Hard Physical Labor Research Articles

VI. Zur ambivalenten Rolle des Telefons beim Waren-Terminhandel

Summary This contribution discusses the ambivalent role of the telephone in commodity futures trading. On one hand, the telephone proved to be useful in commodity futures trading since it was easier to use than the telegraph; on the other, it helped to spread prejudices about the commodity futures business. Indeed, this became a political issue in the 1890s as reforms were demanded. The large agrarians of Prussia in the East were particularly interested in these reforms. Above all, the marginal trading deriving from commodity futures was accused of being ‘unfair business’ and provoked great controversy among jurists before 1891. The prevailing view was that marginal trading ‘was the equivalent of a lottery contract’ and thus could not be litigated in court. Max Weber argued forcefully against this view in his work on stock markets, and the view was eventually rendered obsolete by a judgement from the Supreme Court of the Reich, which prompted law makers to act. Although the telephone benefited commodity trading, it also aroused perceptions of unproductive activity which were easy to associate with the view of commodity futures trading as a form of lottery. This was particularly the case because the self worth of workers rested at the end of the 19th century on ‘hard physical labour’, so that the impression of idleness was not tolerated. This is supported by Popitz’s essay “Was tun wir, wenn wir spielen” from 2000: ‘The actions of gamblers do not [leave behind] a product. [Rather], when they play, they are being creative in an unproductive way.’ As such, the telephone helped commodity futures trading to communicate quickly, but at the same time it was also a symbol of unproductive activity and thereby fed the widespread mistrust of the commodity futures business and its associated marginal trading.

ЭТНОКУЛЬТУРНЫЕ СДВИГИ В ТРАДИЦИОННОМ ПРИРОДОПОЛЬЗОВАНИИ КРАЙНЕГО СЕВЕРО-ВОСТОКА: ОТ ПУШНОГО ПРОМЫСЛА К КЛЕТОЧНОМУ ЗВЕРОВОДСТВУ

The article traces the causes, course and results of a fundamental ethnocultural shift in the traditional environmental management of indigenous population of the Far North-East of Russia – the transition from fur hunting to fur farming. Cheap food supply (waste from marine hunting) and the presence of a significant number of unemployed indigenous people were seen as key factors to the growth of this innovative industry. However, its development was not adequately supported by technical means. The abundance of food supply did not guarantee its preservation and freshness. Due to hard physical labor that prevailed on fur farms, they constantly experienced a shortage of personnel, while most of the workers were non-residents. The cessation of state support in the post-Soviet era led to the complete liquidation of the industry.

Bioarchaeological Research of The Home Army’s Soldiers From Raubiszki and Druzhyle Battles

This article covers the topic of Armia Krajowa’s soldiers and their manner-of-death. AK is a Polish underground military organization that was active during World War II and the post-war period until 1945. Since Vilnius region was occupied by Poland during the inter-war period (1920–1939), multiple historical events in which AK soldiers were fighting against German Nazis and Soviets took place in modern-day Lithuanian territories. Thus, a considerable number of single and mass burials of Polish partisans are uncovered in Lithuania. This research aims to reconstruct the manner-of-death of 9 AK partisans’ skeletal remains from two battles with the Soviets: Družiliai and Raubiškės. The results indicated a wide range of perimortal lesions sustained on the battlefield: perimortal fractures and gunshot wounds. The analysis also revealed pathological lesions that illustrated challenges individuals had faced in their daily partisanship – hard physical labor, malnutrition, non-specific stress.

Global reductions in manual agricultural work capacity due to climate change.

