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Applications of Immersive Technologies for Occupational Safety and Health Management in the Construction Industry: A Systematic Review
No full textThe construction industry contributes significantly to workplace fatalities and injuries despite multiple interventions implemented by governments and construction companies. Recently, immersive technologies as part of a suite of industry 4.0 technologies have also strongly emerged as a viable pathway to help address poor construction occupational safety and health (OSH) performance. A review of literature on the application of immersive technologies for construction OSH management is conducted with the aim of gaining a broader view of different construction OSH areas using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) approach. The evaluation of 79 relevant articles were carried out, selected from Scopus database. The review revealed that literature have focused on the application of various immersive technologies for hazard identification and visualisation, safety training, design for safety, risk perception and assessment in various construction works. This review identified several limitations regarding the use of immersive technologies, which include the low level of adoption of developed immersive technologies for OSH management, very limited research works on the application of immersive technologies for health hazards and limited focus on the effectiveness of various immersive technologies for construction OSH management. Future research should identify possible reasons for the low level knowledge transfer from research to practice and proffer ways of addressing the identified reasons. The effectiveness of the use of immersive technologies for addressing health hazards should also be investigated
The interaction of multiple bubbles in a Hele-Shaw channel
No full textWe study the dynamics of two air bubbles driven by the motion of a suspending viscous fluid in a Hele-Shaw channel with a small elevation along its centreline via physical experiment and numerical simulation of a depth-averagedmodel. For a single-bubble systemwe establish that, in general, bubble propagation speed monotonically increases with bubble volume so that two bubbles of different sizes, in the absence of any hydrodynamic interactions, will either coalesce or separate in a finite time. However our experiments indicate that the bubbles interact and that an unstable two-bubble state is responsible for the eventual dynamical outcome: coalescence or separation. These results motivate us to develop an edge-tracking routine and calculate these weakly unstable two-bubble steady states from the governing equations. The steady states consist of pairs of ‘aligned’ bubbles that appear on the same side of the centreline with the larger bubble leading. We also discover, through time-dependent simulations and physical experiment, another class of two-bubble states that, surprisingly, are stable. In contrast to the ‘aligned’ steady states, these bubbles appear on either side of the centreline and are ‘offset’ from each other. We calculate the bifurcation structures of both classes of steady states as the flow-rate and bubble volume ratio is varied. We find that they exhibit intriguing similarities to the single-bubble bifurcation structure, which has implications for the existence of =-bubble steady states
Speech-Driven Robot Face Action Generation with Deep Generative Model for Social Robots
No full textThe natural co-speech facial action as a kind of non-verbal behavior plays an essential role in human communication, which also leads to a natural and friendly human-robot interaction. However, a lot of previous works for robot speech-based behaviour generation are rule-based or handcrafted methods, which are time-consuming and with limited synchronization levels between the speech and the facial action. Based on the Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) model, this paper developed an effective speech-driven facial action synthesizer, i.e., given an acoustic speech, a synchronous and realistic 3D facial action sequence is generated. In addition, a mapping between the 3D human facial action to the real robot facial action that regulates Zeno robot facial expressions is also completed. The evaluation results show the model has potential for natural human-robot interaction
Quantifying sulfidization and non-sulfidization in long-term in-situ microbial colonized As(V)-ferrihydrite coated sand columns: Insights into As mobility
No full textSulfide-induced reduction (sulfidization) of arsenic (As)-bearing Fe(III) (oxyhydro)oxides may lead to As mobilization in aquifer systems. However, little is known about the relative contributions of sulfidization and non-sulfidization of Fe(III) (oxyhydro)oxides reduction to As mobilization. To address this issue, high As groundwater with low sulfide (LS) and high sulfide (HS) concentrations were pumped through As(V)-bearing ferrihydrite-coated sand columns (LS-column and HS-column, respectively) being settled within wells in the western Hetao Basin, China. Sulfidization of As(V)-bearing ferrihydrite was evidenced by the increase in dissolved Fe(II) and the presence of solid Fe(II) and elemental sulfur (S0) in both the columns. A conceptual model was built using accumulated S0 and Fe(II) produced in the columns to calculate the proportions of sulfidization-induced Fe(III) (oxyhydro)oxide reduction and non-sulfidization-induced Fe(III) (oxyhydro)oxide reduction. Fe(III) reduction via sulfidization occurred preferentially in the inlet ends (LS-column, 31%; HS-column, 86%), while Fe(III) reduction via non-sulfidization processes predominated in the outlet ends (LS-column, 96%; HS-column, 86%), and was attributed to the metabolism of Fe(III)-reducing bacteria (including Shewanella, Ferribacterium, and Desulfuromonas). Arsenic was mobilized in the columns via sulfidization and non-sulfidization processes. More As was released from the solid of the HS-column than that of the LS-column due to the higher intensity of sulfidization in the presence of higher concentrations of dissolved S(-II). Overall, this study highlights the sulfidization of As-bearing Fe(III) (oxyhydro)oxides as an important As-mobilizing pathway in complex As-Fe-S bio-hydrogeochemical networks
The Skilled Teacher: A Heideggerian Perspective on Teacher Practical Knowledge
