A review of safety climate and risk-taking propensity in occupational health, safety and well-being in the construction industry

Conference Theme: Greening Environment, Eco Innovations & EntrepreneurshipStudies which take safety climate as a safety monitoring tool are rarely reported. This study reports a benchmarking program to identify prominent safety management issues in three ongoing railway projects using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. In the quantitative aspect, the research team conducted a safety climate survey with three random samples, one sample from each ongoing project. A robust 11-factor structure of the safety climate questionnaire emerged after factor analysis. Most of the mean scores of safety climate indicators for subcontractors were below 3 (out of 4) and specific indicators were identified as in need of urgent attention. The main contractor's direct labour scored similarly with subcontractors. Two main contractor management teams had to do more to take on the leadership role. The major weaknesses were the following indicators: work procedure for safety, safety compliance, safety priority over work pressure, safety cooperation and involvement, and appreciation of risk. In the qualitative aspect, the research team sought respondents' comments on current safety management practice and suggestions as to further improvement in safety performance. Content analysis showed that conflicting safety rules and inadequate training were common in the three projects, and increased supervision was proposed as the way to improve safety performance.postprin

Plasma membrane cholesterol homeostasis is essential for preventing oxidative damage in wild-type Chinese hamster ovary cells

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Effect of non-vacuum thermal annealing on high indium content InGaN films deposited by pulsed laser deposition

InGaN films with 33% and 60% indium contents were deposited by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) at a low growth temperature of 300 °C. The films were then annealed at 500-800 °C in the non-vacuum furnace for 15 min with an addition of N(2) atmosphere. X-ray diffraction results indicate that the indium contents in these two films were raised to 41% and 63%, respectively, after annealing in furnace. In(2)O(3) phase was formed on InGaN surface during the annealing process, which can be clearly observed by the measurements of auger electron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Due to the obstruction of indium out-diffusion by forming In(2)O(3) on surface, it leads to the efficient increment in indium content of InGaN layer. In addition, the surface roughness was greatly improved by removing In(2)O(3) with the etching treatment in HCl solution. Micro-photoluminescence measurement was performed to analyze the emission property of InGaN layer. For the as-grown InGaN with 33% indium content, the emission wavelength was gradually shifted from 552 to 618 nm with increasing the annealing temperature to 800 °C. It reveals the InGaN films have high potential in optoelectronic applications

Of Potions, Poisons, Polygonum and Pre‐emptive Polymorphism

There are scores of references to plants and herbs in William Shakespeare's plays; he was obviously very knowledgeable about their perceived effects. The secret to the highly potent love potion Oberon asks Puck to find, lies in the purple, yellow and white flower, ‘love‐in‐idleness’, a folk name for the wild pansy (Viola tricolour). When scientists from Royal Society of Chemistry and Quest International put this to the test 400 years later, they concluded that ‘Wild pansies were noted in herbal folklore medicine

Bioactivity-guided Identification and Cell Signaling Technology to Delineate the Lactate Dehydrogenase a Inhibition Effects of Spatholobus Suberectus on Breast Cancer

Aerobic glycolysis is an important feature of cancer cells. In recent years, lactate dehydrogenase A (LDH-A) is emerging as a novel therapeutic target for cancer treatment. Seeking LDH-A inhibitors from natural resources has been paid much attention for drug discovery. Spatholobus suberectus (SS) is a common herbal medicine used in China for treating blood-stasis related diseases such as cancer. This study aims to explore the potential medicinal application of SS for LDH-A inhibition on breast cancer and to determine its bioactive compounds. We found that SS manifested apoptosis-inducing, cell cycle arresting and anti-LDH-A activities in both estrogen-dependent human MCF-7 cells and estrogen-independent MDA-MB-231 cell. Oral herbal extracts (1 g/kg/d) administration attenuated tumor growth and LDH-A expression in both breast cancer xenografts. Bioactivity-guided fractionation finally identified epigallocatechin as a key compound in SS inhibiting LDH-A activity. Further studies revealed that LDH-A plays a critical role in mediating the apoptosis-induction effects of epigallocatechin. The inhibited LDH-A activities by epigallocatechin is attributed to disassociation of Hsp90 from HIF-1alpha and subsequent accelerated HIF-1alpha proteasome degradation. In vivo study also demonstrated that epigallocatechin could significantly inhibit breast cancer growth, HIF-1alpha/LDH-A expression and trigger apoptosis without bringing toxic effects. The preclinical study thus suggests that the potential medicinal application of SS for inhibiting cancer LDH-A activity and the possibility to consider epigallocatechin as a lead compound to develop LDH-A inhibitors. Future studies of SS for chemoprevention or chemosensitization against breast cancer are thus warranted.published_or_final_versio

