The role of latent and active failures in workplace slips, trips and falls: an information processing approach

The vast majority of the published workplace slips, trips and falls (STF) literature is exceedingly narrow in its focus and often ignores wider systems issues in workplace STF aetiology. There is little recognition within the published literature of the importance of latent failures or the upstream organisational and cultural contexts within which workplace STF occur. This is unfortunate, as a systems approach to workplace STF analysis, that is inclusive of latent design and work organisation factors that often shape worker behaviour patterns related to STF risk (e.g. rushing, risk taking), is fundamental to the development of effective prevention measures. The aims of this paper are to provide an understanding of workplace STF causation that is cognisant of the potential role of both active and latent failures in STF causation. The paper presents an ergonomics model for workplace STF analysis that highlights information processing in STF aetiology, the STF incident process and the interaction between latent and active failures in STF causation. The paper draws upon ergonomics research conducted in a range of occupational contexts to illustrate the key features of the model as it applies to workplace STF. Implications of the model for analysis and prevention of STF are discussed.     

Structural and electrical properties of mixed oxides of manganese and vanadium: A new semiconductor oxide thermistor material

Binary oxides of manganese and vanadium have been synthesized by solid state sintering, in which the mass ratio of the individual components Mn₂O₃ and VO₂ have been varied from 90:10 to 5:95. The bulk ceramic samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray analysis. The initial compositions either rich in Mn₂O₃ or in equi-proportion by mass with VO₂ yield β-Mn₂V₂O₇ or a new crystalline form of Mn₂V₂O₇, with unit cell parameters: a = 7.73091 Å, b = 6.640788 Å, c = 6.70779 Å α = γ = 90° and β = 98.7086° which is designated as γ-Mn₂V₂O₇. The compositions, richer in VO₂ produce MnV₂O₆ co-existing with V₂O₅ the proportion of which increases with increase in VO₂. The surface microanalysis shows a spherical-granular morphology in Mn₂V₂O₇ structure and plate/rod-like structures co-existing with granular morphology in case of MnV₂O₆ together with V₂O₅. The electrical parameters of the negative temperature coefficient thermistors were determined. Depending on the constituent oxide composition, the NTC thermistors showed room temperature resistivity in the range of 6.52 × 10² to 6.1 × 10⁶ Ω-cm. The thermistor constant and activation energy are in the range of 0.12–0.458 eV and 1393–4801 K, respectively.     

The role of goal awareness and information technology self-efficacy on job satisfaction of healthcare system users

This paper investigates the influence of goal awareness and IT self-efficacy on job satisfaction based on the motivation sequence model, goal-setting theory, and social cognitive theory. Using a large-scale field survey of healthcare enterprise resource planning (ERP) system users (n?=?352), this study investigates these relationships and provides important insight to healthcare ERP system researchers and managers. Both goal awareness and IT self-efficacy influence positive job satisfaction of healthcare ERP system users, as expected. Furthermore, the influence of goal awareness is stronger when the role of ERP systems is highly perceived for decision-making of the job. There was no interaction effect between goal awareness and IT self-efficacy in the post hoc analysis. The model is significantly supported by the empirical test with the large number of field data from healthcare ERP system users in the healthcare company. Practical and academic implications are discussed in the paper.     

Methods for evaluating volunteers’ contributions in a deforestation detection citizen science project

Today, due to the availability of free remote sensing data, efficient algorithms for image classification and increased connectivity and computing power, together with international policy initiatives, such as the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD), more and more countries are investing in their own national forest monitoring schemes. However, tropical forests remain under threat worldwide. Recently, a citizen science project that enables citizens around the globe to be involved in forest monitoring tasks has been proposed, called “ForestWatchers” (www.forestwatchers.net). Its main goal is to allow volunteers (many of them with no scientific training) around the globe, with their own smartphones, tablets and notebooks, review satellite images of forested regions and confirm whether automatic assignments of forested and deforested regions are correct. Inspected images are then sent to a central database where the results are integrated to generate up-to-date deforestation maps. This approach offers a low-cost way to both strengthen the scientific infrastructure and engage members of the public in science. Here, we describe the methods developed within the scope of the ForestWatchers project to assess the volunteers’ performance. These tools have been evaluated with data of two of the project’s preliminary tasks. The first, called “BestTile”, asks volunteers to select which of several images of the same area has the least cloud cover, while in the second, called “Deforestation”, volunteers draw polygons on satellite images delimiting areas they believe have been deforested. The results from more than 500 volunteers show that using simple statistical tests, it is possible to achieve a triple goal: to increase the overall efficiency of the data collecting tasks by reducing the required number of volunteers per task, to identify malicious behavior and outliers, and to motivate volunteers to continue their contributions.     

