Nonfatal Occupational Injuries in Norwegian Farmers

Svendsen, Kristin,Aas, Oddfrid,Hilt, Bjorn Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute 2014 Safety and health at work Vol.5 No.3

Background: Agriculture ranks among the most dangerous trades worldwide. There is, however, still a lack of knowledge on nonfatal injuries in agriculture. The aim of this study was to describe the nature and occurrence of nonfatal injuries in farmers in two counties in central Norway. Methods: A questionnaire was sent to 7,004 farmers in Norway. We asked for information about the respondents and the farm, whether the farmer had had work-related injuries on the farm during the past 12 months, and details about the incidence and seriousness of the injury. Results: A total of 2,699 respondents gave a response rate of 42%. Of the respondents, 249 (9.2%) reported one or more work-related injuries. The most usual cause of injury involved an animal, and >75% of these happened inside the outbuilding. Among these, 17.5% had a consequence of sick leave or a more serious result. When all the accidents were analyzed by stepwise logistic regression, only the variables: works alone, has >3,500 stipulated working hours at the farm, and the type of production were statistical significant explanatory variables for having an injury. Conclusion: Incorporating safety aspects to a greater extend in the design and construction of outbuildings would make a substantial contribution to injury prevention in agriculture.

East Asia Regional Consultation on Water for Food and Rural Development

Svendsen Mark Korean National Committee on Irrigation and Draina 1999 한국관개배수논문집 Vol.6 No.2

Nonfatal Occupational Injuries in Norwegian Farmersq

Kristin Svendsen,Oddfrid Aas,Bjørn Hilt 한국산업안전보건공단 산업안전보건연구원 2014 Safety and health at work Vol.5 No.3

Background: Agriculture ranks among the most dangerous trades worldwide. There is, however, still alack of knowledge on nonfatal injuries in agriculture. The aim of this study was to describe the natureand occurrence of nonfatal injuries in farmers in two counties in central Norway. Methods: A questionnaire was sent to 7,004 farmers in Norway. We asked for information about therespondents and the farm, whether the farmer had had work-related injuries on the farm during the past12 months, and details about the incidence and seriousness of the injury. Results: A total of 2,699 respondents gave a response rate of 42%. Of the respondents, 249 (9.2%) reportedone or more work-related injuries. The most usual cause of injury involved an animal, and >75% of thesehappened inside the outbuilding. Among these, 17.5% had a consequence of sick leave or a more seriousresult. When all the accidents were analyzed by stepwise logistic regression, only the variables: worksalone, has >3,500 stipulated working hours at the farm, and the type of production were statisticalsignificant explanatory variables for having an injury. Conclusion: Incorporating safety aspects to a greater extend in the design and construction of outbuildingswould make a substantial contribution to injury prevention in agriculture.

IDEOLOGY AND THE EXPRESSION OF BRANDS

Jens Martin Svendsen 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2016 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2016 No.7

