Section Of Work Research Articles

Relation between sick leave and selected exposure variables among women semiconductor workers in Malaysia

Aims: To determine the relation between sick leave and selected exposure variables among women semiconductor workers. Methods: This was a cross sectional survey of production workers from 18 semiconductor factories....

The Primacy of Culture: The Current Growth (or Manufacture) of Consensus within Fascist Studies

'Twenty years after the destruction of the Third Reich, the essence of fascism is still elusive.'1 This statement, taken from the very first issue of the Journal of Contemporary History, edited by Walter Laqueur and George Mosse and dedicated to 'International Fascism 1920-1945', epitomizes the state of fascist studies in the mid-1960s when they were hardly out of their methodological diapers. They had at last started to put behind them an infantile insistence that fascism was the (pseudo-)ideology of nihilistic irrationalism, a movement fuelled by pathological barbarism, or a regime whose sole function was to impose a reign of totalitarian oppression. However, as the ten essays collected between the covers of the fledgling periodical demonstrate, they were conspicuously lacking a shared methodological and conceptual framework which would enable the scholarly verve and historical imagination of individual academic talents to be harnessed to a common purpose. Doubtless Nolte's recently-published comparative study of the ideology of the Action Franqaise, Italian fascism and nazism as permutations of generic fascism, Three Faces of Fascism,2 advertised prominently on the back of that first issue, seemed groundbreaking at the time. Indeed, it has become a cliche to award it the paternity of fascist studies outside the Marxist camp. However, if mythic starting-points are of any relevance, the slimmer but far more wideranging and insightful Varieties of Fascism (New York 1964) by Eugen Weber (a member of the editorial board of this Journal) was to prove a more reliable indicator of the path which the hunt for 'the' fascist minimum would eventually take. Certainly Weber's characterization of fascism, even if it withheld a succinct definition, contained greater heuristic value than the concluding section of Nolte's work, written in what is (to Anglo-Saxon minds)3 a 'metapolitical' register which betrays a will to obfuscate reminiscent of the forbidding forests of Teutonic fairy-tales rather than the sun-drenched clearings sought by children of the Enlightenment.

On the future of forest hydrology and biogeochemistry

Correspondence to: Jeff McDonnell, Oregon State University, USA. This comment arises from a USA-Japan Seminar on the Hydrology and Biogeochemistry of Forested Catchments, funded by the US National Science Foundation, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP). The meeting was hosted by Jeff McDonnell and Tadashi Tanaka in February 2000 at the East West Center in Hawaii. This meeting took place about ten years after the last such USA-Japan hydrology seminar (see details in McDonnell et al., this issue). The accompanying special issue is a distillation of papers from that meeting. These papers represent a cross section of work from both countries across the physical-biogeochemical interface. It is just over 30 years since Hewlett and Hibbert’s seminal work on the variable source area was published. As we enter the 21st century, the traditional domain of forest hydrologists is changing: from paired catchment studies examining changes in water balance associated with afforestation or deforestation, to issues of physical controls on stream biogeochemistry, process-based modelling, tracing water flowpath, residence time and mixing modeling. Nevertheless, while the orientation of forest hydrology has changed a great deal in the past 30 years, the basic concepts have changed only slightly. More detailed process representations are being provided for more catchments. Yet, rather than synthesis of common findings across catchments (that might reveal common controlling processes), much of the science is directed at studying the idiosyncrasies of “yet another catchment”. Particular processes such as macropore flow, capillary fringe-induced groundwater ridging, rapid effusion of old water from hillslopes, etc. have occupied many journal pages in recent decades, but conceptual advancement beyond variable source area theory has been limited. The discussions at the workshop began with an examination of the following questions:

