Construction Tasks Research Articles

Evaluation of typical ecosystem services in Dabie Mountain area and its application in improving residents' well-being.

Research on ecosystem services and residents' well-being in old revolutionary base areas is an important task for China's ecological civilization construction and rural revitalization. Taking Jinzhai County, the core area of Dabie Mountains, China, as an example, based on InVEST model, the methods of spatial autocorrelation and coupling coordinated development degree, the spatiotemporal evolution, spatial heterogeneity and coupling association patterns of ecosystem services and multidimensional well-being in the study area from 2005 to 2020 were discussed. The major results are: In the past 15 years, in the core area of the Dabie Mountains, ecosystem services such as food supply, soil retention and water yield showed an upward trend, carbon sequestration and biodiversity maintenance showed a downward trend. The comprehensive index of multidimensional well-being in the core area of Dabie Mountain increased by 27.23% and the spatial difference in multidimensional well-being is gradually narrowing. By the analysis of coupling coordination, the number of units with the type of coupling disharmony between ecosystem services and multidimensional well-being in the study area decreased significantly from 56.85% in 2005 to 26.81% in 2020, respectively. The analysis of geographical detection showed that the habitat quality factor was the dominant controlling factor of coupling coordination spatial difference. By bivariate spatial autocorrelation analysis, in the past 15 years, the number of units with the "high ecology-high well-being" synergy type increased from 5.44% to 13.31%. The results can provide a reference for accurate identification, optimal regulation and synergistic improvement between ecosystem services and relative poverty in the Dabie Mountain area.

Constructing time-series momentum portfolios with deep multi-task learning

A diversified risk-adjusted time-series momentum (TSMOM) portfolio can deliver substantial abnormal returns and offer some degree of tail risk protection during extreme market events. The performance of existing TSMOM strategies, however, relies not only on the quality of the momentum signal but also on the efficacy of the volatility estimator. Yet many of the existing studies have always considered these two factors to be independent. Inspired by recent progress in Multi-Task Learning (MTL), we present a new approach using MTL in a deep neural network architecture that jointly learns portfolio construction and various auxiliary tasks related to volatility, such as forecasting realized volatility as measured by different volatility estimators. Through backtesting from January 2000 to December 2020 on a diversified portfolio of continuous futures contracts, we demonstrate that even after accounting for transaction costs of up to 3 basis points, our approach outperforms existing TSMOM strategies. Moreover, experiments confirm that adding auxiliary tasks indeed boosts the portfolio’s performance. These findings demonstrate that MTL can be a powerful tool in finance.

Comparing visuospatial construction ability of MoCA and MMSE in cognitive assessment of patients with dementia of Alzheimer’s type

AbstractBackgroundThe ability to see an object or picture as a set of parts and then to construct a replica of the original from these parts is known as visuospatial constructive cognition. Examples of visuospatial construction include drawing, buttoning shirts, constructing models, making a bed, and putting together furniture that arrives unassembled. Visuospatial construction is a central cognitive ability. At the same time, there are enormous individual differences among people in their ability to perform visuospatial constructive tasks. The MoCA had greater sensitivity than MMSE in detecting MCI versus HCs (; however, specificity was lower for the MoCA than MMSE.MethodThe present study has considered visuospatial construction ability in cognitive neuropsychological screening tool. The neuropsychological screening tool were Mini‐mental State Examination (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). The intersecting pentagons copy sub‐item was administered as part of the MMSE whereas there was cube figure to copy where subjects have to initially convert a two‐dimensional contour to a three‐dimensional cube. The sample consisted of 15 patients with mild Dementia of Alzheimer’s type.ResultThe result showed that both the MoCA and the MMSE were successful in differentiating between patients with and without cognitive domain deficits and cognitive impairment. The scores in visuospatial construction ability on MoCA and MMSE are different on visuospatial domain which on further analysis showed significant differences in cognitive performance.ConclusionThe cognitive scores of mild Dementia of Alzheimer’s patient differs which showed the differences in the ability to complete a cognitive task as and thus revealed greater sensitivity of MoCA as compared to MMSE.

Social Representations of Gender: A Contextual Construction in Schools

Social representations of gender (SR), namely, beliefs, values, attitudes, and symbolic content about gender affect people’s behavior and relations to others in social life. Gender representations help explain gender violence among the adolescent population. A qualitative study was conducted to explore the gender SR of teachers and students from two cities in Colombia: Bogotá and Ibagué. Multimethod data collection was performed using a word-association task with 37 teachers and a collaborative cartoon construction task with 284 students from both cities. Thematic analysis and triangulation were performed on this data. Knowledge and informational sources were explored in-depth among students and teachers. The analysis of gender representations revealed rather traditional views: binary representations of gender roles, gender relations, physical characteristics, and behavioral expectations for men and women. The study also found differences between the two educational contexts, scarce references to sexual diversity, and a nuance of tragedy in female gender roles and relations.