Creating the Enabling Environment for More Transparent and Better-resourced Local Governments: A Case of E-taxation in the Philippines

This research joins the growing body of literature that advocates for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in local governance more particularly in public financial management. Using a case study in Bohol, a province in the Philippines, this paper discusses the impact of ICT on local revenue generation by analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data from 15 municipalities which used e-taxation. This paper argues that the use of ICT can make possible more transparent and accountable revenue generation systems to benefit both government and taxpayers. However, these results are differentiated depending on the level of political leadership, the nature of articulation of the demand for ICT use, the ratio of benefit against cost, and the availability of technical skills and resources at the sub-national level. It is within this context that an eco-system analysis is argued to be useful in analyzing how ICT can be adopted, scaled, and used by sub-national governments to achieve better governance.     

Prevalence and personality correlates of Facebook bullying among university undergraduates

The purpose of the present study was to examine the prevalence of cyber-bullying through Facebook in a sample of 226 Greek university undergraduates, and to explore whether big five personality characteristics, narcissism, as well as attitudes toward Facebook, technological knowledge and skills were predictive of such behavior. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire measuring the above constructs. Results indicated that almost one third of the sample reported Facebook bullying engagement at least once during the past month, with male students reporting more frequent involvement than females. Bullying through Facebook was predicted by low Agreeableness and more time spent on Facebook only for males, whereas for females none of the studied variables predicted engagement in Facebook bullying. Findings are discussed in terms of prevention and intervention strategies.     

Planning and execution through variable resolution planning

Generating sequences of actions–plans–for robots using Automated Planning in stochastic and dynamic environments has been shown to be a difficult task with high computational complexity. These plans are composed of actions whose execution might fail due to different reasons. In many cases, if the execution of an action fails, it prevents the execution of some (or all) of the remainder actions in the plan. Therefore, in most real-world scenarios computing a complete and sound (valid) plan at each (re-)planning step is not worth the computational resources and time required to generate the plan. This is specially true given the high probability of plan execution failure. Besides, in many real-world environments, plans must be generated fast, both at the start of the execution and after every execution failure. In this paper, we present Variable Resolution Planning which uses Automated Planning to quickly compute a reasonable (not necessarily sound) plan. Our approach computes an abstract representation–removing some information from the planning task–which is used once a search depth of $k$ steps has been reached. Thus, our approach generates a plan where the first $k$ actions are applicable if the domain is stationary and deterministic, while the rest of the plan might not be necessarily applicable. The advantages of this approach are that it: is faster than regular full-fledged planning (both in the probabilistic or deterministic settings); does not spend much time on the far future actions that probably will not be executed, since in most cases it will need to replan before executing the end of the plan; and takes into account some information of the far future, as an improvement over pure reactive systems. We present experimental results on different robotics domains that simulate tasks on stochastic environments.     

基于C—V模型的目标检测与提取

在目标检测与提取中,传统的蛇模型和基于活动轮廓的局部区域检测方法受到初始条件或者自身的收敛性约束的影响,不仅时间花费多,而且不具备鲁棒性。本文提出一种基于C V模型的变分水平集的目标检测与提取方法,通过大量实验验证,在花费时间和鲁棒性上得到了显著的改善。     

Behavioral Analysis of E-commerce Acceptance in Micro-enterprises简

E-commerce present opportunities and challenges for businesses, especially for micro-enterprises. This paper proposed a theoretical framework that in line with the unique characteristics of E-commerce acceptance in micro-enterprises in Chengdu, which is based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology （UTAUT） model. The extending UTAUT model includes key constructs of performance expectation, perceived behavioral control and the characteristics of owner-managers.