The Relationship between Safety Management Practices with Worker Safety Compliance Behaviour in Manufacturing Sector

Safety management practices are essential to reduce hazardous incidents at the workplace by improving safety conditions at the workplace, as well as encouraging employers and employees to shift their attitudes and behaviors in order to place an importance on safety and health. The purpose of this study is to review the level of safety compliance among the workers in manufacturing company and to review the relationship between safety compliance as dependent variable with the independent variables which are safety management practices which look at management commitment, safety training, and the involvement of the workers, safety communication, promotion of safety and safety rules & procedures. The research method is quantitative analysis and adopting a cross-sectional approach in data gathering. Primary data generated form the questionnaire chose as a data collection. Random sampling method was used in collecting the data and the population is from the Fabricated Metal and Hardware manufacturing company in Nibong Tebal, Pulau Pinang. Quantitative analysis using SPSS version 25.0 was used and the result is showed that the six factors of safety management practices affect the safety behaviors (safety compliance). The findings from this study will provide useful insight for future researchers and practitioners in the field to identify issues and solutions that contribute to safety and health at the workplace

Design-Informed Generative Modelling using Structural Optimization

Although various structural optimization techniques have a sound mathematical basis, the practical constructability of optimal designs poses a great challenge in the manufacturing stage. Currently, there is only a limited number of unified frameworks which output ready-to-manufacture parametric Computer-Aided Designs (CAD) of the optimal designs. From a generative design perspective, it is essential to have a single platform that outputs a structurally optimized CAD model because CAD models are an integral part of most industrial product development and manufacturing stages. This study focuses on developing a novel unified workflow handling topology, layout and size optimization in a single parametric platform, which subsequently outputs a ready-to-manufacture CAD model. All such outputs are checked and validated for structural requirements; strength, stiffness and stability in accordance with standard codes of practice. In the proposed method, first, topology-optimal model is generated and converted to a one-pixel-wide chain model using skeletonization. Secondly, a spatial frame is extracted from the skeleton for its member size and layout optimization. Finally, the CAD model is generated using constructive solid geometry trees and the structural integrity of each member is assessed to ensure structural robustness prior to manufacturing. Various examples presented in the paper showcase the validity of the proposed method across various engineering disciplines

Influence of age, reproductive status and vulvar conformation on canine vaginal microflora.

The influence of age, reproductive status and vulvar conformation on canine vaginal microflora of dogs reared in a tropical environment was successfully determined. Vaginal swab samples were obtained from 15 intact and 15 spayed bitches from a shelter. The dogs were grouped according to age and vaginal cytological examination was conducted to determine the oestrous cycle stage of the bitch. Physical examination and images of the vulvar conformation were captured and classed into three categories (I, II and II) based on the position, size and percentage of occlusion. The effect of vulvar conformation on bacterial load was determined. Canine vaginal microflora isolated in this study is similar to that reported in temperate climates. Coagulase-positive Staphylococcus was the most common bacteria isolated from 86.7% of the bitches. All isolated bacteria were normal opportunistic microflora of the vagina. Bitches less than one-year old had a higher bacteria load, which was 50% higher than bitches above one-year old. This finding may be attributed to the differences in immunity maturity and physiological responses of the dogs. Spayed bitches have higher bacterial load compared to intact bitches in anestrus and this may be associated with the partially occluded vulvae which occurred in 87% of these bitches. Category III, which included bitches with >50% vulvar occlusion by skin folds had a higher load of bacteria (60%) compared to category I where the vulva was not occluded (33.3%)

EM-MAC : an energy-aware multi-channel medium access control protocol for multi-hop wireless networks

