute progressive paraparesis due to spinal intramedullary metastases of a temporal lobe GBM despite the remarkable absence of intracranial tumor relapse. The patient had undergone gross total resection of a left temporal GBM in contact with the ventricles and cisternal space followed by radio- and chemotherapy 13 months before. At the moment of diagnosis of spinal intramedullary metastases, there were no signs of intracranial tumor recurrence as revealed by MRI scans. Since a high level of suspicion may be needed to detect this rare evolution of intracranial GBM and other differential diagnoses must be ruled out at presentation, we discuss the important features of this case regarding clinical manifestation, diagnosis, surgery, and management. Furthermore, we mention possible factors that may have contributed to the development of these metastases in the context of intracranial remission.


2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Lecrubier ◽  
H.U. Wittchen ◽  
C. Faravelli ◽  
J. Bobes ◽  
A. Patel ◽  
...  

SummaryEpidemiologic surveys conducted across Europe indicate that the lifetime prevalence of social anxiety disorder in the general population is close to 7%. The disorder in adulthood rarely presents in its ‘pure’ form and 70–80% of patients have at least one other psychiatric disorder, most commonly depression. Social anxiety disorder is a risk factor for the development of depression and alcohol/substance use or dependence, especially in cases with an early onset (< 15 years). Individuals with social anxiety disorder have significant functional impairment, notably in the areas of initiation and maintenance of social/romantic relationships and educational and work achievement. The economic consequences of social anxiety disorder are considerable, with a high level of diminished work productivity, unemployment and an increased utilisation of medical services amongst sufferers. Effective treatment of social anxiety disorder would improve its course and its health and economic consequences.


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeriy I. Afanasyev

AbstractThe paper is concerned with subcritical branching process in random environment. It is assumed that the moment-generating function of steps of the associated random walk is equal to 1 for some positive value of the argument. Functional limit theorems for sizes of various generations and passage times to various levels are put forward.


Author(s):  
N. V. Shishkina ◽  
E. A. Mamistova ◽  
T. V. Sabetova

This paper tackles the economic impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on the labor markets and human capital. Specifically, it looks into the issues the pandemic brought upon the human resources and personnel during coronavirus lockdowns. The high level of globalization characteristic of the modern economy has only exacerbated the negative impact of the pandemic. At the moment, it remains impossible to assess the qualitative and quantitative parameters of the damage caused to the economies of countries and regions by this event. However, it is possible to identify the main directions of analysis of the consequences of the pandemic, including in terms of the impact on the state of the labor market, which was the main goal of this study. In particular, the authors highlight a number of consequences, the work on overcoming which is still to be done by the Russian socio-economic system. The most obvious of them is the growth of unemployment, the release of part of the employed and the reduction in the number of jobs, and this is observed extremely unevenly across the sectors of the economy. Nevertheless, the authors point out that the problem of staff release is aggravated by the size of the share of informal employment in the labor market, especially in the sectors of public catering, leisure and tourism that have been most affected by the pandemic. As the second important problem, the authors point to ineffective staff reduction, the dismissal of useful and valuable employees of some organizations while maintaining an unnecessarily bloated staff of others. It also mentions the reasons and forms of staff retention, some of which, being either forced or economically and technologically attractive, give rise to additional problems. The authors call an important social consequence of the pandemic a reduction in the number and level of personal contacts in society, in particular, in working groups. As a result, the author's vision of the long-term consequences of current events for the state of the labor market, employment of the population and the economy as a whole is proposed.)


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