Labor-intensive Part Research Articles

Colonial Era Land Clearance Inferred from Soil Pollen Analysis: A Massachusetts Case Study

Pollen deposited on the soil surface in the temperate zone is moved down through the matrix by percolating rainwater and progressively destroyed by natural processes, severely limiting the age of the pollen records in archaeological sites. Colonial-era slopewash onto the location of a pollen profile at the ca. A.D. 1658-1710 Lt. David Fiske homestead in Lexington, Massachusetts shielded a land clearance record from percolation and degradation. Here beech trees were selectively removed, followed later by clear cutting for pasture development. This pattern of beech removal some time before clear cutting is replicated in ca. A.D. 1620-1700 pollen spectra at Linsley Pond, Connecticut. Statements by farmers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries indicate that beech trees were undesirable because they were difficult to clear, and the 17th Century pollen records from Lindsey Pond and the Lt. David Fiske Site reveal that at least some early colonists did the labor intensive part of agricultural preparation by removing beech trees some time interval before clear cutting their land.

IMMIGRATION VERSUS OUTSOURCING: A DEVELOPING COUNTRY’S VIEW

This paper provides a comparative study between temporary immigration policy and product outsourcing process, from the low-income developing country's point of view, which is supply side constrained by the availability of skilled labour. A two-country general equilibrium model establishes an inverse relationship between temporary immigration quota and product outsourcing. Though temporary immigration quota enhances world welfare and the developed country welfare, its impact on welfare level of the developing country is uncertain. In the empirical part, a panel data analysis shows that real consumption level of a set of developing countries increases with an increase in product outsourcing, given an inverse relationship between product outsourcing and temporary immigration policy.Keywords: Immigration, Outsourcing, Intermediate Input, Consumption, Panel AnalysisJEL classification: C23, E20, F2, F12, F22(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1. INTRODUCTIONConventionally international trade between a developed and a developing country, from a theoretical perspective, is based on the difference in relative factor endowments among them. International trade helps utilise the abundant factor. Internationally trading countries gain from relative factor abundance and lower relative price of factor inputs. For instance, a relative labour abundant developing country use the abundant factor and the gains from trade follow from lower relative factor price of labour. In recent times, trade in intermediate goods and factor inputs have assumed significance along with conventional merchandise trade in final goods. For a relatively capital abundant country, with regards to trade in factors inputs, the policy options are between import of low-priced foreign labour and export of domestic capital. It has been theoretically established, a la Ramaswami (1968), that importation of low-priced foreign labour is a better option than exportation of domestic capital for capital abundant developed countnes. Now the question is, What is the choice for a labour abundant country: exportation of domestic labour or importation of foreign capital? This paper investigates into the relationship between exports of domestic labour, that is, temporary migration, and product outsourcing from the perspective of a developing country.Migration and outsourcing are the two manifestations of trade in factor inputs: while migration includes cross-border movement of natural persons, international outsourcing1 involves cross-border movement of capital. Both immigration and international outsourcing increase cost-efficiency of the global production system (Murat and Paba, 2003). The labour-intensive part of the production process is reallocated from the developed country to the labour abundant developing country; the developing countries, engaged in such outsourcing contract, become a part of the globally integrated production chain.2 For instance, a growing outsourcing demand is directed towards India from different capital abundant countries including the USA. There are two types of outsourcing; product outsourcing and service outsourcing. Globally while product outsourcing takes place in engineering, automobile, textile, and chemical industries (Dubey, 2003),3 service outsourcing takes place in communication, information technology and information technology enabled sectors. The developing countries, through outsourcing not only expand their market for intermediate products, but also benefit from employment generation, profit maximisation, quality up-gradation, capacity utilisation skill-improvisation and technology transfer.Immigration is another way by which the pool of high-skilled labour in developing countries is being used by developed countries. Temporary immigration refers to the temporary movement of persons from one country to another to provide on-site services, when immigrants do not get the right to dwell permanently in the host country. …

Validation of a treatment plan‐based calibration method for 2D detectors used for treatment delivery quality assurance

