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Improvement measures to achieve sustainable construction labor performance
Construction industry is the largest industrial employer of the world. However, construction labor suffers from declining productivity, job satisfaction and wellbeing. Given its volume and labor extensiveness, measures undertaken to improve labor sustainability of the construction industry would have high impact for the future. To improve the sustainability of labor performance, this paper suggests decision-making measures at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Data is generated through targeted interviews of the top management of the five biggest Norwegian construction contractors. The measures suggested by the interviewees are analyzed and complemented with theory through a systematic literature review, resulting in the development of 45 measures to achieve sustainable labor performance at strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making levels. Due to strict labor laws and regulations, some frequently reported measures in literature do not hold relevance to the Norwegian construction industry. However, the quality of data and unique position of the Norwegian construction industry magnifies its relevance to the global construction industry
Prevalence and correlates of psychiatric morbidity among caregivers of children and adolescents with neuropsychiatric disorders in Nigeria
Objective: To screen for psychiatric morbidity among caregivers of patients attending a child and adolescent psychiatric clinic. Method: A total of 155 patients and their caregivers were consecutively recruited over a 1 month period. Sociodemographic and clinical information on patients was obtained either from the hospital records or from the caregiver. Scoring on the Children’s Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) was done by clinicians. The caregivers were administered a sociodemographic questionnaire, GHQ-12, Zarit Burden interview, and the Columbia Impairment Scale. Results: Most caregivers observed in this study were females (80.5%) with mothers of the patients accounting for 78% of all the caregivers. A higher percentage of the patients were males (52.8%). Among the caregivers, 39.4% had GHQ Scores of 3 and above. Factors associated with psychiatric morbidity among caregivers include the high level of subjective burden of care, low level of functioning, high degree of impairment and low level of education among patients. Conclusion: The study reveals a high level of psychiatric morbidity among the carers of children and adolescents with mental health problems.Keywords: Psychiatric morbidity; Care giver; Children and adolescent
Threshold and non-linear behavior of lasers of and V - configurations
Dynamic properties of closed three level laser systems are investigated. Two
schemes of pumping - and V - are considered. It is shown that the
non-linear behavior of the photon number as a function of pump both near and
far above threshold is crucially different for these two configurations. In
particular, it is found that in the high pump regime laser can turn off in a
phase-transition-like manner in both and V schemes.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Optical Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy Imaging of 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene Droplets and Clusters on Mica
Optical and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to image 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) on a cleaved mica (001) surface. The vapor deposition of TNT resulted in ellipsoidal drop formation on the mica surface. The growth rate of the drop diameter was found to be linear with vapor dosing time while the drop density followed a 1/r2 dependence, where r is the length of the major axis of the ellipsoid, for increasing dosing times. TNT platelets surrounded by a region depleted of drops were observed after 8 hours of dosing. The depleted region is attributed to a 10% shrinkage for liquid-solid transition for TNT and also from the enthalpy of fusion which causes the vaporization of small drops and clusters of TNT. Residues of TNT located in the depleted regions were characterized by AFM lift-off forces and were attributed to different morphologies of TNT that nucleated at different sites on the mica surface or dinitro- and trinitro-benzene derivatives which are common impurities in 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene
A Generalized Enhanced Quantum Fuzzy Approach for Efficient Data Clustering
© 2013 IEEE. Data clustering is a challenging task to gain insights into data in various fields. In this paper, an Enhanced Quantum-Inspired Evolutionary Fuzzy C-Means (EQIE-FCM) algorithm is proposed for data clustering. In the EQIE-FCM, quantum computing concept is utilized in combination with the FCM algorithm to improve the clustering process by evolving the clustering parameters. The improvement in the clustering process leads to improvement in the quality of clustering results. To validate the quality of clustering results achieved by the proposed EQIE-FCM approach, its performance is compared with the other quantum-based fuzzy clustering approaches and also with other evolutionary clustering approaches. To evaluate the performance of these approaches, extensive experiments are being carried out on various benchmark datasets and on the protein database that comprises of four superfamilies. The results indicate that the proposed EQIE-FCM approach finds the optimal value of fitness function and the fuzzifier parameter for the reported datasets. In addition to this, the proposed EQIE-FCM approach also finds the optimal number of clusters and more accurate location of initial cluster centers for these benchmark datasets. Thus, it can be regarded as a more efficient approach for data clustering
On the Foundation of the Relativistic Dynamics with the Tachyon
The theoretical foundation of the object moving faster than light in vacuum
({\it tachyon}) is still missing or incomplete. Here we present the classical
foundation of the relativistic dynamics including the tachyon. An anomalous
sign-factor extracted from the transformation of
under the Lorentz transformation, which has been always missed in the usual
formulation of the tachyon, has a crucial role in the dynamics of the tachyon.
