Technical Worker Research Articles

Technical worker’s participation in the CVET and company competitiveness

The present study intends to understand how factors influence employed adults’ decision to participate in learning activities in two sectors of the five regions (NUT II) of the Portuguese continental territory. The factors associated to individuals’ participation in Continuing Vocational Education and Training (CVET) constitute an important issue to be studied given the need to understand why adults participate in CVET activities. This is important because continuing professional qualification of workers is assumed to be essential to improve workers’ employability and productivity in companies. In fact, the level of productivity of business depends on effective use of new technologies which is only possible with human resources continuously qualified. For this reason, results will allow us to elaborate recommendations for designing and implementing policies for CVET activities. The present research will be using a methodological approach framed by the ISSTAL (Interdisciplinary, Sequential-Specificity, Time-Allocation, Life-Span) model of social participation (Smith, 1980), already adapted and tested in USA by Cookson (1986) and in Alentejo and other EU regions by Figueira & others (2008) for studying adult participation in learning activities. The study will use a cross-sectional survey complemented by a focus group strategy to discuss survey results by continuing training specialists and practitioners and by a set of case studies to further understanding nature of the participation factors. The cross-sectional survey will use an instrument specifically developed to collect data from a two-stage stratified random sample drawn from a population constituted by technical working people of the two main sectors in the above Portuguese continental regions. According to results from previous studies, it will be expected that the ISSTAL model will be useful for explaining and understanding participation of adults in continuing training activities concerning the sectors of activity under analysis. The study will give an important contribution for promoting equal access to CVET for all workers, as a relevant pathway for a sustainable development of the Portuguese society.

Career Pathway Types and Developmental Process of Technical Worker graduated from Vocational High School

Career Pathway Types and Developmental Process of Technical Worker graduated from Vocational High School

Betting on New Forms of Worker Organization

I have always admired labor organizers, in part because their long hours and incredible ability to listen, engage, and sympathize with people from every political persuasion make it possible for the labor movement to survive. I do not envy them, however, particularly at this moment in history. They often find themselves in untenable situations, faced with impossible moral and political dilemmas. As one Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Worker organizer from the Tufts University campaign—where the union recently lost an election—explained to me in January 2010, “You can't win an election without employer neutrality. Yet you can't get neutrality without making concessions you don't want to make.”

On computational modeling of human-oriented knowledge in Ambient Intelligence

Recent developments within Ambient Intelligence (AmI) provide new possibilities to contribute to personal care, e.g. [1,2,6,7]. For example, our car may monitor us and warn us when we are falling asleep while driving. Similarly, the workspace of a technical worker may monitor the person’s stress level, and provide support in case it is too high. As another example, an elderly person may wear a device that monitors his or her well-being and generates an action when a dangerous situation is noticed. While such AmI applications can be initially based on the acquisition and fusion of sensory information, more intelligent applications need to depend on the availability of an adequate knowledge base for the analysis of human functioning. In recent years, scientific areas such as cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience and biomedical sciences have made substantial progress in providing increased insight in the physical and mental aspects of human functioning. Although much work still remains to be done, models have been developed for a variety of such aspects and the way in which humans (try to) manage or regulate them. From a biomedical angle, examples of such aspects are (management of) heart functioning, diabetes, and eating regulation disorders. From a psychological and social angle, examples are emotion regulation, attention regulation, addiction management, trust management, stress management, and criminal behavior management. If models of human processes and their management are represented in a formal and computational format, and incorporated in intelligent agents in the human environment [5], then AmI applications are able to perform a more in-depth analysis of the human’s functioning [4]. By endowing devices in the environment with explicit knowledge about humanoriented processes and with the capability to reason about the dynamics of such processes, an environment is created that has a better understanding of humans and how to support them, and is able to show a form of ‘social intelligence’ [3].

The impact of menopause and lifestyle factors on blood and bone lead levels among female former smelter workers: The Bunker Hill Study

The Bunker Hill mine in Idaho operated from 1886 to 1981. In the 60's and 70's it provided approximately 25% of the primary lead in the United States. Women first began working on the production and maintenance lines in 1972. This study examines the impact of menopause and several occupational and lifestyle factors as determinants of blood and bone lead levels among 73 female former smelter workers. Blood lead levels were analyzed using graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy. The (109)Cd K X-ray fluorescence system was used to measure calcaneus and tibia bone lead content. Information was obtained on reproductive history, alcohol and cigarette consumption, education, and hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Postmenopausal women (n = 47) had significantly (P < 0.002) higher blood lead levels (3.48 microg/dl) than did premenopausal women (n = 26) (2.19 microg/dl). The best predictors of blood lead levels were smoking (>10 or < or =10 cigarettes/day), natural menopause, technical or community college education, manager or technical worker, and past or present use of HRT. The best predictors of calcaneus bone lead levels (P < 0.2) were technical workers, such as miner; natural menopause; and smoking >10 cigarettes/day; level of education; 1-2 pregnancies; and age (>60 years). Lead exposure results in higher blood lead levels especially during menopause.