Dosimetry using film, CR, electronic portal imaging, or other 2D detectors requires calibration of the raw image data to obtain dose. Typically, a series of known doses are given to the detector, the raw signal for each dose is obtained, and a calibration curve is created. This calibration curve is then applied to the measured raw signals to convert them to dose. With the advent of IMRT, film dosimetry for quality assurance has become a routine and labor intensive part of the physicist's day. The process of calibrating the film or other 2D detector takes time and additional film or images for performing the calibration, and comes with its own source of errors. This article studies a new methodology for the relative dose calibration of 2D imaging detectors especially useful for IMRT QA, which relies on the treatment plan dose image to provide the dose information which is paired with the raw QA image data after registration of the two images (plan-based calibration). Validation of the accuracy and robustness of the method is performed on ten IMRT cases performed using EDR2 film with conventional and plan-based calibration. Also, for each of the ten cases, a 5 mm registration error was introduced and the Gamma analysis was reevaluated. In addition, synthetic image tests were performed to test the limits of the method. The Gamma analysis is used as a measure of dosimetric agreement between plan and film for the clinical cases and a dose difference metric for the synthetic cases. The QA image calibrated by the plan-based method was found to more accurately match the treatment plan doses than the conventionally calibrated films and also to reveal dose errors more effectively when a registration error was introduced. When synthetic acquired images were systematically studied, localized and randomly placed dose errors were correctly identified without excessive falsely passing or falsely failing pixels, unless the errors were concentrated in a majority of pixels in a contiguous narrow dose band. Irregularities seen in the calibration curve expose these errors. The plan-based calibration method was found to be an accurate, efficient procedure, capable of detecting IMRT QA relative dosimetry errors as well as, or better than conventional calibration methods.

Automatic identification of landmarks in digital images

The authors present an automated system for feature recognition in digital images. Morphometric landmarks are points that can be defined in all specimens and located precisely. They are widely used in shape analysis and a typical shape analysis study involves several hundred digital images. Presently, the extraction of landmarks is usually done manually and the process of identifying the landmarks is an important and labour-intensive part of any such analysis. This process is time-consuming, and quite often the research questions are dependent on the duration of obtaining these data. The authors show that a single training image with its landmark co-ordinates is enough to independently estimate the landmarks of any individual within a particular data set. The reliability and accuracy of the method can be further enhanced by using multiple training images. The precision, repeatability and robustness of the algorithm have been evaluated. It is shown in this study that the method is sufficiently accurate to replace the manual identification of landmarks. The generic nature and intrinsic capability of the feature recognition process enables this method to be easily incorporated into other recognition tasks.

Parameterised inventories for life cycle assessment

Background and Objective Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a highly data intensive undertaking, where collecting the life cycle inventory (LCI) data is the most labour intensive part. The aim of this paper is to show a method for representing the LCI in a simplified manner which not only allows an estimative, quantitative LCA, but also the application of advanced analysis methods to LCA.

University of Nebraska College of Medicine.

University of Nebraska College of Medicine.

Automation of laboratory testing for infectious diseases using the polymerase chain reaction-- our past, our present, our future.

While it is an extremely powerful and versatile assay method, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) can be a labor-intensive process. Since the advent of commercial test kits from Roche and the semi-automated microwell Amplicor system, PCR has become an increasingly useful and widespread clinical tool. However, more widespread acceptance of molecular testing will depend upon automation that allows molecular assays to enter the routine clinical laboratory. The forces driving the need for automated PCR are the requirements for diagnosis and treatment of chronic viral diseases, economic pressures to develop more automated and less expensive test procedures similar to those in the clinical chemistry laboratories, and a shortage in many areas of qualified laboratory personnel trained in the types of manual procedures used in past decades. The automated Roche COBAS AMPLICOR system has automated the amplification and detection process. Specimen preparation remains the most labor-intensive part of the PCR testing process, accounting for the majority of the hands-on-time in most of the assays. A new automated specimen preparation system, the COBAS AmpliPrep, was evaluated. The system automatically releases the target nucleic acid, captures the target with specific oligonucleotide probes, which become attached to magnetic beads via a biotin-streptavidin binding reaction. Once attached to the beads, the target is purified and concentrated automatically. Results of 298 qualitative and 57 quantitative samples representing a wide range of virus concentrations analyzed after the COBAS AmpliPrep and manual specimen preparation methods, showed that there was no significant difference in qualitative or quantitative hepatitis C virus (HCV) assay performance, respectively. The AmpliPrep instrument decreased the time required to prepare serum or plasma samples for HCV PCR to under 1 min per sample. This was a decrease of 76% compared to the manual specimen preparation method. Systems that can analyze more samples with higher throughput and that can answer more questions about the nature of the microbes that we can presently only detect and quantitate will be needed in the future.

Automatic determination of imperviousness in urban areas from digital orthophotos

Determination of impervious areas in urban regions is the most labour-intensive part of data acquisition for rainfall-runoff modelling in urban hydrology. This paper presents an automatic determination method of imperviousness from aerial photographs. The colour, CIR (colour infrared) aerial photographs and orthophotos used have a ground resolution of 25 to 75 centimetres. A maximum likelihood classification algorithm was applied to assign each pixel to a surface category. Classification results were then then overlaid with the subcatchments to determine the imperviousness of each subcatchment. Classification and overlay were carried out with the raster-based GIS IDRISI. The method was tested on various catchment areas, and the results compared with data obtained from manually digitised surfaces. Accuracy of the estimated imperviousness for the entire catchment areas was within 10 %. The deviations for individual subcatchments were much higher. Equivalent results were obtained for colour and CIR photograplhs. A combination of both spectral ranges resulted only in a slight improvement. Consequently, this does not justify the additional costs of the second image. The developed method is an interesting alternative for use on large catchment areas where manual digitisation is very time-consuming and, thus, expensive.

