A Study on the Durability of Fire Hoses of Fire Hydrants

Although the number of fires has not changed considerably in recent times, property damage and casualties due to fires are increasing every year. Maintaining the performance of fire-fighting facilities installed in buildings has been emphasized for maximizing human safety and minimizing property damage caused by fires. As a result, since 2017, the maintenance of fire extinguishers throughout their service life, has been mandated. In case of a fire, initial fire extinguishing and fire spreading prevention are crucial. There have been no available measures for the maintenance and verification of indoor fire hydrants and outdoor fire hydrant hoses used for extinguishing fires and preventing combustion expansion. This study was therefore intended to present measures for ascertaining the service life of these fire extinguishers, by evaluating their firefighting abilities through sample analysis and case analysis of the fire hoses. Research shows that the degradation of performance of the fire hoses becomes evident between 9 and 10 years, so that 10 years of service life is considered appropriate for the fire hoses.

Seismic Performance of Offshore Piers under Wave Impact and Chloride Ion Corrosion Environment

Offshore bridges may suffer from chloride ion corrosion, tsunami wave impact, and earthquake. However, the coupling effects of multiple factors have not been fully considered. This paper studied multiple degradation effects on the seismic performance of offshore piers considering tsunami wave impact, chloride ion corrosion, and their interaction. Firstly, through the scale model test of tsunami wave flume, the wave force of box girder structures and piers under different tsunami wave conditions is measured. Then, according to the corrosion characteristics of coastal chloride salts on reinforced concrete bridge piers, the corrosion parameters is selected by Latin hypercube sampling, and the influence of corrosion expansion and cracking of bridge pier cover on the chloride ion corrosion process is considered to modify the degradation model of corroded reinforced concrete materials. Finally, the wave load measured by the test is converted by the similarity criterion of the fluid mechanic test and loaded into the ABAQUS full-bridge model, and the pier after the tsunami wave is evaluated by the pushover analysis. The bearing capacity and lateral stiffness of the corroded pier before and after different tsunami waves are compared. The results show that the lateral bearing capacity and stiffness of bridge piers are, respectively, decreased by 27.6% and 6.2% after 30 years of service. Without corrosion, the lateral bearing capacity and stiffness of piers were, respectively, reduced by 11.45% and 10.6% after HXB-5 wave impact. After 30 years of service, the lateral bearing capacity and stiffness of bridge piers are, respectively, reduced by 41.8% and 22.5% under the combined action of corrosion and HXB-5 wave impact. It is found that the coupling effects of multiple degradation factors were more significant than the simple superposition ones. Therefore, the coupling effect of multiple factors should be considered in practical engineering.

An Interview with Dr. Shipeng Yu, Winner of ACM SIGKDD 2021 Service Award

Shipeng Yu, Ph.D. is the recipient of the 2021 ACM SIGKDD Service Award, which is the highest service award in the field of knowledge discovery and data mining. Conferred annually on one individual or group in recognition of outstanding professional services and contributions to the field of knowledge discovery and data mining, Dr. Yu was honored for his years of service and many accomplishments as general chair of KDD 2017 and currently as sponsorship director for SIGKDD. Dr. Yu is Director of AI Engineering, Head of the Growth AI team at LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network. He sat down with SIGKDD Explorations to discuss how he first got involved in the KDD conference in 2006, the benefits and drawbacks of virtual conferences, his work at LinkedIn, and KDD's place in the field of machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence.

Aggression During Playful and Athletic Activity in the Greek Primary School

The purpose of this pan- Hellenic research was to study the aggressive behavior of students during sports activities and play in the school yard. Specifically, through the answers of 562 (100%) teachers (396 teachers 70% and 166 physical education 30%) the following were investigated: a) the existence and forms, the individual characteristics of children who receive or show aggression, the training of teachers and coping practices that help minimize forms of aggression, and b) differences in teachers' responses to gender, years of service, and specialization. A relevant questionnaire with a five-point scale was prepared and distributed electronically to all primary schools in Greece. Before descriptive and inductive statistics, the a-Cronbach test had showed a value of 0.898 and the control of bifurcation (Guttman) had showed a value of 0,789 which indicates that the questionnaire has good reliability. They were carried out the t-test control for independent samples, ANOVA and x2 control for the differences in the teachers’ answers regarding teachers’ gender, specialty, and years of service. The results showed that all teachers agree that there are forms of aggression during play and sports activity in the elementary school yard and these are distinguished into physical (pushing, kicking, pulling), verbal (swearing, mocking performance), emotional (social exclusion) and some are repetitive and deliberate. We have a significant difference between the teachers in terms of the methods they suggest and the actions they take to deal with the phenomenon. The teachers have done relevant training but this is not enough. They need even more to deal with the phenomenon on their part more effectively.

