The Relationship Between Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency (CFFF) and Temperamenta Characteristics

he analysis in this paper was based on data obtained from 80 male participants, aged 29-65. Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency (CFFF) was measured using the Flicker Test. The Formal Characteristics of Behaviour-Temperament Inventory (FCB-TI) by Strelau and Zawadzki (1993) was used for temperamental characteristics. The results of statistical analysis did not confirm a hypothesis about the correlation between CFFF level and 3 temperamental characteristics. There were no immediate relationships among those variables. Correlation was observed when the CFFF coefficient of variance, instead of average CFFF values, was taken into account, especially in the case of a division into 2 groups of participants, “reckless” and “unsure.” It could be interesting to check in the future a hypothesis about the stability of selected types of reactions.     

Analysis of Conditions and Organization of Work of Notebook Computer Users

Abstract

Aim. The aim of this study was to evaluate working conditions with a notebook computer (notebook) as a potential cause of musculoskeletal disorders. Material and methods. The study had 2 stages. The first one was a questionnaire survey among 300 notebook users. The next stage was an expert analysis of 53 randomly selected workstations. The questionnaire survey included questions about the participants, their working conditions, work organization and also duration of work with a notebook. Results and conclusions. The results of the research showed that most examined operators used a notebook as a basic working tool. The most important irregularities included an unadjustable working surface, unadjustable height of the seat pan and backrest, unadjustable height and distance between the armrests and no additional ergonomic devices (external keyboard, docking station, notebook stand or footstool).     

Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) anaerobic degradation in marine sediments: microcosm study and role of autochthonous microbial communities

Polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) biodegradation was followed for 1 year in microcosms containing marine sediments collected from Mar Piccolo (Taranto, Italy) chronically contaminated by this class of hazardous compounds. The microcosms were performed under strictly anaerobic conditions with or without the addition of Dehalococcoides mccartyi, the main microorganism known to degrade PCBs through the anaerobic reductive dechlorination process. Thirty PCB congeners were monitored during the experiments revealing that the biodegradation occurred in all microcosms with a decrease in hepta-, hexa-, and penta-chlorobiphenyls (CBs) and a parallel increase in low chlorinated PCBs (tri-CBs and tetra-CBs). The concentrations of the most representative congeners detected in the original sediment, such as 245-245-CB and 2345-245-CB, and of the mixture 2356-34-CB+234-245-CB, decreased by 32.5, 23.8, and 46.7 %, respectively, after only 70 days of anaerobic incubation without any bioaugmentation treatment. Additionally, the structure and population dynamics of the microbial key players involved in the biodegradative process and of the entire mixed microbial community were accurately defined by Catalyzed Reporter Deposition Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (CARD-FISH) in both the original sediment and during the operation of the microcosm. The reductive dehalogenase genes of D. mccartyi, specifically involved in PCB dechlorination, were also quantified using real-time PCR (qPCR). Our results demonstrated that the autochthonous microbial community living in the marine sediment, including D. mccartyi (6.32E+06 16S rRNA gene copy numbers g^?1 sediment), was able to efficiently sustain the biodegradation of PCBs when controlled anaerobic conditions were imposed.     

Changing ideas in forestry: A comparison of concepts in Swedish and American forestry journals during the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries

By combining digital humanities text-mining tools and a qualitative approach, we examine changing concepts in forestry journals in Sweden and the United States (US) in the early twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Our first hypothesis is that foresters at the beginning of the twentieth century were more concerned with production and less concerned with ecology than foresters at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Our second hypothesis is that US foresters in the early twentieth century were less concerned with local site conditions than Swedish foresters. We find that early foresters in both countries had broader—and often ecologically focused—concerns than hypothesized. Ecological concerns in the forestry literature have increased, but in the Nordic countries, production concerns have increased as well. In both regions and both time periods, timber management is closely connected to concerns about governance and state power, but the forms that governance takes have changed.     