Automatic determination of imperviousness in urban areas from digital orthophotos

Determination of impervious areas in urban regions is the most labour-intensive part of data acquisition for rainfall-runoff modelling in urban hydrology. This paper presents an automatic determination method of imperviousness from aerial photographs. The colour, CIR (colour infrared) aerial photographs and orthophotos used have a ground resolution of 25 to 75 centimetres. A maximum likelihood classification algorithm was applied to assign each pixel to a surface category. Classification results were then overlaid with the subcatchments to determine the imperviousness of each subcatchment. Classification and overlay were carried out with the raster-based GIS IDRISI. The method was tested on various catcbment areas, and the results compared with data obtained from manually digitised surfaces. Accuracy of the estimated imperviousness for the entire catchment areas was within 10%. The deviations for individual subcatchments were much higher. Equivalent results were obtained for colour and CIR photographs. A combination of both spectral ranges resulted only in a slight improvement. Consequently, this does not justify the additional costs of the second image. The developed method is an interesting alternative for use on large catchment areas where manual digitisation is very time-consuming and, thus, expensive.

Rapid Fire Hair Implanter Carousel. A new surgical instrument for the automation of hair transplantation.

As hair transplantation evolved into a procedure in which large numbers of very small grafts are moved in a single session, new problems have emerged. These include greater staffing requirements, longer operating time, additional technical difficulties, and increasing problems with quality control. To introduce a new surgical instrument, the Rapid Fire Hair Implanter Carousel (Carousel), which can automate the most labor-intensive parts of the hair transplantation process, site creation and implant placement, by combining them into a single step and delivering them in rapid sequence. This instrumentation should help to minimize some of the human factors contributing to graft injury and to simplify and increase the speed of the hair transplant procedure. In a patient with a Norwood IIIA balding pattern, 400 follicular implants were placed into a specific section of the bald scalp. The remainder of the bald scalp was transplanted with 800 follicular implants placed in the traditional way. The two areas were monitored and compared for intraoperative bleeding, ease of placing, total placing time, postoperative healing, and hair growth. Photographic documentation was obtained after surgery and at each postoperative visit. The Carousel visually produced less bleeding when compared with the manual approach. The Carousel was easier to use than the manual technique, since it eliminated graft insertion as a separate step. This was evidenced by the significantly shorter time required to insert the implants (40 grafts/minute with the Carousel vs 6.6 grafts/minute manually) and the decreased need for secondary manipulation once the grafts were inserted. Postoperative healing of the two groups were the same with regard to the duration of crusting and erythema. The rate of hair growth and the total amount of hair observed at 4 months were the same when identical size areas in test and control sides were compared. In this single patient pilot study, the Carousel greatly facilitated the placement of grafts by decreasing bleeding and obviating the extra step needed for the insertion of the implants. As a result, the total operative time decreased, shortening the time the grafts were outside the body, and decreasing the risk of desiccation and warming. By minimizing the human factor in this labor-intensive part of the procedure, the quality of the hair transplant should increase. It is anticipated that these benefits will result in increased hair yield. Further studies are needed, in a larger patient group, so that these benefits can be demonstrated.

The CTSNet Image Library

The CTSNet Image Library

ホタテガイ養殖業の分散・耳吊り作業のラインバランシング法による効率評価

Improvement of production efficiency in the thinning and ear hanging work of scallop aquaculture has long been required, since the work involves processing a huge number of scallops in a certain season, and is the most, labor-intensive part of the scallop production.Through analytical investigations of the work, it was found that variations in process planning greatly affect the productivity of the work.This paper describes the results of analytical investigation of process planning using the concept of line-balancing and the efficiency of combining work elements or minimizing balance-delay. The estimation results for several process planning using the measured standard work time for each work element are also given. The results show that the optimum process planning with high productivity can be estimated, and that by selecting the number of workers at each work station, higher productivity could be achieved.

An automated laboratory lubricant test to simulate valve train wear

The need for a laboratory tool to screen the antiwear properties of potential additives has become more crucial as engine tests have become more expensive and lubricant requirements have become more stringent. A laboratory test has been developed using the Falex machine to simulate the valve train wear of an automobile engine. The test procedure was 3.5 h long and included two levels of applied load. This laboratory test was found to give reproducible wear and correlated with the Sequence III-C engine wear test. The labor-intensive part of the test was converted to computer control and data acquisition. This conversion improved both test control and productivity.