Legal system and its effect for prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in Korea

This study aims to introduce the legislation of occupational safety and health regulations for prevention of WMSDs in Korea and investigate its effect by showing an ergonomic intervention effort in a major motor company. In Korea, WMSDs incidence rates had increased from 1999 to 2003, and it is noted that its increment jumped rapidly in 2002 and 2003. The Korean government established a law prescribing employers’ duty of preventing WMSDs in 2002, which began effective in July, 2003. Following the legislation, all employers should execute the examination of WMSDs risk factors for the eleven designated tasks every three years. In addition to this legal obligation, some large companies voluntarily established an ergonomic intervention program by carrying out in-depth assessments for stressful tasks using OWAS, RULA, NLE, etc. We introduce a major motor company case to illustrate the industry’s activities of fulfilling the legislative requirement and of performing ergonomic assessments. Thanks to Korean government and industry’s effort for prevention of WMSDs, the incidence rates of WMSDs have continually decreased from the year of 2004, right after the year when the WMSDs-related regulation was enforced.

Relevance to industry

In spite of booming of information technology industries and automation of manufacturing processes in Korea, many workers are still exposed to the risk of WMSDs including awkward postures, stressful force exertions, repetitive motions in manufacturing and agriculture industries. WMSDs cases alone constitute 43.1% of occupational diseases in Korea and the industry’s effort of ergonomic intervention of WMSDs becomes a major issue to both the management and the labor union.     

Good programming in transactional memory : Game theory meets multicore architecture

In a multicore transactional memory (TM) system, concurrent execution threads interact and interfere with each other through shared memory. The less interference a thread provokes the better for the system. However, as a programmer is primarily interested in optimizing her individual code’s performance rather than the system’s overall performance, she does not have a natural incentive to provoke as little interference as possible. Hence, a TM system must be designed compatible with good programming incentives (GPI), i.e., writing efficient code for the overall system should coincide with writing code that optimizes an individual thread’s performance. We show that with most contention managers (CM) proposed in the literature so far, TM systems are not GPI compatible. We provide a generic framework for CMs that base their decisions on priorities and explain how to modify Timestamp-like CMs so as to feature GPI compatibility. In general, however, priority-based conflict resolution policies are prone to be exploited by selfish programmers. In contrast, a simple non-priority-based manager that resolves conflicts at random is GPI compatible.     

基于SIFT特征点匹配的水印图像几何校正算法*

为了有效实现水印图像的水印检测与水印嵌入之间的同步,提出一种应用SIFT(scale invariant feature transform)特征点匹配估计水印图像几何变换参数的校正算法.用两个稳定而又相距最远的图像SIFT特征点的变化估计图像所经历的旋转和缩放参数,校正之后,再用一个稳定的SIFT特征点的变化校正图像...     

热轧带钢中板形的计算和控制

热轧带钢中保持良好的板形是生产过程中极其重要的问题。首先,介绍了板形的基础知识包括板形的概念和计算,以及目前生产中板形控制方面实际存在的问题。在此基础上,讨论了影响板形的因素和控制策略,并对由带钢温度引起的缺陷,经过层流冷却获得良好板形的策略做了重点的讨论。从预防的角度阐明了板形的控制方法,并且介绍了一种实际生产中热轧带钢中浪板形控制方法,即PC设定控制方法的具体流程和实际应用效果。     

根际环境因子对马铃薯块茎生长发育影响的研究进展

根际环境因子对马铃薯块茎生长发育具有重要影响。马铃薯根际环境因子包括光照、温度、水分、空气、营养以及重力等,从生态学的角度综述了根际环境因子对马铃薯块茎生长发育的影响,并对存在的问题及其研究进展进行了讨论。     

Subjective evaluation of software evolvability using code smells: An empirical study

