Involvement of construction management professionals in property-level flood adaptation

Flooding is a significant concern across the UK that has caused property damage, economic impact and health and safety concerns. The national climate change risk assessment for the UK projects the risk of flooding to increase in the future, and thus flood risk management is identified as an area that requires serious action. Whilst community level flood protection measures have been and are being put in places where there is an economic case for such intervention, the need for implementing property level flood adaptation (PLFA) is increasingly highlighted. This industry is worth £2.1 billion globally; with a forecasted UK growth at a rate of 7.1% by 2017-18. The aim of this research is to identify the ability of construction managers to provide PLFA advice to homeowners. Interviews were conducted with 10 professionals currently involved in flood adaptation product/service provision to gather their views on construction manager involvement within this niche area. Majority of participants interviewed accepted that construction managers could enter the PLFA industry. However, there has been a lack of evidence that suggest that construction managers have played a key role in this field. The paper suggests that there are several barriers that have resulted in the lack of involvement of construction managers in the PLFA industry. Previous research recognises lack of relevant skills and knowledge required to provide PLFA advice as a key barrier, this is supported by participants interviewed mentioning that the qualification, knowledge and training required were a barrier for construction managers to enter into the PLFA industry

Mobile phone interaction techniques for rural economy development - a review

Rural communities, especially in developing countries, are often neglected in terms of facilities and services that aid their social and economic development. This is evident even in software development processes, in that these groups of users or potential users’ are often not taken into consideration. The resultant effect is that they may not use it or use it sparingly. The objective of this study is to identify the various researches on interaction techniques and user interface design as a first step to the design of suitable mobile interactions and user interfaces for rural users. This research project is also aimed at socio-economic development and adding value to mobile phone users in Dwesa, a rural community in South Africa. This paper presents a literature survey of interaction techniques and user-interfaces. An analysis of the interaction techniques with respect to their suitability, availability of technologies, user capabilities for implementation in a rural context is discussed. Descriptive statistics of users’ current phones interaction facilities in the rural community which briefly illustrates users’ experiences and capabilities in different interaction modes is also presented.KEY WORDS: Interaction Techniques, Mobile phone, User Interface, ICT, Rural Development

Fusion of face and iris biometrics in security verification systems.

Master of Science in Computer Science. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2016.Abstract available in PDF file

Testing and estimating a DSGE model via indirect inference: tackling the Dutch Disease in Kuwait

The economy of Kuwait has very distinct features when compared to other oil endowed economies. As an oil producer, Kuwait’s oil price volatility is a major determinant of the cyclical movements of macroeconomic aggregates in this economy. Thus, this thesis models a Real Business Cycle (RBC) model of Kuwait with an aim to match the cyclical movements of macroeconomic aggregates and describe the resource curse evident in the data. The Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model of the economy is proposed and calibrated in Chapter 3. The model intuition showed that oil productivity shock is a major driver for aggregate fluctuations in this model. The results of model calibration showed that positive oil productivity shock expands oil and non-traded production whilst the non-oil sector declines. This RBC model can calibrate features of the data based on the assumptions it makes about the factor intensities across sectors and factor-price determination. In Chapter 4 and 5, we bring data to bear by testing the validity of our proposed model via Indirect Inference. Our choice of testing is backed up by the limitations surrounding the various econometric techniques and the underlying assumptions they make, especially the Bayesian technique. The debates surrounding the assumptions made about the model and priors chosen makes the Bayesian technique a difficult choice. It is because of these controversies surrounding priors, how true they are and how they inform us about the validity of our model, that make the case for it to be rejected. Thus, the indirect inference is chosen as it provides us with a strong econometric framework to test the model against the data without claims of certainty about the priors. In other words, we can restrict our model and bring it as close as possible to the data, hence making us able to make policy suggestions to deal with the Dutch Disease in Kuwait’s economy. Finally, from our estimated model, suggestions for policy makers to tackle the Dutch Disease via labour market regulations are made in Chapter 6. More so, they are also extended to show optimal fiscal policy behaviour of the government to boom-bust output movements caused by oil price volatility. These have considerable welfare e↵ects which are discussed for the variety of policies suggested