Reducing the risk of invasive forest pests and pathogens: Combining legislation,targeted management and public awareness

Intensifying global trade will result in increased numbers of plant pest and pathogen species inadvertently being transported along with cargo. This paper examines current mechanisms for prevention and management of potential introductions of forest insect pests and pathogens in the European Union (EU). Current European legislation has not been found sufficient in preventing invasion, establishment and spread of pest and pathogen species within the EU. Costs associated with future invasions are difficult to estimate but past invasions have led to negative economic impacts in the invaded country. The challenge is combining free trade and free movement of products (within the EU) with protection against invasive pests and pathogens. Public awareness may mobilise the public for prevention and detection of potential invasions and, simultaneously, increase support for eradication and control measures. We recommend focus on commodities in addition to pathways, an approach within the EU using a centralised response unit and, critically, to engage the general public in the battle against establishment and spread of these harmful pests and pathogens.     

Enhanced science–stakeholder communication to improve ecosystem model performances for climate change impact assessments

In recent years, climate impact assessments of relevance to the agricultural and forestry sectors have received considerable attention. Current ecosystem models commonly capture the effect of a warmer climate on biomass production, but they rarely sufficiently capture potential losses caused by pests, pathogens and extreme weather events. In addition, alternative management regimes may not be integrated in the models. A way to improve the quality of climate impact assessments is to increase the science–stakeholder collaboration, and in a two-way dialog link empirical experience and impact modelling with policy and strategies for sustainable management. In this paper we give a brief overview of different ecosystem modelling methods, discuss how to include ecological and management aspects, and highlight the importance of science–stakeholder communication. By this, we hope to stimulate a discussion among the science–stakeholder communities on how to quantify the potential for climate change adaptation by improving the realism in the models.     

Teaching infant car seat installation via interactive visual presence: An experimental trial

Objective: A large portion of child restraint systems (car seats) are installed incorrectly, especially when first-time parents install infant car seats. Expert instruction greatly improves the accuracy of car seat installation but is labor intensive and difficult to obtain for many parents. This study was designed to evaluate the efficacy of 3 ways of communicating instructions for proper car seat installation: phone conversation; HelpLightning, a mobile application (app) that offers virtual interactive presence permitting both verbal and interactive (telestration) visual communication; and the manufacturer's user manual.

Methods: A sample of 39 young adults of child-bearing age who had no previous experience installing car seats were recruited and randomly assigned to install an infant car seat using guidance from one of those 3 communication sources.

Results: Both the phone and interactive app were more effective means to facilitate accurate car seat installation compared to the user manual. There was a trend for the app to offer superior communication compared to the phone, but that difference was not significant in most assessments. The phone and app groups also installed the car seat more efficiently and perceived the communication to be more effective and their installation to be more accurate than those in the user manual group.

Conclusions: Interactive communication may help parents install car seats more accurately than using the manufacturer's manual alone. This was an initial study with a modestly sized sample; if results are replicated in future research, there may be reason to consider centralized “call centers” that provide verbal and/or interactive visual instruction from remote locations to parents installing car seats, paralleling the model of centralized Poison Control centers in the United States.     

Influence of age,season, body condition and geographical area on concentrations of chlorinated and brominated contaminants in wild mink (Neovison vison) in Sweden

The wild mink has gained acceptance as a sentinel species in environmental monitoring. However, only limited data are available in the literature on factors driving variability in concentrations of organic pollutants in this species. This study characterizes the differences in contaminant concentrations in subcutaneous fat of male mink from four different areas in Sweden and demonstrates how age, season and body condition influence concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners, polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) congeners (including methoxylated forms, MeO-PBDEs), as well as the pesticides dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), chlordane and hexachlorobenzene (HCB). The data were statistically treated using multiple regression and principal component analysis. The ∑PCB concentration and concentrations of PCB congeners 138, 156, 157, 180, 170/190, 189, 194, 206, 209 as well as PBDE 153/154 varied with age. Season had an influence on ∑PCB, PBDE 47 and PBDE 153/154 concentrations, as well as concentrations of most PCB congeners, with the exception of PCB 101, 110, 141 and 182/187. Lean mink had higher concentrations of most PCBs and PBDEs than mink with larger fat depots. The analyzed pesticides (DDE, oxychlordane, HCB) showed no systematic variation with season, age or body condition. The concentrations of MeO-PBDEs were generally low and 6MeO-PBDE 47 was the most commonly detected MeO-PBDE in mink from marine, brackish and freshwater areas. The results indicate that age, season and body condition are factors that may influence the concentrations of PCBs and PBDEs, and it is thus recommended to take these factors into account when analyzing mink exposure data.     