The stupendous growth in wireless and mobile devices in the recent years has prompted researchers to look at innovative approaches that enable effective use of the available resources. In this thesis, we propose a medium access control (MAC) protocol, referred to as EM-MAC, that enables wireless devices with multi-channel access capabilities while minimizing energy consumption. EM-MAC relies on iMAC's efficient channel selection mechanism to resolve the medium contention on the common control channel, and to select the best available data channel for data communication. Our protocol saves energy by allowing devices that have not gained access to the medium to switch to doze mode until the channel becomes idle again. The pair of devices that gains access to the data channel reserves and uses the channel until the end of the reservation period. At the end of each reservation period, devices belonging to a given data channel contend again for the medium, and only the pair of devices that wins access to the medium is allowed to communicate on the channel while all other devices switch to doze mode. Using simulations, we show that EM-MAC yields substantial energy savings when compared with iMAC

Surface plasmon based fiber optic refractive index sensor

This paper has proposed a surface plasmon resonance-based photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sensor to detect even a small change in refractive index (RI) values of analytes. The impact on sensor performance by Bezier polygon core structure of the PCF and gold coating in an air hole have been carried out. The sensor resonance wavelength and the respective confinement loss are analyzed for various Bezier polygon parameters and for various gold coating thicknesses. Also, a comparison between gold filling and gold coating in an air hole of PCF have been undertaken to show the superiority of the gold coating in sensor performance. The promising sensor performance has been noted down above the analyte RI of about 1.3 with an upright sensitivity of about 7000 nm/RIU. This type of sensor is of great interest in medical and industrial applications.

Surface plasmon based fiber optic refractive index sensor

102-107This paper has proposed a surface plasmon resonance-based photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sensor to detect even a small change in refractive index (RI) values of analytes. The impact on sensor performance by Bezier polygon core structure of the PCF and gold coating in an air hole have been carried out. The sensor resonance wavelength and the respective confinement loss are analyzed for various Bezier polygon parameters and for various gold coating thicknesses. Also, a comparison between gold filling and gold coating in an air hole of PCF have been undertaken to show the superiority of the gold coating in sensor performance. The promising sensor performance has been noted down above the analyte RI of about 1.3 with an upright sensitivity of about 7000 nm/RIU. This type of sensor is of great interest in medical and industrial applications

Novel microfluidic techniques to evaluate cell adhesion properties for medical applications

The thesis explores the advantages of using microfluidic technology in the field of medicine, to effectively monitor and treat various inflammatory diseases. This was achieved through the characterisation of how sticky cells are under various conditions, where specific adhesive strengths and cell behaviour can be attributed as bio-markers for diseases such as Malaria, and Multiple Sclerosis

Analysis and Modeling of Vapor Recompressive Distillation Using ASPEN-HYSYS

HYSYS process modeling software was used to analyze the effect of reflux ratio and number of trays on the purity of ethylene in a vapor recompression distillation column and also in an ordinary distillation column. Analysis of data showed that with increased pressure a higher reflux ratio is needed to obtain a purity of 99.9{\%} for both towers. In addition number of trays was varied to see its effect on purity. Analysis proved that purity increases with number of trays

Bidirectional MM-Wave Radio over Fiber transmission through frequency dual 16-tupling of RF local oscillator

In this paper for the first time, a 60 GHz bidirectional Millimeter Wave (MM-Wave) Radio over Fiber (RoF) transmission through a new frequency dual 16-tupling of 3.75 GHz local oscillator (LO) is demonstrated. The proposed system is constructed with parallel combination of two cascaded stages of MZMs. The upper cascaded stage and the Lower cascaded stages are biased at the Maximum Transmission Point (MATP). By suitable adjustments of LO phase and amplitude, optical sidebands with spacing of 8 times the input LO frequency is generated. These sidebands are then separated using filters to achieve dual 16-tupling. A good agreement between numerical derivations and the simulation results are achieved. Further, a simulation is performed to access the dual bidirectional transmission performance for the double and single tone modulation with 2.5 Gbps data transmission. The transmission distance is limited to 25 km for the double tone modulation due to bit walk of effect. A 60 km link distance is achieved with single tone modulation. The dispersion induced power penalties less than 0. 5 dB at 10−9 BER is observed for both up and down streams