OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH OF CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN DILI, TIMOR LESTE

Occupational Safety and Health is the program to protect workers from the dangers of work accidents and occupational diseases that may occur during work. This study was conducted to determine the implementation performance of occupational safety and health program, to find out the obstacles during the implementation occupational safety and health programs, as well as labor laws and regulations relating to OSH on construction projects in Dili Timor Leste. This study collected data by distributing questionnaires to employees who work on the four (4) ongoing construction projects in Dili. Data analysis was carried out on Microsoft Excel which further processed the data using the mean count to determine the average value of the questionnaire and the standard deviation. This study found that the project in Dili has implemented the Occupational Safety and Health program. This can be seen from the overall results of the analysis with a mean value of 4.49 and a standard deviation of 0.473. From these results, it can be concluded that every construction project company prioritizes the implementation of OHS. The second result is the obstacles in applying OHS; from the analysis results show that the barriers from the worker side are rank 1 with a mean value of 2.90 and a standard deviation of 0.925. It can be concluded that many obstacles in implementing the OSH program occur from the workers' side due to the lack of awareness and knowledge of workers about OSH in working on construction projects. The result of the third analysis is Timor Leste's labor laws and regulations. The results of the analysis show that it is sufficient for companies to apply Law no. 4/2012 on employment in the areas of security, hygiene and health in the workplace.

Lean Concept Implementation Practices in Small and Medium Scale Pharmaceutical Industry- A Case Study

This paper describes an exploratory study of lean techniques and an extant of its implementation in a pharmaceutical industries. The main purpose of this paper is, at how much extant adoption of lean techniques and elimination of wastage and non-value added activities in a pharmaceutical industries. A questionnaire survey is prepared to know the extent of lean techniques implementation. Questionnaire survey send to the respondents of various department (production and planning, human resources, quality and control, transportation, inventory control etc.) of an organization and asked to rate the each of these areas. This study also inspect the drivers and barriers that affect the adoption of lean techniques. The mean value for each area is obtain after calculations on SPSS and statistical analyses were performed for each area. Further, this study also examined different subjects related with lean techniques adoption for example its comprehension among the respondent organization, its advantages and impediments, the techniques and tools used, etc. The outcomes from this study also revealed the hindrance that forestall or postpone the lean execution. The main obstacles in adoption of lean technology are the absence of understanding lean ideas and shop floor representative’s attitude. Keywords: lean manufacturing, lean barriers, SPSS, mean score, driving forces

General deformation behavior of deep excavation support systems: A review

In geotechnical engineering, ground movement caused by excavations is a challenging issue. The excessive differential settlement generated by soil movement induced by wall deflection may cause damage to nearby structures. A detailed literature review on the general deformation behavior of deep excavation support systems is presented in this paper. Many factors, such as normalized horizontal deflection (δh-max/He%), vertical displacement (δv-max/He%), δvmax/δhmax ratio, settlement influence zone (Do), etc., can play significant roles in describing the deflection behavior of the excavation system. A descriptive analysis of the reviewed data was carried out. The concluded δh-max/He% values range between 0.17 to 1.5, with a mean value of 0.58 for soft clay, while in the case of sands and stiff clay soils δh-max/He% value ranges between 0.07 to 0.40, with a mean value of 0.20. δv-max/He% values range between 0.13 to 1.10, with a mean value of 0.49 for soft soil, while its value ranges between 0.02 to 1.10, with a mean value of 0.24 in the case of sands and stiff clay soils. The settlement influence zone (Do) reaches a mean distance of 2.3He, which falls within Do=1.5-3.5He in the case of soft clays, while Do reaches a mean distance of 2.0He and 3.0He in the case of sands and other stiff clay soils, respectively. The relationship between system stiffness and excavation-induced wall and ground movements was discussed. Unfortunately, the literature review offers limited data regarding system stiffness, the 3-D nature of excavation support systems, excavation processes, and time effects.

Harm to the Well-being of the Udder at the Level of Dairy Farms of Sidi Mhamed Benali Wilaya of Relizane (Algeria)

Background: Among the dairy cattle production problems in Algeria, mastitis rank first in terms of socio-economic impact. Our aim is to identify the state of well-being of the udder in order to manage and control mastitis related problems. Methods: The pH analysis of 177 cow milk samples was performed at two farms located in the Sidi Mhamed Benali region in northwest Algeria associated with an assessment (of the udder’s cleanliness degree, the udder’s position, the teat’s hyperkeratosis lesion and the ITH) out over a period of one year (2020-2021). Result: Analysis of mean (of cleanliness, udder position and ITH) between cold and warm season were significantly different at a value of [(4.11; 2.75); (5.19; 4.11); (56.96; 73.76)] respectively. The paper test revealed that the health of the udder is influenced by any variation in cleanliness and the ITH whose correlation coefficient is equal to 0.72 leading to the appearance of subclinical mastitis during the cold season. While during the hot season the bad milking procedure is incriminated in the appearance of hyperkeratosis lesion at a mean value equal to 1 (smooth ring stage) inducing the appearance of clinical mastitis with p less than 0.05, moreover the cows in first lactation are the most influenced by these elicited factors. In conclusion, monitoring and evaluating the well-being of the udder around the parturition is a tool that allows better prevention of mastitis.