Deriving heart rate variability indices from cardiac monitoring—An indicator of driver sleepiness

Objective: Driver fatigue is considered to be a major contributor to road traffic crashes. Cardiac monitoring and heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is a candidate method for early and accurate detection of driver sleepiness. This study has 2 objectives: to evaluate the (1) suitability of different preprocessing strategies for detecting and removing outlier heartbeats and spectral transformation of HRV signals and their impact of driver sleepiness assessment and (2) relation between common HRV indices and subjective sleepiness reported by a large number of drivers in real driving situations, for the first time.

Methods: The study analyzed >3,500 5-min driving epochs from 76 drivers on a public motorway in Sweden. The electrocardiograph (ECG) data were recorded in 3 studies designed to evaluate the physiological differences between awake and sleepy drivers. The drivers reported their perceived level of sleepiness according to the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) every 5?min. Two standard methods were used for identifying outlier heartbeats: (1) percentage change (PC), where outliers were defined as interbeat intervals deviating >30% from the mean of the four previous intervals and (2) standard deviation (SD), where outliers were defined as interbeat interval deviating >4 SD from the mean interval duration in the current epoch. Three standard methods were used for spectral transformation, which is needed for deriving HRV indices in the frequency domain: (1) Fourier transform; (2) autoregressive model; and (3) Lomb-Scargle periodogram. Different preprocessing strategies were compared regarding their impact on derivation of common HRV indices and their relation to KSS data distribution, using box plots and statistical tests such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Student’s t test.

Results: The ability of HRV indices to discriminate between alert and sleepy drivers does not differ significantly depending on which outlier detection and spectral transformation methods are used. As expected, with increasing sleepiness, the heart rate decreased, whereas heart rate variability overall increased. Furthermore, HRV parameters representing the parasympathetic branch of the autonomous nervous system increased. An unexpected finding was that parameters representing the sympathetic branch of the autonomous nervous system also increased with increasing KSS level. We hypothesize that this increment was due to stress induced by trying to avoid an incident, because the drivers were in real driving situations.

Conclusions: The association of HRV indices to KSS did not depend on the preprocessing strategy. No preprocessing method showed superiority for HRV association to driver sleepiness. This was also true for combinations of methods for frequency domain HRV indices. The results prove clear relationships between HRV indices and perceived sleepiness. Thus, HRV analysis shows promise for driver sleepiness detection.     

Chemical and spectroscopic characterization of organic matter during the anaerobic digestion and successive composting of pig slurry

In this work, anaerobic digestion of pig slurry and successive composting of the digestate after centrifugation were studied by means of chemical analysis, FTIR and fluorescence spectroscopy as excitation–emission matrix (EEM). Chemical analysis highlighted the organic matter transformation occurring during the processes. A decrease of volatile solids and total organic carbon were observed in the digestate with respect to the fresh pig slurry as a consequence of the consumption of sugars, proteins, amino acids and fatty acids used by microorganisms as a C source. Water Extractable Organic Matter (WEOM) was obtained for all samples and fractionated into a hydrophilic and a hydrophobic fraction. The highest WEOM value was found in the pig slurry indicating a high content of labile organic C. The digestate centrifuged and the digestate composted showed lower hydrophilic and higher hydrophobic contents because of the decrease of labile C. Total phenolic content was lower in the digestate with respect to fresh pig slurry sample (36.7%) as a consequence of phenolic compounds degradation. The strong decrease of total reducing sugars in the digestate (76.6%) as compared to pig slurry confirmed that anaerobic process proceed mainly through consumption of sugars which represent a readily available energy source for microbial activity. FTIR spectra of pig slurry showed bands indicative of proteins and carbohydrates. A drop of aliphatic structures and a decrease of polysaccharides was observed after the anaerobic process along with the increase of the peak in the aromatic region. The composted substrate showed an increase of aromatic and a relative decrease of polysaccharides. EEM spectra provided tryptophan:fulvic-like fluorescence ratios which increased from fresh substrate to digestate because of the OM decompostion. Composted substrate presented the lowest ratio due to the humification process.