Interactive mobile equipment safety task-training in surface mining

Improving the quality of equipment training for the Heavy Equipment Operators(HEO)is a critical task in improving safety and eliminating equipment-related injuries in mining.One of major responsibilities for the HEOs is proper machine inspection.Traditional miner safety training includes the use of hardcopy documents and video instructions.However,modern mobile and computer technology offers tremendous potential to improve the training process.In this study,we apply a 360-degree camera,opensource platform WordPress^(TM),and the software Unity3D in order to create materials and tools for the HEOs safety training to help trainees better understand the pre-shift safety machine inspection.The computer-based safety task training developed in this research is tested and implemented at a surface mine in the southern United States.

Altered electroencephalographic networks in developmental dyslexia after remedial training:a prospective case-control study

Electroencephalographic studies using graph theoretic analysis have found aberrations in functional connectivity in children with developmental dyslexia.However,how the training with visual tasks can change the functional connectivity of the semantic network in developmental dyslexia is still unclear.We looked for differences in local and global topological properties of functional networks between 21 healthy controls and 22 dyslexic children(8–9 years old)before and after training with visual tasks in this prospective case-control study.The minimum spanning tree method was used to construct the subjects’brain networks in multiple electroencephalographic frequency ranges during a visual word/pseudoword discrimination task.We found group differences in the theta,alpha,beta and gamma bands for four graph measures suggesting a more integrated network topology in dyslexics before the training compared to controls.After training,the network topology of dyslexic children had become more segregated and similar to that of the controls.In theθ,αandβ1-frequency bands,compared to the controls,the pre-training dyslexics exhibited a reduced degree and betweenness centrality of the left anterior temporal and parietal regions.The simultaneous appearance in the left hemisphere of hubs in temporal and parietal(α,β1),temporal and superior frontal cortex(θ,α),parietal and occipitotemporal cortices(β1),identified in the networks of normally developing children was not present in the brain networks of dyslexics.After training,the hub distribution for dyslexics in the theta and beta1 bands had become similar to that of the controls.In summary,our findings point to a less efficient network configuration in dyslexics compared to a more optimal global organization in the controls.This is the first study to investigate the topological organization of functional brain networks of Bulgarian dyslexic children.Approval for the study was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the Institute of Neurobiology and the Institute for Population and Human Studies,Bulgarian Academy of Sciences(approval No.02-41/12.07.2019)on March 28,2017,and the State Logopedic Center and the Ministry of Education and Science(approval No.09-69/14.03.2017)on July 12,2019.