Physical Human Characteristics Research Articles

Impact of Office Ergonomic Elements on Employee Performance: A Case Study of Larsen and Toubro, Surat

Ergonomics is said to have a great potential when it comes to designing of any artefact. Office ergonomics, a branch of ergonomics, seeks to understand how physical characteristics of humans are relevant in designing the workplace and is often used by organisations as an input to minimize the amount of discomfort faced by the employees. The provision of this input by the organisation generates a need to understand if it has any impact on the output produced by the employees. This paper seeks to understand this relationship and study the impact of office ergonomics on the performance of the employees. Additionally, it tries to discover the presence of participatory ergonomics (PE) in the organisation. 75 employees were randomly drawn from different departments of Larsen and Toubro, Surat, India and a questionnaire was administered to assess the relationship between 9 ergonomic elements (independent variables) and employee performance (dependent variable) by building a multiple regression model in R. The regression was first carried out for the 75 employees, post which the type of department that employees belong to (manufacturing or non-manufacturing) was added in the multiple regression model to test if department type moderates the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. The study also tried to understand the implementation of PE in the organisation. Overall, for all employees, architectonic details and colour of the walls showed significant impact on performance. When departmental setup was introduced in the model as a moderating variable, it did not change the results of the model. Thus, departmental setup was found to be irrelevant in moderating the relationship between the variables.

PERANCANGAN MEJA DAPUR ERGONOMIS PADA MASYARAKAT DESA

Cikuya village is a village located at the foot of Mount Lagadar, 10 km from the Pasteur toll Jakarta direction. Nearly 60% or 378 female residents of RW 01, Kampung Cikuya work as a housewife, with the level of education completed primary school as much as 241 out of 637 women, doubles as a food vendor who spends most of his time in the kitchen. After switching from kerosene to gas, residents of Kampung Cikuya create own kitchen table made of wood or a wall. The design of the kitchen table that they make are usually not fit to the user's body, can be too low or too high. It can interfere with the comfort and safety of its users who are women. Therefore, it is necessary to design the kitchen table in accordance with the principles of ergonomics. The term ergonomics means designing a safe, convenient, and efficient, healthy, besides, Science ergonomics is also associated with the physical characteristics of humans. On this research, writer do direct measurements on 32 women aged 18-59 years. Anthropometric data measured is consist of : elbow height, fore arm's reach, thick chest, and arm span. Data processing use statistical science to find the average (mean) and also standard deviation. After that, writer test the data. Data testing consist of : the adequacy of the data, the data uniformity test, normality test data and determine the value of the test persentil.Untuk data using SPSS software. The results is elbow height average RW 01 is 92.03 cm. Thick average chest 25.31 cm, fore arm reach 70.65 cm and 154.4 cm hand span. Using a 5% percentile obtained size kitchen tablet, writer can get table height 88 cm, width 55 cm table and table length 143 cm. On this research writer have 2 alternative design. On alternative design 1, the table is made with storage by using as a framework meranti wood, wood overlaid with multiplex and HPI (high pressure laminate), as the top surface layer using aluminum. Alternative design 1 cost of Rp. 1.609 million. While the second alternative, the design of the table without a storage. Alternative design 2 made of with meranti wood frame, multiplex surface coatings and aluminum. Alternative design 2 cost is Rp.626.000 Keywords: Design kitchen table, Ergonomics, Cikuya village

Transumanos e pós-humanos em “Deuses de pedra”: a valorização do corpo padronizado na distopia de Jeanette Winterson

Em Deuses de Pedra (2012), escrito por Jeanette Winterson, há um espaço narrativo distópico do passado em que habitantes do planeta Orbus, praticamente destruído por intervenções humanas, vivem para as alterações genéticas e melhoramento estético dos seus corpos bonitos e jovens. Ao mesmo tempo, há um avanço tecnológico no desenvolvimento de robôs, sendo o mais representativo o robô sapiens, extremamente inteligente e belo e com características físicas humanas. Na narrativa há corpos distintos materialmente, no entanto, similares visualmente a partir de um ideal de padrão de beleza que incentiva a alteração dos corpos como um espaço de adaptação social. Nesse trabalho será analisado a relação entre corpo e tecnologia e qual a implicância dessas discussões para os estudos de transumanismo e pós-humanismo a partir dos corpos alterados das personagens e as consequências dessas alterações a partir da criação de um corpo ideal que promove uma ideia errônea de saúde perfeita através da interferência tecnológica.

The Life and Labors of Francis Galton: A Review of Four Recent Books About the Father of Behavioral Statistics

educational statistics, that individual is Francis Galton. Galton was not a great mathematical statistician; he made no important contributions to that field. In fact, his efforts to earn an honors degree in mathematics at Cambridge resulted in a physical and mental breakdown (Gillham, 2001). The contributions that jus tify Galton's status as father?or grandfather?of the field are based on his rediscovery of statistical methods and his application of those methods to the measurement of the mental and physical characteristics of humans. Galton deserves credit for our use of such basic analytic frameworks as percentile rank, correlation, and regression. He was not the first to describe the mathematical relationship represented by the correlation coefficient, but he rediscovered this relationship and demonstrated its application in the study of heredity, anthropol ogy, and psychology. He is responsible for the term correlation (from co relation), he discovered the phenomenon of regression to the mean, and he is responsible for the choice of r (for reversion or regression) to represent the cor relation coefficient. Galton developed statistical applications for the behavioral sciences. He demonstrated the importance of the normal distribution and the normal cumula tive frequency distribution in understanding human characteristics. Through this research and his influence on Karl Pearson (who provided a mathematically superior alternative to Galton's formulation of the correlation coefficient), Galton influenced Student (William G?sset), R. A. Fisher, and the applied sta tisticians that have followed.