Sustainable Infrastructure Development: A Holistic System Based Decision Making Framework Integrating Vulnerability Indicators and Stakeholders Objectives

Infrastructure systems enable the host communities to expand, develop, and prosper in adequate socioeconomic conditions and healthy environment. Thus, the strategies for sustainable infrastructure development should aim to increase the individual utility of the local stakeholders, while reducing the vulnerability of the built environment to perturbations. Nevertheless, the available frameworks consider the development of the infrastructure systems as isolated projects and do not simultaneously address the needs of the stakeholders or the vulnerability of the built environment. The goal of this research is to provide decision makers and the research community with a novel infrastructure development framework that holistically balances between the short-term development objectives and long-term sustainability goals. This research presents an innovative decision making framework that assimilates the needs of the broad community stakeholders while decreasing the vulnerability of the built environment (i.e. social, economic, and environmental). The framework utilizes a bottom-up agent based modeling approach to account for the needs, decision actions, and learning behaviors of the different stakeholders. The framework integrates well-established vulnerability indicators into the objective functions of the associated stakeholders to guide the infrastructure development strategies. Finally, the developed framework utilizes a multi-dimensional evaluation module to balance between the needs of the stakeholders and the vulnerability of the built environment. The developed framework was implemented on the post-Katrina housing and infrastructure redevelopment projects in three Mississippi coastal counties. The proposed framework was tested against the existing conditions and null hypothesis tests. Each of the infrastructure development strategies had its positive and negative impacts on the vulnerability and/or redevelopment of the community. Through utilizing the proposed framework, a set of Pareto optimal strategies were developed that dominated the existing conditions and the null hypothesis tests. Those strategies increased the individual utility of the stakeholders, and decreased the social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities of the host community. This novel infrastructure development decision making framework will enable the communities to identify strategies that balance between the short-term development objectives and the long-term sustainability goals. Thus, this innovative approach will ensure the prosperity of the current and future generations

The collapse of the Cypress Viaduct during the Loma Prieta earthquake of October 17, 1989

The Loma Prieta earthquake of October 17, 1989 in California was one of the most disastrous earthquakes in U.S history. It caused damage to commercial, residential, and industrial structures, transportation and utilities. This study includes investigations about the Cypress Viaduct collapse re?ported by: California Governor\u27s Board of Inquiry [4].National Institute of Standards and Technology (NEL) W.3The Author. Investigators in the first report concluded that the collapse was due to horizontal ground motion. In the second one, it was due to the vertical ground motion. In the author\u27s investigation, a detailed static and dynamic analyses are performed to determine the cause of the failure. Static analyses are performed to determine the moment and shear capacities of the critical sections. Also to predict the mode and sequence of failure. Dynamic analyses are performed employing the finite element software ADINA to investigate the effect of ground motion on the Viaduct

Conflict Management and Preferred Style for Resolving Conflict

The purpose of this paper is what the common causes of conflict in Middle East (Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, K.S.A and Kuwait), and what is preferred style for resolving conflict in these countries. Conflict is inevitable and often necessary to management techniques build personality and relationships high-performing teams will evolve through form, storm and norm, so the conflict is not the problem poor management of the conflict is the problem, sometimes use power to win too emotionally involved and others around you can solve the conflict by many methods intended for addressing conflict between opponents also might be considered. This paper will provide an overview of the concepts of conflict, where conflict occurs, differences between competition and conflict, conflict type, Common causes of conflict, how to minimize the conflict, how to build team work, how to manage conflict, conflict strategy and style, prefer style that using when resolve conflict and steps for resolving conflict. We make a questionnaire in much country in Middle East in construction field. First we found that conflict is natural and should be happened between teams up to 95%. Secondly we found the most reason that increases conflict is due personality issues (personal chemistry) up to 90%. At last we found that up to 90% of managers are using collaborating and accommodating as a mode of conflict resolving, which is found to be more commonly used in handling conflict. The paper presents a useful source of information which would benefits organizations in its globalization, which has faded the national boundaries and has brought people of different culture to work together on a single platform

