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.
MCM-48 zeolites have unique properties from the surfaces and structure point of view as it’s shown in the results ,and unique and very sensitive to be prepared, have been experimentally prepared and utilized as a second-generation/ acid - catalyst for esterification reactions of oleic acid as a model oil for a free fatty acid source with Ethanol. The characterization of the catalyst used in the reaction has been identified by various methods indicating the prepared MCM-48 is highly matching the profile of common commercial MCM-48 zeolite. The XRF results show domination of SiO2 on the chemical structure with 99.1% and agreeable with the expected from MCM-48 for it's of silica-based, and the SEM results show the cubic c
... Show MoreA new data for Fusion power density has been obtained for T-3He and T-T fusion reactions, power density is a substantial term in the researches related to the fusion energy generation and ignition calculations of magnetic confined systems. In the current work, thermal nuclear reactivities, power densities of a fusion reactors and the ignition condition inquiry are achieved by using a new and accurate formula of cross section, the maximum values of fusion power density for T-3He and TT reaction are 1.1×107 W/m3 at T=700 KeV and 4.7×106 W/m3 at T=500 KeV respectively, While Zeff suggested to be 1.44 for the two reactions. Bremsstrahlung radiation has also been determined to reaching self- sustaining reactors, Bremsstrahlung values are 4.5×
... Show MoreThe most common artifacts in ultrasound (US) imaging are reverberation and comet-tail. These are multiple reflection echoing the interface that causing them, and result in ghost echoes in the ultrasound image. A method to reduce these unwanted artifacts using a Otsu thresholding to find region of interest (reflection echoes) and output applied to median filter to remove noise. The developed method significantly reduced the magnitude of the reverberation and comet-tail artifacts. Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm is most suitable for hyperplane differentiate. For that, we use image enhancement, extraction of feature, region of interest, Otsu thresholding, and finally classification image datasets to normal or abnormal image.
... Show MoreIn this paper, we design a fuzzy neural network to solve fuzzy singularly perturbed Volterra integro-differential equation by using a High Performance Training Algorithm such as the Levenberge-Marqaurdt (TrianLM) and the sigmoid function of the hidden units which is the hyperbolic tangent activation function. A fuzzy trial solution to fuzzy singularly perturbed Volterra integro-differential equation is written as a sum of two components. The first component meets the fuzzy requirements, however, it does not have any fuzzy adjustable parameters. The second component is a feed-forward fuzzy neural network with fuzzy adjustable parameters. The proposed method is compared with the analytical solutions. We find that the proposed meth
... Show MoreCo-composting process can be acquired by combining organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) with sewage sludge (SS) and mature compost (MC) as enhancement and bulking agent to overcome the problems of municipal solid waste and wastewater treatment plants besides the finally produced fertilizer usage for agriculture and horticulture. The effects of different mixture ratios of (OFMSW), (SS) and (MC) on the performance of composting process were investigated in this study. Piles of about 10 kg were prepared by mixing OFMSW, SS and MC in three different ratios (w/w) [OFMSW: SS: MC= 3:1:1, 3:2:1, and 3:3:1]. Results showed that the pile [3:1:1] was most beneficial to composting. The final compost products contained a
... Show MoreIn any natural area or water body, evapotranspiration is one of the main outcomes in the water balance equation. It is also a crucial component of the hydrologic cycle and considers as the main requirement in the planning and designing of any irrigation project. The climatic parameters for the Ishaqi area are calculated from the available date of Samarra and Al-Khlais meteorological stations according to a method for the period (1982–2017) according to Fetter method. The results of the mean of rainfall, relative humidity temperature, evaporation, sunshine, and wind speed of the Ishaqi area are 171.96 mm, 49.67%, 24.86 C°, 1733.61 mm, 8.34 h/day, and 2.3 m/sec, respectively. Values of Potential Evapotranspiration are determined by
... Show MoreThis paper proposes a self organizing fuzzy controller as an enhancement level of the fuzzy controller. The adjustment mechanism provides explicit adaptation to tune and update the position of the output membership functions of the fuzzy controller. Simulation results show that this controller is capable of controlling a non-linear time varying system so that the performance of the system improves so as to reach the desired state in a less number of samples.