• Title/Summary/Keyword: Scientific laboratory workers

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Prevalence of Accident Occurrence Among Scientific Laboratory Workers of the Public University in Lebanon and the Impact of Safety Measures

  • Nasrallah, Inaam M.;El Kak, Assem K.;Ismaiil, Lina A.;Nasr, Rihab R.;Bawab, Wafa T.
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.155-162
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    • 2022
  • Background: Workers are exposed to several risks in academic laboratories due to the presence of potentially hazardous substances. The main objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of accident occurrence and associated risk factors among laboratory workers at the scientific laboratories of the public university in Lebanon and the impact of safety measures training and availability. Methods: In this observational study, a survey was conducted for one year in scientific laboratories at faculties of the public university. Results: Among the participants (N = 220), 45.0% have had accidents; the main cause was exposure to chemicals (73.7%) and more specifically by inhalation (45.4%). Females (85.9%) were more exposed to accidents than males. Laboratory workers with a master's degree, a full-time schedule, and more than ten years of experience were significantly more exposed to accidents (p < 0.05). A significant association was found between accident occurrence and training on management of hazardous products (p = 0.044), risks related to workplace (p = 0.030), eyewash and emergency shower (p < 0.001), first aid (p = 0.012), and facial protection availability (p = 0.019). In spite of the lack of safety culture and efficient training on laboratory safety, participants have shown a very good perception regarding safety measures to be applied in case of work accidents. Conclusion: Based on our findings, the prevalence of accident occurrence is elevated among lab workers at the public university. The impact of regular training on laboratory safety preventive measures is of great importance to ensure the efficiency of occupational health and safety in scientific laboratories.

Common and scientific names of amphibians, domestic animals, birds, invertebrates, mammals, reptiles, and aquaculture

  • Song, Jeong-Mee;Jang, Hyung-Kwan;Song, Hee-Jong
    • Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
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    • v.25 no.4
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    • pp.385-407
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    • 2002
  • The planning of any experiment or trial involving the use of animal (material) requires the most detailed and careful consideration of the wide variety of species and strains that are now available. Unfortunately, although many research workers carefully define their requirements with respect to chemicals or complicated laboratory equipment, often they appear to be unaware of the specifications that should be similarly applied to laboratory animals and end up simply asking for a white mouse! The aim of any user of laboratory animals should be to achieve maximum accuracy with the minimum number of animals, and it is, therefore, essential that careful consideration should be given to the choice of the animal(Bleby J, 1987). The first step when selecting an experimental animal is to specify the type needed, taking into account the following factors: 1. species, 2. breed or strain, and 3. quality, especially with respect to health and genetical status. The correct choice of species cannot be emphasized too strongly and failure to do so can sometimes have dire consequences, frequently very expensive in financial terms and sometimes extremely tragic in manifestations of human and animal suffering. In this paper, we reorganized a lot of collected articles described previously for common and scientific names of amphibians, domestic animals, birds, invertebrates, mammals, reptiles, and aquaculture as mentioned in the text.

Comparison of Airborne Nanoparticle Concentrations between Carbon Nanotubes Growth Laboratories based on Containment of CVD (탄소나노튜브 성장 실험실에서 CVD 밀폐 여부에 따른 공기 중 나노입자 농도 비교)

  • Ha, Ju-Hyun;Shin, Yong-Chul
    • Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.184-191
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    • 2010
  • Although the usage of nanomaterials including carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has increased in various fields, scientific researches on workers' exposures and controls of these materials are very limited. The purpose of this study was to compare the airborne nanoparticles concentrations from two university laboratories conducting experiments of CNTs growth based on containment of thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Airborne nanoparticle concentrations in three metrics (surface area concentration, particle number concentration, and mass concentrations) were measured by task using three direct reading instruments. In a laboratory where CVD was not contained, the surface area concentration, number concentration and mass(PM$_1$) concentration of airborne nanoparticles were 1.5 to 3.5 times higher than those in the other laboratory where CVD was confined. The ratio of PM$_1$ concentration to total suspended particles(TSP) in the laboratory where CVD was not confined was about 4 times higher than that in the other laboratory. This indicates that CVD is a major source of airbone nanoparticles in the CNTs growth laboratories. In conclusion, researchers performing CNTs growth experiments in these laboratories were exposed to airborne nanoparticles levels higher than background levels, and their exposures in a laboratory with the unconfined CVD were higher than those in the other laboratory with the confined CVD. It is recommended that in the CNTs growth laboratories adequate controls including containment of CVD be implemented for minimizing researchers' exposures to airborne nanoparticles.

