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Millions of man-hours are lost to industry through employees suffering backache or strain caused by operating poorly designed ma

admin2013-09-23  63
问题     Millions of man-hours are lost to industry through employees suffering backache or strain caused by operating poorly designed machines and vehicles or moving awkward and heavy loads. Production is also interrupted by injury from other causes, such as vibration and excessive noise.
【R1】______
    But help is coming from a perhaps unexpected quarter for companies prepared to plan their workshops and manufacturing lines to take account of these hazards.
    The necessary information is emerging from a recently formed team of Ministry of Defense scientists at the Army Personnel Research Establishment at Farnborough. They are measuring factors which limit a soldier’ s ability to cope with advanced technical equipment and new types of vehicles, or to carry out routine jobs under difficult working conditions.
    The problems of the factory and office manager may at first sight seem distant from those of the Army.
【R2】______
    A task force of 120 physiologists, biologists, computer scientists, technologists and soldiers is therefore looking for the point at which human factors set the limit to the use of technology.
    It is the stage at which no matter how advanced the engineering, it is the man who caused the complicated e-quipment to fail.
    Dr. John Nelms, director of the establishment, says: " In an era when there is almost nothing the engineer can not build, man is the limiting factor. The research program marks a new stage in the evolution of the army in looking at how best to make the soldier and technology compatible. If we do not get the relationship right, the next battlefield could be a shambles. "
    To meet the vast range of occupational hazards faced by the armed forces, the research group is measuring the limits imposed by physical stress arising from heat and cold, noise and vibration, psychological pressure, and the operational stress of putting high technology system into battleground conditions. The army also has an obligation during peacetime and training exercises to ensure that its men are exposed to greater risks to, say, hearing than those encountered in a well-run industry.
    Trials to discover how stress cuts the efficiency of a man with a guided missile or a new tank electronic control and firing system, perhaps by reducing his "hit rate" from 100 percent to only 50, may appear to be a special requirement. But it is also relevant to the introduction in industry and commerce of new technologies with keyboard controls and visual displays.
【R3】______
    Different patterns of noise are measured at Farnborough because damage to hearing is produced in various ways. Impulse noise from gunfire produces high pressures on the ear of a short duration, making the effects on the ear difficult to measure.
    For instance, a rifle shot produces a maximum pressure of 160 decibels, lasting less than a hundredth of a second, at the ear of the marksman, whereas a typical industrial noise might reach an average level of 90 decibels over most of the working day. Some idea of those noise levels is given by what a person hears about 20 feet from a roadway—from motorcycles it is 89 decibels, cars 87 decibels, light commercial vehicles 88 and heavy lorries 92.
    The effect on the body of lifting, loading and carrying objects is perhaps the work that has the widest common application to industry and the Army.
    But the methods used today by the research team and the trials section—a group of regular soldiers seconded for two years for this work—to measure physiological limitations imposed by physical stress and strain are far from usual.
    The measurements involve monitoring muscle fatigue by analyzing the bioelectric signals produced during movement and examination of the energy being expended and the muscle strength.
【R4】______
    Particular tasks scrutinized at Farnborough include such things as the physiological strain in loading 120 mm ammunition within the turret workplace intended for a new tank design. The importance of this type of study was underlined by an analysis of the prototype of an advanced new armored vehicle, which the specialists in human engineering showed could only be operated by about 5 percent of the men in the Army.
【R5】______
    It will provide further valuable material for the scientific discipline known as ergonomics—fitting the job to the workers—to which several university and polytechnic research groups have also made important contributions.
A. Although these occupational hazards are well recognized eliminating them is another matter, and they are not problems that disappear overnight by a wave of the magic wand of new technology.
B. New advances in technology requires specialist research into the best way to operate sophisticated equipment.
C. Indeed, the military research emerged because the generals foresaw that the development of a wide range of new equipment, including man-operated guided missiles and suits for protection against nuclear, chemical and biological dangers, had important implications for the efficiency of the soldier on the battlefield.
D. The psychological fear of the battlefield may be missing, but measurements of the degree to which an operator’ s skill is impaired by constant noise and other stressful interruptions are of concern to all businessmen.
E. An indication of the stress on the cardiovascular system is made by recording variation in heart rates during work. A tiny tape recorder attached to the individual’ s clothing logs the signals.
F. Much of this information is being compiled as manuals that will be available to industry as well as suppliers of defense equipment to the Ministry of Defense.
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答案A
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