Physical growth in thalassemic children of 2-12 years with multiple transfusions

The hemoglobinopathies are the most common single-gene defect in man. The thalassemia syndromes are a heterogeneous group of hereditary disorder due to decreased synthesis of either α or β globin chain of Hb A. There are 3 phases of growth disturbances and have three different etiologies. First phase: growth disturbances is mainly due to hypoxia, anaemia, ineffective erythropoiesis and nutritional factors; the Second phase: During late childhood, growth retardation is mainly due to iron overload affecting the GH-IGF-1 axis and other endocrinal complications. Third phase: after the age of 10-11 years, delayed or arrested puberty is an important contributory factor to growth failure in adolescents thalassemic who does not show any growth spurt. Cross-sectional, observational, single-centre, tertiary hospital-based study. Children of thalassemia major of 2-12 years with multiple transfusions was taken over 1 year. Study population was divided into 2 groups: Group1-irregularly transfused; Group 2-regularly transfused. Clinical settings, anthropometry, laboratory tests like serum ferritin, pre-transfusion haemoglobin, total leucocyte count etc. were taken into consideration. Thalassemia children with other comorbidities like tuberculosis, chronic kidney disease, chronic heart diseases etc. were excluded from the study.Among the 200 children, 143 (71.5%) were taking regular (2-4 weekly) transfusion therapy and 57 (28.5%) were taking irregular transfusion (>4weekly). Mean age of diagnosis was 18.66 ± 7.443months in Group 1 (Irregularly transfused) and 18.93 ± 7.218 months in Group 2 (Regularly transfused). Among the regularly transfused thalassemic 17.7% children had W/A < 3 percentile and among the irregularly transfused children it was 15%. Among the irregularly transfused children, 27. 1% and among the regularly transfused children 21.6% had H/A <3rd percentile. In the present study children 61% had normal BMI and only 5.4 % had BMI less than 3rd percentile overall. Among irregularly transfused thalassemic children >10years of age, 86.7% have not attained puberty yet. Among the regularly transfused thalassemic children 96.7% have not attained puberty yet. US and LS individually affected resulting in stunting but it was proportionate innature so US: LS ratio was according to age. A positive correlation between pre-transfusion haemoglobin and W/A and H/A suggested that with decreasing pre-transfusion haemoglobin concentration more child had growth retardation. Mean value of serum Ferritin was 941 ± 608.490 ng/ml in Group 1(Irregularly transfused) and Mean value of serum Ferritin was 1403 ± 685.584ng/ml in Group 2(Regularly transfused). MUAC in the present study was 12.44cm suggesting mild-moderate malnutrition. Extremely variable clinical and haematological findings were observed in these patients. Growth retardation has found in both regularly and irregularly transfused patients. These findings are almost comparable to other Indian studies. Appropriate knowledge regarding prenatal counselling, early diagnosis, regular transfusions and overall treatment can help better management of this group of patients.

Research on Virtual Color Restoration of Complex Building System Based on Discrete Wavelet Transform

At present, image restoration has become a research hotspot in computer vision. The purpose of digital image restoration is to restore the lost information of the image or remove redundant objects without destroying the integrity and visual effects of the image. The operation of user interactive color migration is troublesome, resulting in low efficiency. And, when there are many kinds of colors, it is prone to errors. In response to these problems, this paper proposes automatic selection of sample color migration. Considering that the respective gray-scale histograms of the visual source image and the target image are approximately normal distributions, this paper takes the peak point as the mean value of the normal distribution to construct the objective function. We find all the required partitions according to the user’s needs and use the center points in these partitions as the initial clustering centers of the fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm to complete the automatic clustering of the two images. This paper selects representative pixels as sample blocks to realize automatic matching of sample blocks in the two images and complete the color migration of the entire image. We introduced the curvature into the energy functional of the p-harmonic model. According to whether there is noise in the image, a new wavelet domain image restoration model is proposed. According to the established model, the Euler–Lagrange equation is derived by the variational method, the corresponding diffusion equation is established, and the model is analyzed and numerically solved in detail to obtain the restored image. The results show that the combination of image sample texture synthesis and segmentation matching method used in this paper can effectively solve the problem of color unevenness. This not only saves the time for mural restoration but also improves the quality of murals, thereby achieving more realistic visual effects and connectivity.