Manual outdoor work is essential in many agricultural systems. Climate change will make such work more stressful in many regions due to heat exposure. The physical work capacity metric (PWC) is a physiologically based approach that estimates an individual's work capacity relative to an environment without any heat stress. We computed PWC under recent past and potential future climate conditions. Daily values were computed from five earth system models for three emission scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5) and three time periods: 1991-2010 (recent past), 2041-2060 (mid-century) and 2081-2100 (end-century). Average daily PWC values were aggregated for the entire year, the growing season, and the warmest 90-day period of the year. Under recent past climate conditions, the growing season PWC was below 0.86 (86% of full work capacity) on half the current global cropland. With end-century/SSP5-8.5 thermal conditions this value was reduced to 0.7, with most affected crop-growing regions in Southeast and South Asia, West and Central Africa, and northern South America. Average growing season PWC could falls below 0.4 in some important food production regions such as the Indo-Gangetic plains in Pakistan and India. End-century PWC reductions were substantially greater than mid-century reductions. This paper assesses two potential adaptions-reducing direct solar radiation impacts with shade or working at night and reducing the need for hard physical labor with increased mechanization. Removing the effect of direct solar radiation impacts improved PWC values by 0.05 to 0.10 in the hottest periods and regions. Adding mechanization to increase horsepower (HP) per hectare to levels similar to those in some higher income countries would require a 22% increase in global HP availability with Sub-Saharan Africa needing the most. There may be scope for shifting to less labor-intensive crops or those with labor peaks in cooler periods or shift work to early morning.

Sustained exercise load by young adult females while wearing surgical mask raises core body temperature measured with zero-heat-flux thermometer.

When a pandemic such as that caused by the novel coronavirus disease termed COVID-19 emerges, it is recommended to wear a mask when in public situations, with information regarding the impact on thermoregulation essential, especially during exercise or hard physical labor. The present study investigated changes in core body temperature (CBT) while wearing a surgical mask (SM) during exercise (TCBT) using a non-invasive zero-heat-flux (ZHF) thermometer. Nine young adult females performed ergometer exercise for 30min at 60 W with (mask group) and without (control) a SM under a non-hot condition, shown by wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) findings. TCBT, mean skin temperature (TMST), heart rate (HR), and humidity in the perioral region of the face (%RH) were determined. Each of those markers showed increased values during exercise, with the increases in TCBT, HR, and %RH, but not TMST, during exercise found to be significantly greater in the mask group. HR reserve (%HRR), derived as load intensity during exercise, was also significantly higher in the mask group. Each subject completed all of the experimental protocols without noting pain or discomfort. These results suggest that wearing a SM while performing mild exercise contributes to increased TCBT associated with increased exercise intensity, expressed as %HRR in a non-heated condition. Furthermore, the ZHF thermometer was shown to be safe and is considered useful for conducting such studies. Additional examinations will be necessary to examine gender and age group differences, as well as the use of different exercise methods and intensity and ambient conditions.

Putting Russia's Ban in Historical Perspective: A Curated Interview

Putting Russia's Ban in Historical Perspective: A Curated Interview

Small intestine prolapse after vaginal hysterectomy with vaginal dome rupture. A clinical case

The relevance of surgical treatment of pelvic organ prolapse is beyond doubt, due to the high prevalence and risk of surgical intervention during life. Surgical treatment of prolapse today remains the only effective method, however, despite more than 400 methods of surgical correction, the number of complications and relapses does not tend to decrease.
 This article presents a clinical case of ineffective choice of surgical treatment of genital prolapse with own tissues and vaginal hysterectomy, which subsequently led to the development of enterocele. In the future, the lack of postoperative follow-up and the preservation of a lifestyle that included the performance of hard physical labor led to a rupture of the dome of the vagina and prolapse of the loops of the small intestine.
 Today, for the prevention of complications and recurrence of genital prolapse, it is mandatory for patients to go through a careful selection for surgical treatment, which should include a clinical study and study of risk factors. When choosing an operative approach, complex treatment is necessary, including the use of the patients own tissues and modern materials that allow creating a reliable physiological framework to strengthen the pelvic organs. When performing this surgery, it is necessary not only to replace the damaged defective pelvic fascia with a new one, but also to create a neofascia that ensures the preservation of the normal function of the pelvic organs.

Cohort study of the effects of occupation and environmental tobacco smoke on the incidence of Alzheimer's disease among seniors.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a disease caused by many factors including occupational and environmental factors. Secondhand smoke (SHS) can affect cognitive function. However, there is limited recent epidemiological research on how SHS and occupational factors affect AD in Zhejiang province. We established a cohort of an AD high-risk population. In 2018, a cohort of 1742 elderly aged ≥60 years was established. In 2020, the cohort was followed up, and a total of 1545 people participated in the two surveys. Data collection included demographic and economic information such as age, gender, occupation, education level etc., and relative health behavior information such as smoking, drinking and tea drinking, etc. Basic physical examination data included height, weight, blood pressure, etc. At the same time, related cognitive status was assessed. Cox proportional hazards regression models, both unadjusted and adjusted models, were used to determine associations between cohort characteristics and AD. The results showed that SHS exposure and occupational characteristics were associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairments in seniors. Subgroups who used to work as blue-collar workers, who never worked, who kept standing for most of the time at work, and who were engaged in hard physical labor prior to retirement, had high incidence rates of AD. It was revealed that SHS, standing for most of the time and hard physical labor were associated risk factors of AD among seniors, compared with white-collar work. We recommend that the government establish a community supervisory mechanism to persuade smokers to quit or control smoking.