Measurement techniques for the acoustic analysis of synchronousbelts

At present, in the automotive field, the noise generated by beltdrives is evaluated by using microphones in the proximity of the belt,crankshafts, idlers and so on. Such a method can be misleading, since it mayeasily include the contributions of other noise sources present during themeasurement. Moreover, a large amount of data is needed in order to testvarious layouts and various running conditions.We present a method for the analysis and prediction of the noise generated bybelt drives which consists of two distinct phases in this paper.For simplicity, a two-pulley belt drive has been considered and the resultshave been validated at the meshing frequency, at which, as has been shown inthe existing literature, the phenomenon of noise generation is mainlyconcentrated.In the first stage of the work, the acoustic power generation of the beltdrive being tested was measured by means of acoustic intensity techniques.Subsequently, an acoustic prediction was performed by using vibration dataobtained with a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) as inputs for aboundary element code. The SLDV was used because of its capability ofmeasuring in-operation data on the running belt, which would not have beenpossible using traditional contact sensors (accelerometers and so on).The results obtained in the two phases were finally compared in order toevaluate the relation between the vibratory behaviour and the total acousticradiation determined experimentally. The experimental and numerical data agreefairly well, adding precious information on the noise generation mechanismsand showing the feasibility of modelling the vibro-acoustic behaviour of beltdrives and the possibility of a totally numerical procedure. In particular theimplementation of an entirely numerical procedure using, for example, datagenerated through the use of codes for the dynamic characterization ofmechanical systems (multi-body mechanical models and so on) seems foreseeable.In the final section of the present work, the uncertainty arising from themeasurement processes of the investigation method presented is also discussed.

Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863

Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 16131836. By Graham Russell Hodges. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 413. Illustrations, maps, tables. Cloth, $45.00; paper, $18.95.) Graham Russell Hodges has taken on the commendable and consuming task of writing the history of black New York from its colonial beginnings in 1613 through the tumultuous early years of the Civil War. Root & Branch examines the cultural, social, and political development of black men and women in New York and east New Jersey, chronicling the successes and failures in their long struggle for freedom. Through church records, tax lists, wills, slave trade statistics, diaries, and other sources, Hodges has contributed tremendously not only to the historiography of African-American life, but also to the narratives of colonial, early American, and antebellum history. In his introduction, Hodges acknowledges that his project builds upon the work of other historians such as Shane White, Edgar McManus, and Roi Ottley. His construction of black New York begins with the arrival of the first black in New Netherland in June 1613 and ends with the Draft Riots of 1863. The first two chapters of his work explore the development of the legal codification of slavery in New York as well as the evolution of a distinct slave culture in both the infant city and the rural countryside. Just as Virginia's slave laws evolved over the first few decades of the seventeenth century, slavery in New York took form in a similar fashion. As the legal status of slavery in the colony was unclear, African men and women existed in an ambivalent environment. These men and women were by no means free. However, the future of their enslavement was ambiguous, as Holland did not recognize slavery at home and as chattel bondage was still an emerging concept. According to Hodges and many other historians of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America, race did not determine the free or enslaved status of a man or woman in colonial New York. As the West India Company utilized both white and black servants, Hodges's argument concerning the fluidity of race relations in seventeenth-century New York is fairly convincing. However, by the 1640s the West India Company began the legacy of black slavery as a handful of black men along with their wives were given their freedom with weighty stipulations. Annual fees in the form of maize, wheat, peas, beans, and hogs were to be paid by the Africans to the government in return for their freedom. However, the final stipulation of freedom rested upon the condition that their existing children were to serve as slaves. Hodges points to this moment as a turning point in black slavery for New Amsterdam and North America, for Dutch officials ruled that slavery would descend through the mother, a practice that became standard in America (13). Perhaps the most impressive section of Hodges's work focuses upon the development of slavery and slave culture during the eighteenth century through the American Revolution. Hodges spends a great deal of time examining what he labels as the Thirty Year Rebellion, an intensified period of slave resistance following the passage of strict slave codes in New Jersey and New York. …

"Staging as an Anthropological Category"

