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Changes in Psychosocial Work Conditions in Taiwanese Employees by Gender and Age from 2001 to 2010: Yawen CHENG, et al. Institute of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taiwan— Objective The aim of this study was to examine changes in working hours, shift work, psychological and physical job demands, job control and job insecurity in Taiwanese employees by gender and age during the period of 2001 to 2010. Methods The study subjects were 36,750 men and 27,549 women, aged 25−64, from 4 rounds of cross‐sectional surveys of representative employees. Psychosocial work conditions were assessed by a validated questionnaire. Results Regression analyses with adjustment of education and employment grade showed that from 2001 to 2010, the proportions of workers with long working hours (>48 hours/week) (OR=1.4 in men and 1.5 in women) and workers with short working hours (<40 hours/week) (OR=1.3 in both genders) both increased over time, indicating an increasing polarization in the distribution of working hours. Furthermore, the proportions of nonstandard work shifts (OR=1.7 in men and 2.1 in women) and work with high physical demands (OR=1.5 for both gender) increased. There were signs of decreasing levels of job control from 2001 to 2007, which seemed to be more apparent in younger workers than in older workers. However, a slight recovery in decision latitude and opportunity for learning was noticed in later years. The trend in job insecurity was not linear, with the highest prevalence found in 2004. Conclusions Our findings suggested that certain aspects of psychosocial work environment had deteriorated in Taiwan. There is a need to raise public awareness about the changing patterns of psychosocial health risks at work as well as their causes and their potential impacts on worker well‐being.

Objectives: To examine the distribution of work-to-family conflict (W-FC) across socio-demographic groups and a wide spectrum of occupations, and its associations with workers’ burnout, self-rated health, and mental health status by sex. Methods: A cross-sectional household survey of representative employees was conducted in 2013. A standardized questionnaire was administered to collect information. Results: W-FC was high in employees aged 35 to 44 years old and in certain occupational groups. Long working hours, rotating work shift, high work demands, high job control, low workplace justice, and family care burden were risk factors for W-FC, and high W-FC score was significantly associated with burnout, poor self-rated health, and minor mental disorder. Conclusions: To improve workers’ health, it is essential to identify high risk groups and adopt measures to reduce conflicts between work and family life.

Abstract-This study investigates the optimization of direct current reactive co-sputter deposition process parameters to achieve multiple performance characteristics (roughness, roundness, and flank wear) in the CrWN thin films by the Grey-Taguchi method. In the confirmation runs, when using grey relational analysis, improvement of 17.045% was obtained in surface roughness, 20.833% in roundness, and 28.354% in flank wear, respectively. Furthermore, control charts tell us when special causes of variation are impacting the direct current reactive co-sputter deposition process and product characteristics are stable over time.Keywords-CrWN;co-sputter; grey-taguchi method; control charts I. INTRODUCTION Chromium tungsten nitride (CrWN) thin films were deposited onto tungsten carbide tools substrates, by direct current (DC) reactive magnetron co-sputter at room temperature. The effect and optimization of CrWN thin films deposition parameters (DC reactive magnetron co-sputter parameters: Cr power, W power, N2/(Ar+N2) flow-rate ratios and deposition time) on the structure, roundness and flank wear in the turning operations were studied. To strengthen wear resistance in conventional tool materials, sputtering techniques (physical vapour deposition, PVD) have recently found increasingly wider use in such coating applications [1][2][3]. The morphological and properties of tool are the results of the effect of deposition parameters on the thin films (sputter power, substrate temperature, substrate rotate speed, substrate-to-target distance, base pressure and process pressure) [4][5][6]. In this study, the co-sputter process parameters (Cr DC power, W DC power, N2/(Ar+N2) flowrate ratios, and deposition time) were controlled to insert hard metal chromium tungsten nitride (CrWN) onto tungsten carbide tools for dry machining .Taguchi experimental design is a powerful approach for increasing experimental

A method for the ABO and Rhesus (Rh) blood group typing from individual erythrocytes is proposed in this study. Bloodgroup-specific antibodies immobilized to gold nanoparticles (BG-AuNP) were utilized for the identification of blood groups from individual erythrocytes by objective-type dark-field microscopy (OTDFM). The scattering of free BG-AuNP and their Brownian motion as well as BG-AuNP attached on erythrocytes is easily observed by OTDFM. The strong scattering intensity caused by BG-AuNP packing-enhanced nanoscattering (PENS) on erythrocytes is first demonstrated. PENS combined with OTDFM allows us to identify blood groups within 5 s for all blood group antigens including A, B, D, C, c, E, and e. This was immediately identified by mixing with BG-AuNP without any washing step or waiting for hemoagglutination. Therefore, PENS combined with OTDFM demonstrates feasibility and advantages for use in emergency transfusions where the blood group of patients is unknown. Moreover, matching RhD+ in the case of emergency transfusions may also be beneficial in reducing the shortage of RhD− red blood cell concentrate in the case of a population with a high frequency in RhD−.

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