Assessment of mining activities with respect to the environmental protection

This paper deals with the impact of mining on the environment. Coal mining is still among the most widespread and most intense mining activity, which disturbs the landscape around us bringing regional environmental, economic and aesthetic problems. However, for many countries in the world, including the Czech Republic, deposits of raw materials play an important role, especially for purposes of producing electricity and thermal energy. At the same time, growing emphasis laid on the environmental protection can be observed worldwide. To meet the increasing ecological demands, it is reasonable to consider the most significant aspects of mining activities from the environmental point of view, as well as to consider the possibilities of the abandoned mines utilization as possible waste dumps. Parts of this problem consist in: the monitoring, environmental impacts assessment of exploration and mining activities and waste disposal mining, which may significantly contribute to the environmental protection in the future. Several parameters that can significantly affect the usability of the waste disposal mining, such as geological structure, hydro-geological conditions, material composition and physical and mechanical properties of rocks are discussed in detail in this work. The article also includes a practical example of Environmental Impact Assessment process for the particular activity of OKD stock company, which is the only producer of hard coal (bituminous coal) in the Czech Republic. Its coal is mined in the southern part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin - in the Ostrava-Karvina coal district. KeywordsWeb of Science221937

INTERACTIONS AND INFLUENCES ON COAL MINERS' SAFETY ATTENTION: AN EVALUATION USING IMPROVED DEMATEL-ISM

In coal mining, the myriad of factors influencing miners' attention to safety necessitates deeper exploration. Particularly, discerning the significance and interplay of these factors offers crucial insights into the actual disparities in miners' safety attentiveness. Yet, a limited number of comprehensive studies address this dimension. Thus, an advanced Decision Making Trial Evaluation Laboratory-Interpretive Structural Model (DEMATEL-ISM) has been employed to probe the determinants impacting coal miners' safety focus and the mechanisms underpinning these interactions. The objective is to provide strategies that could diminish the occurrence of minor accidents. Results revealed that there are 9 causative factors and 6 resultant factors shaping the coal miners' attention to safety. Within the structural model of these factors, three layers and seven levels were identified. Notably, the intricacy of relationships among these factors was found to be profound. Emphasis is recommended on the management of these intricate deep-level causative factors boasting high driving power, and mid-level resultant factors characterized by both substantial driving force and dependence

C-structures and f-structures for the British national corpus

We describe how the British National Corpus (BNC), a one hundred million word balanced corpus of British English, was parsed into Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) c-structures and f-structures, using a treebank-based parsing architecture. The parsing architecture uses a state-of-the-art statistical parser and reranker trained on the Penn Treebank to produce context-free phrase structure trees, and an annotation algorithm to automatically annotate these trees into LFG f-structures. We describe the pre-processing steps which were taken to accommodate the differences between the Penn Treebank and the BNC. Some of the issues encountered in applying the parsing architecture on such a large scale are discussed. The process of annotating a gold standard set of 1,000 parse trees is described. We present evaluation results obtained by evaluating the c-structures produced by the statistical parser against the c-structure gold standard. We also present the results obtained by evaluating the f-structures produced by the annotation algorithm against an automatically constructed f-structure gold standard. The c-structures achieve an f-score of 83.7% and the f-structures an f-score of 91.2%

Case For Consultation: A Managers Perspective

This research supports the hypothesis that consultation, team work and congruence is a strategy to reduce risk, and that effective consultation reduces the potential for outrage when things do not go to plan. The research sought the opinion of managers on these matters, and if they were aware of own-biases that undermine the effectiveness in which they engage, and of antidotes to such “hazardous thoughts”. To understand what influences consultation (“upwards listening” as such) we conducted 4 preliminary one-on-one interviews. We then surveyed a total of 20 senior managers and other stakeholders in the coal mining industry, in an on-line survey. 100% of respondents (17/17) believe that access to information improves chances of making a correct decision; 78% of respondents (13/17) believe that managers are conscious of a socially divide (class-stratification) from subordinates; 100% of respondents (17/17) believe that managers must consult with employees in order to reduce Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) risk; 58% (11/19) believe that someone should be held to account for an OH&S disaster; 94% (15/16) believe that distributed decision making results in more resilient operations; 65% (11/17) agree that it is important for employees to have representatives to act as a channel of communication with management on safety and health matters; 71% (11/17) believe that elected safety and health representatives are likely to abuse their powers if they are a member of a union; 82% (14/17) believe that very close co-operation between mine managers, the Mines Inspectorate, and the workmen's inspectors reduces OH&S risk. The research demonstrated that managers are conscious of own-biases, and of behaviour that is capable of undermining consultation and system safety. Managers also understand why mismanagement of information can be promoted by others as prima-facie-evidence-of-neglect, or malfeasance, when disaster strikes. It is hypothesised that managers in safety system are akin to jurors in the judicial system; ethics apply, and both managers and jurors are expected to represent the interests of community, not themselves

J Organ Psychol

CC999999/Intramural CDC HHS/United States2019-02-26T00:00:00Z30820492PMC6390287vault:3159

Misc. Pub. 92-1

I submit herewith the annual report of the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, School of Agriculture and Land Resources Management, University of Alaska Fairbanks, for the period ending December 31, 1991. This is done in accordance with an act of the Congress, approved M arch 2, 1887, entitled "An act to establish Agricultural Experiment Stations, in connection with the Agricultural Colleges established in the several states under the provisions of an act approved July 2,1862, and under the acts supplementary thereto," and also of the act of the Alaska Territorial Legislature, approved March 12,1935, accepting the provisions of the act of Congress. James V. Drew, DirectorStatement of Purpose -- Drastic Retreat of Columbia Glacier Shows Natural Reforestation at Work -- Reindeer Range and Productivity Studied in Beringia Heritage International Park -- Radio Collars Aid Research into Reindeer Calf Mortality -- Moose Browse on Site of Mining Reclamation Study -- Developing Marketing Strategies for Alaska's Agricultural Entrepreneurs -- R.S. 2477— The Key to Access Across Federal Lands -- Plant, Animal and Soil Sciences -- Forest Sciences -- Resources Management -- Grants and Funds -- Financial Statement -- Publications -- Staf

Advancing self-escape training : a needs analysis based on the National Academy of Sciences report "improving self-escape from underground coal mines."

"This report summarizes a needs analysis and actions taken by NIOSH based on the National Academy of Sciences recommendations specific to advancing self-escape training, with an emphasis on preparing rank-and-file mineworkers for self-escape. This report also provides the foundation for the practical guidance offered in its sister publication, the NIOSH Information Circular (IC) "Self-escape Core Competency Profile: Guidance for Improving Underground Coal Miners' Self-escape Competency" [NIOSH 2023], which offers an evidence-based self-escape competency framework derived from the results of this work." - NIOSHTIC-2NIOSHTIC no. 20067688Suggested citation: NIOSH [2023]. Advancing self-escape training: a needs analysis based on the National Academy of Sciences report, \u201cImproving Self-escape from Underground Coal Mines.\u201d By Hoebbel CL, Bellanca JL, Ryan ME, Brnich MJ. Pittsburgh PA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2023-134, https://doi.org/10.26616/NIOSHPUB2023134