Ellagic acid, a phenolic compound, exerts anti-angiogenesis effects via VEGFR-2 signaling pathway in breast cancer

Anti-angiogenesis targeting VEGFR-2 has been considered as an important strategy for cancer therapy. Ellagic acid is a naturally existing polyphenol widely found in fruits and vegetables. It was reported that ellagic acid interfered with some angiogenesis-dependent pathologies. Yet the mechanisms involved were not fully understood. Thus, we analyzed its anti-angiogenesis effects and mechanisms on human breast cancer utilizing in-vitro and in-vivo methodologies. The in-silico analysis was also carried out to further analyze the structure-based interaction between ellagic acid and VEGFR-2. We found that ellagic acid significantly inhibited a series of VEGF-induced angiogenesis processes including proliferation, migration, and tube formation of endothelial cells. Besides, it directly inhibited VEGFR-2 tyrosine kinase activity and its downstream signaling pathways including MAPK and PI3K/Akt in endothelial cells. Ellagic acid also obviously inhibited neo-vessel formation in chick chorioallantoic membrane and sprouts formation of chicken aorta. Breast cancer xenografts study also revealed that ellagic acid significantly inhibited MDA-MB-231 cancer growth and P-VEGFR2 expression. Molecular docking simulation indicated that ellagic acid could form hydrogen bonds and aromatic interactions within the ATP-binding region of the VEGFR-2 kinase unit. Taken together, ellagic acid could exert anti-angiogenesis effects via VEGFR-2 signaling pathway in breast cancer. © 2012 The Author(s).published_or_final_versio

CLNet: A Compact Latent Network for Fast Adjusting Siamese Trackers

© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. In this paper, we provide a deep analysis for Siamese-based trackers and find that the one core reason for their failure on challenging cases can be attributed to the problem of decisive samples missing during offline training. Furthermore, we notice that the samples given in the first frame can be viewed as the decisive samples for the sequence since they contain rich sequence-specific information. To make full use of these sequence-specific samples, we propose a compact latent network to quickly adjust the tracking model to adapt to new scenes. A statistic-based compact latent feature is proposed to efficiently capture the sequence-specific information for the fast adjustment. In addition, we design a new training approach based on a diverse sample mining strategy to further improve the discrimination ability of our compact latent network. To evaluate the effectiveness of our method, we apply it to adjust a recent state-of-the-art tracker, SiamRPN++. Extensive experimental results on five recent benchmarks demonstrate that the adjusted tracker achieves promising improvement in terms of tracking accuracy, with almost the same speed. The code and models are available at https://github.com/xingpingdong/CLNet-tracking

Psychological drivers of hotel guests’ energy‐saving behaviours—empirical research based on the extended theory of planned behaviour

The hospitality industry is an important energy consumer and carbon emitter. Behaviour-driven energy conservation is a strategy with great promise to strengthen the energy efficiency of hotel buildings. The aim of this study is to explore the driving psychological factors of hotel guests’ energy-saving intentions and behaviours. This paper constructs two extensions of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) with personal norms, past behaviours, and self-determined motivation to explain the guests’ energy-saving behaviour in hotel buildings. This research compares the explanatory power of the original TPB and two extensions with structural equation modelling. The analysis is based on 530 valid, self-reported data from 827 surveyed hotel guests in Shanghai. The analysis suggests that the extended model gains greater explanatory power in predicting the behaviour patterns by employing the above three additional factors. In addition, self-determined motivation presents a more significant impact than other more developed TPB predictors, such as intention and perceived behaviour control. Aside from that, past behaviour replaces attitude as the most critical predictor of hotel energy-saving intention in the extended models. In addition to the existing interventions in office and residential buildings, the research highlights the role of self-determination in hotel energy conservation and further emphasises the long-term benefit of encouraging pro-environmental behaviours in hotel guests. The findings expand the existing research on pro-environmental behaviours and will contribute to energy-saving behaviour intervention in hotel buildings and policy formulations for sustainable hotel operation and maintenance.</jats:p