Due to this factor the mass of the tachyon transforms in the unusual way
although the energy and momentum, which are defined as the conserved quantities
in all uniformly moving systems, transform in the usual way as in the case of
the object moving slower than light ({\it bradyon}). We show that this result
can be also obtained from the least action approach. On the other hand, we show
that the ambiguities for the description of the dynamics for the object moving
with the velocity of light ({\it luxon}) can be consistently removed only by
introducing a new dynamical variable. Furthermore, by using the fundamental
definition of the momentum and energy we show that the zero-point energy for
any kind of the objects, {\it i.e.}, the tachyon, bradyon, and luxon, which has
been known as the undetermined constant, should satisfy some constraints for
consistency, and we note that this is essentially another novel relativistic
effect. Finally, we remark about the several unsolved problems.Comment: 39 pages, latex, 15 figures avaliable upon reques
Temperature and entropy of Schwarzschild-de Sitter space-time
In the light of recent interest in quantum gravity in de Sitter space, we
investigate semi-classical aspects of 4-dimensional Schwarzschild-de Sitter
space-time using the method of complex paths. The standard semi-classical
techniques (such as Bogoliubov coefficients and Euclidean field theory) have
been useful to study quantum effects in space-times with single horizons;
however, none of these approaches seem to work for Schwarzschild-de Sitter or,
in general, for space-times with multiple horizons. We extend the method of
complex paths to space-times with multiple horizons and obtain the spectrum of
particles produced in these space-times. We show that the temperature of
radiation in these space-times is proportional to the effective surface gravity
-- inverse harmonic sum of surface gravity of each horizon. For the
Schwarzschild-de Sitter, we apply the method of complex paths to three
different coordinate systems -- spherically symmetric, Painleve and Lemaitre.
We show that the equilibrium temperature in Schwarzschild-de Sitter is the
harmonic mean of cosmological and event horizon temperatures. We obtain
Bogoliubov coefficients for space-times with multiple horizons by analyzing the
mode functions of the quantum fields near the horizons. We propose a new
definition of entropy for space-times with multiple horizons analogous to the
entropic definition for space-times with a single horizon. We define entropy
for these space-times to be inversely proportional to the square of the
effective surface gravity. We show that this definition of entropy for
Schwarzschild-de Sitter satisfies the D-bound conjecture.Comment: Final version; To appear in Phys. Rev. D; 12 pages, 1 figure,
RevTex-4; Typos corrected; References adde
Pseudogap Value in the Energy Spectrum of LaOFeAs: Fixed Spin Moment Treatment
The experimental data available up to date in literature corresponding to the
paramagnetic - spin density wave transition in nonsuperconducting LaOFeAs are
discussed. In particular, we pay attention that upon spin density wave
transition there is a relative decrease of the density of states on the Fermi
level and a pseudogap formation. The values of these quantities are not
properly described in frames of the density functional theory. The agreement of
them with experimental estimations becomes more accurate with the use of fixed
spin moment procedure when iron spin moment is set to experimental value.
Strong electron correlations which are not included into the present
calculation scheme may lead both to the decrease of spin moment and
renormalization of energy spectrum in the vicinity of the Fermi level for
correct description of discussed characteristics
Dichloridobis[(ferrocenylmethylidene)(furan-2-ylmethyl)amine-κN]palladium(II)
The title compound, [Fe2Pd(C5H5)2(C11H10NO)2Cl2], exhibits a square-planar geometry at the PdII atom, which is determined by inversion-related chlorine and ferrocenylimine molecules across a center of symmetry. The ferrocenylimine moieties are trans to each other
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