This paper presents the results of an empirical study on the subjective evaluation of code smells that identify poorly evolvable structures in software. We propose use of the term software evolvability to describe the ease of further developing a piece of software and outline the research area based on four different viewpoints. Furthermore, we describe the differences between human evaluations and automatic program analysis based on software evolvability metrics. The empirical component is based on a case study in a Finnish software product company, in which we studied two topics. First, we looked at the effect of the evaluator when subjectively evaluating the existence of smells in code modules. We found that the use of smells for code evaluation purposes can be difficult due to conflicting perceptions of different evaluators. However, the demographics of the evaluators partly explain the variation. Second, we applied selected source code metrics for identifying four smells and compared these results to the subjective evaluations. The metrics based on automatic program analysis and the human-based smell evaluations did not fully correlate. Based upon our results, we suggest that organizations should make decisions regarding software evolvability improvement based on a combination of subjective evaluations and code metrics. Due to the limitations of the study we also recognize the need for conducting more refined studies and experiments in the area of software evolvability.

Critical success factors revisited: success and failure cases of information systems for senior executives

The literature suggests the existence of critical success factors (CSFs) for the development of information systems that support senior executives. Our study of six organizations gives evidence for this notion of CSFs. The study further shows an interesting pattern, namely that companies either “get it right”, and essentially succeed on all CSFs, or “get it completely wrong”, that is, fall short on each of the CSFs. Among the six cases for which data were collected through in-depth interviews with company executives, three organizations seemed to manage all the CSFs properly, while two others managed all CSFs poorly. Only one organization showed a mixed scorecard, managing some factors well and some not so well. At the completion of the study, this organization could neither be judged as a success, nor as a failure. This dichotomy between success and failure cases suggests the existence of an even smaller set of “meta-success” factors. Based on our findings, we speculate that these “meta-success” factors are “championship”, “availability of resources”, and “link to organization objectives”.     

Male response to natural sex pheromone ofMigdolus fryanus westwood (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) females as affected by daily climatic factors

Males of the sugarcane borer,Migdolus fryanus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), are attracted to females by means of a sex pheromone. Mating usually occurs during a few days from October to March under field conditions in São Paulo State, Brazil. This work reports on mating of this species as affected by daily climatic factors, during a single nuptial flight. Maximum male capture by the natural sex pheromone occurred from 1000 to 1100 AM at air and soil temperatures of 30.0°C and relative humidity of 57.0%. As these temperatures increased, females burrowed into the soil, as they are more sensitive to heat than males. Thus, it was concluded that sex pheromone-mediated mating in this cerambycid is directly affected by temperatures of air and soil.     

Confidential Incident Reporting on the UK Railways: The ‘CIRAS’ System

The paper describes CIRAS (Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System), a confidential reporting system developed by the authors in collaboration with ScotRail, the Health and Safety Executive, Railtrack and the (now defunct) British Rail Board. After a two-year pilot/developmental study with ScotRail during 1995–97, the system is now subscribed to by all but one of the major train operating companies, rail infrastructure and maintenance companies with a presence in Scotland; plus a developing profile in the rest of the UK.  CIRAS gathers data in three ways: (i) from an initial report form or telephone call, (ii) from a structured follow-up telephone questionnaire, and (iii) from an in-depth interview with a researcher (telephone or face-to-face, according to priority). The interviews bring to light details of personal motive, and of intended/unintended actions, which are not commonly found on company-run databases because of their association with disciplinary procedures. Information is processed through a human factors model and fed back to the companies involved, in disidentified form, to take corrective action.  The basic structure of the human-factors model is described; data are presented on reports received to date which have been processed through this model. The system has recently been recommended by a UK Parliamentary Committee and by Railtrack Safety and Standards Directorate for extension to the UK network as a whole.     

People, Information Systems and Change

Information systems are the glue between people and computers. Both the social and business environments are in a continual, some might say chaotic, state of change while computer hardware continues to double its performance about every 18 months. This presents a major challenge for information system developers.  The term user-friendly is an old one, but one which has come to take on a multitude of meanings. However, in today’s context we might well take a user-friendly system to be one where the technology fits the user’s cognitive models of the activity in hand. This article looks at the relationship between information systems and the changing demands of their users as the underlying theme for the current issue of Cognition, Technology and Work.  People, both as individuals and organisations, change. The functionalist viewpoint, which attempts to freeze and inhibit such change, has failed systems developers on numerous occasions. Responding to, and building on, change in the social environment is still a significant research issue for information systems specialists who need to be able to create living information systems.