The scene of human culture is not found in nature; it is staged. Each of the utterance forms of language is a staging, whether it be the ostensive that stages an element of the world (Fire!), the imperative that forces the world to realize the staging implicit in the linguistic sign, or the declarative that allows us to construct in our imagination a fictive staging of this world. It is this latter category that most concerns Wolfgang Iser, but the imaginary construc tion of the fictive is conceivable only on the basis of the more elementary forms that link the world of signs with the world of originary experience. Staging as an Anthropological Category is the title of the last section of Iser's major work of literary anthropology, The Fictive and the Imagi nary.1 In the epilogue, Iser puts aside his categories of fictive and imaginary, first for those of and and finally for that of staging. All these last are anthropological categories in the sense that they explicitly abandon the dual subject-object relation of metaphysics for a scenic configuration in which the sign mediates among the members of a collective audience. A performance, the classical locus of mimesis as it has been understood since Aristotle, takes place before the representatives of the community, who observe the generation of a transcendent world of meanings out of human interac tion. To refer to the fictions that we enjoy in the privacy of our imagination as staged is to remind us of the communal source of these as of all representations. I would contend that the transcendence of reality through representa tion implicit in the categories of mimesis, performance, and staging, a transcendence that is for Iser the raison d'?tre of the human as a literary being, can most parsimoniously be explained by means of a generative hypothesis of origin. The impossibility of attaining the real otherwise than through representation?an impossibility that defines humanity from the beginning?is at the same time the basis of the imagination's capacity to liberate itself from the culturally given to explore the implicit potential of new, hypothetical realities. Generative thinking observes this process of liberation from the minimally disruptive standpoint of its hypothetical scene of origin.

Henry Jones Ford: The Political Science of Forecasting

Henry Jones Ford published The Rise and Growth of American Politics in 1898, and in it he looked back into the eighteenth century to find meaning in the developments of the nineteenth and provide material for his forecasts of the twentieth. So, too, do we look back for meaning in our own era, and use what we find to forecast about things to come. It is worthwhile, then, to reexamine the final section of Ford's work, “Tendencies and Prospects of American Politics,” because doing so helps us to understand the opportunities and pitfalls awaiting political scientists who forecast.Ford began his prophesying venture with the bold statement that there are no new ideas. In America, he claimed, we seem to be bound by the Whig theory of governance: with us, it is all separation of powers and checks and balances. We tinker with them, and we bind the constitutional fabric ever tighter to prevent abuses of power by vile politicos. “The belief that the Constitution could be tinkered into some sort of mechanical excellence” hampered British thinkers and ours as well (1898, 355). In the late eighteenth century, the British concentrated on institutional reforms, but nothing could help, because men entered politics in order to gain wealth and position.

The influence of rubber bush compliance on vehicle suspension movement

The work described in this paper forms part of a large study into aspects of suspension and tyre modelling on computer simulations of vehicle handling during the design process. The section of work included here aims to describe the influence of rubber bush compliance on changes in suspension geometry during vertical movement relative to the vehicle body. The emphasis is placed on the use of multibody systems analysis software to predict suspension characteristics and hence provide information for vehicle designers regarding the potential handling behaviour of a new vehicle design. Analysis work has been carried out to illustrate how joints in a vehicle suspension can be modelled and the issues involved where a detailed treatment of the rubber bush material is considered. The paper concludes by outlining the trend towards suspension designs which will increasingly depend on the behaviour of rubber bushes, and the implications for complex computer simulations such as vehicle handling and braking.

Mechanical behavior and damage development during cyclic fatigue at high-temperature of a 2 · 5D [formula omitted] composite

This article describes part of a project to investigate the high-temperature fatigue behavior of a 2 · 5D C SiC multilayer composite. This material is particularly interesting since it has been found that damage exists in the as-supplied material owing to the residual stresses produced during cooling of the composite. This section of work describes the effect of the number of cycles and the temperature on the composite, and attempts to explain the behavior during testing. The parameters controlling damage development and therefore fatigue life, are believed to be both thermal constraint in the composite, and the damage produced. The nature of the damage is such that the material is best considered in terms of damage occuring on the scale of the yarns, rather than at the smaller fiber level.