The Effect of Peer Learning vs. Traditional Learning on Knowledge and Clinical Performance of Critical Care Nursing Students

Background: Clinical practice is a vital part of nursing education, and highly valued by student nurses. From a student perspective, the clinical environment can be perceived as stressful and not welcoming. Therefore, the relationship between the student and the instructor is fundamental to the learning process. Peer learning offers students the opportunity to learn from each other. Moreover, it was suggested that academic involvement and interaction with faculty and fellow students increases the time and physical and psychological energy that students devote to the academic experience. The positive effects of peer learning have been described as increased cognitive skills, self-confidence, autonomy, clinical skills and reasoning are highlighted. Furthermore, and perhaps more difficult to evaluate in other educational models, are increased self-evaluating skills, collaborative- and leadership abilities, critical thinking and the opportunity to share the experiences of a fellow student without the immediate interference of the preceptor. Aim: The study aimed to compare the effect of using peer learning versus traditional learning on the clinical performance of critical care nursing students. Methods: The study was conducted at the critical and emergency care nursing Department, Faculty of Nursing, Damanhour University using an experimental comparative design. 100 nursing students enrolled in the third year were selected randomly to participate in this study. These were divided into two groups randomly. - Group I (study group): consisted of 50 students who were similarly assigned into 10 subgroups of 5 students each and they were learned by their colleagues. Group II (control group) included the other 50 students who were similarly assigned to 2 skill labs in subgroups of 25 students each.Results: The finding of the current study indicates significantly better performance scores among peer learning group. This study revealed that the majority of the study group students were positively satisfied as regarding peer learning. Moreover, the  majority of the students in peer group stated that being taught by their peer increases interaction and collaboration with other students, they can communicate more freely with their peer than with their clinical instructor they don't feel freer to approach the instructor for help than their peer. However, they agreed that the feedback they received from their peers is more helpful and they learn more from their peer than from their clinical instructor. Furthermore, they expressed their belief that peer learning experience was worth the time spent and students felt more comfortable when the performance is being assessed by their peer.Conclusion: The results of this study confirm the results of the previous studies, emphasizing numerous positive effects of peer learning methods in the academic environment. The results of this study also suggest that peer-assisted learning increases the confidence, reduces anxiety and affects the development of students' future responsibilities. Therefore, the study recommends more utilization of this approach in nursing education, with training workshops aimed at changing the attitude of nurse educators towards the use of more innovative models of active learning such as peer learning. Keywords: Peer learning, peer tutoring, traditional method, nursing students, clinical performance

Subtraction images: A really helpful tool in non-vascular MRI

AbstractBackgroundSubtraction imaging is a technique whereby an unenhanced T1-weighted sequence is digitally subtracted from the identical sequence performed after gadolinium administration.Aim of the workThis study will highlight the role of subtraction imaging for non-vascular MRI applications.Subjects and methodsThe study included 40 patients presenting with lesions in different parts of the body, that are initially hyperintense on T1W sequences.We used post-processing software (Osirix) to digitally subtract the pre-enhancement from the post enhancement sequences.ResultsBased on subtraction imaging findings 5 patients were diagnosed with intraocular melanomas, two patients were diagnosed with hemorrhagic cysts in the masseter muscle, two patients were diagnosed with hemorrhagic cysts in the parotid gland, two patients were diagnosed with dysplastic hepatic nodules, 5 patients were diagnosed with post-ablation necrosis following hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment, two patients showed recurrent HCC after chemoembolisation, 3 patients showed chemoembolised HCC without recurrence, 4 patients showed intraluminal gall bladder sludge, 4 patients showed hemorrhagic renal cysts, one patient showed solid papillary neoplasm of the pancreas, 6 patients showed chocolate ovarian cysts, two patient showed ovarian cystadenoma and two patients showed ovarian cystadenocarcinoma.ConclusionSubtraction MRI is very helpful tool in non-vascular MRI applications

Words differentiation in the wound and amendment and the impact on governance and narrators Marwiyaat