Charitable Activities of the Spanish Mining Holding HUNOSA for the Preservation of Industrial Heritage in the Context of Decarbonization

Charitable activities of mining companies undertaken out of commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) are aimed at creating a favourable environment in the regions of operational presence. Mining companies mainly support the areas which are directly related to their core business or influence the life of local communities. The caste-based nature of mining as a profession has evolved over the centuries, as it combines hard physical labour and adverse working conditions. The mining labour union was the main social and political pillar of Asturias throughout the 20th century, while working class history largely accounted for the history of the region. The industry crisis of 1966 led the miners to submit a request to the government for nationalisation of their companies, as they sustained irreparable economic losses. As a response to their request, National Institute of Industry (INI) integrated into the coal sector, and in 1967 the mining company HUNOSA (Hulleras del Norte S. A.) was founded. After the democractic transition the mining labour movement maintained its social, political and cultural hegemony; however, industrial decline and decarbonisation undermined these foundations, no matter how deep-rooted they were. By the end of the 20th century the Asturian coal industry was faced with another phase of crisis. While the first blow came in the 1970s with the end of protectionist energy policies, the second one had to do with the inability to adapt to the conditions of the world market. In the 1990s Asturias faced a rapid population loss as well as rising unemployment. At the same time, general Western European trend of phasing out coal-fired power in line with the Paris Agreement of 2015 brought about a grave crisis of the coal industry. HUNOSA, the only monopolist on the Spanish coal market, is responsible for implementing a fair “coal transition”. The mining tradition that was passed down through generations and seemed immutable has come to an end. One of the responses of former miners to the dissolution of the industry is to become actively involved in the protection and promotion of the mining heritage. It manifests both a nostalgic yearning for the past and a willingness to preserve and pass on the memory of it to future generations.

Lorenz Hofbauer: connecting the unexpected

Lorenz Hofbauer grew up on a farm in southern Germany. “It was nothing like urban life; people get up early and there is a lot of hard physical labour, particularly around the harvest”, explained Hofbauer, who is now Professor of Medicine, Endocrinology, and Geriatric Medicine at Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus, Technische Universität Dresden (Dresden, Germany). Some of his uncles and cousins still work their farms, growing hops, and brewing beer. “On the farm, you do not learn to live with nature.

Kolyma Stories

Kolyma Stories

Becoming Italian

Becoming Italian

Spot the Miner

Coal mining is an industry that is associated with hard physical labor and harsh mental conditions. Modern artistic projects involving portraits of miners evolve as artists' responses to political and economic changes in the mining industry, which is currently in decline, and place a major focus on miner communities, rather than individual miners. This article presents an overview of relevant selected artistic projects, and supplements them with a small mini-gallery sketched by the author. The mini-gallery viewers have been invited to test their perception of miners based on a series of charcoal portraits representing men and women dressed in mining workwear and everyday clothes. Who in this mini-gallery is a miner, what serves as the basis for the respondents' guesswork, and, overall, how different is today’s perception of miners from those of the past centuries? Three main factors are outlined as potentially relevant for identifying miners: mining workwear, gender, and facial expression. The readers can compare their intuitive reactions with the results from an online experiment, which was presented in Norwegian, Russian, and English and collected 136 responses. Although the presence of mining workwear and male gender still carry a strong association with miners, the results reveal certain differences across Norway, Russia, and the United States. The article is interdisciplinary and combines aspects of art history, social studies and psychology with an artistic project.

