Lost Hours Research Articles

Economic Impact and Risk Assessment of Sand and Dust Storms (SDS) on the Oil and Gas Industry in Kuwait

There is a lack of published research on the economic effect and the risk associated with sand and dust storms (SDS) worldwide. The objectives of this study are to estimate the economic impact of SDS on the oil and gas industry in Kuwait, to estimate a risk index for each loss, and to recommend a sustainable system for the mitigation of the damaging effects and economic losses of infrastructures. Hot spots of wind erosion, wind corridors, and dust frequency and severity formed the basis to locate the most susceptible oil and gas fields and operations. Ten sectors with potential loss vulnerabilities were evaluated: exploration, drilling, production, gas, marine, soil remediation, project management, water handling, maintenance, and research and development. Sand encroachment, although not a sector per se, was also considered. The results indicate that sand, and to lesser extent dust, are damaging and costly to the oil and gas infrastructure of Kuwait, with an economic cost estimation of US$9.36 million, a total of 5159 nonproductive lost hours, and 347,310 m3 of annual sand removal. A risk assessment identified three sectors with the highest risk indices (RI): drilling (RI = 25), project management (RI = 20), and maintenance (RI = 16). Sand encroachment also constituted a high risk (RI = 25). Mitigation of sand storms using a hybrid biological–mechanical system was shown to be cost-effective with an equivalent saving of 4.6 years of sand encroachment. The hazard implications of sand storm events continue to be a major concern for policy-makers given their detrimental economic impacts, and require that government officials wisely allocate investment budgets to effectively control and mitigate their damaging effects.

Prediction of Vigilant Attention and Cognitive Performance Using Self-Reported Alertness, Circadian Phase, Hours since Awakening, and Accumulated Sleep Loss

Sleep restriction causes impaired cognitive performance that can result in adverse consequences in many occupational settings. Individuals may rely on self-perceived alertness to decide if they are able to adequately perform a task. It is therefore important to determine the relationship between an individual’s self-assessed alertness and their objective performance, and how this relationship depends on circadian phase, hours since awakening, and cumulative lost hours of sleep. Healthy young adults (aged 18–34) completed an inpatient schedule that included forced desynchrony of sleep/wake and circadian rhythms with twelve 42.85-hour “days” and either a 1:2 (n = 8) or 1:3.3 (n = 9) ratio of sleep-opportunity:enforced-wakefulness. We investigated whether subjective alertness (visual analog scale), circadian phase (melatonin), hours since awakening, and cumulative sleep loss could predict objective performance on the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), an Addition/Calculation Test (ADD) and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST). Mathematical models that allowed nonlinear interactions between explanatory variables were evaluated using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Subjective alertness was the single best predictor of PVT, ADD, and DSST performance. Subjective alertness alone, however, was not an accurate predictor of PVT performance. The best AIC scores for PVT and DSST were achieved when all explanatory variables were included in the model. The best AIC score for ADD was achieved with circadian phase and subjective alertness variables. We conclude that subjective alertness alone is a weak predictor of objective vigilant or cognitive performance. Predictions can, however, be improved by knowing an individual’s circadian phase, current wake duration, and cumulative sleep loss.

Productivity Loss Due to Presenteeism Among Patients with Arthritis: Estimates from 4 Instruments

To estimate and compare lost work hours attributable to presenteeism, defined as reduced productivity while working, in individuals with osteoarthritis (OA) or rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to 4 instruments. In our prospective study, 250 workers with OA (n = 130) or RA (n = 120) were recruited from community and clinical sites. Lost hours due to presenteeism at baseline were estimated using the Health and Labor Questionnaire (HLQ), the Work Limitations Questionnaire (WLQ), the World Health Organization's Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ), and the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire (WPAI). Only those respondents working over the past 2 weeks were included. Repeated-measures ANOVA was used to compare the lost-time estimates, according to each instrument. Of the 212 respondents included in the analyses, the frequency of missing and "0" values among the instruments was different (17% and 61% for HLQ, 8% and 5% for WLQ, 1% and 16% for HPQ, 0% and 27% for WPAI, respectively). The average numbers of lost hours (SD) per 2 weeks due to presenteeism using HLQ, WLQ, HPQ, and WPAI were 1.6 (3.9), 4.0 (3.9), 13.5 (12.5), and 14.2 (16.7). The corresponding costs for the 2-week period were CAN$30.03, $83.05, $284.07, and $285.10. The differences in the lost-hour estimates according to instruments were significant (p < 0.001). Among individuals with arthritis, estimates of productivity losses while working vary widely according to the instruments chosen. Further research on instrument design and implications for a standardized approach to estimate lost time due to presenteeism is needed.

Improved injury management at an Australian aluminium smelter

This longitudinal study sought to determine the effectiveness of interventions to improve injury management in an industrial setting. Study participants were workers from three production departments of a large aluminium smelter. The interventions introduced were to encourage active participation in rehabilitation procedures by injured workers, improve communication with all stakeholders, identify and manage psychosocial issues, and focus the workforce on occupational health and safety matters. Linear regression modelling was used to determine the effectiveness of the interventions using data collected for fourteen months before and fifteen months after the introduction of interventions. Outcomes compared were the number of injuries, number of persons on restricted duty, and lost hours per month. Modelling showed the intervention significantly reduced the number of injuries in the potrooms (from 14 to 6 per month). The number of persons on restricted duties was reduced in all departments (potrooms: from 12 to 7 persons per month, cast house: 3 to 1 person per month, carbon plant: 3 to 1 person per month). Lost hours were significantly reduced in the potrooms (from 244 to 61 hours per month). These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the revised injury management process introduced.

