Approach to Implementing Health and Environmental Safety System in Construction Projects Using Fuzzy Logic

The present study's objective is the implementation of the general Health and Safety Executive(HSE) Plan in civil projects; at first, it is required to formulate the Work Breakdown Structure(WBS) in the relevant project with the aim of coming to a proper time plan. In this study, the scope of the implementation of this system includes two items in which the probability and risks of timing projects can come to light.The two substantial items in timing projects are activity and time itself which, in some projects, given the un-clarity of the scope of these two items, one is required to take into consideration the probable and approximate value of such scope with the analysis of the fuzzy expert method. And, one of the methods used for the analysis of the scope of timing probabilities is the use of the practical implications of fuzzy logic in engineering sciences; thus, in the essay at hand, the basic information required for risk assessment, fuzzy logic, the theory of fuzzy numbers, and the method used for analyzing, disintegrating, and composing them, with the purpose of applying them in projects' risk assessment, is presented.Fuzzy logic can be introduced as a powerful and flexible tool for analyzing the scope of risk of projects which is enabled to provide us with the mathematical formulation of the unclear or unspecific parameters and, eventually, represent the analysis and evaluation of data in a numerical format

Advanced empirical research based on structural equation modeling (SEM) regarding the impact of tax revenue on GDP dynamics at EU-28 level

The main objective of this empirical study is to investigate the impact of tax revenue on GDP dynamics at EU-28 level based on structural equation modeling (SEM). We applied structural equation modeling (SEM) which represents a multivariate statistical analysis technique used especially for analyzing structural relationships between measured variables and latent structures. Selected taxes are the following: environmental taxes, indirect taxes, social contributions, taxes on capital, taxes on labour, taxes on property, and direct taxes. The sample period includes a long time horizon during 2005-2017 for each member states of EU-28. Our empirical findings revealed the level of taxation exhibits an increased influence on GDP dynamics in case of EU-28 member states.JEL Codes - C3; E62; O47; O5

Identifying Information Retrieval Research Trends Using Author Co-citation Network

AbstractThe aim of this study was mapping, visualizing and determining subject trends in the field of information retrieval using author co-citation network based on articles indexed in Scopus from 2005- 2018. This scientometric study was performed using co-citation analysis. Research population includes all articles indexed in Scopus in the field of information retrieval from 2005 to 2018. Therefore, 35018 papers were retrieved in this field. VOSviewer was used to analyze the author co-citation. The study indicated that a total of 604757 authors were co-cited, 212328 journals were cited. Also highly cited articles and sources were determined. Amongst countries, United States, China, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada ranked one to five, respectively. Computer science was a pioneer with regard to interdisciplinary area in IR. It is noteworthy that visualization of author co-citation in field of IR determined ten clusters, namely knowledge and information science, computer science, electronics, information retrieval, information seeking behavior, psychology, multimedia information retrieval, software engineering, ophthalmology and surgery

Provide a Model for Determining the Competitive Price Range in Public Private Partnership Water and Wastewater Projects in Iran (Case Study of Wastewater Collection and Treatment Plant Sirjan City)

In order to choose the method of project implementation in the form of partnership or conventional method, various factors in the formation of the concept of value for money creation in each project are evaluated to be the basis for decision making. Many countries use Public Sector Comparators (PSC) to reach this decision. In this research, the correct calculation of PSC and simulation of risks to achieve a negotiable price range in water and wastewater projects in Iran has been done. The data collection tool in this study was to review various articles to identify the types of risks and distribute questionnaires and interviews with experts in the water and wastewater industry in order to determine the main and effective risks and then, the occurrence and severity of the effects of each risk. The price range was determined using the Monte Carlo simulation. After determining the main risks on PSC, using Monte Carlo method and risk distribution functions, the minimum and maximum amount of each risk and the total risk were determined for 70%, 80% and 90% confidence coefficients. According to the obtained model, to determine the price range, the price presented in the case study should be 500% to 550% in the minimum case and 750% to 850% increase in the maximum case for different reliability coefficients. As a result of this study, inflation risks, exchange rate fluctuations, regional political instability, public and private sector corruption have had the greatest impact on the PSC and price range determination

