Technological Intensification Research Articles

An Overview on Studies of Stress State Affect

Stress is a multidimensional concept and it always shapes our performances. An individual strive to overcome with this stress by the help of technology. But in one hand where the technology has provided the acuity and sharpness to human performance on the other hand it has also engendered ample amount of stress for users.The current review focuses on stress and how it affects the human performance. The human experience of stress and the outcome of their task performance often are tightly linked because tasks itself create stress without the addition of any external stressor. So, present review clarifies this strain effect in term of transitory states of stress. This review comprises of effects of mind‟s transitory states on discriminability and prolongs awareness in tasks. Many researches had been done to explain the effect of task stress and individual‟s strain which induced by task, but none was able to present a general model that could account for all of the various results and prevent the performance decrement. Therefore the current review is an attempt to appraise these works which describes stress as multidimensional states of stress which play crucial role during performances.For each string, founding scientific articles, researches and contemporary empirical developments are quoted that demonstrate the range of novelty and technical innovations that has taken place.Many contemporary concepts like techno-stress, task stress, and strain effects are rooted in this manuscript. This review provides a new dimension to think. The relation between stress and performance is well-known to us but this literature review identified the strain factors during task.The current review represents the facts and strain importance in which the human performance takes place most accurate and robust. At last this review shed on the issues of stress-states and vigilance as well as automation and provides new perspective to vigilance researches because the technological intensification can be seen in various types of applied tasks for example transportation, medical monitoring, sonar and radar operations as well as in manufacturing industries sector etc.Moreover, this review is also to attract human factors and ergonomics researchers to design a system that to be stress-free as possible for the user.

Experimental Research Methods After Critique

In a temporal and spatial configuration dominated by the hyper-fast transmission of visual information by way of new technologies, methodologies must compete to hold our and the public’s attention. The traditional role of critique continues to be important, but acknowledging new and faster approaches that bypass critique, and which have in fact been in practice already is necessary. This article explores three new ways of thinking about methods: the use of “the example” and its distinction from the case study, the importance of affirmative methods as a counter to “critical” methods, and the fruitfulness of engaging the indeterminacies that come with making connections in research. It argues that these approaches are in keeping with an “ethico-politics” suitable for societies characterized by technological intensification.

Hunter–gatherer ecodynamics and the impact of the Heinrich event 2 in Central and Southern Portugal

The impact of North Atlantic Heinrich 2 event (HE2) (26.5–24.3 ka cal BP) in Iberia is currently attested by a set of high resolution deep-sea cores, confirming a record of increasing aridity, lowered temperatures, and important changes in the vegetation cover. In Portugal, a reasonable number of archaeological sites are dated to this time-span, where significant changes in the economic and technological structures have been identified as a new cultural component: the Proto-Solutrean. Based on high-resolution paleoenvironmental data, chronological and archaeological evidence, our study demonstrates how HE2 might have been the main trigger for Proto-Solutrean cultural change. Technological intensification and diversification, as well as the adjustments made in land-use patterns towards an expansion of the social networks, are presented as the major climate-driven outcomes. Within the Panarchy and the Adaptive Cycle Model framework, these modifications consist of a Release and Reorganization moment of the hunter–gatherer cultural systems that will lead to the appearance of the Solutrean technocomplex in Southwestern Iberia.

An Ideological Derivative toward the Origins of Territoriality and Early Sedentism in the Northeastern United States

Early/Middle Archaic (10,000-6000 B.P.) mortuary practices are very poorly understood in the Northeastern United States. Traditionally, the Late Archaic has been considered a period of dramatic population rises, which coincided with settlement system shifts, increased cultural complexity, and highly ritualized burial ceremonialism. However, recent data indicate that increasingly complex mortuary patterns had already emerged by the Early/Middle Archaic. While the mid-Atlantic and southern New England were characterized by higher residential mobility and simple (expedient) interments, corresponding to Territorial Transhumance, data from northern New England are typified by logistical mobility and more complex formal cemeteries, reflecting Territorial Sedentism. Also, complex mortuary ceremonialism by the Early/Middle Archaic appears to have emerged without evidence for corresponding resource, technological, or social intensification. Therefore, I suggest that pre-Late Archaic ideological intensification resulted in territoriality and early sedentism, and was the “trigger” that led to subsequent increased cultural complexity in the Northeast.

Analysis of natural and social dynamics of fishery production systems in Paraná, Brazil: implications for management and sustainability

Sustainability and management issues are discussed for eight fishery production systems (FPS) in the state of Paraná, Brazil, from an interdisciplinary perspective. FPS were defined after a set of multidisciplinary classification criteria, in an attempt to conceive fishing activities as a new level of integration between natural and social systems. Systems were compared using the Rapid Appraisal of Fisheries Status (RAPFISH) methodology, with 48 scored attributes, grouped in five evaluation fields (ecological, economic, social, technological and political). Systems were also analyzed for a subset of 14 attributes selected as sustainability indicators. All systems from Paraná showed a poor sustainability profile, yet for different reasons. Two groups of systems proved consistent: traditional systems, and the motorized shrimp trawl systems on the coastal shelf. The traditional systems are historically ancient, employ little technology, show a large diversity of fishing practices, and preserve traditional management. The second is a modern group of systems, with a gradient of technological intensification from motor pirogues or canoes to entrepreneurial trawlers; these systems are market-oriented, intensive and ecologically aggressive, but their fishermen have better living conditions. The methodology showed a great potential for offering interdisciplinary interpretations of fishery dynamics, especially in situations of scant information and several systems to compare. Yet, the analysis of sustainability proved strongly affected by the choice of attributes, which necessarily constitute a small, oversimplified fraction of reality. Management should seek a broader consideration of the complexity of socioeconomic and natural processes that govern fisheries in order to recognize differences among systems and adequately address particular development issues and critical points. A viable way to do this could be the consideration of the fishery system as a management unit, with greater participation of stakeholders to better understand the specificities and particular needs of the systems.