No full textThe concept of teacher Practical Knowledge, with its emphasis on the intuitive and situated nature of teaching practice, has provided a compelling approach to understanding what underlies teaching practice. However, much of the literature around Practical Knowledge focuses on teacher reflections on their practice and leaves unexplored the question of how the situation elicits particular practices from teachers. Moreover, there is a tendency to focus on individual Practical Knowledge, and this means that the social dimension, and particularly the socially normative element, of teaching practice is perhaps underappreciated. This article develops what I call the Skilled Teacher Approach to teaching practice, which shifts the focus from teachers’ individual cognitions about practice, to what teachers directly perceive as possible in their fundamentally social teaching environment. The Skilled Teacher Approach is rooted in Heidegger’s phenomenology but also draws substantially on Enactivist literature and argues that what teachers do in practice is largely a product of the affordances they directly perceive in their practice environment. It also argues that much of the landscape of affordances that a teacher perceives is socially constructed. Consequently, a significant part of Practical Knowledge relates to a sensitivity to the socially given affordances and knowing intuitively ‘what one does’ as a teacher. This perspective offers a new understanding of teaching practice and suggests new ways of engendering positive change in practice
Amygdala responses to negative faces are not associated with depressive symptoms: cross-sectional data from 28 638 individuals in the UK Biobank cohort
No full textFuSeBMC v4: Smart Seed Generation for Hybrid Fuzzing
No full textFuSeBMC is a test generator for finding security vulnerabilities in C programs. In Test-Comp 2021, we described a previous version that incrementally injected labels to guide Bounded Model Checking (BMC) and Evolutionary Fuzzing engines to produce test cases for code coverage and bug finding. This paper introduces an improved version of FuSeBMC that utilizes both engines to produce smart seeds. First, the engines run with a short time limit on a lightly instrumented version of the program to produce the seeds. The BMC engine is particularly useful in producing seeds that can pass through complex mathematical guards. Then, FuSeBMC runs its engines with extended time limits using the smart seeds created in the previous round. FuSeBMC manages this process in two main ways. Firstly, it uses shared memory to record the labels covered by each test case. Secondly, it evaluates test cases, and those of high impact are turned into seeds for subsequent test fuzzing. In this year’s competition, we participate in the Cover-Error, Cover-Branches, and Overall categories. The Test-Comp 2022 results show that we significantly increased our code coverage score from last year, outperforming all tools in all categories.<br/
Advancing Australian Public Health Initiatives Targeting Dementia Risk Reduction
No full textPublic health initiatives aim to improve health outcomes for populations by preventing disease and the health consequences of environmental hazards and natural or human-made disasters. Whilst public health initiatives have been successfully used to modify behaviours for chronic diseases yet many initiatives targeting reduced dementia risk in older adults suffer from conceptual and statistical flaws that greatly limit their usefulness. The limited success in modifying lifestyle dementia risk factors has led us to fall short in building a successful roadmap to dementia risk reduction. Here we argue for adopting a population-level, holistic approach to dementia risk reduction strategies across the lifespan. This approach is supplemented by 10 strategies that focus on improving social policies, harnessing existing policy, legislature and incentive schemes, and identifying feasible approaches to increase recreational and transport-related physical activity to creating best practice healthcare that supports healthy brain ageing for all.Key words: Health policy, health services, public health, gerontology, dementi
Energy consumption and performance optimisation of laser cleaning for coating removal
No full textSelective removal of coatings by lasers can facilitate the reuse of coated tools in a circular economy. In order to optimise and control the process, it is essential to study the impact of process input variables on process performance. In this paper, coating removal from tooling was carried out using a picosecond a pulsed fibre laser, in order to investigate the effects of laser pulse energy, pulse frequency, galvo scanning speed and scanning track stepover. A fractional factorial design of experiments and analysis of variance was used to optimise the process; considering cleaning rate, specific energy consumption and surface integrity as assessed by changes in surface roughness and composition of the tooling after laser cleaning. The results shows synergy between cleaning rate and specific energy with the laser pulse frequency and galvo scanning speed as the two most significant factors, while the laser pulse energy had the greatest contribution to changes in surface composition. Based on extensive experiments, the relationship between processing rate and system specific energy consumption was mathematically modelled. The paper contributes a new specific energy model for laser cleaning and provides a benchmark of the process energy requirements compared to other manufacturing processes. Additionally, the generic scientific learning from this is that the rate of energy input is a key tool for maximising cleaning rate and minimising specific energy requirements, while the intensity of energy applied, is a key metric that influences surface integrity. More complex factors, influence the surface integrity.</p
Adrenergic prolongation of action potential duration in rainbow trout myocardium via inhibition of the delayed rectifier potassium current, IKr.
No full textCatecholamines mediate the ‘fight or flight’ response in a wide variety of vertebrates.The endogenous catecholamine adrenaline increases heart rate and contractilestrength to raise cardiac output. The increase in contractile force is driven in large partby an increase in myocyte Ca 2+ influx on the L-type Ca current (I CaL ) during thecardiac action potential (AP). Here, we report a K + - based mechanism that prolongsAP duration (APD) in fish hearts following adrenergic stimulation. We show thatadrenergic stimulation inhibits the delayed rectifier K + current (I Kr ) in rainbow trout( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) cardiomyocytes. This slows repolarization and prolongsAPD which may contribute to positive inotropy following adrenergic stimulation in fishhearts. The endogenous ligand, adrenaline (10 -6 M), which activates both α- and βARs reduced maximal I Kr tail current to 61.4±3.9% of control in atrial and ventricularmyocytes resulting in an APD prolongation of ~ 20% at both 50 and 90%repolarization. This effect was reproduced by the α-specific adrenergic agonist,phenylephrine (10 -6 M), but not the β-specific adrenergic agonist isoproterenol (10 -6 M). Adrenaline (10 -6 M) in the presence of β 1 and β 2 -blockers (10 -6 Matenolol and 10 -6 M ICI-118551, respectively) also inhibited I Kr . Thus, I Krsuppression following adrenergic stimulation leads to APD prolongation in the rainbowtrout heart. This is the first time this mechanism has been identified in fish and may actin unison with the well-known enhancement of I CaL following adrenergic stimulationto prolong APD and increase cardiac inotropy