Evaluation of construction contract documents to be applied in modular construction focusing ambiguities; A text processing approach

Modular coordination in building construction has become increasingly popular, particularly in Northern Europe and North America. In Canada, modular construction came to considerable attention over the last decade due to its valuable effect on project constraints, safety, and preventing construction and demolition waste. However, the modular construction industry still adopts the same administrative procedures designed for the conventional construction industry, even though the features of modular and conventional construction are different in terms of construction processes and methods. Due to this trend, ambiguities in administrative documents are widely occurred and are one of the main causes to generate conflict, disputes, and claims between owners and modular suppliers as general contractors. As a first step in the this research to overcome this challenge, the research team focuses on investigating the contents and structures of the current standard contracts and modular RFPs, which are one of the major sources of confusion in modular construction, in order to mitigate and/or remove the ambiguities based on the considering the specifications of off-site construction procedures and system. In this case, this research illustrates a conceptual framework that has two parts: First, classification of the main sources of ambiguities in construction contracts (both Conventional and modular) and second, to identify the similarities and differences between Canadian documents (standard contracts and modular RFPs) and benchmark countries by applying through text processing and readability analysis. We applied text processing to find top terms, including terms with high frequency (TF) in each document, also high TF-IDF terms, which species occur in one document and not others then, we detected manually the three standard contracts and four RFPs and compare them with the output of literature review to identify the major issues that are common. The readability analysis shows the textual complexity of a document and to what extent the documents are difficult to read. The main findings indicate that the modular industry in Canada suffers from a lack of specific standard contract documents for modular construction

Influence of grain size on ductile failure of magnesium alloys

This study presents the research on influence of grain size on ductile failure of magnesium alloys. Grain refinement has a great impact on enhancement of tensile ductility by slowing down failure process. However, it cannot improve its bendability due to the possibility of failure at the compression side during bending

Petri nets, probability and event structures

Models of true concurrency have gained a lot of interest over the last decades as models of concurrent or distributed systems which avoid the well-known problem of state space explosion of the interleaving models. In this thesis, we study such models from two perspectives. Firstly, we study the relation between Petri nets and stable event structures. Petri nets can be considered as one of the most general and perhaps wide-spread models of true concurrency. Event structures on the other hand, are simpler models of true concurrency with explicit causality and conflict relations. Stable event structures expand the class of event structures by allowing events to be enabled in more than one way. While the relation between Petri nets and event structures is well understood, the relation between Petri nets and stable event structures has not been studied explicitly. We define a new and more compact unfoldings of safe Petri nets which is directly translatable to stable event structures. In addition, the notion of complete finite prefix is defined for compact unfoldings, making the existing model checking algorithms applicable to them. We present algorithms for constructing the compact unfoldings and their complete finite prefix. Secondly, we study probabilistic models of true concurrency. We extend the definition of probabilistic event structures as defined by Abbes and Benveniste to a newly defined class of stable event structures, namely, jump-free stable event structures arising from Petri nets (characterised and referred to as net-driven). This requires defining the fundamental concept of branching cells in probabilistic event structures, for jump-free net-driven stable event structures, and by proving the existence of an isomorphism among the branching cells of these systems, we show that the latter benefit from the related results of the former models. We then move on to defining a probabilistic logic over probabilistic event structures (PESL). To our best knowledge, this is the first probabilistic logic of true concurrency. We show examples of expressivity achieved by PESL, which in particular include properties related to synchronisation in the system. This is followed by the model checking algorithm for PESL for finite event structures. Finally, we present a logic over stable event structures (SEL) along with an account of its expressivity and its model checking algorithm for finite stable event structures

Benchmarking Approach for Empirical Comparison of Pricing Models in DRMS

emand response management systems often involve the use of pricing schemes to motivate the efficient use of electrical power. Achieving this efficiency requires the detection of electrical power patterns. The detection of these patterns normally involves use of non-linear, quasi-non-linear, and at times linear data pattern detection models. The behavioural disparities of these models and specifically when used for a specific set of data make it hard to select the most efficient model. The contribution of this study is devising an empirical benchmark (reference) ( perfect ) control pricing (PCP) model through which various models are compared in order to select the most efficient model. In this study, the authors elect neural networks, sliding window–multiple linear regression, and a proportional controller models to be representative of non-linear, quasi-non-linear, and linear models, respectively, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of PCP. The dataset used for demonstrating both the operation of PCP and the elected models for comparisons is collected from Green Button project and Pacific Gas and Electric

