Construction is a hazardous industry with a high number of injuries. Prior research found that many industry injuries can be prevented by implementing an effective safety plan if prepared and maintained by qualified safety personnel. However, there are no specific guidelines on how to select qualified construction safety personnel and what criteria should be used to select an individual for a safety position in the United States (US) construction industry. To fill this gap in knowledge, the study goal was to identify the desired qualifications of safety personnel in the US construction industry. To achieve the study goal, the Delphi technique was used as the main methodology for determining the desired qualifications for construction safety personnel. As a result, a panel of 15 subject-matter experts was selected, and 4 rounds of surveys were carried out. The findings of the study led to the identification of the desired qualifications for three construction safety positions (safety entry, safety professional, and safety manager). The present study contributes to the body of theoretical knowledge on construction safety and presents practical guidelines to assist industry stakeholders select qualified safety personnel for their projects. The selection of qualified safety personnel is expected to improve workplace safety performance and positively reflect on other project outcomes. Construction stakeholders should pay attention to three key aspects (namely, education, experience, and certification) when determining the qualifications for a safety leadership position and take into consideration the type of position intended to be filled. This study fills the gap in knowledge by identifying the desired qualifications and criteria on how to select safety personnel in the US construction industry.
Computer systems and networks are increasingly used for many types of applications; as a result the security threats to computers and networks have also increased significantly. Traditionally, password user authentication is widely used to authenticate legitimate user, but this method has many loopholes such as password sharing, brute force attack, dictionary attack and more. The aim of this paper is to improve the password authentication method using Probabilistic Neural Networks (PNNs) with three types of distance include Euclidean Distance, Manhattan Distance and Euclidean Squared Distance and four features of keystroke dynamics including Dwell Time (DT), Flight Time (FT), mixture of (DT) and (FT), and finally Up-Up Time (UUT). The resul
... Show MoreThe photostabilization? of poly vinyl chloride (PVC) ? films has been investigated by using diamine derivatives. The? (PVC) films were? contained 0.5% weight? of diamine derivatives which prepared by the method of casting. The photostabilizations? ?of these compounds were determined by monitoring the carbonyl index value with irradiation time. Also, the effect ?of concentrations of additives (range 0.1-0.5wt) on the rate of photostabilization? process was studied. Therefore we found? that a increased photostabilization rates was increase with increasing? concentrations of compound. Besides, the influence? on film thickness? of photostabilization process was also studied; ?and the results? showed that? the increasing of film thickness incr
... Show More<span lang="EN-US">This paper presents the comparison between optimized unscented Kalman filter (UKF) and optimized extended Kalman filter (EKF) for sensorless direct field orientation control induction motor (DFOCIM) drive. The high performance of UKF and EKF depends on the accurate selection of state and noise covariance matrices. For this goal, multi objective function genetic algorithm is used to find the optimal values of state and noise covariance matrices. The main objectives of genetic algorithm to be minimized are the mean square errors (MSE) between actual and estimation of speed, current, and flux. Simulation results show the optimal state and noise covariance matrices can improve the estimation of speed, current, t
... Show MoreShadow removal is crucial for robot and machine vision as the accuracy of object detection is greatly influenced by the uncertainty and ambiguity of the visual scene. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm for shadow detection and removal based on different shapes, orientations, and spatial extents of Gaussian equations. Here, the contrast information of the visual scene is utilized for shadow detection and removal through five consecutive processing stages. In the first stage, contrast filtering is performed to obtain the contrast information of the image. The second stage involves a normalization process that suppresses noise and generates a balanced intensity at a specific position compared to the neighboring intensit
... Show MoreGeneral Background: Deep image matting is a fundamental task in computer vision, enabling precise foreground extraction from complex backgrounds, with applications in augmented reality, computer graphics, and video processing. Specific Background: Despite advancements in deep learning-based methods, preserving fine details such as hair and transparency remains a challenge. Knowledge Gap: Existing approaches struggle with accuracy and efficiency, necessitating novel techniques to enhance matting precision. Aims: This study integrates deep learning with fusion techniques to improve alpha matte estimation, proposing a lightweight U-Net model incorporating color-space fusion and preprocessing. Results: Experiments using the AdobeComposition-1k
... Show MoreThe biometric-based keys generation represents the utilization of the extracted features from the human anatomical (physiological) traits like a fingerprint, retina, etc. or behavioral traits like a signature. The retina biometric has inherent robustness, therefore, it is capable of generating random keys with a higher security level compared to the other biometric traits. In this paper, an effective system to generate secure, robust and unique random keys based on retina features has been proposed for cryptographic applications. The retina features are extracted by using the algorithm of glowworm swarm optimization (GSO) that provides promising results through the experiments using the standard retina databases. Additionally, in order t
... Show MoreThis research aims to test the ability of glass waste powder to adsorb cadmium from aqueous solutions. The glass wastes were collected from the Glass Manufacturing Factory in Ramadi. The effect of concentration and reaction time on sorption was tested through a series of laboratory experiments. Four Cd concentrations (20, 40, 60, and 80) as each concentration was tested ten times for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50 min. Solid (glass wastes) to liquid was 2g to 30ml was fixed in each experiment where the total volume of the solution was 30ml. The pH, total dissolved salts and electrical conductivity were measured at 30ºC. The equilibrium concentration was determined at 25 minutes, thereafter it was noted that the sorption
... Show Morecapable of the measuring with a high degree of precision in a single instrument. Total stations device are used for station setting up, setting-outmany points from one station. Their major purpose of this work is to take advantage of total station for setting up building and to establish 3D representation using AutoCAD program. The area of the study was Civil Engineering Department at Baghdad University campus AL Jadiriyah. The completion of the work is done in two stages; 1. The field work: In this stage, the Total Station Nikon Nivo-5C was selected for the current study. This device was measured horizontal and vertical distance, elevations, and coordinates from a single set up. This data directly stored on memory. 2. The office work: In t
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