Managing Knowledge-Based Resource Capabilities Under Uncertainty

A firm's ability to manage its knowledge-based resource capabilities has become increasingly important as a result of performance threats triggered by technology change and intense competition. At the manufacturing plant level, we focus on three repositories of knowledge that drive performance. First, the physical production or information systems represent knowledge embedded in the plant's technical systems. Second, the plant's workforce has knowledge, including diverse scientific information and skills, to effectively operate the technical systems. Third, the firm's managerial systems embody knowledge in the form of goals, reward systems, and control and coordination systems. Taken together, we consider the technical systems, workforce knowledge, and the managerial systems as the plant's knowledge-based resource capability. Two normative models are introduced offering insight on how plant performance is impacted by investments in workforce knowledge (training) or the technical systems (process change). The models explicitly recognize that the outcome of investments in knowledge-based change is uncertain due to factors including technical problems, worker resistance, and limited financial resources. Also, we recognize that workforce knowledge may be deployed to mitigate the outcome uncertainty encountered with process change. Investments in knowledge-based change cannot be fully understood in isolation of the managerial systems. In one model, the plant manager is motivated by an incentive system that rewards the realization of a threshold goal, whereas in the other model the incentive system emphasizes the realization of meeting a particular target goal. We also investigate the impact of the manager's view of uncertainty (her willingness to absorb risk), which is influenced by the managerial systems. Results show that different characterizations of the managerial systems have a profound effect on managerial behavior and plant-level performance.

Supporting clinical skills developments.

The provision of clinical skills facilities in nursing and medical education centres has become more common (Bradley and Postlethwaite 2003, Ker et al 2003, Scott 2001), fuelled by calls to improve practitioners' fitness for practice (UKCC 1999), shared interprofessional learning (DoH 2001), and modernisation of the workforce (DoH 2000a). However, little attention appears to have been directed towards the pragmatic task of supporting these facilities. Support mechanisms were instituted in one school of nursing and midwifery to facilitate skills-based teaching and learning in a simulated clinical environment. The benefits of the new technical support worker role are discussed, including the more efficient use of learning resources and the positive learning experience of students.

Case study: benefits of IT for older people and their carers

The first article in this series (Vol 11(11): 759-63) described the development of the ACTION project, an information technology-based initiative designed to enhance the quality of life for family carers and older people, and the second article (Vol 11(12): 827-31) considered how the usability of the ACTION system as a whole was evaluated. This, the third article, presents a case study which describes in more detail the impact of the ACTION project on the lives of both a family carer (Rolf) and his wife (Kerstin), and on the technical worker (Thomas) who helped Rolf and Kerstin to learn to use the ACTION system. The impact of the intervention is assessed using two broad sets of criteria: (1) those relating to the PREP (Preparedness, Enrichment, Predictability) model of nursing interventions, and (2) those relating to the wider implications of participation in a research and development project of this nature.

One century of foreign immigration to the United States: 1880-1979.

Due to declining fertility rates and increased numbers of immigrants, legal foreign immigration now comprises 1/4 of the US's annual population growth. This article uses 1900-1979 Immigration and Naturalization Service data on immigrants' intended destination to examine immigration policy and its effect on immigrants and the American people. From the US's beginnings to the 1880s, immigrants came mainly from Great Britain, Germany, and other Northern and Western European countries, in the 1890s; over 70% of immigrants came from Italy, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Germany. Immigration had peaked at over 1 million persons a year at the outbreak of World War I, then declined sharply, and rose again greatly during the first 2 decades of the 20th Century. The first significant legislation to restrict ethnic groups was in the early 1880s with the Chinese Exclusion Act; In 1924, Congress passed the 2nd Immigration and Naturalization Act which used the 1890 census to set quotas for ethnic groups, and later used the 1920 census to fix quotas in the national origins system; both pieces of legislation favored Northern and Western Europeans. Immigration declined drastically during the 1930s and early 1940s, but the Displaced Persons Act, the War Brides Act, and 1950s legislation allowed more Asian refugees and some other ethnic groups to enter the country. The nationality origins quotas were eliminated in 1965, and were followed by dramatic changes in immigration character as persons from formerly low quota nations flooded into the US. 1976 and 1978 legislation made immigration still more equitable, and the Refugee Act of 1980 allowed admittance of 50,000 refugees with no regard for geographic or ideological biases. A preference system, in operation since 1924, has favored relatives of citizens and immigrants with certain skills. Females presently outnumber male immigrants, average immigrant age is 26.2 years, and over 1/2 of the immigrants since 1950 have been housewives, children, or others with no occupation. In the 1970s, 1 in 10 immigrants was a professional or technical worker, probably from Asia. In 1900, most immigrants headed for mainly northern, industrialized cities, especially New York. In recent years, too destinations have included New York, California, Washington, Texas, and Florida. Throughout the century, 3/5 immigrants went to only 5 states, so many states have received very few immigrants since 1900. Due to the amount spent on receiving refugees, and economic and job problems, many Americans think immigration should be greatly limited. Today's 1 million legal and illegal immigrants will continue to change the composition of the American population, as the long established Northern and Western European population declines.