Investigation of the effective factors on branding in cosmetic and hygienic products (Case study: Ladies consuming cosmetic and hygienic products with local brands)

Despite the long history of brands, this concept has been considered in marketing literature for a long time such that it has attracted many experts' attention to this field as one of the most important concepts of modern marketing literature. This concept has become so important that wherever loyalty is mentioned, brand is undoubtedly considered too. This research aims to investigate the effect of marketing mixture (7Ps) on making brands of local hygienic and cosmetic products whose statistical society is ladies consuming hygienic and cosmetic products in Mashhad. The sample under analysis of this research consists of 381 people. It was identified after the analysis of their data using SPSS software and testing the research's assumptions that marketing mixture's factors are effective on making brands. In addition, the severity of the effect of each factor was identified

Investigation of the effective factors on branding in cosmetic and hygienic products (Case study: Ladies consuming cosmetic and hygienic products with local brands)

Despite the long history of brands, this concept has been considered in marketing literature for a long time such that it has attracted many experts' attention to this field as one of the most important concepts of modern marketing literature. This concept has become so important that wherever loyalty is mentioned, brand is undoubtedly considered too. This research aims to investigate the effect of marketing mixture (7Ps) on making brands of local hygienic and cosmetic products whose statistical society is ladies consuming hygienic and cosmetic products in Mashhad. The sample under analysis of this research consists of 381 people. It was identified after the analysis of their data using SPSS software and testing the research's assumptions that marketing mixture's factors are effective on making brands. In addition, the severity of the effect of each factor was identified

Evaluation of Effective Indicators on Promotion of Webometric Rank of Golestan University of Medical Sciences Website

Presence on the Web and the realization of webometric indicators are one of the most important indicators of reflecting the international presence of universities. This study evaluates the content and technical characteristics that influence webometric rankings on Golestan University of Medical Sciences websites. This research is a descriptive practical survey that describes the status of the website based on the content and technical features that influence the promotion of webometric rankings. A total of 53 Golestan University of Medical Sciences websites were included, consisted of 7 college websites, 8 Deputies websites, and 16 websites for hospitals and 22 websites for research centers. Data were collected using checklist. Result shows that 49.46 percent of the expected indicators were met by the units. Colleges with the overall average of 57.64 percent had the highest compliance and the hospitals with 36.72 percent had the lowest compliance with the webometric indexes. The results show that 54.72 percent of the Deputies and 47.73 percent of the research centers have met the indicators. According to the findings, notice to the indicators that less-considered, is necessary for webometric managers and researchers. Also, given that Golestan University of Medical Sciences is the weakest in the Impact Index, considering the number of backlinks identified by search engines is one of the priorities of web infrastructure enhancement programs

Synthesis and Statistical Analysis of Changing Size of Nano-structured PbO2 during Mechanical Milling Using Taguchi Methodology

The research investigates synthesized Nano-structured PbO2 using ball milling. The structure and morphology of the samples were determined in the process of milling by means of XRD and SEM. The size of particles was estimated through DLS analysis. The TEM image of the synthesized powder verifies the achievement of Nano dimensions. Design and analyses of the results using Taguchi methodology reveal that the size of synthesized Nano-structured PbO2 decreases as ball to powder ratio (BPR) increases while the average size of the particles increases as mechanical milling speed increases from 200 to 250 rpm. Considering the results of TEM, the size of the synthesized Nano-structured PbO2 by means of mechanical milling was estimated to be 50 Nanometers. In addition, the even distribution and spherical morphology of the synthesized powder by this method is crystal clear in SEM images. Additionally, the result of the statistical analysis of particle size based on the effective parameters by means of Minitab software showed that BPR parameter had the greatest impact on the size of particles; BPR increase improved the objective parameter as compared with other parameters under study. According to the results obtained by Minitab software and considering the little influence of time on particle size decrease and in order to minimize the costs of synthesis, it is suggested the synthesis process be done in two hours and the BPR parameters be increased so as to decrease the size of particles