The science of al-Jarh wa al-Ta\u27dil (Recommending or not recommending Narrators) is regarded as a cautious, because of its numeral branches, issues and its influence on accepting or rejecting Traditions. Hadith Scholars have played good efforts in this sense, they have collected all about narrators, which show their attitude regarding relation (Riwayah), not only an individual separated study, but also a comparative study with others. This matter caused a balanced study which measured the priority among them, a matter which showed the terms used to prefer one over another, such as: memorization, accurateness, full achievement, going deeply in understanding Traditions, the authenticity in relating one tradition from one Sheikh (Scholar), and the priority of Shuyukh in jurisprudence, brightness, eloquence, wide knowledge…etc, which show the general view and the accurate knowledge regarding narrators. This article focused on priority terms which was used by scholars of Jarh and Ta\u27dil by which they distinguished between reliable narrators in different sides, also between weak narrators, and to put some traditions in advance. Another thing tackled here was the influence of priority on judging Narrators and their narrations, the classes of their students, who is more reliable, the correction between narrations if we have contradiction among them, and to know the illness of narrations. The article also discussed some attentions to certain issues, which are needed to Hadith Scholars in searching Hadiths, or the biography of Narrators, the judgment of their traditions, when it is difficult to judge the narrator and his narration because of neglecting such issues and their applications

Rethinking relationships in the construction industry : integrating sustainable development into project management processes

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Programming model abstractions for optimizing I/O intensive applications