As the branding process is intertwined with already existing culturally conditioned conceptions, fundamental cultural processes in a society might affect the attraction of a specific brand. This means that trends of ethical or political fashions influence the popularity of brands and how they are recognized. In his seminal book Brand Society, Martin Kornberger argues that “brands have brought about a new way of living a life: the ubiquitous, pervasive yet little analyzed notion of lifestyle encapsulates brands’ power to quite literally stylize life”. He points to three influential elements—he calls them a troika—provides a basis for this analysis. These are Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics. (Kornberger, 2010) I will here propose a fourth, namely stories, tales, and that which lies behind these, modes of understanding, you might even want to call it a sentiment. I hope to show that such stories (sentiments) take on the form of ideas and thus can have profound political implications, if not to say that they have ideological origins and in this way far-reaching consequences, the effects on brands and the use of attire coupled to them just being one. This fourth element I prefer to call simply Sentiment, even though feeling would probably be just as appropriate or even Thought-trends. Ideology could be another possible term, but this is really an outcome rather than a good term in and of itself for what I intend to show. Yet another possibility would be to use the term Myth, then of course with reference to Barthes myth-concept. (Barthes, 1997) His concept has to do with self-descriptions, mainly focusing on national sentiments and self-understandings of what it might mean to be for instance French or British, Barthes exemplifies by referring to concrete manifestations such as the Eiffel Tower or Five o’clock tea, answers to questions like ’Who are we?’ or ‘How do people like us live?’. These are national myths based on some sort of ethnical factor, living-space if you will. This is however not what I’m focusing on, rather under-currents to thinking of another sort. So I’ll just stick with Sentiments for the time being To show this, I will take help of a specific case and in so doing focus on its position in the late 60-ties and early 70-ties. The case accordingly focuses on how the brand Fj?llr?ven has been acknowledged as having varying political, ethical and fashionable positioning over decades. The case is compared to another related brand within the outdoor equipment-slash-fashion industry, Hagl?fs. Possibly a lesser known brand and this have its explanations as will be seen. One aspect of this sentiment is stories; if the sentiment manifests itself as a kind of self-understanding in terms of self-stories, tales of oneself and of one’s history, then stories is a facet of the sentiment. The term stories might imply storytelling, a term lately frequently used to denote a marketing tool within something in practical marketing coined content marketing. By this one might mean marketing that is not primarily targeted at conveying a simple message pertaining to a customer need or want, rather at building trustworthiness in an attempt to relate to customers sense of belonging or search for ideas and suggestions—the helpful company with a legitimate history and position in society. Storytelling has been the subject of many books, both textbooks and consultancy literature, Brown, (2004), Mossberg & Nissen Johansen (2006), Thier (2006), to name but a few. Content marketing is not that novel an idea as Pulizzi (2012) contends, it has been around for for hundreds of years. His exampel is John Deere and the compay’s strive to educate its customers in how to use equipment. Another example would be Jell-O and their recipies in the early 20th century. Another aspect of storytelling might be the so called corporate narrative, this phenomenon has been analyzed by many, Barbara Czarniawska (1997, 2005, 2009) to name but one. She even makes an interesting connection between corporate storytelling and novels, as well as referring storytelling to leadership. In this sence stories and storytelling is not just marketing, it is also part of an organizations inner workings, as leadership and the (possibly co-) creation of a shared identity; it is stories of the self and stories that would contextualize and explain the position of the self, thus pertaining to sentimets, also of course to explain and rationalize the actions taken within the actual context that is described by these stories, hence they are can be seen as manifestations of a mental selfportrait. The idea of realization of actions motivated by and pertaining to stories and storytelling in organization and marketing has also been analyzed by Rehnberg (2014) from a linguistic viewpoint, using Fj?llr?ven as an exampel for the analysis. She of course has a much greater scope for her analysis than just actions, but it is one of her vital points. Stories in her sense can be of two kinds, Strategic stories and Common stories, the difference being that Strategic stories are stories that are created by a commercial actor. She talks of stories as chains of text, texts that are stories can be consecutively constructed, an obvious example being blogg texts. These texts develop a story, further Rehnberg points out that they in themselves are inscribed in stories: stories contextualize stories so to speak. These contextualizing stories she calls meta-stories, stories that remain weak in their explicitness, yet strong in their impact. Invisible in details yet most visible in society, both as self-understanding of what’s importante and as self-descriptions of the social, even models for explanations. One might come to think about Lyotard and his pivotal work La Condition Postmodern. Lyotards critizises the idea of mega-stories and talks about small, maybe even local, stories. (Lyotard, 1984) A Lyotardian mega-story is one that pertains to the whole society, in a sense claims to explain everything in society, a story that tells a bout developlemnt and societal focus and strive; it explains our moment in history and what we are as a society. Lyotard maintains that these stories more or less has outlived themselves. This is what he calls the postmodern condition. Knowledge then