Alienated Histories, Alienating Futures: Raciology and Missing Time in The Interrupted Journey

THE INTERRUPTED JOURNEY. Two Lost Hours Aboard Flying Saucer, published in 1966, introduced many in United States to now-familiar tropes, structures, and conventions of alien abduction narrative. In this purportedly true account, Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple from New Hampshire, began to suffer strange physical, emotional, and psychological symptoms following brief vacation. Their problems seemed to emanate from an encounter with an unidentified flying object and two-hour period of amnesia that followed its sighting. After Barney entered therapy for what he thought were unrelated issues, period of missing became increasingly central to his anxieties. He was referred to Dr Benjamin Simon, Boston-area hypnotherapist. Simon took on both Betty and Barney as patients to determine what happened during their two lost hours but did not expect narrative that was reconstructed from their sessions. Under hypnosis, Hills reported being abducted by extraterrestrials, taken on board flying saucer, and subjected to variety of intrusive medical examinations before being returned to their car. They ultimately decided to go public with their story and contacted John G. Fuller, New England journalist who agreed to compile their narrative from recordings of Hills' therapy sessions and conversations with Hills. The Hills' abduction account, strange amalgam of science fiction tale and captivity narrative, focuses itself on race and, in particular, politics of competing raciologies that organize themselves around body. Barney Hill, described as a strikingly handsome descendent of proud Ethiopian freeman (4), continually tries to categorize his abductors into some racial group. The Hills also recalled their captors' fascination with their racialized bodies; when asked if aliens were in colour of her skin, Betty remembers that, instead, they were interested in of her skin (Fuller 272; emphasis added). In this essay, I will examine The Interrupted Journey's discourse on race. In particular, I examine meaning of Hills' confrontation with futuristic beings who seem to be raceless themselves yet are nevertheless fixated on things like structure of Betty Hill's skin and chromatic differences between Betty and Barney. While number of scholars have remarked upon alien abduction genre's strange obsession with race, (1) Bridget Brown offers perhaps most detailed analysis in They Know Us Better than We Know Ourselves: The History and Politics of Alien Abduction. Brown contends that abduction narratives offer means by which people left out of certain narratives of progress can create their own stories and fashion truths that square with their own experience of world (7). The Hill case, she suggests, fundamentally concerned with theme of retrieving or reconstructing lost time (26). The Hills respond to increasing uncertainty about nature of memory and its relationship to truth, in particular sense that they lack control over their own memories, which are constantly retrieved, inserted, removed, or modified by aliens or Dr Simon. Nevertheless, Brown claims, The Interrupted Journey provides means by which Hills can address the strains of life in present day (60). Later, Brown links Hills' anxieties to technologized management of body, especially reproductive technologies. The pregnancy test administered to Betty Hill, for instance, speaks back to articles in popular magazines that inspired fears surrounding the mass management and manipulation of human creation (73). Like Brown, I will argue that The Interrupted Journey is text that responds to issues surrounding politics of memory and medical technologies. However, I will re-situate Hills' abduction narrative by imagining it as prophetic interlocutor with Paul Gilroy's Between Camps: Nations, Cultures, and Allure of Race. …

Predictors of employment and lost hours from work in cancer caregivers

This cross-sectional, descriptive study identified variables associated with caregivers who (1) were employed and (2) reported lost hours from work due to care demands. Family caregivers (N=80) of persons with a primary malignant brain tumor participated in a 45-60 min telephone interview, answering questions regarding the impact of providing care on their emotional health and employment status. Younger caregivers were more likely to be employed. Caregivers were more likely to report lost hours from work when care recipients required assistance with Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) and were closer to the time of diagnosis. Data suggest that interventions to assist caregivers in maintaining employment should target caregivers of persons with limitations in physical function and should include strategies to coordinate care to assist with IADLs.

Indirect Costs of Migraine in a Public Brazilian Hospital

To evaluate the indirect costs of migraine affecting employees of a public Brazilian hospital. Migraine is a common primary headache which has a negative influence on the well-being and quality of life, as well as the professional life, of affected individuals. Our series consisted of 846 employees with migraine. The Lost Hours Equivalence Index, which considers both the hours lost due to the absence from work and reduction in productivity, was used to estimate the number of working hours lost due to migraine. Of the employees with migraine studied, 91% presented a mean 56.9% loss of productivity. The mean number of total lost working hours per month due to migraine was 6.5. The estimated total indirect cost of migraine was R $986 903.77 (US $815 622.54), implicating costs of R $241.30 (US $199.42) per employee per year. Based on its impact on life and the resulting costs, migraine should be considered a public health problem and thus measures should be adopted to reduce its impact on the individual and on society.

The specialist looks at everyday medical care in industry: psychiatry.

The psychiatric field has a large role to play in the department of industrial medicine. It cannot be overemphasized that many lost hours in terms of manpower could be saved by the consideration that employees are persons who react to even subtle stresses and tensions in the industrial facility as a whole, and that each employee brings to work the tensions of his own family relationship, as well as those from his own general social milieu. It has long been accepted that absenteeism, work slowdowns, and accident-proneness are influenced by such emotional tensions. The plant physician occupies a unique position between management and the worker. The position of the doctor in our culture allows for special confidence from the worker, even though the worker may consider that the doctor represents management. The doctor's attitudes can, therefore, be very influential with the worker, and if the doctor is to function to