Mobile phones interaction techniques for second economy people

Second economy people in developing countries are people living in communities that are underserved in terms of basic amenities and social services. Due to literacy challenges and user accessibility problems in rural communities, it is often difficult to design user interfaces that conform to the capabilities and cultural experiences of low-literacy rural community users. Rural community users are technologically illiterate and lack the knowledge of the potential of information and communication technologies. In order to embrace new technology, users will need to perceive the user interface and application as useful and easy to interact with. This requires proper understanding of the users and their socio-cultural environment. This will enable the interfaces and interactions to conform to their behaviours, motivations as well as cultural experiences and preferences and thus enhance usability and user experience. Mobile phones have the potential to increase access to information and provide a platform for economic development in rural communities. Rural communities have economic potential in terms of agriculture and micro-enterprises. Information technology can be used to enhance socio-economic activities and improve rural livelihood. We conducted a study to design user interfaces for a mobile commerce application for micro-entrepreneurs in a rural community in South Africa. The aim of the study was to design mobile interfaces and interaction techniques that are easy to use and meet the cultural preferences and experiences of users who have little to no previous experience of mobile commerce technology. And also to explore the potentials of information technologies rural community users, and bring mobile added value services to rural micro-entrepreneurs. We applied a user-centred design approach in Dwesa community and used qualitative and quantitative research methods to collect data for the design of the user interfaces (graphic user interface and voice user interface) and mobile commerce application. We identified and used several interface elements to design and finally evaluate the graphical user interface. The statistics analysis of the evaluation results show that the users in the community have positive perception of the usefulness of the application, the ease of use and intention to use the application. Community users with no prior experience with this technology were able to learn and understand the interface, recorded minimum errors and a high level of v precision during task performance when they interacted with the shop-owner graphic user interface. The voice user interface designed in this study consists of two flavours (dual tone multi-frequency input and voice input) for rural users. The evaluation results show that community users recorded higher tasks successes and minimum errors with the dual tone multi-frequency input interface than the voice only input interface. Also, a higher percentage of users prefer the dual tone multi-frequency input interface. The t-Test statistical analysis performed on the tasks completion times and error rate show that there was significant statistical difference between the dual tone multi-frequency input interface and the voice input interface. The interfaces were easy to learn, understand and use. Properly designed user interfaces that meet the experience and capabilities of low-literacy users in rural areas will improve usability and users‟ experiences. Adaptation of interfaces to users‟ culture and preferences will enhance information services accessibility among different user groups in different regions. This will promote technology acceptance in rural communities for socio-economic benefits. The user interfaces presented in this study can be adapted to different cultures to provide similar services for marginalised communities in developing countrie

RANCANG BANGUN ELECTRIC SCISSOR LIFT TABLE ( PENGUJIAN )

Rancang bangun alat electric scissor lift table ini bertujuan untuk membantu proses pengangkatan dan pemindahan benda yang relatif berat terutama untuk mengangkat motor roda dua. Alat electric scissor lift table ini menggunakan tenaga motor listrik 1/2 hp dengan kecepatan 1400 rpm, gearbox 1:30, pulley, belt, dan menggunakan seling baja diameter 6 mm, rangka menggunakan rangka baja, besi hollow dan profil L. Cara kerja alat memanfaatkan putaran motor listrik yang dikompres dengan gearbox sebagai peredam putaran. pada gearbox terdapat pulley dan belt yang menghubungkan ke winch yang berfungsi sebagai penggulung tali seling yang telah kaitkan pada salah satu bagian kaki dinamis. Tali seling yang di gulung membuat kaki dinamis tertarik yang membuat meja berfungsi atau terangkat ke atas sedangkan ketika tali seling di kendurkan meja atas nya turun ke bawah, untuk mengatur putaran motor listrik menggunakan stopkontak. Setelah dilakukan pengujian terhadap alat electric scissor lift table, dapat disimpulkan bahwa total beban yang dapat di angkat adalah 230 Kg dan Tinggi maksimal angkatnya adalah 1 meter

Molecular Divergence with Major Morphological Consequences: Development and Evolution of Organ Size and Shape

Understanding the causes of the morphological diversity among organisms is a topic of great interest to evolutionary developmental biologists. Although developmental biologists have had great success in identifying the developmental mechanisms and molecular processes that specify organ size and shape within species, only relatively recently have the molecular tools become available to study how variation in these mechanisms gives rise to the phenotypic differences that are observed among closely related species. In addition to these technological advances, researchers interested in understanding how molecular variation gives rise to phenotypic variation have used three primary strategies to identify the molecular differences underlying species-specific traits: the candidate gene approach, differential gene expression screens, and between-species genetic mapping experiments. In this review, we discuss how these approaches have been successful in identifying the genes and the cellular mechanisms by which they specify variation in one of the most recognizable examples of the evolution of organ size, the adaptive variation in beak morphology among Darwin’s finches. We also discuss insect reproductive structures as a model with great potential to advance our understanding of the specification and evolution of organ size and shape differences among species. The results from these two examples, and those from other species, show that species-specific variation in organ size and shape typically evolves via changes in the timing, location, and amount of gene/protein expression that act on tissue growth processes.YesThis is the accepted manuscript version of the following article: Masly, J. & Azom, M. (2022). Molecular divergence with major morphological consequences: Development and evolution of organ size and shape. Essays in Biochemistry, 66 (6). https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20220118