has to be construed in other terms than in something under the umbrellla of such a mega-story, somewhat holistic, i.e. understod in terms of a whole system rather than as disconected units or propositions. His critique can be said to be directed towards ideas that has come to be expressed by people such as the 19th century philosophers and pedagogue Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) and, the better known, John Dewey (1859-1952), and possibly also, at least in an idirect way, the italian philosopher Gianbatista Vico (1668-1744). But in the course of progression of this text, I hope it will be clear that the ideas of these three very influencial, or semi-influencial, philosophers, are not totally consistant with each other even though they share some similarities on some level. And of course, that at the point where they share simlarities, they also help to explain the case of Fj?llr?ven. The American pragmatist John Dewey is one of the heavily influential philosophers during the 19th and 20th centuries. He can be said to represent a very dominant strain of thought that has its roots in 18th century enlightenment. One early forerunner within the field of pedagogy is the now since long forgotten Herbert Spencer. The strain of thought these philosophers represent can be coined progressivist. The idea within this thought model is that improvement is possible through knowledge, a kind of optimism when it comes to society and human effort to improve its living conditions, and being in the world. But knowledge should and must be rooted in empirical observations. In this way, the study of scripture would not lead to knowledge, at least not of the world in which we live. A boy or a girl (depending if you follow Dewey or Spencer) reaches knowledge of the empirical world when confronted with it. The world poses the problems, and the boy or girl looks for solutions to these problems. The problems occur when ambitions to do things are limited in some way, the problem is to overcome these limitations, in this way the solutions have a two-pronged grounding: in part in the empirical, in part in the personal. It is driven by personally experienced limitations, and by empirical observations. The same is true of science, Dewey maintains, and in this way all knowledge-seeking activities. The ideal is the tailor, the cabinetmaker and the shoemaker: the craftsman, in short. Knowledge is within the world and about the world. The outcome of knowledge is better a living-in-the-world and a better life for the living people, thus knowledge is part of the improvement of life for human beings, for society as a whole, if you will. This progressivist mentality is linked to society and everything in it and thus to brands that accordingly resonates the progressivist sentiments and hopes so that the brand of Fj?llr?ven can be said to be an example of progression in this progressivist tradition. I’ll come back to this later, and show how this is possible. I have earlier mentioned Giambattista Vico (1664-1744), an Italian philosopher and educator. Contrary to Dewey and Spencer, he describes the development of society in terms of stories resonating in society. Now, one might say that this is just what the progressivist sentiment is, a story, a tale if you will, of progression and improvement. This sentiment has very much been the guide of political judgement (an apparent example is Swedish Government Official Reports, this manner of preparing decisions is not uncommon elsewhere either, as far as I know) and pedagogy, where students are urged to find out for themselves, ideas of individualized learning, problem based learning (PBL) and more. The idea at the core of these methodologies are in all cases that student’s lust for learning and problem solving is vital for learning. Problem solving and invention is hailed, whilst repetitious repeating of authoritative commandments is unsolicited; progression is also a questioning of authorities, sometimes anyway. So if the progressivist sentiment is a story told, or rather untold but communicated throughout society, it still drives action and strategic choices, and it still is what it is not supposed to be. It is in effect a Lyotardian mega-story, and also a Rehnbergian. Gianbatista Vico argues that a society develops its understanding of itself and its mentality in terms of story about itself in three phases, the divine, the heroic and the human. The three phases are characterized by three different approaches to knowledge and truth. The first rather primitive phase, Divine, is characterized by an equation of empirical phenomenon with divine phenomenon. Comprehension is driven by Poetry, Phantasy and Metaphysics, and so builds the basis for construing the world. The metaphor is characterizing this stage, in that the world is described in divine terms that they themselves represent rather than present, it is what it is not. The second phase according to Vico is the Heroic. It is described as idealization, institutions are feudal, the central figure of speech is the metonym that one stands for all, the king for the county. Society will be embodied by class difference. The third stage Vico calls the Human phase. Irony and rationalism are characterizing factors, democracy and general laws, too. The phases can appear a trifle optimistic if they are seen as consecutive, which is what I think Vico suggests. The important idea that I want to hold on to here is not the phases progressiveness taken as a whole, rather what they contain by themselves. Vico's thesis is that truth exists as a consequence of forms of understanding, in the text, in the sentiments condensed into stories and understandings resonating within society. This idea I want to use to explain why the progressivist sentiments can be said to resonate by and with a brand as a token re-presentative re-verbarating, i.e. re-stating, the story resonating in a society: a story or rational knowledge-seeking in order to enhance welfare and ease endeavors, solve problems we encounter and make life a smoother and more efficient ride. With reference to Umberto Eco, Martin Kornberger points out that an author seldom, if ever, has any control over the interpretations of their work. This idea has also been put forward by Paul Ricoeur. This means that the