Participation of Danish and immigrant cleaners in a 1-year worksite intervention preventing physical deterioration

Worksite health promotion is seldom offered to workers who are low-educated and multi-ethnic, possibly due to an assumption that they are more reluctant to participate. Furthermore, little has been done to promote health at female-dominated workplaces. The main aim of this study was to investigate differences in participation among immigrant and Danish cleaners throughout a 1-year randomised controlled study tailored to cleaners and carried out in predominantly female workplaces. No significant differences in ethnicity were found in consent and participation throughout the 1-year intervention. Dropout was equally distributed among Danish and immigrant cleaners. This study indicates that a worksite health promotion intervention among a female-dominated, high-risk occupation such as cleaning can be equally appealing for Danes and immigrants. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: This study provides insight about participation of Danish and immigrant cleaners in a worksite health promotion intervention in a predominantly female occupation. For attaining high participation and low dropout in future worksite health promotion interventions among cleaners, the intervention ought to not only target the ethnic background of the workers, but also to be specifically tailored to the job group.     

Implementation of physical coordination training and cognitive behavioural training interventions at cleaning workplaces--secondary analyses of a randomised controlled trial

This study evaluates the implementation of physical coordination training (PCT) and cognitive behavioural training (CBTr) interventions in a randomised controlled trial at nine cleaners' workplaces. Female cleaners (n = 294) were randomised into a PCT, a CBTr or a reference (REF) group. Both 12-week interventions were performed in groups guided by an instructor. Records were kept on intervention dose (adherence) unanticipated events at the work place (context) and quality of intervention delivery (fidelity). Participant adherence was 37% in the PCT and 49% in the CBTr interventions. Optimal implementation was reached by only 6% in PCT and 42% in the CBTr. Analysis of the barriers to successful implementation indicated that the intervention process is sensitive to unanticipated events. In order to succeed in improving the health of high-risk populations such as cleaners and to correctly interpret intervention effects, more research on implementation is needed. Trial registration: ISRCTN96241850. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: Both physical coordination training and cognitive behavioural training are potential effective workplace interventions among low educated job groups with high physical work demands. However, thorough consideration should be given to feasibility in the design of interventions. The optimal intervention should be tailored to closely match the implementation context and be robust and flexible to minimise susceptibility to changes in work organisation.     

Gender identity: The benefits of a self-schema approach.

Questions S. L. Bem's (see record 1983-21087-001) definition of a gender schema and argues that male and female sex-typed individuals do not have equivalent gender schemata. The high-androgynous individuals are the only ones for whom both masculinity and femininity are equally available and who might be properly termed "gender schematic." (6 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Technological and environmental behavior of sewage sludge ash (SSA) in cement-based materials

Sewage sludge ash (SSA) is a waste material obtained from the incineration of wastewater sludge. The physical, chemical and mineralogical characteristics of SSA, and the evaluation of its use in cement-based materials, are presented in this paper. Results show that SSA is composed of irregular grains having a high specific surface area and thus leading to a significantly high water demand. A fraction of the ash is rapidly soluble (sulfates, aluminum and silica) and can create new-formed products in presence of lime. SSA induces short delays of cement hydration, probably due to both minor elements of the ash and dilution effect. Compressive strengths of mortars containing 25% and 50% of SSA are always lower than those of reference mortars but it is shown that SSA has a long-term positive effect which might be related to a slight pozzolanic activity. The amount of elements leached from SSA mortars is slightly higher than from the reference mortar without residue but it remains of the same order of magnitude. An extensive literature review was performed in order to compare the residue used in this study with others included in the same category. This analysis highlighted the principal characteristics that must be taken into account to use SSA correctly in cement-based materials.     

A look at public key certificates

Many Internet applications use public key technology for security purposes. These applications (i.e. World Wide Web protocols, Internet protocol security, digital signatures, user authentication and E-mail) require a public key infrastructure (PKI) to securely manage public encryption keys for widely distributed users or systems.¹ The use of public key technology requires that the user of a public key be confident that the public key belongs to the correct remote subject (i.e. person or system) with which the encryption mechanism will be used.² This confidence is obtained through the use of public key certificates.²     

The face of the patent is not the “Whole Story”: determining effective life of a pharmaceutical patent in the United States

This article provides an overview of the factors that may contribute to the effective term of protection for a pharmaceutical product in the USA––by patent and by FDA market exclusivities, identifies public and commercial sources for collecting relevant patent term and exclusivity data, and provides a strategy for ensuring that the effective term of protection has been calculated accurately.     

Functional characterization of purified pear protease and its proteolytic activities with casein and myofibrillar proteins

This study was performed to characterize pear protease proteolytic activity and investigate the use of pear protease as a meat tenderizer. Pear protease was purified and stabilized by 5% dextrin during lyophilization (dry) or concentration (liquid). Pear protease was further characterized with respect to pH, thermodynamics, and enzyme kinetics. Pear protease was stable at a pH range of 5-8 with an optimum pH of 6.5. From Arrhenius plots, liquid protease showed higher temperature dependency (23.49 kJ/mol) than dry protease (18.62 kJ/mol) due to its higher activation energy. The kcat/Km, catalytic efficiency of enzyme, was similar with 2.9 and 2.7 µM/min with dry and liquid proteases. Pear protease was evaluated for its proteolytic activities with casein and beef myofibrillar proteins by individually and combination with fig and kiwifruit proteases. These result indicated that pear and kiwifruit proteases could be complementary to be a desirable product for meat tenderization.     

A First Report of Photoemission in Experiments Related to Flash Sintering

A highly nonlinear increase in electrical conductivity and concomitant photoemission occurs not only during “flash sintering” but also in presintered, dense specimens. We report results from experiments with dense specimens that show a strong correspondence between the intensity of photoemission and electrical conductivity of specimens under a variety of conditions of the electrical parameters. It is proposed that both properties are related to the concentration of electron–hole pairs generated in such experiments.     

An automated technique for real-time production of lifelike animations of American Sign Language

Generating sentences from a library of signs implemented through a sparse set of key frames derived from the segmental structure of a phonetic model of ASL has the advantage of flexibility and efficiency, but lacks the lifelike detail of motion capture. These difficulties are compounded when faced with real-time generation and display. This paper describes a technique for automatically adding realism without the expense of manually animating the requisite detail. The new technique layers transparently over and modifies the primary motions dictated by the segmental model and does so with very little computational cost, enabling real-time production and display. The paper also discusses avatar optimizations that can lower the rendering overhead in real-time displays.     

Mechanistic investigation and selectivity of the grafting onto C60 of macroradicals prepared by cobalt-mediated radical polymerization

The grafting mechanism of poly(vinyl acetate) macroradicals prepared by cobalt-mediated radical polymerization onto C₆₀ is investigated. The experimental conditions directly impact the nature and stability of the PVAc/C₆₀ adducts. In the presence of residual initiating radicals that can compete with PVAc° macroradicals for addition onto C₆₀, mixtures of PVAc/C₆₀ adducts having between one and eight polymer chains per C₆₀ are formed. PVAc/C₆₀ adducts prepared with low [PVAc]:[C₆₀] ratios may contain weak C₆₀–C₆₀ bonds that further dissociate and account for the instability of the products. The formation of such dimers can be lessened by increasing the temperature from 30 °C to 100 °C. The temperature increase also allows a complete dissociation of the PVAc-Co dormant species into PVAc° macroradicals and an almost quantitative grafting of eight PVAc chains onto C₆₀, leading to well-defined C₆₀(PVAc)₈ octa-adducts. These results might shed new light on the grafting onto C₆₀ of macroradicals prepared by other CRP techniques.