Provision of agricultural machinery for agricultural production in Russia

Relevance. The level of technical equipment occupies a special place in the development of agricultural production. For the development and improvement of production operations in agriculture, developed countries are introducing various high-tech processes and equipment. As a result, agricultural work becomes more interesting, productive and efficient. Only due to the complete automation of technological operations and processes, it is possible to significantly facilitate hard physical labor. The volume of work is significantly increasing at the same costs with the use of innovative machinery and equipment in agricultural production. Consequently, this leads to an increase in the economic efficiency of production.Materials and research methods. The materials of the study were data from periodicals on trends in the technical re-equipment of agriculture in Russia, materials of statistical reporting of the Russian Federation, its constituent entities and the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia over the past decades. In the course of the research, abstractlogical, monographic, computational-constructive, comparative analysis and statistical methods were used.Results. According to the results of the studies, it was established that the provision of agricultural machinery and equipment to agricultural enterprises in Russia has been deteriorating from year to year since 1990, there is a high level of deterioration of technical equipment, a low level of its renewal, a large share of old structures in the structure of the technical fleet of agricultural enterprises. Due to the lack of agricultural machinery, Russia loses about 30% of its crop yield every year, significant losses of production occur from non-compliance with agrotechnical terms for spring sowing, sowing winter crops, harvesting, as well as violations of the technology of cultivation of crops. As the reasons for the lag in the technical equipment of agricultural enterprises in Russia, the authors highlight such factors as the low level of profitability of agricultural enterprises, the inaccessibility of credit funds and weak government support for the industry. It is proved that without positive changes in the trend of technical equipment of agricultural organizations it will be impossible to increase the efficiency of agricultural production.

Remote Employment: Expansion of Anti-Migration Factors (Using a Number of Federal Entities of the Southern Federal District As an Example)

The relevance of the problem under consideration is related to the expansion of distance employment both in connection with the development of digital economy and under the influence of the pandemic as a new phenomenon that can affect migration. The purpose of this article is to identify the possibility of the emergence of new anti-migration factors, new measures to consolidate the population in a particular territory in connection with the development of remote employment. In contrast to the existing studies of labor migration and remote employment, a synthesis of these processes is proposed, the understanding of which has not yet been reflected in scientific papers, as the analysis of the scientific works showed. Methodology of the study is based on the results of theoretical understanding of sociological surveys of Internet recruitment data for the reasons and directions of labor migration and distance employment. People who leave for other regions and are engaged in remote work are in general characterized by higher education, relatively young age and the desire to move to large cities with developed infrastructure. Nevertheless, they differ in the types of work performed. When working remotely, they are engaged in IT technologies, accounting, audit, and legal services. During labor migration, they work in construction industry, enterprises of raw materials extraction, and industrial production, i.e. jobs involving hard physical labor. At the same time young people are more focused on intellectual work and are not interested in physical work. It is facilitated by the focus of the current education system on the development of creativity and project activities with little attention paid to the development of physical abilities. The development of distance employment is just a new factor in the consolidation of the permanently settled population in the region. For this purpose, it is suggested to change the approaches to infrastructure development, which is confirmed by the experience, for example, of Innopolis and the proactive formation of individual labor careers, primarily for native population but also for the newly arrived people. Such a policy is most important for the federal entities of the Southern Federal District the reason for moving to which is a unique natural factor and a favorable climate.

Roman Port Societies: The Evidence of Inscriptions

Roman Port Societies: The Evidence of Inscriptions

Hard and Invisible Bricks in the Wall: An Empirical Investigation on Gender, Caste, and Health Among Migrant Brick Workers in South India

The current cross-sectional study is on the pathetic and excruciating conditions of employees in the brick industry conducted using a mixed-method approach in selected kilns from the four Districts of Karnataka State, South India. India is the country producing the highest number of bricks after China. Economic coercion is pushing the massive poor, especially the women labourers to engage in hard physical labour to survive. This study has explored that labourers in the brick industry are being exploited and excluded in voluminous ways. Caste plays a predominant role while hiring, wage fixation, and assigning the job at kilns. Women labour is being devalued in the name of the traditional and irrational social construction of gender. Sexual exploitations, low payment, restless work, harassment, absence of labour laws, are common here. It is found that rigid intergenerational occupational mobility into unorganised sectors among lower-caste people, as well as intra/intra-community social networks, among brick workers, are being called into question. We conclude that this is the time to think about the ‘National Register of Interstate Migrants’ and ‘National Mission to the Brick Industry’ in the context of the post-economic situation of COVID-19.