An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism

This book comprises a general survey of the study of New Testament manuscripts, and outlines for students of the New Testament the basic tools and skills involved in studying those manuscripts. The present edition is a thoroughly revised and updated version of Leon Vaganay's Initiation a la critique du Nouveau Testament, published in 1933, and each section of that original work has been brought up to date in light of the latest research in the field. In its aim to provide a solid foundation to study of New Testament textual criticism, this comprehensive survey will be of great value to those who are looking for basic information about the subject; while the documentary information it contains about the extant manuscripts, and its original theoretical sections, will ensure that the book has much of value to offer the more advanced student of the New Testament.

Friction and wear of PTFE — a review

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is an important engineering material. When rubbed or slid against a hard surface, PTFE exhibits a low coefficient of friction but a high rate of wear. These unique properties of the polymer have encouraged many mechanistic and physical examinations of the processes involved in the friction and wear of this polymer. A section of such work carried out over the past 30 years is reviewed here. When rubbed against a hard surface, the PTFE chain undergoes scission, creating active groups which chemically react with the counterface. This results in strong adhesion and a coherent transfer film. Further interaction between the bulk polymer and the transfer film gives rise to anisotropic deformation of the unit cell, which results in closeness of adjacent chains and easy shear between chains. Sliding brings about growth in as well as reorientation of crystallites situated in a very thin subsurface region of the bulk polymer. Such structural rearrangement facilitates the joining of adjacent aligned crystallites to form films and ribbons which emerge as debris.

An Arabic Manuscript On China and Tibet

E VER since western orientalists took interest in Arabic geographic accounts, a score or so of Arab geographers who had either travelled to the Far East or, more often, collected hearsay and stories from secondary sources about the marvels of those lands, have been translated into European languages. More texts of this sort, in Persian and Turkish, were translated, edited and published over the years. The most recent of Arabic manuscripts touching upon China was published by Richard Frye in 1949.1 The present manuscript is a section of a larger work by Muhammad b. Ha`i 'All, a writer of the 16th century who, interestingly enough, entitled his book: Iqlzm Ndmeh f-l Tarnh (The Book of IqlzmPashas in History). The manuscript was written in 993/ 1585 by commission of Murad, an illustrious military commander, later made Grand Vizier, under Sultan Ahmad I (enthroned in 1603). The pages relevant to China and Tibet (8-13b) were hand-copied by Richard Frye2 in 1945 from the original MS, at the Top Kapi Saray in Istanbul, the section of Andarun Hamayun (the Inner Palace) in the Sultan Ahmad III Library. Whether the MS is still located there it is now hard to ascertain. What is clear is that the book included accounts of other places in Central Asia such as Samarkand and Turkestan. The report of China, Tibet and Central Asia being sketchy at best, and dealing with what appears more as fantasy than substantive data, the question arises why would Murad Pasha, an eminent man of action, commission such an account? Indeed, judging from the text, one would be inclined to conclude that rather than a travel-

Dutch library services to disadvantaged persons.

Hospital libraries in the Netherlands provide a variety of services. In this paper two well-equipped hospital libraries, staffed by professionally qualified librarians, are described. Some hospital libraries rely on volunteers, supervised by professional librarians, while in others volunteers work completely on their own. Special services for elderly people are focused on persons who cannot visit the library by themselves. These services vary from visiting house-bound people to placing a small library in residential homes. Of special interest is the library work for aphasics in the Netherlands. The Section of Library Work for the Elderly, Sick and Handicapped Persons, a section of the Dutch Centre for Public Libraries and Literature (NBLC) is described.