The Effects of Accession to the European Union for the Competitiveness of Polish Service Sectors

The share of services in Polish economy is increasing. They account for the prevailing portion of GDP and employment, they attract most of foreign direct investments located in Poland. Services are also increasingly internationalized: due to technological progress and intensification of interrelations in world economy, their share in international trade is rising. The aim of the paper is to analyze current tendencies in trade in services between Poland and the European Union countries and to indicate changes in competitiveness of service sectors in Poland after accession to EU. There should be a statistical evidence of increased specialization in services trade, as service enterprises can benefit from the freedom to provide services in the European Union markets. Measures used to assess Polish competitive position in services trade with EU countries are: revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index, and Grubel-Lloyd index measuring the level of intra-industry trade. The paper is organized as follows: introduction to the subject, presentation of the measures of the country’s competitiveness used in the research, presentation of the facts concerning services trade flows between Poland and EU countries and finally empirical results of the survey.

Intensification or extensification? Factors affecting technology use in peri-urban lowlands along an agro-ecological gradient in West Africa

The paper analyses whether the increased use of lowlands in proximity to urban centres in West Africa is associated with technological intensification or extensification. Technologies are typified in terms of their orientation – land or labour saving – and market dependence for their procurement and reviews the factors driving and modifying their use in lowlands. The factors associated with technology use are analyzed empirically using geo-referenced lowland data around four urban centers along an ecological gradient in Côte d’Ivoire and Mali. The technologies analyzed include both external inputs (fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, improved varieties) and crop management practices (plot level bunding, rice transplanting and rice direct seeding). Results from binomial logit models highlight the prominent positive and non-linear role of proximity to urban markets for the technological intensification of lowlands – an issue associated with factor scarcities and the transaction costs for procurement and marketing. Technology use in lowlands is also associated with the agro-ecological gradient, lowland development and non-native lowland users. A common thread linking these variables is that they modify resource scarcity and therefore intensification incentives. Lowlands are not always as valuable as they may seem and there may be limited incentives to intensify. Instances of significant lowland cultivation and intensification in the study sites tend to be associated with specific opportunities – driven by market opportunities and modified by seasonal, institutional or development-induced relative land scarcity. Market access is therefore a necessary but not sufficient factor for the technological intensification of lowland use. There is a need for better targeting of development efforts in terms of enabling lowland intensification or extensification as appropriate.

A simple model of technological intensification

Ugan, Bright and Rogers [When is technology worth the trouble? Journal of Archaeological Science 30 (10) (2003) 1315–1329] develop procurement and processing versions of an optimization model, termed the tech investment model, to formalize the conditions that favor investing time in the manufacture of more productive but more costly technologies. Their approach captures the tradeoffs that occur as less costly versions are supplanted by more costly versions of the same category of technology (e.g., fishhooks), but not the tradeoffs that occur when more costly categories of technology supplant different but less costly categories used for the same purpose (e.g., hook and line vs. spear). We (i) propose an alternative model in which different categories of technology are characterized by separate cost–benefit curves, (ii) develop point-estimate and curve-estimate versions on this model, and (iii) show how they might be applied using the development of weaponry in aboriginal California as an example.

The Fertility of Agricultural and Non-Agricultural Traditional Societies

A comparison of demographic data from a sample of traditional, natural-fertility societies demonstrates that the mean total fertility of populations which practise intensive agriculture is significantly higher than that of foragers and horticulturalists. These findings support the association that demographers and economists have long maintained between the intensification of subsistence technology and increases in human fertility. This higher fertility probably results from changes in nutritional status, marriage patterns, and breastfeeding practices that frequently accompany subsistence intensification. A fuller explanation of these fertility differentials, however, will require the collection of further high-quality microdemographic data from a variety of traditional societies.

Yield and quality of winter rape seeds depending on the method of sowing and sowing norms in the conditions of the right bank

Purpose. Revealing the dependence of the formation of high yield and quality indicators of winter seeds on the influence of the level of intensification of the cultivation technology in the conditions of the Forest-Steppe of the Right Bank. Methods The results of the conducted researches on the influence of the sowing method, sowing norms of winter rape on its seed productivity are given. The prospect of expanding the sown areas of winter oilseed rape, actualizes research to identify the dependence of the formation of high yields and quality indicators of winter oilseed rape from the influence of the level of intensification of cultivation technology. The research methods used in the field experiment correspond to the methods of field experiments and guidelines. The experiment was established by the method of split sites. Winter rapeseed cultivar Antaria of Ukrainian selection and Exagon hybrid of foreign selection were used for sowing. The generally accepted technology of growing winter rape for the area where the research was conducted was used. Results. The results of the research on the influence of sowing method, sowing norms of winter oilseed rape on its seed productivity show that the highest yield of winter oilseed rape seeds was obtained by sowing ordinary row with a row spacing of 15 cm, and sowing rate in the variety - 0.8 million seeds /ha, hybrid - 0.6 million seeds / ha. It is established that the method of sowing and sowing norms affect the quality of winter rape. The optimal sowing rate of winter rapeseed is for the variety - 0.8 million similar seeds per 1 ha, for the hybrid - 0.6 million similar seeds per 1 ha, when sown in the usual row method with a row spacing of 15 cm. Conclusions. It was found that the highest oil content in winter rapeseed was - 46.98% for sowing in a wide row with a row spacing of 45 cm. Also, this method of sowing was determined by the lowest (0.39%) content of erucic acid, while the content of glucosinolates for this method of sowing was higher (33.1 μmol / g) compared to the usual method of sowing.