Fatigue is a recognized problem in many facets of the human enterprise. It is not confined to any one area of activity but enters all situations in which humans have to perform for extended intervals of time. Most problematic are the circumstances in which obligatory action is continuous and the results of failure are evidently serious or even catastrophic. Therefore, the modern media especially highlights fatigue-related failures in industries such as transportation, materials processing and healthcare. It can be, and indeed is, no coincidence that most of the spectacular failures in process control that have resulted in the world's largest industrial accidents have occurred in the small hours of the morning when the circadian rhythm is lowest and operator fatigue itself peaks. While there have been legislative efforts made at state, federal and international levels to regulate working hours of employees, the appropriate implementation of such legislation is still a long way off. The Handbook of Operator Fatigue provides a comprehensive account of the subject to serve as the definitive reference work for researchers, students and practitioners alike. The volume features 30 chapters written by experts from around the world to address each important facet of fatigue, including: the scale of the fatigue problem (Section I), the nature of fatigue (Section II), how to assess fatigue (Section III), the impact of fatigue on health (Section IV), fatigue in the workplace (Section V), the neurological basis of fatigue (VI), sleep disorders (VII), and the design of countermeasures to fatigue (VIII).

This book is a collection of contemporary applications of psychological insights into practical human factors issues. The topics are arranged largely according to an information processing/energetic approach to human behavior. Consideration is also given to human-computer interaction and organizational design.

Rapid advances in IT that allow complex information to be presented in high volume and density are challenging human ability to absorb and analyze data as never before. Designing technologies and systems to provide optimal sensory information to human users will be increasingly important. But to do this, quantitative relationships between brain behavior at a molecular level and observable human behavior must be better identified. This was previously considered to be a futuristic, and somewhat unrealistic, goal, however, recent advances in cognitive neuroscience have provided new opportunities for researchers. Refinements in imaging technology and simulation tools, and the learning yielded from them, provided the Quantifying Human Information Processing (QHIP) research teams strong starting points from which to further assess the ability to quantify human information processing. Led by experts in psychology, cognitive science, and information processing, among other fields, researchers sought to quantify the information flow in the nervous system, the limits of that flow, and how it is affected by emotions. The QHIP effort looked at specific aspects of the brain's information processing ability including measuring task-related and unrelated thought, assessing mental workload, and finding optimal information processing. The researchers found important indicators of both the capacity and limits of the human brain, and offer new ways to think about the brain. This work is a valuable contribution to the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and cognition, and will serve as a resource for human factors engineers designing the next generation of information, safety, analysis, and control systems because it starts to answer how to maximize information processing without overloading the central nervous system.

In recent years there has been steadily increasing interest in motor behavior and a growing awareness that a person not only has to know what to do in a particular situation, but also how to do it. The question of how actions are performed is of central concern in the area of motor control. This volume provides an advanced-level treatment of some of the main issues. Experiments concerned with basic processes of motor control typ ically examine very simple movements. At first glance these tasks appear to be far removed from real-world tasks, but it should be kept in mind that they are not studied for their own sake. One of the main reasons for using them is the well-recognized, but sometimes questioned, scientific principle that basic laws may be discovered more easily in simple situations than iIi complex situations. Another reason is that the simple tasks studied constitute building blocks of more complex tasks. For example, some complex skills can be consid ered as consisting of sequences of aimed movements, although, as no one would doubt, knowing everything about these individual movements does not mean knowing everything about, for example, typing. The first two chapters of the present volume focus on behavioral and physiological studies of programming and preparation of move ments. In the first chapter D. Rosenbaum introduces the concept of a motor program that is set up in advance of the overt movement."

Fatigue is a recognized problem in many facets of the human enterprise. It is not confined to any one area of activity but enters all situations in which humans have to perform for extended intervals of time. Most problematic are the circumstances in which obligatory action is continuous and the results of failure are evidently serious or even catastrophic. Therefore, the modern media especially highlights fatigue-related failures in industries such as transportation, materials processing and healthcare. It can be, and indeed is, no coincidence that most of the spectacular failures in process control that have resulted in the world's largest industrial accidents have occurred in the small hours of the morning when the circadian rhythm is lowest and operator fatigue itself peaks. While there have been legislative efforts made at state, federal and international levels to regulate working hours of employees, the appropriate implementation of such legislation is still a long way off. The Handbook of Operator Fatigue provides a comprehensive account of the subject to serve as the definitive reference work for researchers, students and practitioners alike. The volume features 30 chapters written by experts from around the world to address each important facet of fatigue, including: the scale of the fatigue problem (Section I), the nature of fatigue (Section II), how to assess fatigue (Section III), the impact of fatigue on health (Section IV), fatigue in the workplace (Section V), the neurological basis of fatigue (VI), sleep disorders (VII), and the design of countermeasures to fatigue (VIII).