The Fictional Works of Caryl Phillips: An Introduction

Final Passage1 (winner of Malcolm X Prize) is story of Leila, who comes to England, bringing her husband Michael (more burden than baggage) and infant son Calvin. Left alone by her unfaithful husband, living without hope or happiness in slum conditions, she decides to return to her little Caribbean island. However, by this time Leila has suffered a breakdown, is unemployed, and one wonders if she will be able to give decision practical, financial expression. It is not Britain has opened her eyes to previously overlooked positive aspects of her island home; return is merely lesser of two unattractive alternatives. author, who himself was taken to England as a baby and who as adult has made journey back, writes about the Indian wave of immigration into Britain, so-called mother country, in 1960s. Through Leila we gain inkling of understanding as to why people left Caribbean and what life was like for those immigrants in Britain, where at time it was legal and normal to display signs read, coloureds [or 'blacks']. No dogs. (Wole Soyinka records his experiences in satiric poem Telephone Conversation.) novel thus has wider dimensions of a historical, economic, and cultural nature. In 1962 V. S. Naipaul published a collection of essays titled Middle Passage.2 phrase the comes down from days of slavery. was when a ship left England for Africa, carrying baubles, cheap industrial products were bartered for slaves. Then began dreadful middle passage, to American and Caribbean plantations, during which voyage many died and were thrown overboard. (It is estimated as many as twenty million Africans were abducted from continent.) survivors were sold at auction; with money realized, raw materials were purchased to feed voracious industrial machines back home, and ship began the final passage, so much richer for enterprise. Leila wishes to make her final passage back to Caribbean, although, as already indicated, she may end up marooned and captive for rest of her life: a different form of life imprisonment from experienced by Rudy in Higher Ground (more on this later). On other hand, first section of novel bears subtitle The End, describing Leilas departure from Caribbean: end may also be beginning of a return after all. Her mother, dying in a hospital, says, London is not my home. . . . And I don't want you to forget either (124). Naipaul, in Middle Passage, observes with detachment subdued, bewildered immigrants herding onto ship for England. Phillips presents us with case of one out of those anonymous thousands, one from historical statistics. In same collection of essays Naipaul describes St. Kitts as an overpopulated island of sixty-eight square miles, producing a little sea-island cotton, having trouble to sell its sugar, and no longer growing tobacco, first crop of settlers. . . . We were . . . watching lights of toy capital where people took themselves seriously enough to drive cars from one point to another (24). He records his nightmare, that I was back in tropical Trinidad (43), a land indifferent to virtue as well as to vice (58). History, he argues (29), is built around achievement and creation, and nothing was created in Indies. (The epigraph of Final Passage is from Eliot: A people without history / Is not redeemed from time.) Slavery has bred self-contempt (71), and West Indian, more than most, needs writers to tell him who he is and where he stands (73). Phillips undertakes a telling, and absence becomes essence of novel: absence of history and achievement, of scope in present and hope for future. second and longer section of work is Home. Michael's grandfather uses a metaphor to convey island's cultural hybrid: yams from Africa, mangoes from India, and coconuts from Pacific. men almost miraculously find money to go drinking day and night, but it is not a glorious riot, a Bacchanalian celebration of life, but rather a drinking through boredom and hopelessness to a state of stupor. island is a place where sound of a motorcycle starting up is a sufficient event to attract adult spectators: There's nothing here for me to do, nothing! . . . Nothing, man! (53). Michael falls back on physical vanity: great care is taken over length of his shirt sleeves and trousers; motorcycle gives him illusion of power, and he possesses freedom is a total denial of responsibility. In sleep, with pose and posturing set aside, his tired face crumbles like a bridge collapsing into rubble (62). He gets drunk on his wedding day and spends night with Beverley, by whom he already has a son. As Leila's pregnancy advances, he moves into

The Window of Vulnerability: A Political Spirituality

This book, which takes its title a concern expressed by United States military strategists regarding a perceived weakness in this country's security system in early 1980s, collects some of Dorothee Soelle's writings over past eight years. Her purpose is present vulnerability as a sign of relationship, receptivity, and communication, and therefore to open that window as wide as possible. To do so, Soelle inspects alternatives militarism, sexism, and some forms of organized religion. The chapters on militarism reflect themes that Soelle has repeatedly embraced in other writings. The goal of state should be peace and not security; majority of armaments are not intended ensure survival, but rather for purposes of overkill; bilateral disarmament negotiations have lost all credibility and therefore only solution crisis is unilateralism. The Christian must be willing risk through nonviolence and civil disobedience, and in so doing, destroy god of this world, bomb. Closely linked militarism is sexism, since the women's movement has repeatedly uncovered connections between male dominance and war, between maleness and self-identification with warrior, between lust and violence. To offset this horrendous situation, feminism calls for both equal rights and a new and different culture. A form of liberation theology, feminism seeks change any system that oppresses people, especially economically, as movement incorporates a new language for God (mother), a new sense of sin as self-denial, an appreciation of praxis as first step toward change, and a hope that Christian from below will participate fully in feminist agenda. The final major section of Soelle's work evaluates New Right religious movement, liberal theology, and liberation theology. Concerned that political debate in United States has become increasingly theologized, she denounces electronic church, which has linked money and religion and exploited values of nation, work, and family. Liberal theology, which Soelle terms helpless, is too individualized and therefore disregards plight of suffering masses throughout world. The only valid theological op-