This thesis contributes from the perspective of task-based programming models to the efforts of optimizing I/O intensive applications. Throughout this thesis, we propose programming model abstractions and mechanisms that target a twofold objective: from the one hand, improve the I/O and total performance of applications on nowadays complex storage infrastructures. From the other hand, achieve such performance improvement without increasing the complexity of applications programming. The following paragraphs briefly summarize each of our contributions. First, towards exploiting compute-I/O patterns of I/O intensive applications and transparently improving I/O and total performance, we propose a number of abstractions that we refer to as I/O Awareness abstractions. An I/O aware task-based programming model is able to separate the handling of I/O and computations by supporting I/O Tasks. The execution of such tasks can overlap with compute tasks execution. Moreover, we provide programming model support to improve I/O performance by addressing the issue of I/O congestion. This is achieved by using Storage Bandwidth Constraints to control the level of task parallelism. We support two types of such constraints: (i) Static storage bandwidth constraints that are manually set by application developers. (ii) Auto-tunable constraints that are automatically set and tuned throughout the execution of application. Second, in order to exploit the heterogeneity of modern storage systems to improve performance in a transparent manner, we propose a set of capabilities that we refer to as Storage heterogeneity Awareness. A storage-heterogeneity aware task-based programming model builds on the concepts and abstractions that are introduced in the first contribution to improve the I/O performance of applications on heterogeneous storage systems. More specifically, such programming models support the following features: (i) abstracting the heterogeneity of the storage devices and exposing them as one hierarchical storage resource. (ii) supporting dedicated I/O scheduling. (iii) Finally, we introduce a mechanism that automatically and periodically flushes obsolete data from higher storage layers to lower storage layers. Third, targeting increasing parallelism levels of applications, we propose a Hybrid Programming Model that combines task-based programming models and MPI. In this programming model, tasks are used to achieve coarse-grained parallelism on large-scale distributed infrastructures, whereas MPI is used to gain fine-grained parallelism by parallelizing tasks execution. Such a hybrid programming model offers the possibility to enable parallel I/O and high-level I/O libraries in tasks. We enable such a hybrid programming model by supporting Native MPI Tasks. These tasks are native to the programming model for two reasons: they execute task code as opposed to calling external MPI binaries or scripts. Also, the data transfers and input/output handling is done in a completely transparent manner to application developers. Therefore, increasing parallelism levels while easing the design and programming of applications. Finally, to exploit the inherent parallelism opportunities in applications and overlap computation with I/O, we propose an Eager mechanism for releasing data dependencies. Unlike the traditional approach for releasing dependencies, eagerly releasing data dependencies allows successor tasks to be released for execution as soon as their data dependencies are ready, without having to wait for predecessor task(s) to completely finish execution. In order to support the eager-release of data dependencies, we describe the following core modifications to the design of task-based programming models: (i) defining and managing data dependency relationships as parameter-aware dependencies (ii) a mechanism for notifying the programming model that an output data has been generated before the execution of the producer task ends.Aquesta tesi contribueix des de la perspectiva dels models de programació basats en tasques als esforços d’optimitzar les aplicacions intensives de I/O. Al llarg d'aquesta tesi, proposem abstraccions i mecanismes del model de programació que persegueixen un doble objectiu: per una banda, millorar la I/O i el rendiment total de les aplicacions a les complexes infraestructures d'emmagatzematge de l'actualitat. D'altra banda, aconsegueixi aquesta millora del rendiment sense augmentar la complexitat de la programació d'aplicacions. Els paràgrafs següents resumeixen cadascuna de les nostres contribucions. En primer lloc, proposem una sèrie d'abstraccions a què ens referim com a abstraccions de consciència de I/O. Un model de programació basat en tasques amb reconeixement d'I/O pot separar el maneig d'I/O i els càlculs en admetre Tasques d'I/O. L'execució d'aquestes tasques es pot superposar amb l'execució de tasques de càlcul. A més, proporcionem suport de model de programació per millorar el rendiment d'I/O en abordar el problema de la congestió d'I/O. Això s'aconsegueix mitjançant l'ús de restriccions d'amplada de banda d'emmagatzematge per controlar el nivell de paral·lelisme de tasques. Admetem dos tipus d'aquestes restriccions: estàtic i autoajustable. En segon lloc, proposem un conjunt de capacitats a què ens referim com a Consciència d'heterogeneïtat d'emmagatzematge. Un model de programació basat en tasques conscient de l'heterogeneïtat de l'emmagatzematge es basa en els conceptes i les abstraccions que s'introdueixen en la primera contribució per millorar el rendiment d'I/O de les aplicacions en sistemes d'emmagatzematge heterogenis. Més específicament, aquests models de programació admeten les característiques següents: (i) abstreure l'heterogeneïtat dels dispositius d'emmagatzematge i exposar-los com a recurs d'emmagatzematge jeràrquic. (ii) admetre la programació d'I/O dedicada. (iii) Finalment, presentem un mecanisme que descarrega automàticament i periòdicament les dades obsoletes de les capes d'emmagatzematge superiors a les capes d'emmagatzematge inferiors. En tercer lloc, proposem un model de programació híbrid que combina models de programació basats en tasques i MPI. En aquest model de programació, les tasques s'utilitzen per aconseguir un paral·lelisme de gra gruixut en infraestructures distribuïdes a gran escala, mentre que MPI es fa servir per obtenir un paral·lelisme de gra fi en paral·lelitzar l'execució de tasques. Un model d'aquest tipus de programació híbrid ofereix la possibilitat d'habilitar I/O paral·leles i biblioteques d'I/O d'alt nivell en tasques. Habilitem un model de programació híbrid d'aquest tipus en admetre tasques MPI natives que executen codi de tasca en lloc de trucar a binaris o scripts MPI externs. A més, la transferència de dades i el maneig d’entrada / sortida es realitza d’una manera completament transparent per als desenvolupadors d’aplicacions. Per tant, augmenta els nivells de paral·lelisme alhora que se'n facilita el disseny i la programació d'aplicacions. Finalment proposem un mecanisme Eager per alliberar dependències de dades. A diferència de l'enfocament tradicional per alliberar dependències, alliberar amb entusiasme les dependències de dades permet que les tasques successores s'alliberin per a la seva execució tan aviat com les dependències de dades estiguin llestes, sense haver d'esperar que les tasques predecessores acabin completament l'execució. Per tal de donar suport a l'alliberament ansiós de les dependències de dades, descrivim les següents modificacions centrals al disseny de models de programació basats en tasques: (i) definir i administrar les relacions de dependència de dades com a dependències conscients de paràmetres (ii ) un mecanisme per notificar la model de programació que s'ha generat una dada de sortida abans que finalitzi l'execució de la tasca de productor.Postprint (published version