A Psychophysical Approach on the Assessment of Lifting Loads (정신물리학적 접근방법을 이용한 들기작업의 작업하중 평가에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Hyun Jin;Ock, Minwoo;Chang, Seong Rok
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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    • v.27 no.4
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    • pp.96-100
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    • 2012
  • Low back pain (LBP) is a major issue in modern industrialized society which is mainly caused by manual material handling (MMH) tasks. The objective of this study was to provide scientific data for establishing work standard for Korean workers throughout the laboratory experiment including some specific lifting tasks. Thirty male college students were recruited as participants. The maximum voluntary contraction (MVC), recommended weight limit (RWL), and psychophysical safety weight using Borg's CR-10 scale were studied. Results showed that the RWL was 8.4% MVC higher than the proposed psychophysical safety weight. Based on this result, it is suggested that the NIOSH lifting equation (NLE) should not be directly applied to Korean without reasonable modifications. The ratio of psychophysical safety weight to MVC was ranged from 20.1 to 26.4%. It is expected that use of the methodology in this study may provide better expectation of the work ability of Korean for reducing lower back pains caused by MMH.

A study on the Exercise Remedy in Musculo-Skeletal Disorder prevention (근골격계질환 예방을 위한 운동요법에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Jung-Sik
    • Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.59-62
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    • 2010
  • At the present time, Musculo-Skeletal Disorders breaks out and it is increased in a high speed. It is a serious problem for the labors and managements. People becoming greatly interested in it. It is caused by the labor intensity which is according to the work form, hours of labor, and the labors and the labor unions have a correct understanding in it, and the labor powers becoming older, and the change of divisional social environment which is latent. Before working do the simple preparation gymnastics or operate insensitive exercise remedy without scientific verification only in the present circumstances. Although operate the Work-related Musculo-Skeletal Disorders exercise remedy, it can not get a sufficient effectiveness. So the study develop one type of exercise remedy which are divided the upper limbs exercise remedy, the trunk exercise remedy, the lower limbs exercise remedy. It can be done without using any exercise equipments and regardless places. We should also enable the exercise remedy to be easily applied to workers who are in different circumstances. To use EMG to measure the burden of exercise remedy. By doing so, employees can easily do exercises and it will help to prevent and even can treat MSD. It is just the objective of the research.

A Study on Curriculum Development in the Dental Technology Department of a Vocational Junior College (전문대학 치기공과 교육과정 개발에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Joo-Tae
    • Journal of Technologic Dentistry
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    • v.6 no.1
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    • pp.31-86
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    • 1984
  • The educational purpose of a junior college is believed to be to effectively train and produce professional workers equipped with the knowledge and skills required in various technical fields of modern society. Since dental technology takes its share of an important role through the enhancement of people's health and the construction of a whlfare society, the prosthodontia department is imposed with a great responsibility to train highly skilled, responsible dental technicians who will meet the social demands. To attain this goal, those who are in charge of the training and education should place emphasis on the development of better educational programs. In other words, the present curriculum which is lacking in many comprehensive aspects, is not satisfactory to provide the students with the required know-how and qualities. As is known, a currculum is the detailed guidance to the efficient operation of an educational program, and that of dental technology is not an exception. In addition, dental technology requires very detailed programs in training, because it requires both diversified and comprehensive application of serveral different fields. The following are the main points to be taken into consideration in developing an effective curriculum for this department. 1. The curriculum should be gradually expanded so that the fundamental subjects will contain principal theories which can be directly applied to the specified majoring subjects. 2. An effective arrangement of time tables should be provided so that basic practice and experiments can be conducted in direct connection with the leatures on the basic theories. 3. For a creative and up-to-date curriculum to help cope with the problems in achieving the aims of technological development and scientific education, intensive and extensive studies should be done on the curricula developed in the advanced countries. 4. The specific majoring subjects should be rearranged to contain new theories which are beneficial to dental technology. As an institution which is spearheaded for ondustrial-educational cooperation, the Junior collegeis role demands that the department should make every possible effect to cultivate highly-skilled technicisns. The following suggestions are made to help work out an ideal curriculum. 1. The basic theory subjects should be selected with consideration toward closely related majoring subjects. 2. The curriculum should be efficiently operated to effectively relate theories with experiments. 3. Subject importance must be rearranged ; It has been found that the ideal proportion of cultural, elective and required subjects is 20%, 20% and 60% respectively. 4. The credit allotments should be reconsidered: The total credits required for completion should preferably be 80; 16 for the cultural and the elective subjects respectively and 48 for the required subject. 5. A Commissioned education system should be formalized for strengthening industrial educational cooperation. 6. Experiments and practice should be intensified with the support of improved laboratory facilities. 7. The training period should be expanded form the present two years to three of four years, in order to produce more highly qualified technicians.

