OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal complaints of the back, arms or neck, and legs among nurses, and to investigate the relation between these complaints and various work related and personal variables. METHODS A questionnaire survey was carried out in four nursing homes in The Netherlands. RESULTS The response was 95% and resulted in 846 completed questionnaires. It w...

The study discusses results of investigations carried out in the course of driving a motorcar by a person with a locomotive disability. Driving tests were conducted in road conditions as well as on a manoeuvring square. Observations concerned interactions of the disabled person during his/her utilisation of different pieces of equipment situated within the reach of the user’s hands. The scope o...

This paper discusses the experiences of the specialised Danish translation company Lingtech in its use of MT for the translation of technical texts. The background and motivation for setting up Lingtech as an MT-based company is outlined. After a short general presentation of the PaTrans MT-system, the different tasks we have to perform in relation to our use of MT and the way this work is orga...

In this thesis we study the improvements that artificial intelligence techniques can bear in the field of fire safety management of buildings. Fire safety is a component of the technical function of a building and therefore can be examined at the design stages. Nowadays it is mainly taken into account by application of regulation rules. We suggest a method that differs in two ways: first it con...

The growing number of musculoskeletal disorders in industry could be addressed by the use of collaborative robots, which allow the joint manipulation of objects by both a robot and a person. However the efficiency of a collaborative robot regarding the reduction of musculoskeletal disorders risks is highly task-dependent. Yet, even when designing dedicated systems, the ergonomic benefit provide...

Human-robot cooperation is a very active field of research, aiming to combine the specific capabilities of robots and humans to enable new forms of labor. One requirement for successful cooperation or coexistence is the safety of the human operator in the presence of heavy-weight and dangerous robot arms. As a second goal, high availability of the robot system is important to facilitate its ado...

Robot algorithms are critical building blocks of any robotic system. They enable robots to interpret sensory data, plan courses of actions, control the execution of those actions, and learn new skills, in order to achieve greater autonomy. Today, the design and analysis of robot algorithms are more crucial than ever. • Robotics is undergoing major transformations. Originally focused on industri...

This article is a description of the current situation in France with regard to occupational cancer: research, prevention, and occupation. Toxicologic experiments are carried out using (italic)in vitro(/italic) and (italic)in vivo(/italic) tests, particularly using transgenic mice. Several epidemiologic studies have been conducted over the last decades: population-based case-control studies; mo...