Chemical research in technical colleges

In this article, the author gives the results of an analysis into the extent of chemical research in technical colleges. By analysing the origin of papers presented in the leading chemistry journals, he concludes that further aid should be given to the technical college research worker particularly by the employment of further research assistants.

The Scientific and Technical Worker in Economic Development

The Scientific and Technical Worker in Economic Development

Journal abbreviations

The purpose of abbreviations of journal titles, like the use of symbols for the chemical elements and symbols for physical constants, is primarily to provide the technical worker with a means of saving time and effort in his own writing, as well as secondarily to save some printing space in technical journals. It should be as obvious as in the use of element symbols or technical terms that the abbreviation of journal citations should be uniform in character and intelligible to all who read them.

The Managerial Revolution

THE increasing importance of the scientific or technical worker in industry was the theme of one of the most suggestive chapters in Prof. A. M. Carr-Saunders and Mr. P. A. Wilson's study of the professions. Despite, however, all the attention being directed to scientific management, whether through the work of, the Institute of Public Administration or the Institute of Industrial Management, the social consequences and implications of the assumption by the technical and scientific staffs of an increasing degree of responsibility for the larger industrial units characteristic of to-day have attracted little attention. Prof. Carr-Saunders and Mr. Wilson's observations, like Mr. S. W. Smith's subsequent paper on the place and function of the administrative and technical worker in the new forms of economic structure, presented at the British Association meeting in 1936, have largely escaped comment. Certainly none of the professional associations of technical or scientific workers appears to have initiated any action to meet the developments and needs thus forecast. The Managerial Revolution Or What is Happening in the World Now. By James Burnham. Pp. iv + 271. (London: Putnam and Co., Ltd., 1942.) 7s. 6d. net.

Scientific and Technical Literature and Information

THE services provided to the scientific and technical research worker by the National Central Library are too well known to need emphasis in the present emergency. So far as text-books and pre-war volumes of periodicals are concerned, these services will doubtless find increasing utilization during the War. However, the original editorial more specially concerned itself with the supply and use of current issues of scientific and technical periodicals, especially European publications. The only portions of Colonel Newcombe's memorandum that are relative to this specific problem are his statements that the entries in the National Central Library relating to holdings of such periodicals by British libraries are constantly being brought up to date, and his optimism concerning the facilities for obtaining European periodicals at the present time.

Outlook of Professional Organizations

PRFOUND changes in manufacturing technique and industrial organization have resulted from the modernization of industry under the influence of power production during the last twenty years. This is generally recognized, but equally important changes in the personnel of industry have largely escaped attention. The recent report of the Industrial Health Research Board, it is true, pointed out that industry is demanding a different type of worker, but apart from Prof. Carr-Saunders' and Mr. P. A. Wilson's study of the professions, the increasing importance of the technical and scientific worker in industry has scarcely received the attention it deserves. Not only have the technical and scientific staffs been immediately responsible for much of the development and reorganization involved in the modernization and rationalization of industry, but they have also assumed an increasing share of the responsibility for the administration of the larger industrial units characteristic of to-day. In fact, large-scale industry mainly depends on their activities, and in turn they find in it the fullest scope for their knowledge and skill.

Administration and Technology in Industry

IN a paper on “The Place and Function of the Administrative and Technical Worker in the New Forms of Economic Structure” before Section F (Economic Science and Statistics) of the British Association on September 14, Mr. S. W. Smith directed attention to the growth and change of personnel which have accompanied the changes in the structure of industry and in industrial practice and technique in the last thirty-five years, particularly since the War. The mechanization and rationalization of industry have been accompanied by a significant growth in the importance of the technicians and scientific workers and the administrative staff, with a simultaneous reduction in the significance and proportion of unskilled labour and of controlling and directing owners of business. The bulk of the reorganization and modernizing work involved in the transformation of industry has been carried out by the technical and administrative staffs, and their importance has been further enhanced by the marked tendency for the proportion of professional, technical and administrative staffs to increase steadily in proportion to the remainder.