Finger and hand protection on circular table and panel saws

Several hundred accidents involving the use of circular saws and resulting in injury, to hands or fingers occur each year in Germany.In the presented project, new approaches for the prevention of hand injuries and for the contactless detection of fingers are being investigated for comprehensive protection on circular saws. The basic principles can be applied to other machines with manual loading and/or unloading. This paper describes several principles to distinct human skin and wood and a safety guard that prevents touching the rotating blade. In a first approach a reliable protective device with functional diversity has been developed using a passive infrared sensor in combination with a capacitive field sensor. Second the distinction between skin and wood or other material is done by dedicated kind of spectral analysis in the near infrared region. With a kind of light curtain the intrusion into the dangerous zone near the blade can be prevented.The safety guard protects the operator’s hand within 50 ms. The forces of the protective system peak at no more than 120 N. We are presenting a complete strategy for such different tasks as cutting wedges, stopped cutting and hidden cutting, which have a very high odds ratio.     

Changes in the spatial patterns of human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) in Europe 1990–2006

Understanding patterns, dynamics, and drivers of land use is crucial for improving our ability to cope with sustainability challenges. The human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) framework provides a set of integrated socio-ecological indicators that quantify how land use alters energy flows in ecosystems via land conversions and biomass harvest. Thus, HANPP enables researchers to systematically and consistently assess the outcome of changes in land cover and land-use intensity across spatio-temporal scales. Yet, fine-scale HANPP assessments are so far missing, an information important to address site-specific ecological implications of land use. Here, we provide such an assessment for Europe at a 1-km scale for the years 1990, 2000, and 2006. The assessment was based on a consistent land-use/biomass flow dataset derived from statistical data, remote sensing maps, and a dynamic global vegetation model. We find that HANPP in Europe amounted to ~43 % of potential productivity, well above the global average of ~25 %, with little variation in the European average since 1990. HANPP was highest in Central Europe and lower in Northern and Southern Europe. At the regional level, distinct changes in land-use intensity were observed, most importantly the decline of cropland areas and yields following the breakdown of socialism in Eastern Europe and the subsequent recovery after 2000, or strong dynamics related to storm events that resulted in massive salvage loggings. In sum, however, these local dynamics cancelled each other out at the aggregate level. We conclude that this finding warrants further research into aspects of the scale-dependency of dynamics and stability of land use.     

Safety Studies on Hydraulic Proportional Valves With Electrical Position Feedback

The authors analysed a proportional valve with electrical position feedback for its failure behaviour. Severalfailures were introduced into the feedback loop, especially into the 2 solenoids and the inductive positiontransducer. The behaviour of the valve for square and ramp reference signals was recorded and systematicallyanalysed. It was shown that failures could be detected by monitoring the residual signal from the equipmentunder control or the residual signal from the sensor. It was possible to achieve the safe position within twice thenormal response time of the valve by switching off the current of both solenoids. The application of these resultsfor a new generation of safe proportional valves is discussed. The use of the results of these investigationsobviates the need for redundancy of the electrical position monitoring arrangement in a safe proportionalvalve.     

Prenatal diagnosis of partial agenesis of the corpus callosum in a fetus with thanatophoric dysplasia type 2

A fetus with thanatophoric dysplasia type 2 (TD2) associated with cloverleaf skull and abnormal development of the corpus callosum is reported. This case represents the first prenatal direct visualization of a partial agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) using high-resolution ultrasonography and colour power Doppler, which was confirmed by post-mortem magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The causal link between cloverleaf skull in TD and partial ACC is discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

International research into occupational safety and health protection.

Are we doing the right thing? Are we setting the right priorities for the future in occupational safety and health research? How does BG (Institution for Statutory Accident Insurance and Prevention) research compare nationally and internationally? As a mosaic of answers to these questions, this article explores international research on priorities in occupational research and analyses these against the backdrop of the nearly 1,000 research projects conducted by 9 institutions from 8 countries in the year 2003.     

Umweltmanagement im landwirtschaftlichen Betrieb

Although problems may occur in the implementation of environmental management systems (EMS) in agriculture, an EMS can be a suitable farm management tool. In the past, pilot projects have revealed that the environmental audit as a base analysis still contains methodical weak points. A uniform procedure for the implementation process is not possible due to variations in the structure of farms in Germany with respect to size, employee structure and capital resources. While the resource costs which occur on larger farms can lead to a benefit due to increased efficiency, this has not yet been established for smaller farms. In these cases, other measures such as the implementation of generic management systems (especially environment and quality) or a farm-specific implementation of a management system without the cost-intensive certification may be a possible alternative.     

Assessment of Population Dynamics of Specific Strains in Groundwater Bioaugmentation Experiments by Two Different Molecular Techniques

A set of microcosm experiments was performed to understand the behaviour of special degraders in bioaugmentation experiments. In the experiments the following chlorobenzene degraders were used: the genetically modified Pseudomonas putida F1CC, and the two wild-type strains Pseudomonas putida GJ31 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa RHO1. These strains were used at an initial cell density of 10⁵ cells mL^–1 groundwater which had been spiked with 1,2-dichlorobenzene (1,2-DCB), 1,4-dichlorobenzene (1,4-DCB) and, as main contaminant, chlorobenzene (CB). The population dynamics and behaviour of the three special degraders within the groundwater microcosms were studied by single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis of 16S rDNA fragments amplified from directly extracted community DNA and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) with species-specific probes. RHO1 disappeared after 4 days as detected by FISH in contrast to SSCP-detection where RHO1 could be found during the whole incubation time. Whereas GEM F1CC and wild-type strain GJ31 survived the whole incubation for 20 days. With both methods we were able to detect all strains with high specificity among the indigenous microbial community. The data sets obtained from SSCP analysis and FISH were highly correlated. Specific band intensity within the SSCPfingerprints and the cell counts determined by FISH gave a quantitative overview about the introduced strains.