Safety Risk Management of LEED Building Construction : A BIM based Approach

Green buildings have been gaining popularity in the construction industry due to their low impact on the environment. Green buildings are aimed at creating energy-efficient, healthy, and environment-friendly buildings. However, OSHA records show that about 48% more accidents occur in green building construction as compared to traditional construction methods. Compromising the workers\u27 health and safety questions the true sustainability of the building. Green buildings have been a popular strategy in institutional sustainability agendas. Globally, LEED is the most popular green buildings rating system. Statistics show that an increasing number of construction projects intend to obtain the LEED certification in the next decade. However, elevated worker health and safety risks have been gradually becoming a concern while pursuing LEED credits. However, there exists a limited study comparing the safety hazards occurring in conventional construction practices and green construction practices.This research explores the major safety risks associated with LEED-certified building construction. Failure Mode Effect, Analysis (FMEA) is used to determine the safety risk associated with each LEED credit. LEED credits were ranked based on safety performance. Safety score and incremental cost of LEED credits were used to identify the optimal credit combination for LEED gold certification that reduces the safety risk and minimizes the cost. Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) was used to analyze the impact of project factors on safety risk. This analysis identified how the risk level of LEED credits changes based on project parameters. Safety risks identified from FMEA and BBN were used to develop Building Information Modelling (BIM)-based solutions to improve worker safety. The outcomes of this research will address the challenges of LEED construction and inform the construction industry in enhancing the health and safety of construction workers with state-of-the-art technolog

A comparison of desflurane and sevoflurane in the recovery of cognitive function after general anesthesia in elderly patients

Background: The postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) or psychomotor function disorder is known to be associated with the anesthetic agents, as well as the physiological changes resulting from the anesthesia. The known risk factors are old age, preexisting cerebral cardiac or vascular disease, alcohol abuse, intra and post-operative complications.Methods: 50 patients above 65 years of age falling into ASA Grade 1, 2, or 3 were catagrzed into 2 groups, one (Group A) wherein sevoflurane was given as the anesthetic agent and the other (Group B) where desflurane was administered. All had undergone physical and regular blood examination. MMSE score was taken for all patients for cognitive recognition before surgery and 1, 3, and 6 hours after surgery.  Results: Of the 50 patients, the MMSE score was above 27 for all before surgery, while, post-surgery it was below 27 after I hour in 100% of the cases. After 3 hours, in Group A, the mean MMSE was above 27 while it was still below 27 in Group B while it was above 27 in both the Groups after 6 hours post-surgery. There was only 1 cases of POCD after 6 hours in Group A and none in Group B. The recovery time was faster in Group B as compared to Group A.Conclusions: Desflurane was marginally a better anesthetic agent in terms or recovery to sevoflurane and sevoflurane was slightly better than the former when it came to cognitive recognition Therefore, we conclude that both the drugs are equally good anesthetic agents.

Development of stability indicating assay method for estimation of Ibuprofen and Famotidine in combined dosage form in tablet

A simple, precise, accurate, simultaneous stability indicating RP-HPLC method for the estimation of IBU (Ibuprofen) and FMT (Famotidine) in combined dosage form was developed using Grace RP-C18 (4.6 x 250mm, 5m) in an gradient mode with mobile phase comprising of Methanol: Water (pH 2.5 using OPA) The flow rate was 0.7 mL/ min and effluent was monitored at 240.0 nm. The retention times were found to be 6.68 min for IBU and 1.76 min for FMT. The assay exhibited a linear dynamic range of 30- 150 g/mL for IBU and 1- 5 g/mL for FMT. The calibration curves were linear (r 2 = 0.994 for IBU and r 2 = 0.997 for FMT) over the entire linear range. Mean % recovery was found to be 99.82 % for IBU and 99.91 % for FMT with % RSD was NMT 2 for both estimations which fully agrees with system suitability which is in good agreement with labeled amount of formulation. The % RSD for Intra- Day and Inter-Day Precision was NMT than 2 for both the drugs. The developed method was validated as per ICH guideline

The Effect of Feeding Native Warm Season Grasses in the Stocker Phase on the Quality of Beef Loin Steaks