Critique of Capitalist Ideology in Bhattarai’s Muglan

This article explores Govinda Raj Bhattarai’s worries about the innocent youths to be the Muglanis forced by the dominant capitalistideology of the society in his novel Muglan. In the novel, he presents the critical situation of the youths who are compelled to leave their motherland just for survival but they get sold like cattle and are enslaved and forced to do hard physical labour in the cruel foreign land. The article applies neo-Marxist insights to study devastating results of elitist bourgeois ideology of the society over the life of poor innocent people in the novel. It mainly borrows ideas from Luis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” along with the ideas by Terry Eagleton and Antonio Gramsci. The article shows Bhattarai’s critique of elitist bourgeois ideology of the society that he does through his choice of the protagonist, Sutar, who along with other youths leaves his home and goes to muglan but gets robbed, sold and forced to work as road builder in the foreign land of Bhutan. By showing the hopelessness of better life for the youths in their native land, Nepal and their pathetic condition in the foreign land, Bhattarai critiques the elitist ideology of Nepalese society.

Modeling the Multidimensional Predictors of Multisite Musculoskeletal Pain Across Adulthood-A Generalized Estimating Equations Approach.

Background: Multisite pain is commonly chronic and often lacks its initial role as a potential tissue damage signal. Chronic pain among working-age individuals is a risk for disability and imposes a major burden on health care systems and society. As effective treatments for chronic pain are largely lacking, better identification of the factors associated with pain over working years is needed.Methods: Members of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 participated in data collection at the ages of 31 (n = 4,028) and 46 (n = 3,429). Using these two time points, we performed a multivariable analysis of the association of socioeconomic, occupational, psychological and lifestyle factors (i.e., low education, living alone, low household income, unemployment, occupational physical exposures [hard physical labor, leaning forward, back twisting, constant moving, lifting loads of ≥ 1 kg], physical inactivity, regular smoking, regular drinking, overweight, and psychiatric symptoms) with the number of musculoskeletal pain sites (i.e., upper extremity, lower extremity, lower back, and the neck-shoulder region; totalling 0–4 pain sites). The data were analyzed using generalized estimating equations.Results: At the age of 31, multisite pain was reported by 72.5% of men and 78.6% of women. At the age of 46, the prevalence of multisite pain was 75.7% among men and 82.7% among women. Among men, the number of pain sites was positively associated with age (rate ratio 1.05, 95% confidence interval 1.01–1.08), low household income (1.05, 1.01–1.08), unemployment (1.13, 1.06–1.19), any occupational exposure (1.17, 1.12–1.22), regular smoking (1.06, 1.02–1.11), and psychiatric symptoms (1.21, 1.17–1.26). Among women, the number of pain sites was positively associated with age (1.06, 1.04–1.10), unemployment (1.10, 1.05–1.15), any occupational exposure (1.10, 1.06–1.13), regular smoking (1.06, 1.02–1.10), overweight (1.08, 1.05–1.11), and psychiatric symptoms (1.19, 1.15–1.22); living alone was negatively associated with the number of pain sites (0.95, 0.91–0.99).Conclusion: Of the studied predictors, psychiatric symptoms, occupational physical exposures and unemployment were most strongly associated with multisite pain among both sexes. The results of this study deepen the understanding of the underlying factors of and comorbidities behind multisite pain, and help develop pain relief and rehabilitation strategies for working-age individuals with multisite pain.

Новый позднескифский некрополь Танагельды в Предгорном Крыму

This is the first publication of the archaeological material obtained from the research of the necropolis Tanageldy of 2nd—1st centuries BC in the Piedmont Crimea. The expedition of the Scythian Neapolis Museum-Reserve in 2017 explored 3 collective ground crypts on the necropolis’s territory which belongs to a large settlement complex of ancient times in the city of Kara-Tau. Observations obtained in the course of a detailed anthropological analysis of the buried are curious. Mainly young women, adolescents and children were buried in the underground crypts, the bones of many of them reflect the consequences of routine hard physical labor. This phenomenon can be associated with the developed terraced farming, traces of which were found on the territory of the settlement complex. In one of the crypts, a skull of a man was discovered, with traces of three surgical interventions and separated from the body in ancient times.