A Special Homotopy Continuation Method For A Class of Polynomial Systems

A special homotopy continuation method, as a combination of the polyhedral homotopy and the linear product homotopy, is proposed for computing all the isolated solutions to a special class of polynomial systems. The root number bound of this method is between the total degree bound and the mixed volume bound and can be easily computed. The new algorithm has been implemented as a program called LPH using C++. Our experiments show its efficiency compared to the polyhedral or other homotopies on such systems. As an application, the algorithm can be used to find witness points on each connected component of a real variety

The emergence of the 2013 H7N9 and related viruses in China

Promising Investigator ScholarshipPoster Session: News and Views from the H7N9 OutbreakBackground: The novel H7N9 influenza A virus first detected in March 2013 has caused more than 130 cases of human infection in China, resulting in 39 deaths. This virus is a reassortant of H7, N9 and H9N2 avian influenza viruses and carries some amino acids linked to mammalian receptor binding, raising concerns of a new pandemic. However, neither the source populations of the H7N9 outbreak lineage nor the conditions for its genesis are fully understood. Materials and Methods: Following the initial reports of H7N9 influenza infection in humans, field surveillance was conducted during 4th-18th April in Zhejiang, Shandong and Guangdong provinces. Pairs of oropharyngeal and cloacal samples from chickens and other poultry, together with faecal and water samples from live poultry markets (LPMs), farms and wetlands were collected for virus isolation and whole genomic sequencing. H7, N9, N7 and H9N2 archived isolates, obtained during previous influenza surveillance between 2000-2013 in southern China, were also sequenced and phylogenetically analyzed to pinpoint the genesis of the H7N9 and a related H7N7 virus. The infectivity and pathology of H7N9 and H7N7 viruses were tested in a ferret model. Results: Through a combination of active surveillance, screening of virus archives, and evolutionary analyses, we found that H7 viruses have independently transferred from domestic ducks to chickens in China on at least two occasions. Subsequently they reassorted with enzootic H9N2 viruses to generate the H7N9 outbreak lineage, and a related but previously unrecognized H7N7 lineage. The H7N9 outbreak lineage has spread over a large geographic region and is prevalent in chickens at LPMs that appear to be the immediate source of human infections. In ferrets this virus caused a productive infection and pneumonia. Virus was shed via the nasal route and transmitted to physical contact and some airborne-exposed animals. Like the H7N9 virus, the H7N7 virus was also mainly isolated from chickens at LPMs and it could efficiently infect ferrets, be shed via the nasal and rectal routes, and cause severe pneumonia. Conclusions: These findings provide a clear picture showing how the current H7N9 human viruses emerged. Domestic ducks act as primary vectors to acquire and maintain diversified viruses from migratory birds, and facilitate different subtype combinations between H7 and N9 or N7 viruses and interspecies transmissions to chickens. After being introduced, the H7N9 or H7N7 viruses reassorted with enzootic H9N2 viruses and formed the current reassortant H7N9 or H7N7 viruses seen in chickens. This likely led to outbreaks in chickens, resulting in the rapid spread of the novel reassortant H7N9 virus through LPMs, which then became the source of human infections. Whether the H7N9 outbreak lineage will, or has, become enzootic in China needs further investigation. Our results also indicate that H7 viruses pose a broader threat than the current H7N9 virus. Continued prevalence of this family of H7 viruses in poultry could lead to further sporadic human infections, with an ongoing risk that the virus might acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.published_or_final_versio