Development and evaluation of RAMP I – a practitioner’s tool for screening of musculoskeletal disorder risk factors in manual handling

RAMP I is a screening tool developed to support practitioners in screening for work-related musculoskeletal disorder risk factors related to manual handling. RAMP I, which is part of the RAMP tool, is based on research-based studies combined with expert group judgments. More than 80 practitioners participated in the development of RAMP I. The tool consists of dichotomous assessment items grouped into seven categories. Acceptable reliability was found for a majority of the assessment items for 15 practitioners who were given 1?h of training. The usability evaluation points to RAMP I being usable for screening for musculoskeletal disorder risk factors, i.e., usable for assessing risks, being usable as a decision base, having clear results and that the time needed for an assessment is acceptable. It is concluded that RAMP I is a usable tool for practitioners.     

Faculty position announcement

Faculty position announcement     

A principle of natural self-organization

The Science of Nature - This paper is the first part of a trilogy, which comprises a detailed study of a special type of functional organization and demonstrates its relevance with respect to the...     

Interregional burden-sharing of greenhouse gas mitigation in the United States

Emissions trading is anattractive candidate for implementinggreenhouse gas mitigation, because it canpromote both efficiency and equity. Thispaper analyzes the interregional impacts ofalternative allocations of carbon dioxideemission permits within the U.S. Theanalysis is performed with the aid of anonlinear programming model for ten EPARegions and for six alternative permitdistribution formulas. The reason thatvarious alternatives need to be consideredis that there is no universal consensus onthe best definition of equity. Advanceknowledge of absolute and relative regionaleconomic impacts provides policy-makerswith a stronger basis for making thechoice. The analysis yields several usefulresults. First, the simulations indicatethat no matter how permits are allocated,this policy instrument can substantiallyreduce the cost of GHG mitigation for theU.S. in comparison to a system of fixedquotas for each of its regions. Interestingly, the welfare impacts ofseveral of the allocation formulas differonly slightly despite the large differencesin their philosophical underpinnings. Also, the results for some equity criteriadiffer greatly from their application inthe international domain. For example, theEgalitarian (per capita) criterion resultsin the relatively greatest cost burdenbeing incurred by one of the regions of theU.S. with the lowest per capita income.