BACKGROUND CONTEXT Cumulative (repetitive) lumbar disorder is common in the workforce, and the associated epidemiology points out high risk for lifting heavy loads, performing many repetitions, and performing movements at high velocity. Experimental verification of viscoelastic tissue degradation and a neuromuscular disorder exist for cyclic work under heavy loads. Experimental validation for a...

The type and magnitude of loads passing through the track superstructure have a great impact on both the design and the performance of concrete sleepers and fastening systems. To date, the majority of North American research focusing on quantifying rail infrastructure loading conditions has been conducted on heavy-haul freight railroads. However, the results and recommendations from these studi...

Of the many improvements in the design of highway pavements during the past two decades, it is doubtful that any have been more important to the life and service of the pavement than the incorporation of the granular base course as a design feature. The true significance of the base course can be more thoroughly understood if one considers the merits of this practice. First, the properly design...

The hyporheic zone of a river is nonphotic, has steep chemical and redox gradients, and has a heterotrophic food web based on the consumption of organic carbon entrained from downwelling surface water or from upwelling groundwater. The microbial communities in the hyporheic zone are an important component of these heterotrophic food webs and perform essential functions in lotic ecosystems. Usin...

Transmission of interactive multimedia streams requires stringent Quality-of-Service (QoS) guarantees in delay, delay jitter, and bandwidth, which imposes strict resource constraints on the paths being used. While the general problem of finding a path that meets multiple QoS constraints is NP complete, we have shown that such a path can be found in polynomial time if the network service discipl...

In January/February 2006, heavy snowfalls in Bavaria (Germany) lead to a series of infrastructural damage of catastrophic nature. Since on many collapsed roofs the total snow load was not exceptional, serious engineering deficiencies in roof construction and a sudden rise in the total snow load were considered to be the trigger of the events. An analysis of the then meteorological conditions re...

STUDY OBJECTIVE The aim was to examine the relationship between exposure to occupational risk factors during working life and physical disability after retirement. DESIGN The study was a cross sectional epidemiological survey of a representative sample of retired subjects belonging to a supplementary pension fund in the Paris area. SETTING The study took place in the general community. PA...

If you’ve ever found yourself struggling under a heavy pile of suitcases at the end of a holiday, spare a thought for the porters in some of the planet’s most remote locations. ‘When you start looking around, professional porters all around the world carry loads supported by their heads’, says Norman Heglund, from the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, who is fascinated by the technique...

In recent years, high speed and automation have been promoted to provide higher efficiency for container handling in cranes handling containers such as container cranes and transfer cranes. To bring about automation in these cases, it is important to detect the positioning of hoisting loads accurately. In 1996, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.(MHI) developed a hoisting load position sensor usi...

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) are protected against the Arctic winter cold by thick fur of prime insulating capacity and hence have few avenues of heat loss during work. We have investigated how these animals regulate brain temperature under heavy heat loads. Animals were instrumented for measurements of blood flow, tissue temperatures and respiratory frequency (f) under full anaesthesia, wherea...