SOCIAL ENREPRENEURSHIP: IMPACT OF OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY (OHS) FACTORS ON WORKERS’ BEHAVIOR IN DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION SECTORS IN OMAN

PURPOSE This paper critically analyzes and assesses the various factors of occupational health and safety (OHS), and elucidate the factors affecting construction workers’ behavior in different construction projects of Oman. It aims to create Occupational Health and Safety awareness in construction workers working for Social Entrepreneurs in Oman. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Two hundred and fifty-two construction workers from various projects were selected based on a simple random sampling basis, and the data was collected through a well-defined questionnaire. FINDINGS The study shows that workers favor communication in the improvement of workers’ behavior in the industrial and infrastructure construction projects.Education and training help in capacity building and skills development and contributes towards sustainable positive OHS result in petrochemical construction projects. Management commitment plays a major part to maintain a sustained hazard free environment in building construction projects. The study also shows that the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) factors –OHS policies, health care, communication, management commitment, education and training and workers’ behavior, have a direct impact on health and safety results towards social entrepreneurship of creating awareness in the construction sectors of Oman. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/ IMPLICATIONS A model named Construction Industries Influencing Factors Framework (CIIFF) Model, has been developed with the orientation of workers’ behavior which can be developed further making improvements in the existing mechanism and the factors influencing can be dealt with wider procedures to ensure improvements. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS The model may help in creating tools that are more effective to reduce Occupational Health and Safety related accidents and property damages in a construction project.&nbsp

Low Cost, Efficient Output- Only Infrastructure Damage Detection with Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor network comprises of sensors and actuators with universally useful processing components to agreeably screen physical or ecological conditions, for example, temperature, pressure, and so on. Wireless Sensor Networks are particularly portrayed by properties like the constrained power they can reap or store, dynamic network topology, expansive size of the arrangement. Sensor networks have an enormous application in fields which incorporates territory observing, object tracking, fire detection, landslide recognition and activity observing. Given the network topology, directing conventions in sensor networks can be named at based steering, various levelled based directing and area-based directing. Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) is a vitality productive various levelled based steering convention. Our prime spotlight was on the examination of LEACH given specific parameters like network lifetime, soundness period, and so forth and furthermore the impact of particular sending assault and level of heterogeneity on LEACH convention

Flexibility in manufacturing enterprises

A manufacturing enterprise is a collection of interrelated, flexible, optimized business processes delivering value to the customers through high quality products and services, faster than competition. This view of an enterprise enables one to consider the entire business system including the suppliers, product development, manufacturing, logistics, distribution, and retailing and to smoothen out the interfaces between them. Performance measures and performance measurement are important for monitoring, control and management. We identify and discuss eight performance measures for generic business processes. These include lead time, customer service, dependability, quality, flexibility, cost, capacity, and asset utilization. In this paper, we concentrate on flexibility of business processes with special emphasis on the supply chain and order-to-delivery processes. We attempt to provide clear definitions and measures of various types of flexibilities as well as discuss the relationship between product structure and supply chain flexibility. The relationship between uncertainties, flexibility, technology, and product structure is clearly brought out in this paper

Simulations of Transient Membrane Behavior in Cells Subjected to a High-Intensity Ultrashort Electric Pulse

A molecular dynamics (MD) scheme is combined with a distributed circuit model for a self-consistent analysis of the transient membrane response for cells subjected to an ultrashort (nanosecond) high-intensity (approximately 0.01-V/nm spatially averaged field) voltage pulse. The dynamical, stochastic, many-body aspects are treated at the molecular level by resorting to a course-grained representation of the membrane lipid molecules. Coupling the Smoluchowski equation to the distributed electrical model for current flow provides the time-dependent transmembrane fields for the MD simulations. A good match between the simulation results and available experimental data is obtained. Predictions include pore formation times of about 5-6 ns. It is also shown that the pore formation process would tend to begin from the anodic side of an electrically stressed membrane. Furthermore, the present simulations demonstrate that ions could facilitate pore formation. This could be of practical importance and have direct relevance to the recent observations of calcium release from the endoplasmic reticulum in cells subjected to such ultrashort, high-intensity pulses

Integrated analytical models for flexible manufacturing systems

Product form queueing networks (PFQN) and generalized stochastic Petri nets (GSPN) have emerged as the principal performance modelling tools for flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). In this paper, we present integrated PFQN-GSPN models, which combine the computational efficiency of PFQN and representational power of GSPN by employing the principle of flow-equivalence. We show that FMS that include non-product form characteristics such as dynamic routing and synchronization can be evaluated efficiently and accurately using the integrated models