talk, the communicated ideas, the re-verberation if you will, has a greater impact on the meaning of a work than the work itself, the work itself being one of the factors influencing the meaning creating process but not the only. The meaning creating process thus becomes an ever ongoing socially contingent process rather than a stable, once and for all, established fact. Transferred to the field of brands, as Kornberger does, the idea is that brands resonate in society, and they resonate ideas that people have, individuals and collectives. Marcel Danesi voices a similar idea when he affirms that advertising that is in some sense or another successful always resonates with something outside of the brand meaning itself. (Danesi, 2008) An intertextual connection to societal factors. If this is true, then brands resonate not just in an individual sense with individual co-creators, but also in a collective sense with ideas rather than individuals, individuals being the carriers, vehicles if you will, of meaning that co-create meaning but the long term intertextual factors needs to be taken into account. If this is so, then Fj?llr?ven would be a case in point and, further, intertextuality does not need to be communicated explicitly, it is still present, like progressivism is present and thus would influence the meaning construct of a brand, and consequently its sense of significance, value, for want of a better word. The progressivist sentiment becomes an actor in itself that is involved in the co-authoring of brand meaning. Let me now turn to Fj?llr?ven. Fj?llr?ven first saw daylight in 1960. It was commenced by ?ke Nordin as a cellar company sewing outdoor equipment of his own design, selling it locally. In less than ten years he had built a company that produced all sorts of equipment, although his original product were rucksacks. These rucksacks had for the time a novel design in the sense that this design was first offered in a commercial situation by Fj?llr?ven. ?ke Nordin had built his own carrying-frames and sewn his own sacks to go with the frame himself. The design with frames that one can lash one’s carrying-load onto was of course not new, what was new was Fj?llr?ven’s applications and commercialization of the concept. At the time another outdoor-equipment supplier was very well established on the Swedish market, Hagl?fs. In 1914 the entrepreneur Wiktor Hagl?f started the self-named business. He began his business in a very similar way to ?ke Nordin, by selling rucksack of his own make, primarily to local farmers and loggers. The Hagl?f business grew as his rucksacks were perceived as modern and would meet high demands on quality in the wear and tear of the logger’s and farmer’s hard work. The rucksacks of the Hagl?f make were even chosen by the Swedish army and used well into the 70-ties. The Hagl?f rucksacks were robust and heavy. One voiced from the time—early 70-ties—stated that if you wanted a rucksack to last forever, then you should choose a Hagl?fs. But if you wanted something sleek, slender and light-weight, then Fj?llr?ven would be the preferred the choice. The thing that is voiced here is significant in more than one way, I think. First, a quality argument is not always sustainable. Second, what is perceived as ‘the best’ is not always obvious. Third, success breeds success in a very specific fashion. What is put forward is the choice between a quality condition and something else, what this something else is, is not exactly clear, more of a feeling than something apparent and markedly substantial in a tangible respect. Except maybe for the weight-factor, which can be interpreted in quite another direction, light-weight meaning fragile, even delicate. In fact, the voice hinted in that direction by supplementing the assessment by saying that if one would venture to drop the Hagl?fs rucksack from way up high onto a hard surface it would sustain the fall and still be in a usable state. It was thus maintained that that would not be the case with a rucksack of a Fj?llr?ven make. So one might think that any rational ourdoorer (hiker or backpacker) would pick the rucksack with the most likelihood to sustain harsh conditions as the Swedish army in those days did, but that is not so, not in all cases anyway, since the Fj?llr?ven rucksack with its concept of a frame onto which the actual sacks were fastened. The concept was, at least for some, obviously more important than durability. But another explanation is possible to, as I see it, and that explanation has to do with fashion: it was more fashionable for some people to carry your things in a Fj?llr?ven rucksack than in a Hagl?fs. If this is true then this fashionablity needs explaining, and it is precisely here that the tell-tale stories plays vital role. During the 19th and 20th centuries a strong undercurrent was the progressivist sentiment: progress, strive for discoveries, inventions, the future is the important age—past is bygones—political inventions to better society, social inventions to better life, inventions in the field of technology, interventions to improve individuals as well as collectives (“A future to believe in”, a phrase presently used by one of the contenders to the presidency of the United States of America, the leftist candidate). Fj?llr?ven presented such an invention that intervened in the life of backpackers as well as outdoorers, the hikers of the time. The invention was the fashionable, the progressive—the political if you will—that bettered life. This progressiveness was the social wave that Fj?llr?ven could surf on and it became the wave of success for Fj?llr?ven that the firm still seems to surf on. Hagl?fs was left behand, and possibly still is. The invention was not first and foremost a technological invention as an instance in the tale of progress; a social re-verberation to allude to the Danesian concept of synergy. Following Danesi, a valid story is a story that has the ability to attract sentiment, a story that will inscribe and make sense in terms of a synergetic effect. If the undercurrent is progressivism and that sentiment rationalizes Fj?llr?ven and their offering to users of rucksacks in terms of a story of progression, then that would account for the position Fj?llr?ven got, and, at least to a degree, still retain.

