Appropriate technology for manufacturing: Some management issues

This paper introduces the idea of appropriate technology and applies it to the choices organisations make when designing, implementing and managing advanced manufacturing technologies. Five sets of choices are considered: the type and level of technology; the allocation of functions between humans and machines; the role of humans in advanced systems; the organisation structures to support them; and the ways in which people participate in their design. The paper concludes that most organisations are not effective at developing and implementing appropriate technologies, and that ergonomists have failed to meet the needs of technologies and managers in these areas.     

Dust source identification using MODIS: A comparison of techniques applied to the Lake Eyre Basin, Australia

The impact of mineral aerosol (dust) in the Earth's system depends on particle characteristics which are initially determined by the terrestrial sources from which the sediments are entrained. Remote sensing is an established method for the detection and mapping of dust events, and has recently been used to identify dust source locations with varying degrees of success. This paper compares and evaluates five principal methods, using MODIS Level 1B and MODIS Level 2 aerosol data, to: (a) differentiate dust (mineral aerosol) from non-dust, and (2) determine the extent to which they enable the source of the dust to be discerned. The five MODIS L1B methods used here are: (1) un-processed false colour composite (FCC), (2) brightness temperature difference, (3) Ackerman's (1997: J.Geophys. Res., 102, 17069-17080) procedure, (4) Miller's (2003:Geophys. Res. Lett. 30, 20, art.no.2071) dust enhancement algorithm and (5) Roskovensky and Liou's (2005: Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L12809) dust differentiation algorithm; the aerosol product is MODIS Deep Blue (Hsu et al., 2004: IEEE Trans. Geosci. Rem. Sensing, 42, 557-569), which is optimised for use over bright surfaces (i.e. deserts). These are applied to four significant dust events from the Lake Eyre Basin, Australia. OMI AI was also examined for each event to provide an independent assessment of dust presence and plume location. All of the techniques were successful in detecting dust when compared to FCCs, but the most effective technique for source determination varied from event to event depending on factors such as cloud cover, dust plume mineralogy and surface reflectance. Significantly, to optimise dust detection using the MODIS L1B approaches, the recommended dust/non-dust thresholds had to be considerably adjusted on an event by event basis. MODIS L2 aerosol data retrievals were also found to vary in quality significantly between events; being affected in particular by cloud masking difficulties. In general, we find that OMI AI and MODIS AQUA L1B and L2 data are complementary; the former are ideal for initial dust detection, the latter can be used to both identify plumes and sources at high spatial resolution. Overall, approaches using brightness temperature difference (BT10-11) are the most consistently reliable technique for dust source identification in the Lake Eyre Basin. One reason for this is that this enclosed basin contains multiple dust sources with contrasting geochemical signatures. In this instance, BTD data are not affected significantly by perturbations in dust mineralogy. However, the other algorithms tested (including MODIS Deep Blue) were all influenced by ground surface reflectance or dust mineralogy; making it impossible to use one single MODIS L1B or L2 data type for all events (or even for a single multiple-plume event). There is, however, considerable potential to exploit this anomaly, and to use dust detection algorithms to obtain information about dust mineralogy.     

Contact type dependency of texture classification in a whiskered mobile robot

Actuated artificial whiskers modeled on rat macrovibrissae can provide effective tactile sensor systems for autonomous robots. This article focuses on texture classification using artificial whiskers and addresses a limitation of previous studies, namely, their use of whisker deflection signals obtained under relatively constrained experimental conditions. Here we consider the classification of signals obtained from a whiskered robot required to explore different surface textures from a range of orientations and distances. This procedure resulted in a variety of deflection signals for any given texture. Using a standard Gaussian classifier we show, using both hand-picked features and ones derived from studies of rat vibrissal processing, that a robust rough-smooth discrimination is achievable without any knowledge of how the whisker interacts with the investigated object. On the other hand, finer discriminations appear to require knowledge of the target’s relative position and/or of the manner in which the whisker contact its surface. Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Impact of noise on self-rated job satisfaction and health in open-plan offices: a structural equation modelling approach

This study uses a structural equation model to examine the effects of noise on self-rated job satisfaction and health in open-plan offices. A total of 334 employees from six open-plan offices in China and Korea completed a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire included questions assessing noise disturbances and speech privacy, as well as job satisfaction and health. The results indicated that noise disturbance affected self-rated health. Contrary to popular expectation, the relationship between noise disturbance and job satisfaction was not significant. Rather, job satisfaction and satisfaction with the environment were negatively correlated with lack of speech privacy. Speech privacy was found to be affected by noise sensitivity, and longer noise exposure led to decreased job satisfaction. There was also evidence that speech privacy was a stronger predictor of satisfaction with environment and job satisfaction for participants with high noise sensitivity. In addition, fit models for employees from China and Korea showed slight differences.

Practitioner Summary: This study is motivated by strong evidence that noise is the key source of complaints in open-plan offices. Survey results indicate that self-rated job satisfaction of workers in open-plan offices was negatively affected by lack of speech privacy and duration of disturbing noise.     

Retrieval Of Morphological Variants In Searches Of Latin Text Databases

This paper reports a detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of a system that has been developed for the identification and retrieval of morphological variants in searches of Latin text databases. A user of the retrieval system enters the principal parts of the search term (two parts for a noun or adjective, three parts for a deponent verb, and four parts for other verbs), this enabling the identification of the type of word that is to be processed and of the rules that are to be followed in determining the morphological variants that should be retrieved. Two different search algorithms are described. The algorithms are applied to the Latin portion of the Hartlib Papers Collection and to a range of classical, vulgar and medieval Latin texts drawn from the Patrologia Latina and from the PHI Disk 5.3 datasets. The effectiveness of these searches demonstrates the effectiveness of our procedures in providing access to the full range of classical and post-classical Latin text databases. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Multiple indices of body condition reveal no negative effect of urbanization in adult house sparrows

As urbanized areas expand and develop throughout the world, the importance of understanding their effects on wildlife increases. Living in cities may be stressful for animals but may also provide benefits at the same time, and the sum of these effects should manifest in the body condition of individuals. Studies addressing this phenomenon tend to evaluate one or few indices of body condition, each of which may be subject to various confounding effects and seasonal changes. In this study we used multiple approaches to assess the effects of urbanization on adult body condition in house sparrows (Passer domesticus), a passerine undergoing population declines in urban habitats. In line with earlier studies, we found that sparrows in more urbanized habitats have reduced body mass. However, birds had similar scaled mass index (body mass corrected for body size) along the urbanization gradient at all times of the year, contradicting the previous result on type-1 regression residuals. In the non-breeding season, urban and rural birds had similar levels of corticosterone, hematocrit, and heterophil:lymphocyte ratio. In the molting season, hematocrit indicated better condition in rural birds whereas H:L ratio showed the opposite; however, these trends were not consistent between age groups. Two condition-dependent plumage traits, male bib size and wing bar size, showed no systematic variation along the gradient of urbanization. These results suggest that the environmental conditions experienced by adult house sparrows are not more stressful in more urbanized habitats, and they also highlight the importance of considering multiple indices of body condition.