Native Warm Season Grasses (NWSG) provide excellent wildlife habitat and are well adapted to the Southeastern United States. Steaks that were obtained from cattle fed NWSG in the stocker phase and finished on grain and tall fescue were subjected to simulated retail display for 0, 3, 6, and 9 days (graininished) and 0, 3, and 6 (forageinished) days respectively. Grain finished carcasses graded as choice and select while forage finished carcasses were both select and standard. Fat percentage was higher and moisture was lower in steaks from grain finished carcasses when compared to forage finished cattle. Lipid oxidation was lower in forage finished steaks on day 6 (0.35mg malonaldehyde/kg) than grain finished steaks (0.5mg malonaldehyde/kg). The overall acceptability scores given by consumers for both treatment groups were between like slightly and like moderately

Sorting by Strip Moves and Strip Swaps

Genome rearrangement problems in computational biology [19, 29, 27] and zoning algorithms in optical character recognition [14, 4] have been modeled as combinatorial optimization problems related to the familiar problem of sorting, namely transforming arbitrary permutations to the identity permutation. The term permutation is used for an arbitrary arrangement of the integers 1, 2,···, n, and the term identity permutation for the arrangement of 1, 2,···, n in increasing order. When a permutation is viewed as the string of integers from 1 through n, any substring in it that is also a substring in the identity permutation will be called a strip. The objective in the combinatorial optimization problems arising from the applications is to obtain the identity permutation from an arbitrary permutation in the least number of a particular chosen strip operation. Among the strip operations which have been investigated thus far in the literature are strip moves, transpositions, reversals, and block interchanges [16, 2, 25, 11, 34]. However, it is important to note that most of the existing research on sorting by strip operations has been focused on obtaining hardness results or designing approximation algorithms, with little work carried out thus far on the implementation of the proposed approximation algorithms. This research starts with implementing two existing algorithms [5, 34] and as the main contributions, provides two new algorithms for sorting by strip swaps: 1) A greedy algorithm in which each strip swap reduces the number of strips the most, and puts maximum strips in their correct positions; 2) Another algorithm that uses the strategy of bringing closest consecutive pairs together called the closest consecutive pair (CCP) algorithm. The approximation ratios for the implemented algorithms are also experimentally estimated

A study of effectiveness of addition of drug teneligliptin to metformin, glimepiride, pioglitazone combination in type II diabetic patients

Background: Diabetes is a most prevalent chronic disease and has reached to alarming stage in almost all developed and developing countries. Worldwide approximately four hundred millions of people are living with diabetes and it is a leading cause of death. Aims and objectives is to study effectiveness of addition of drug Teneligliptin to Metformin, Glimepiride, Pioglitazone combination in type II Diabetic patients.Methods: This was a cross sectional study carried out in the department of Medicine of a tertiary health care centre during the one year period i.e. January 2017 to January 2018 in the type II diabetic patients. Out of all type II diabetic patients 40 patients who were on the treatment for hypoglycemia with drugs Metformin, Glimepiride, Pioglitazone were selected out of these randomly 20 patients were continued on the previous treatment (Group B) and remaining 20 were given additional drug Teneligliptin (Group A). The statistical analysis was done by unpaired t-test and chi-square test analyzed by SPSS 19 version of software.Results: In this study Authors have seen that the average age in both the groups was comparable i.e. 36.78±6.74 and 38.92±5.87 (p>0.05, t=1.24, df=38), the sex ration was also similar in both the group (p>0.43, χ2=0.43, df=1) and the HbA1C was comparable at 1st Wk. 10±4.56 - 9.87±3.42 (p>0.05, t=1.023, df=38) and 4th Wk. 8±5.23 - 9.67±4.52 (p>0.05, t=1.0804, df=38) but significantly differed at 8th Wk. 7.12±2.34 - 9.92±3.56 (p<0.01, t=3.82, df=38), 12th Wk. 5.98±1.98 - 9.24±2.79 (p<0.001, t=4.26, df=38) respectively in Group A and B.Conclusions: It can be concluded from this study that the addition of Teneligliptin significantly reduced the HbA1c level at the end of 4th wk. and hence superior to conventional Metformin, Glimepiride, Pioglitazone only combination treatment