Occurrence of Cognitive and Neurological Symptoms in Norwegian Dentists

Hilt, Bjorn,Svendsen, Kristin,Syversen, Tore,Aas, Oddfrid,Qvenild, Torgunn Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute 2011 Safety and health at work Vol.2 No.2

Objectives: Previous investigations have presented some evidence of late cognitive effects in dental personnel exposed to metallic mercury. We wanted to examine if Norwegian dentists have an increased prevalence of symptoms consistent with neurological and/or cognitive malfunction. Methods: The study group consisted of 406 dentists from central Norway and 217 controls from the general population, all under the age of 70. They had responded to a standardised postal questionnaire (Euroquest) inquiring about seven symptoms in regard to neurology, psychosomatics, memory, concentration, mood, sleep disturbances, and fatigue. A score was calculated for each symptom based on 4 to 15 single questions scored on a scale from 1 (seldom or never) to 4 (very often). Results: The dentists and controls had a participation rate of 57.2 % and 42.9 % respectively. The dentists reported no more cognitive symptoms than the controls, with low average symptom scores from 1.16 for neurological symptoms in males to 1.73 for fatigue in females. Corresponding figures for the controls were 1.22 and 1.77. There were a total of 1.2 % of the dentists and 1.8 % of the controls who reported having three or more of the seven symptoms "often" or more frequently. Conclusion: Norwegian dentists do not report more cognitive and neurological symptoms than controls from the general population.

Effectuality of Cleaning Workers' Training and Cleaning Enterprises' Chemical Health Hazard Risk Profiling

Suleiman, Abdulqadir M.,Svendsen, Kristin V.H. Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute 2015 Safety and health at work Vol.6 No.4

Background: Goal-oriented communication of risk of hazards is necessary in order to reduce risk of workers' exposure to chemicals. Adequate training of workers and enterprise priority setting are essential elements. Cleaning enterprises have many challenges and the existing paradigms influence the risk levels of these enterprises. Methods: Information on organization and enterprises' prioritization in training programs was gathered from cleaning enterprises. A measure of enterprises' conceptual level of importance of chemical health hazards and a model for working out the risk index (RI) indicating enterprises' conceptual risk level was established and used to categorize the enterprises. Results: In 72.3% of cases, training takes place concurrently with task performances and in 67.4% experienced workers conduct the trainings. There is disparity between employers' opinion on competence level of the workers and reality. Lower conceptual level of importance was observed for cleaning enterprises of different sizes compared with regional safety delegates and occupational hygienists. Risk index values show no difference in risk level between small and large enterprises. Conclusion: Training of cleaning workers lacks the prerequisite for suitability and effectiveness to counter risks of chemical health hazards. There is dereliction of duty by management in the sector resulting in a lack of competence among the cleaning workers. Instituting acceptable easily attainable safety competence level for cleaners will conduce to risk reduction, and enforcement of attainment of the competence level would be a positive step.

CRIMINALITY,MARKETING AND THE RECIDIVISM PROBLEM

Håkan Preiholt,Martin Svendsen 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2016 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2016 No.7

The overarching aim of this paper is to show how a marketing perspective, together with an analysis of dressing and clothes on groups in our society, can help to explain such tangible issues as the recidivism sequence for criminals, this being an important factor for the crime rate in western countries. The problem is visualized in two ways: firstly though statistics from The Swedish Crime Survey, 2015, and secondly by in-depth description of systems of dressing and deporting of oneself—one’s demeanor—complemented with interviews with criminals showing how the identity is drifting into the form of authenticity, which is elaborated as a marketing communication problem in this paper. The analysis is based on a marketing communication perspective in conjunction with individual and group authenticity issues. In sum, it is about the individual recidivism in getting the authenticity of criminality. This means that the identity is visibly anchoring itself in the form of a criminal authenticity. The study boils down to a statement, which can be coined “The longer a person is in prison, the greater the probability of recidivism into criminal activity for that same person.” The conclusion is that we cannot-paradoxically, as it may seem-cure the recidivism problem in the world of criminals since one cannot change an authenticity-authentic identity-well anchored through personal outfits, thus communicating to the society at large. Finally, we provide reasons why the correctional institutions still have great difficulties to bring down the criminal recidivism rate.

