Exploring the attributes of collaborative working in construction industry

Due to the increased level of uncertainty of construction market and the variety of building functions, the practitioners in construction need work together more closely, which means a higher degree of collaborative working is often necessary. There is evidence that higher degree of collaborative working can produce more successful projects, but there has been only limited research to examine the definition of collaborative working. The lack of understanding of collaborative working resulted in confusion of application of more collaborative approaches e.g. partnering or alliancing. The work presented here is part of an ongoing PhD study which aims to explore the impact of collaborative working on construction project performance. The aim of this paper is to identify a spectrum of attributes of collaborative working, which will facilitate the understanding what collaborative working is, why collaborative working is needed and how to work together. In order to identify those attributes of collaborative working, the method of ‘identification test’ will be adopted, which is based on the recent related literature

Cats and dogs and pheromones: researching the student experience

Pheromone Therapy is a unique online course pioneered by the University of Lincoln and delivered through the university's virtual learning environment. The course adopted innovative practices such as induction activities designed to embed the skills required for successful online learning, a range of interactions with content and focus on opportunities for socialisation including ‘café’ forums and a student gallery. Retention is a key issue with distance delivery (Simpson, 2003) but listening to the student voice is only a comparatively recent initiative. Past studies have focussed on non-completion (Yorke & Longden, 2008) or the student experience on campus (JISC, 2007). Pheromone Therapy was an opportunity to capture data about distance learner’s experience of learning in isolation and collect individual responses to the course design. Findings provided a rich source of information for the construction and delivery of online courses in the future. Social aspects of learning online have been suggested as prime motivators in building a sense of collegiality. Pheromone Therapy was designed to include opportunities for social interaction but students demonstrated how the learning experiences which were situated in practice, with opportunities for shared participation, created the greatest cohesion and sense of community

The Impact of Power Training on Balance and Visual Feedback Removal

Because power training has been known to augment stability, the purpose of this study was to assess whether the removal of visual input affects lower limb muscle power production in young women who are resistance trained to the same degree it affects the untrained. This provided insight as far as the need for resistance training protocols in a largely untrained visually impaired population. To study this, fourteen college-aged female participants (18-23 years) performed a seated double-leg press on a leg sled machine, isolating power production of the lower limbs. After establishing baselines, which involved finding an average of power produced during five trials, the subjects were asked to close their eyes for the following set of five pushes. The power production was assessed by utilizing a Tendo Unit, with placement on one of the limbs of the machine, to measure power output during leg extension (measured in Watts). Statistics analyzed in SPSS determined the average power deficit of the athletic population to be 11.57 Watts, whereas the general population had an average power deficit of 37.43 Watts. The deficits experienced by each respective group upon visual removal were significantly different from one another, as evidenced by a p-value of .048. This accentuated the power-trained group’s resilience. A suggested training plan regimen including cardiorespiratory, resistance, flexibility, and neuromotor exercises has been appended for persons experiencing visual impairment and seeking to better their balance through power

Ion mixing to produce amorphous Mo-Ru superconducting films

Amorphous Mo55Ru45 alloy films were formed by ion mixing of multilayered samples. The ion mixed films, which contain no metalloid element, show excellent superconducting properties. The measured properties are correlated with the microstructure obtained by both x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy

Caddo Ceramic Assemblages from Sites in the Ayish and Palo Gaucho Bayou Basins, San Augustine County, Texas

In 1939 and 1940, G. E. Arnold recorded a number of archaeological sites in and around San Augustine, in East Texas, as part of a Works Progress Administration-funded (WPA) archaeological survey of East Texas. The eight sites of concern in this article are in either the Ayish Bayou or Palo Gaucho Bayou basins; the former is a southward-flowing tributary to the Angelina River, while the latter is a southeast-flowing tributary to the Sabine River. In several instances, depending upon the circumstances, Arnold was able to collect substantial numbers of ancestral Caddo ceramic and lithic artifacts from several of these sites. The character of these ceramic sherds—and their stylistic and technological similarities or differences to the ceramic assemblages from the 1716-1719, 1722-1773 Mission Dolores de los Ais in San Augustine as well as other known sites on Palo Gaucho and Housen bayous and Attoyac Bayou are the primary focus of the analysis reported on herein, but other temporally diagnostic ceramic and lithic artifacts are discussed as well