Export fluxes of dissolved inorganic carbon to the northern Indian Ocean from the Indian monsoonal rivers

Rivers are an important source of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) to the adjacent coastal waters. In order to examine the spatial variability in the distribution and major sources of DIC in the Indian monsoonal rivers and to quantify their export flux to the northern Indian Ocean, 27 major and medium-sized rivers were sampled during the discharge period. Significant spatial variability in concentrations of DIC (3.4–73.6&thinsp;mg&thinsp;L−1) was observed, and it is attributed to spatial variations in the precipitation pattern, the size of rivers, pollution and lithology of the catchments. The stable isotopic composition of DIC (δ13CDIC) also showed strong spatial variability (−13.0&thinsp;‰ to −1.4&thinsp;‰) in the Indian monsoonal rivers with relatively depleted δ13CDIC values in rivers of the northwest of India (-11.1±2.3&thinsp;‰) and enriched values in the southeast of India (-3.5±2.3&thinsp;‰). Results of the linear least-squares regression models of Keeling and Miller–Tan's plots indicated that the chemical weathering of carbonate and silicate minerals by soil CO2 is the major source of DIC in the Indian monsoonal rivers. Spatial variability in the deviation of δ13CDIC from the approximated δ13C of the source may probably be due to dominant autotrophic production in rivers of the southeastern region, whereas heterotrophic decomposition of organic matter largely influences the other Indian monsoonal rivers. It is estimated that the Indian monsoonal rivers annually export ∼10.3&thinsp;Tg of DIC to the northern Indian Ocean, of which the major fraction (75&thinsp;%) enters into the Bay of Bengal, and the remaining fraction reaches to the Arabian Sea. This is consistent with the freshwater flux, which is 3 times higher for the Bay of Bengal (∼378&thinsp;km3&thinsp;yr−1) than for the Arabian Sea (122&thinsp;km3&thinsp;yr−1). Despite discharge from the Indian monsoonal rivers accounting for only 1.3&thinsp;% of the global freshwater discharge, they disproportionately export 2.5&thinsp;% of the total DIC exported by the world's major rivers. Despite rivers from the region in the southwest (SW) of India exporting DIC that is an order of magnitude lower (0.3&thinsp;Tg&thinsp;yr−1) than the rivers from other regions of India, the highest yield of DIC was found in the rivers of the SW region of India. It is attributed to intense precipitation (∼3000&thinsp;mm), favorable natural vegetation of tropical moist deciduous and tropical wet evergreen and semi-evergreen forests, tropical wet climate, high soil organic carbon, and the dominance of red loamy soils in catchments of the rivers of the SW region.</p

Reference evapotranspiration in the irrigated perimeters of the state of Sergipe

O conhecimento da evapotranspiração de referência (ETo) é essencial no manejo de irrigação de culturas agrícolas em todo o mundo. Neste trabalho se utilizaram dados meteorológicos diários de evaporação do tanque "Classe A", temperaturas máximas e mínimas, insolação, velocidade do vento a 2 m de altura e umidade relativa do ar, referentes ao período de 1989 a 1993, coletados em quatro perímetros irrigados do Estado de Sergipe, para estimativa da ETo com base nos métodos do Tanque Classe "A", Radiação Solar, Hargreaves & Samani, Linacre e Penman-Monteith (FAO/56). Comparam-se os valores diários da ETo para a região estudada, através dos quais, quando comparados com o modelo de Penman-Monteith (FAO/56) se obtiveram os melhores desempenhos com os métodos que utilizam a radiação solar como dado de entrada no modelo. O método do Tanque Classe "A" não apresentou desempenho satisfatório em nenhum perímetro irrigado estudado. _________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT: The knowledge of reference evapotranspiration (ETo) is essential for the irrigation scheduling of crops throughout the world. This work used daily meteorological data of Class A pan evaporation, maximum and minimum air temperatures, insolation, wind speed at 2 m above surface and relative humidity from 1989 to 1993 for four irrigated perimeters of Sergipe. These data were used for estimating ETo based on the following methods: Class A pan evaporation, Solar Radiation, Hargreaves & Samani, Linacre and Penman-Monteith (FAO/56). The daily values of ETo were compared to those obtained by FAO Penman-Monteith method in order to choose the best method of estimating ETo for the region. The best performance was obtained for those models which used the solar radiation as the data input. The Class A pan evaporation method did not show favorable performance in any irrigated perimeter