Effectuality of Cleaning Workers' Training and Cleaning Enterprises' Chemical Health Hazard Risk Profiling

Abdulqadir M. Suleiman,Kristin V.H. Svendsen 한국산업안전보건공단 산업안전보건연구원 2015 Safety and health at work Vol.6 No.4

Background: Goal-oriented communication of risk of hazards is necessary in order to reduce risk of workers’ exposure to chemicals. Adequate training of workers and enterprise priority setting are essential elements. Cleaning enterprises have many challenges and the existing paradigms influence the risk levels of these enterprises. Methods: Information on organization and enterprises’ prioritization in training programs was gathered from cleaning enterprises. A measure of enterprises’ conceptual level of importance of chemical health hazards and a model for working out the risk index (RI) indicating enterprises’ conceptual risk level was established and used to categorize the enterprises. Results: In 72.3% of cases, training takes place concurrently with task performances and in 67.4% experienced workers conduct the trainings. There is disparity between employers’ opinion on competence level of the workers and reality. Lower conceptual level of importance was observed for cleaning enterprises of different sizes compared with regional safety delegates and occupational hygienists. Risk index values show no difference in risk level between small and large enterprises. Conclusion: Training of cleaning workers lacks the prerequisite for suitability and effectiveness to counter risks of chemical health hazards. There is dereliction of duty by management in the sector resulting in a lack of competence among the cleaning workers. Instituting acceptable easily attainable safety competence level for cleaners will conduce to risk reduction, and enforcement of attainment of the competence level would be a positive step.

Dielectrophoretic manipulation of human chromosomes in microfluidic channels: extracting chromosome dielectric properties

Casper Hyttel Clausen,Maria Dimaki,Sonia Buckley,Winnie Edith Svendsen 한국바이오칩학회 2011 BioChip Journal Vol.5 No.1

An investigation of the dielectric properties of polyamine buffer prepared human chromo-somes is presented in this paper. Chromosomes prepared in this buffer are only a few micrometers in size and shaped roughly like spherical discs. Dielectropho-resis was therefore chosen as the method of manipulation combined with a custom designed microfluidic system containing the required electrodes for dielec-trophoresis experiments. Our results show that although this system is presently not able to distinguish between the different chromosomes, it can provide average data for the dielectric properties of human chromosomes in polyamine buffer. These can then be used to optimize system designs for further characterization and even sorting. The experimental data from the dielectrophoretic manipulation were combined with theoretical calculations to extract a range of values for the permittivity and conductivity of human poly-amine buffer prepared chromosomes.

Gene Co-expression Network Analysis Associated with Acupuncture Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis: An Animal Model

Dea Louise Ravn,Afsaneh Mohammadnejad,Kemal Sabaredzovic,Weilong Li,Jesper Lund,Shuxia Li,Anders Jørgen Svendsen,Veit Schwämmle,Qihua Tan 대한침구의학회 2020 대한침구의학회지 Vol.37 No.2

Background: Classical acupuncture is being used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). To explore the biological response to acupuncture, a network-based analysis was performed on gene expression data collected from an animal model of RA treated with acupuncture.Methods: Gene expression data were obtained from published microarray studies on blood samples from rats with collagen induced arthritis (CIA) and non-CIA rats, both treated with manual acupuncture. The weighted gene co-expression network analysis was performed to identify gene clusters expressed in association with acupuncture treatment time and RA status. Gene ontology and pathway analyses were applied for functional annotation and network visualization.Results: A cluster of 347 genes were identified that differentially downregulated expression in association with acupuncture treatment over time; specifically in rats with CIA with module-RA correlation at 1 hour after acupuncture (-0.27; <i>p</i> < 0.001) and at 34 days after acupuncture (-0.33; <i>p</i> < 0.001). Functional annotation showed highly significant enrichment of porphyrin-containing compound biosynthetic processes (<i>p</i> < 0.001). The network-based analysis also identified a module of 140 genes differentially expressed between CIA and non-CIA in rats (<i>p</i> < 0.001). This cluster of genes was enriched for antigen processing and presentation of exogenous peptide antigen (<i>p</i> < 0.001). Other functional gene clusters previously reported in earlier studies were also observed.<br>Conclusion: The identified gene expression networks and their hub-genes could help with the understanding of mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of RA, as well understanding the effects of acupuncture treatment of RA.