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Wearable Computers

  • Cho, Gil-Soo;Barfield, Woodrow;Baird, Kevin
    • Fiber Technology and Industry
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    • v.2 no.4
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    • pp.490-508
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    • 1998
  • One of the latest fields of research in the area of output devices is tactual display devices [13,31]. These tactual or haptic devices allow the user to receive haptic feedback output from a variety of sources. This allows the user to actually feel virtual objects and manipulate them by touch. This is an emerging technology and will be instrumental in enhancing the realism of wearable augmented environments for certain applications. Tactual displays have previously been used for scientific visualization in virtual environments by chemists and engineers to improve perception and understanding of force fields and of world models populated with the impenetrable. In addition to tactual displays, the use of wearable audio displays that allow sound to be spatialized are being developed. With wearable computers, designers will soon be able to pair spatialized sound to virtual representations of objects when appropriate to make the wearable computer experience even more realistic to the user. Furthermore, as the number and complexity of wearable computing applications continues to grow, there will be increasing needs for systems that are faster, lighter, and have higher resolution displays. Better networking technology will also need to be developed to allow all users of wearable computers to have high bandwidth connections for real time information gathering and collaboration. In addition to the technology advances that make users need to wear computers in everyday life, there is also the desire to have users want to wear their computers. In order to do this, wearable computing needs to be unobtrusive and socially acceptable. By making wearables smaller and lighter, or actually embedding them in clothing, users can conceal them easily and wear them comfortably. The military is currently working on the development of the Personal Information Carrier (PIC) or digital dog tag. The PIC is a small electronic storage device containing medical information about the wearer. While old military dog tags contained only 5 lines of information, the digital tags may contain volumes of multi-media information including medical history, X-rays, and cardiograms. Using hand held devices in the field, medics would be able to call this information up in real time for better treatment. A fully functional transmittable device is still years off, but this technology once developed in the military, could be adapted tp civilian users and provide ant information, medical or otherwise, in a portable, not obstructive, and fashionable way. Another future device that could increase safety and well being of its users is the nose on-a-chip developed by the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. This tiny digital silicon chip about the size of a dime, is capable of 'smelling' natural gas leaks in stoves, heaters, and other appliances. It can also detect dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. This device can also be configured to notify the fire department when a leak is detected. This nose chip should be commercially available within 2 years, and is inexpensive, requires low power, and is very sensitive. Along with gas detection capabilities, this device may someday also be configured to detect smoke and other harmful gases. By embedding this chip into workers uniforms, name tags, etc., this could be a lifesaving computational accessory. In addition to the future safety technology soon to be available as accessories are devices that are for entertainment and security. The LCI computer group is developing a Smartpen, that electronically verifies a user's signature. With the increase in credit card use and the rise in forgeries, is the need for commercial industries to constantly verify signatures. This Smartpen writes like a normal pen but uses sensors to detect the motion of the pen as the user signs their name to authenticate the signature. This computational accessory should be available in 1999, and would bring increased peace of mind to consumers and vendors alike. In the entertainment domain, Panasonic is creating the first portable hand-held DVD player. This device weight less than 3 pounds and has a screen about 6' across. The color LCD has the same 16:9 aspect ratio of a cinema screen and supports a high resolution of 280,000 pixels and stereo sound. The player can play standard DVD movies and has a hour battery life for mobile use. To summarize, in this paper we presented concepts related to the design and use of wearable computers with extensions to smart spaces. For some time, researchers in telerobotics have used computer graphics to enhance remote scenes. Recent advances in augmented reality displays make it possible to enhance the user's local environment with 'information'. As shown in this paper, there are many application areas for this technology such as medicine, manufacturing, training, and recreation. Wearable computers allow a much closer association of information with the user. By embedding sensors in the wearable to allow it to see what the user sees, hear what the user hears, sense the user's physical state, and analyze what the user is typing, an intelligent agent may be able to analyze what the user is doing and try to predict the resources he will need next or in the near future. Using this information, the agent may download files, reserve communications bandwidth, post reminders, or automatically send updates to colleagues to help facilitate the user's daily interactions. This intelligent wearable computer would be able to act as a personal assistant, who is always around, knows the user's personal preferences and tastes, and tries to streamline interactions with the rest of the world.

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