DISTANCE EDUCATION IN THE PANDEMIC ERA: THE VIEWS OF GREEK GENERAL AND SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION REGARDING READINESS, CHALLENGES AND THE POST-COVID EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES

<p>The present study, via the use of a questionnaire, examined the views of 138 Greek teachers, of general and special education, on the readiness for distance education, the challenges they face during the courses, and the measures to be taken in education in case of a next crisis such as Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Educators’ views on the measures to be taken by educational institutions in order to be ready to provide distance education in the post-COVID era were also examined. The analysis of results showed that Special Education teachers appeared to be more ready for distance education; indeed, their field of employment itself, namely teaching, their years of service, the age and the level of studies were found to have a statistically significant influence on their answers. The greater challenge that both groups of teachers faced were the difficulties in communicating with their students. It became apparent also the great need for training teachers in issues related to distance education as well as the protection of their personal data of their students. </p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0977/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Sharing reflections and expressing appreciation upon completing a decade as co-editor of the IJHPR

The Israel Journal of Health Policy Research (IJHPR) was launched in January 2012. In December 2021 it will be completing 10 years of continuous publication. I have had the privilege of serving as the journal’s co-editor in chief during this period, and after ten years of service I am now preparing to step down from that role. IJHPR achievements of which I am particularly proud include remaining true to its mission, attracting manuscripts from virtually all the Israeli institutions engaged in health policy research as well as many leading institutions abroad, widening the circle of Israeli professionals who are submitting manuscripts to journals, and helping many established Israeli academics expand their repertoires to include articles with strong policy components. Several people and organizations have helped make editing the IJHPR such a wonderful experience for me. They include IJHPR co-editor Avi Israeli, IJHPR associate editor Steve Schoenbaum, the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research (which sponsors the journal), BioMed Central (which publishes the journal), the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute (my employer), my family (and particularly my wife, Laura Rosen), and the thousands of authors who have chosen to publish with the IJHPR. May the journal’s second decade be even better than its first one!

ATTITUDES OF SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS IN EAST JERUSALEM TOWARDS EMPLOYING THE PORTFOLIO AS AN ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT TOOL IN TEACHING

The study aimed to identify the attitudes of secondary school teachers in East Jerusalem towards employing the achievement file "Portfolio" as an alternative assessment tool in teaching, according to gender variables, years of service, educational material, and the classes they teach. To verify the objectives of the study, the two researchers used the descriptive analytical method by constructing a questionnaire whose number of paragraphs was (15) paragraphs. The questionnaire was applied to a sample of (143) male and female teachers, from the study community consisting of (780) male and female teachers. The results of the study concluded that the attitudes of secondary school teachers in East Jerusalem towards employing the achievement file "Portfolio" as an alternative assessment tool were positive and to a medium degree, and that the overall tool obtained an arithmetic mean of (3. 40), as well as the presence of statistically significant differences due to the variables of gender, years of service and subject education and the classes they teach, came for the benefit of female teachers, long-serving teachers, 12th grade teachers, and also for teachers of subjects other than science, mathematics and languages.

The reality of using social networks as an educational medium from the point of view of the faculty members at Umm Al-Qura University: واقع استخدام شبكات التواصل الاجتماعي كوسيط تعليمي من وجهة نظر أعضاء هيئة التدريس بجامعة أم القرى

The study aimed to uncover the reality of using social media as an educational medium from the point of view of faculty members at Umm Al-Qura University, and in order to achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher used the descriptive approach by applying a questionnaire consisting of (39) statements distributed in two areas, namely the degree of use of faculty members at Umm Al-Qura University Social media networks and the second field have the degree of importance of using social media as an educational medium from the point of view of the faculty members at Umm Al-Qura University, and it was distributed among a sample of the faculty members at Umm Al-Qura University of (118) members, and the study showed several results, the most important of which were: The faculty members at Umm Al-Qura University use social media networks as an educational medium to a large extent and with an average of (3.65), and that the use of social networks as an educational medium is very important, as the arithmetic average reached the importance of using social networks as an educational medium from the point of view of the faculty members at Umm Al-Qura University (4.35) And the existence of statistically significant differences in the importance of using social networks as an educational medium according to the variable years of service in favor of the category (less than 5 years).