The Human Contribution is vital reading for all professionals in high-consequence environments and for managers of any complex system. The book draws its illustrative material from a wide variety of hazardous domains, with the emphasis on healthcare reflecting the author's focus on patient safety over the last decade. All students of human factors - however seasoned - will also find it an invaluable and thought-provoking read.

This book explores the human contribution to the reliability and resilience of complex, well-defended systems. Usually the human is considered a hazard - a system component whose unsafe acts are implicated in the majority of catastrophic breakdowns. However there is another perspective that has been relatively little studied in its own right - the human as hero, whose adaptations and compensations bring troubled systems back from the brink of disaster time and again. What, if anything, did these situations have in common? Can these human abilities be ’bottled’ and passed on to others? The Human Contribution is vital reading for all professionals in high-consequence environments and for managers of any complex system. The book draws its illustrative material from a wide variety of hazardous domains, with the emphasis on healthcare reflecting the author’s focus on patient safety over the last decade. All students of human factors - however seasoned - will also find it an invaluable and thought-provoking read.

It's obvious why only men develop prostate cancer and why only women get ovarian cancer. But it is not obvious why women are more likely to recover language ability after a stroke than men or why women are more apt to develop autoimmune diseases such as lupus. Sex differences in health throughout the lifespan have been documented. Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health begins to snap the pieces of the puzzle into place so that this knowledge can be used to improve health for both sexes. From behavior and cognition to metabolism and response to chemicals and infectious organisms, this book explores the health impact of sex (being male or female, according to reproductive organs and chromosomes) and gender (one's sense of self as male or female in society). Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health discusses basic biochemical differences in the cells of males and females and health variability between the sexes from conception throughout life. The book identifies key research needs and opportunities and addresses barriers to research. Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health will be important to health policy makers, basic, applied, and clinical researchers, educators, providers, and journalists-while being very accessible to interested lay readers.

Quality/Patient Safety

Space Safety and Human Performance provides a comprehensive reference for engineers and technical managers within aerospace and high technology companies, space agencies, operators, and consulting firms. The book draws upon the expertise of the world's leading experts in the field and focuses primarily on humans in spaceflight, but also covers operators of control centers on the ground and behavior aspects of complex organizations, thus addressing the entire spectrum of space actors. During spaceflight, human performance can be deeply affected by physical, psychological and psychosocial stressors. Strict selection, intensive training and adequate operational rules are used to fight performance degradation and prepare individuals and teams to effectively manage systems failures and challenging emergencies. The book is endorsed by the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS). - 2019 PROSE Awards - Winner: Category: Engineering and Technology: Association of American Publishers - Provides information on critical aspects of human performance in space missions - Addresses the issue of human performance, from physical and psychosocial stressors that can degrade performance, to selection and training principles and techniques to enhance performance - Brings together essential material on: cognition and human error; advanced analysis methods such as human reliability analysis; environmental challenges and human performance in space missions; critical human factors and man/machine interfaces in space systems design; crew selection and training; and organizational behavior and safety culture - Includes an endorsement by the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS)

In the resilience engineering approach to safety, failures and successes are seen as two different outcomes of the same underlying process, namely how people and organizations cope with complex, underspecified and therefore partly unpredictable work environments. Therefore safety can no longer be ensured by constraining performance and eliminating risks. Instead, it is necessary to actively manage how people and organizations adjust what they do to meet the current conditions of the workplace, by trading off efficiency and thoroughness and by making sacrificing decisions. The Ashgate Studies in Resilience Engineering series promulgates new methods, principles and experiences that can complement established safety management approaches, providing invaluable insights and guidance for practitioners and researchers alike in all safety-critical domains. While the Studies pertain to all complex systems they are of particular interest to high hazard sectors such as aviation, ground transportation, the military, energy production and distribution, and healthcare. Published periodically within this series will be edited volumes titled Resilience Engineering Perspectives. The first volume, Remaining Sensitive to the Possibility of Failure, presents a collection of 20 chapters from international experts. This collection deals with important issues such as measurements and models, the use of procedures to ensure safety, the relation between resilience and robustness, safety management, and the use of risk analysis. The final six chapters utilise the report from a serious medical accident to illustrate more concretely how resilience engineering can make a difference, both to the understanding of how accidents happen and to what an organisation can do to become more resilient.

Air safety is right now at a point where the chances of being killed in an aviation accident are far lower than the chances to winning a jackpot in any of the major lotteries. However, keeping or improving that performance level requires a critical analysis of some events that, despite scarce, point to structural failures in the learning process. The effect of these failures could increase soon if there is not a clear and right development path. This book tries to identify what is wrong, why there are things to fix, and some human factors principles to keep in aircraft design and operations. Features Shows, through different events, how the system learns through technology, practices, and regulations and the pitfalls of that learning process Discusses the use of information technology in safety-critical environments and why procedural knowledge is not enough Presents air safety management as a successful process, but at the same time, failures coming from technological and organizational features are shown Offers ways to improve from the human factors side by getting the right lessons from recent events

This book provides a balanced account of the global environmental issues which threaten our society and which we neglect at our peril. Analysing both social and environmental components of the issues - global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain and drought - the book offers a valuable integrative approach and a detailed analysis of environmental issues in a clear, non-technical manner. Emphasising the climatological dimension common to all environmental issues, Global Environmental Issues recognises the multi-faceted nature of the issues, their common causes and the possibility of common solutions. Assessment of socio-economic, cultural amd political factors provides a balanced introduction to both the dangers and advantages of human interference with the environment. What have we done to deserve our current environmental crisis? Can we solve our current environmental problems, or is it too late? This new edition of a best selling text is completely updated and expands to include greater detail and new material such as a new section on atmospheric modelling. A glossary has been added together with a bibliography for further reading at the end of each chapter, allowing readers to develop their interest in specific areas. The interdisciplinary text will prove invaluable to students in geography, environmental studies and other courses in whcih the environmental approach is emphasised.

An argument in favor of finding a place for humans (and humanness) in the future digital economy. In the digital economy, accountants, baristas, and cashiers can be automated out of employment; so can surgeons, airline pilots, and cab drivers. Machines will be able to do these jobs more efficiently, accurately, and inexpensively. But, Nicholas Agar warns in this provocative book, these developments could result in a radically disempowered humanity. The digital revolution has brought us new gadgets and new things to do with them. The digital revolution also brings the digital economy, with machines capable of doing humans' jobs. Agar explains that developments in artificial intelligence enable computers to take over not just routine tasks but also the kind of “mind work” that previously relied on human intellect, and that this threatens human agency. The solution, Agar argues, is a hybrid social-digital economy. The key value of the digital economy is efficiency. The key value of the social economy is humanness. A social economy would be centered on connections between human minds. We should reject some digital automation because machines will always be poor substitutes for humans in roles that involve direct contact with other humans. A machine can count out pills and pour out coffee, but we want our nurses and baristas to have minds like ours. In a hybrid social-digital economy, people do the jobs for which feelings matter and machines take on data-intensive work. But humans will have to insist on their relevance in a digital age.

Understanding how to make the best of human skills and knowledge is essential in the design of technology and jobs, particularly where these involve decision-making and uncertainty. Recent developments have been made in naturalistic decision-making, distributed cognition and situational awareness, particularly with respect to aviation, transport an