Organic Phosphorus Mineralization Dominates the Release of Internal Phosphorus in a Macrophyte-Dominated Eutrophication Lake

Macrophyte-dominated eutrophication (MDE) lakes have attracted wide attention due to the high phosphorus (P) loading in sediments that poses a wide spread risk for P release and pollution management. However, because of the superior productivity characteristics, the role of organic P mineralization in sediments in the internal P loading of MDE lake is still under debate. This study investigated the release dynamic of P in the sediments of Lake Caohai, a MDE lake in southwest of China, using a combination of the modified Huffer sequential extraction method, 31P nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), and composite diffusive gradient in thin films (DGT) technology. Results showed that the apparent P diffusion flux at the sediment-water interface was remarkably high, with a mean value of 0.37 mg m−2 d−1. The phosphate ester organophosphorus components (i.e., Mono-P and Diester-P) continuously deposited and degraded in the sediments maintained the high productivity of the lake, and the mineralization process plays a critical role in the release of internal P. Although the content of inorganic P in sediment is relatively high (accounting for approximately 60% of total P), the reductive mechanism based on P-containing iron oxide/hydroxide has a low contribution to the internal P loading, as was indicated by the low release rate of P-combination iron-manganese (Fe-Mn)/iron-aluminum (Fe-Al) (BD-P and NaOH-P) and the insignificant positive correlations between DGT-labile P and DGT-labile Fe in the sediment cores. Additionally, organic P in sediments could transfer to P-combination Fe-Al/Fe-Mn. However, in severely expropriated environments, the enrichment of P-combination Fe-Al/Fe-Mn in surface sediments inhibited the mineralization of monophosphate to some degree. Taken together, this study emphasized the impact of sediment organic P loading on the release of internal P in lake, highlighting that organic P is also the valuable objects for avoiding eutrophication of MDE lakes.

Morphostructural Characterization of the Heterogeneous Rhodolith Bed at the Marine Protected Area “Capo Carbonara” (Italy) and Hydrodynamics

Mediterranean rhodolith beds are priority marine benthic habitats for the European Community, because of their relevance as biodiversity hotspots and their role in the carbonate budget. Presently, Mediterranean rhodolith beds typically occur within the range of 30–75 m of water depth, generally located around islands and capes, on flat or gently sloping areas. In the framework of a collaboration between the University of Milano-Bicocca and the Marine Protected Area “Capo Carbonara” (Sardinia, Italy), video explorations and sampling collections in three selected sites revealed the occurrence of a well developed and heterogeneous rhodolith bed. This bed covers an area >41 km2 around the cape, with live coverage ranging between 6.50 and 55.25%. Rhodoliths showed interesting morphostructural differences. They are small compact pralines at the Serpentara Island, associated with gravelly sand, or bigger boxwork at the Santa Caterina shoal associated with sand, whereas branches are reported mostly in the Is Piscadeddus shoal, associated with muddy sand. Both in the Santa Caterina shoal and the Serpentara Island, rhodoliths generally show a spheroidal shape, associated with a mean value of currents of 4.3 and 7.3 cm/s, respectively, up to a maximum of 17.7 cm/s at Serpentara, whereas in the Is Piscadeddus shoal rhodolith shape is variable and current velocity is significantly lower. The different hydrodynamic regime, with a constant current directed SW, which deviates around the cape towards E, is responsible for such morphostructural heterogeneity, with the site of the Serpentara Island being the most exposed to a constant unidirectional and strong current. We can associate current velocity with specific rhodolith morphotypes. The morphostructural definition of the heterogeneity of rhodoliths across large beds must be considered for appropriate management policies.

Reference Values and the Z-Score Values of Tricuspid Annular Plane Systolic Excursion in Chinese Children

Objective To establish age-specific and body surface area (BSA)-specific reference values of Tricuspid Annular Plane Systolic Excursion (TAPSE) for children under 15 years old in China. Study design A retrospective study was conducted in Children's Hospital Attached to the Capital Institute of Pediatrics. A total of 702 cases were included in this research to establish reference values of TAPSE. SPSS 25.0 (IBM) was used for data analysis. Lambda-mu-sigma method was used to calculate and construct the age-specific and BSA-specific percentiles and Z-score curves of TAPSE. Results The mean value of TAPSE increased with age and BSA from 0 to 15 years in a nonlinear way and reached the adult level (17mm) until 1 year old. No difference could be observed in genders. Conclusions TAPSE values increased with age and BSA in Chinese children aged between 0-15 years and there was no difference between boys and girls. A multi-center study from different parts of China is supposed to be conducted in the future to reflect the whole spectrum of TAPSE in Chinese children.

The second Vassiliev measure of uniform random walks and polygons in confined space

Biopolymers, like chromatin, are often confined in small volumes. Confinement has a great effect on polymer conformations, including polymer entanglement. Polymer chains and other filamentous structures can be represented by polygonal curves in 3-space. In this manuscript, we examine the topological complexity of polygonal chains in 3-space and in confinement as a function of their length. We model polygonal chains by equilateral random walks in 3-space and by uniform random walks in confinement. For the topological characterization, we use the second Vassiliev measure. This is an integer topological invariant for polygons and a continuous functions over the real numbers, as a function of the chain coordinates for open polygonal chains. For uniform random walks in confined space, we prove that the average value of the Vassiliev measure in the space of configurations increases as $O(n^2)$ with the length of the walks or polygons. We verify this result numerically and our numerical results also show that the mean value of the second Vassiliev measure of equilateral random walks in 3-space increases as $O(n)$. These results reveal the rate at which knotting of open curves and not simply entanglement are affected by confinement.