Interleukin-15 responses to acute and chronic exercise in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis

PurposeInterlukin-15 (IL-15) is an inflammatory cytokine that plays a vital role in immunology and obesity-associated metabolic syndrome. We performed this systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate whether exercise promotes circulating IL-15 concentrations in adults.MethodsWe searched PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus from inception to May, 2023 and identified original studies that investigated the effectiveness of acute and/or chronic exercise on serum/plasma IL-15 levels in adults. Standardized mean differences (SMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using random effect models. Subgroup analyses were performed based on type of exercise, and training status, health status and body mass indexes (BMI) of participants.ResultsFifteen studies involving 411 participants and 12 studies involving 899 participants were included in the acute and chronic exercise analyses, respectively. Our findings showed that acute exercise increased circulating IL-15 concentrations immediately after exercise compared with baseline [SMD=0.90 (95% CI: 0.47 to 1.32), p=0.001], regardless of exercise type and participants’ training status. Similarly, acute exercise was also associated with increased IL-15 concentrations even one-hour after exercise [SMD=0.50 (95% CI: 0.00 to 0.99), p=0.04]. Nevertheless, chronic exercise did not have a significant effect on IL-15 concentrations [SMD=0.40 (95% CI: -0.08 to 0.88), p=0.10].ConclusionOur results confirm that acute exercise is effective in increasing the IL-15 concentrations immediately and one-hour after exercise intervention, and thereby playing a potential role in improving metabolism in adults.Systematic review registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=445634, identifier CRD42023445634

IMPACT OF CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND TECHNOLOGY ON RISK MANAGEMENT OF CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES IN IRAN

The current research was conducted with the topic of investigating the effect of cultural, economic and technological factors on the risk management of construction companies in Iran. This research was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of method. The statistical population of this research is: senior managers and engineers of grade 1 construction companies in Iran, of which 120 people were selected as a sample through sampling in available was selected and a researcher-made questionnaire was distributed among them and they were asked to rate each item according to its importance from one (lowest) to five (highest). To analyze the data, partial least squares technique was used with the help of SmartPLS software, and the results showed that cultural and economic factors do not affect the risk management of Iran construction companies, but technological factors have an effect on the risk management of Iran construction companies

A maturity evaluation model for implementing agile management in Iranian building companies with respect to identifications of its challenges

Agile management originally introduced in development of software projects in computer industry but it is applied in different non-software projects because of its success in managing projects. This approach contains some different tools and techniques for working with the dynamic and changeable environment of projects. According to the previous attempts, some investigators believed that the agile management is useful for construction projects and some others do not agree with this statement. The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to identify the challenges of implementing the agile management in the building companies in Iran and the second one is to prepare a model for evaluating the level of the maturity of a company for implementing agile management. The field studies and distributing questionnaires will be applied for the first objective of this paper and for the next purpose, evaluating the maturity level of companies, the authors will use one of the multi-attribute decision making models named TOPSIS. The results show that the level of the maturity of companies should be surveyed separately in each company in three different parts including: engineering, procurement and construction. It means that the level of maturity in these phases is different

A study on the effect of knowledge management on job satisfaction: A case study of texture industry

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effect of knowledge management on job satisfaction in Iranian texture industry. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 219 out 230 employees who work for one Iranian texture firm in province of Markazi in Iran. The study uses structural equation modeling to examine different hypotheses based on the implementation of LISREL software package. The results of our investigation indicate that knowledge management positively influences on organizational improvement, organizational learning as well as quality improvement. The results of study also indicate that while there was a negative relationship between organizational improvement and job satisfaction, quality improvement and organizational learning positively influence on job satisfaction