Kajian terhadap ketahanan hentaman ke atas konkrit berbusa yang diperkuat dengan serat kelapa sawit

Konkrit berbusa merupakan sejenis konkrit ringan yang mempunyai kebolehkerjaan yang baik dan tidak memerlukan pengetaran untuk proses pemadatan. Umum mengenali konkrit berbusa sebagai bahan binaan yang mempunyai sifat kekuatan yang rendah dan lemah terutama apabila bahan binaan ini dikenakan tenaga hentaman yang tinggi. Namun begitu, konkrit berbusa merupakan bahan yang berpotensi untuk dijadikan sebagai bahan binaan yang berkonsepkan futuristik. Binaan futuristik adalah binaan yang bercirikan ringan, ekonomi, mudah dari segi kerja pembinaan dan yang paling penting adalah mesra alam. Dalam kajian ini, konkrit berbusa ditambah serat buangan pokok kelapa sawit untuk untuk meningkatkan sifat kekuatan atau rapuh. Serat kelapa sawit juga berfungsi mempertingkatkan ketahanan hentaman terutamanya aspek nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman dan nilai tenaga hentaman. Kandungan peratusan serat kelapa sawit yang digunakan adalah 10%, 20% dan 30% dengan dua ketumpatan konkrit berbusa iaitu 1000kg/m3 dan 1400kg/m3 . Untuk menentukan nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman dan nilai tenaga hentaman, ujikaji Indentasi dan ujikaji hentaman dilakukan ke atas sampel�sampel yang telah diawet selama 28 hari. Luas bawah graf tegasan-terikan yang diperolehi daripada ujikaji Indentasi merupakan nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman bagi sampel konkrit berbusa. Untuk ujikaji hentaman, keputusan ujikaji dinilai berdasarkan nilai tenaga hentaman untuk meretakkan sampel yang diperolehi daripada mesin ujikaji dynatup. Secara keseluruhannya, hasil dapatan utama bagi kedua-dua ujikaji menunjukkan sampel yang mengandungi peratusan serat kelapa sawit sebanyak 20% mempunyai nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman dan nilai tenaga hentaman yang tinggi. Serapan tenaga maksimum adalah sebanyak 4.517MJ/m3 untuk ketumpatan 1400kg/m3 . Ini menunjukkan ketumpatan 1400kg/m3 berupaya menyerap tenaga lebih baik berbanding ketumpatan 1000kg/m3 . Manakala untuk nilai tenaga hentaman maksimum adalah sebanyak 27.229J untuk ketumpatan 1400kg/m3 . Hasil dapatan tersebut menunjukkan ketumpatan 1400kg/m3 dengan peratusan serat sebanyak 20% berupaya mengalas tenaga hentaman yang lebih banyak sebelum sampel retak. Kesimpulannya, peningkatan ketumpatan konkrit berbusa dan pertambahan serat buangan kelapa sawit ke dalam konkrit berbusa dapat meningkatkan ciri ketahanan hentaman konkrit berbusa khususnya aspek nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman dan nilai tenaga hentaman

On Suggesting Entities as Web Search Queries

The Web of Data is growing in popularity and dimension, and named entity exploitation is gaining importance in many research fields. In this paper, we explore the use of entities that can be extracted from a query log to enhance query recommendation. In particular, we extend a state-of-the-art recommendation algorithm to take into account the semantic information associated with submitted queries. Our novel method generates highly related and diversified suggestions that we as- sess by means of a new evaluation technique. The manually annotated dataset used for performance comparisons has been made available to the research community to favor the repeatability of experiments