The Categorial Satisfaction of Self-Reflexive Reason

Robert Pippin's book, Hegel's Idealism: the Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness, is a deep, probing reconstruction of Hegel's project and the specific ways in which he tried to work out that project. It is rich in both analytical detail and in setting Hegel's thought in the historical complex of ideas that run from Kant to Fichte. It offers us a different view of Hegel than we have been accustomed to getting.I shall not concentrate too much on the details of Pippin's book, which excels in the depth and fine grained quality of its analyses. Instead, I shall deal with his overall interpretation and how good a case can be made for it. Pippin's goal of locating Hegel in terms of the Kantian project is well founded, and I think that he almost succeeds admirably. But only almost.The design of this commentary is threefold. First, I will give an overview of the general thrust of Pippin's interpretation. Second, I shall raise some questions about it and propose an alternative to it. Finally, I shall look at part of one particular section of Pippin's work, namely, his interpretation of Hegel's conception of “Essence” in the Science of Logic.Pippin's main thesis about Hegel's program seems relatively straightforward: Hegel's work should be understood as carrying on and transforming the Kantian idea of deriving all the conditions of knowledge from the transcendental unity of apperception, a special kind of self-conscious awareness of objects. Let us call this the Apperception Thesis.

Walsh and Hoyt's Clinical Neuro-Ophthalmology

Dr Neil R. Miller, the Frank B. Walsh Professor of Neuro-Ophthalmology at The Johns Hopkins Institutions, Baltimore, sets a very high standard in the first two volumes of his revision of Walsh and Hoyt's classic. Volume 1 covered the visual sensory system and the optic nerve. Volume 2 covered the autonomic nervous system, eye movements, and the sensory innervation of the eye and orbit. This latest volume, on tumors and related lesions, may be even better than its two predecessors, a remarkable achievement. Volume 3 is the most complete, the most useful, and the most readable book on clinical aspects of nervous system tumors currently available, and it is apt to remain so for a long time. The first section of this large work (733 pages) is devoted to diagnosis. It informs the reader about the symptoms and signs (neuro-ophthalmic and otherwise) of mass lesions at various loci. Excellent illustrations

Is biochemistry irreducible to chemistry?

Is biochemistry irreducible to chemistry?

Intermultiplet transfers of excited sodium atoms induced by nitrogen molecules

The predictions of a multiple curve crossing model (MCC) were compared to experimental observations of various intermultiplet transfers in thermal energy Na/N2 collisions. This includes comparisons to the energy dependence and the absolute value of the Na(4D→5S) cross section that was measured in the experimental section of the present work using a crossed beam apparatus. This also includes comparisons with beam data available in the literature. These last experimental results are not always directly comparable to the calculated cross sections. Deconvolution or simulation procedures are then needed. The general agreement between the MCC calculations and the experimental results is good. In many cases it is much better than a factor 2. The cases or disagreement were discussed carefully, and each of them can be attributable to uncertainties in the experiment or in the procedures of deconvolutions and simulations.

Book reviewsThoracic Oncology. Ed. by ChoiN. C. and GrilloH. C., pp. 384, 1983 (Raven Press, New York), $49.00. ISBN 0–89004–434–1

Thoracic neoplasms constitute a large section of work in oncology, and a book which covers the incidence, aetiology, pathology, clinical behaviour and treatment in a concise and readable way is a welcome addition to the literature. At first it might be thought to be too vast a subject to be covered in 384 pages but herein lies the book's usefulness.