Study on the Factors Influencing and Mechanisms Shaping the Institutional Resilience of Mega Railway Construction Projects

With mega railway construction projects (MRCPs) facing various natural disasters and extremely difficult engineering construction tasks, there is an urgent need to improve the resilience management capability of engineering construction to cope with complex and changing internal and external risks. As a key element of the construction management system, the level of institutional resilience directly determines the adaptability of the construction system in the face of crisis. However, the research on the influencing factors and the formation mechanism of institutional resilience is slightly insufficient. Therefore, this paper defines the connotation of institutional resilience in MRCPs on the basis of existing research. Secondly, it codes authoritative journals and expert interview reports related to MRCPs in China by applying a rooting theory. Finally, the paper analyses the formation mechanism of institutional resilience based on an Interpretative Structural Modeling and proposes strategies to enhance it. The results show that the institutional environment is the fundamental influencing factor, institutional implementation, institutional supervision, institutional guarantee and institutional feedback are the direct influencing factors, and institutional stakeholders and institutional design are indirect influencing factors. The mechanism of interaction between the institution and the institutional environment, the mechanism of interaction between the institution and the institutional stakeholders, the mechanism of generation of institutional rules and the mechanism of operation of institutional rules work together to generate institutional resilience. This paper, as an exploratory study on institutional resilience in the field of engineering management, has sorted out the ideas for the subsequent research on institutional resilience in this field and provided the directions for project managers of MRCPs to improve their institutional systems.

A Co-adaptive Duality-aware Framework for Biomedical Relation Extraction.

Biomedical relation extraction is a vital task for electronic health record mining and biomedical knowledge base construction. Previous work often adopts pipeline methods or joint methods to extract subject, relation, and object while ignoring the interaction of subject-object entity pair and relation within the triplet structure. However, we observe that entity pair and relation within a triplet are highly related, which motivates us to build a framework to extract triplets that can capture the rich interactions among the elements in a triplet. We propose a novel co-adaptive biomedical relation extraction framework based on a duality-aware mechanism. This framework is designed as a bidirectional extraction structure that fully takes interdependence into account in the duality-aware extraction process of subject-object entity pair and relation. Based on the framework, we design a co-adaptive training strategy and a co-adaptive tuning algorithm as collaborative optimization methods between modules to promote better mining framework performance gain. The experiments on two public datasets show that our method achieves the best F1 among all state-of-the-art baselines and provides strong performance gain on complex scenarios of various overlapping patterns, multiple triplets, and cross-sentence triplets. Code is available at https://github.com/11101028/CADA-BioRE. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Phasing analysis on DRO with impulsive maneuver

The cis-lunar periodic orbit exhibits some unique dynamic characteristics. Among them is the distant retrograde orbit, which has long-term stability and is one of the ideal candidate deployment orbits for cis-lunar space stations and deep-space exploration transfer stations. Orbiting, rendezvous, and docking are among the flight operations involved in space station on-orbit construction, material supply, spacecraft monitoring, and other tasks. Suitable initial conditions can be created for these operations by shortening the relative distance between spacecraft through phasing. In this study, the characteristics of a two-impulse phasing orbit on a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) are summarized, and its phasing ability is globally analyzed. Based on these analyses, a phasing optimization problem was presented and solved. Using DRO’s dynamic characteristics, a DRO multi-impulse phasing rolling solution method is presented. For accuracy purposes, the orbit determination error is also considered in this method. The simulation analysis was performed using the circular restricted three-body problem (CR3BP) dynamic model and the ephemeris model. Compared with the results of two-impulse phasing, this method reduces the offset of the end position of the DRO phasing orbit from hundreds to tens of kilometers. This result satisfies the relative distance requirements for subsequent spacecraft operations. The total pulse requirement of this phasing method for the two models was within a reasonable and feasible range.

Influence of exposure in a corrosive environment on ultimate stress of heat-treated welded joints of Al–Mg–Si–Сu alloy

Abstract The priority task of modern aircraft construction is to ensure the reliability of the operation of structures, which depends both on the quality of execution of technological processes during manufacturing and on the corrosion-mechanical durability of welded joints. This work aims to study the influence of contact duration with a corrosive environment on the mechanical strength of the base metal and welded joints of the Al–Mg–Si–Cu alloy, heat-treated in different modes (artificial aging, quenching followed by artificial aging). Corrosion-mechanical tests were carried out under constant axial tensile stress in 3 % NaCl solution for 14 days, followed by determination of the corrosion rate, ultimate strength, and fractographic analysis of the fracture surface. The results showed that the corrosion resistance of the joints is almost equal to the corrosion resistance of the base metal. It was experimentally confirmed that the ultimate strength of the base metal and welded joints decreased after corrosion exposure in a 3 % NaCl solution. This is caused by the embrittlement of the structure and the formation of corrosion defects in the near-surface zone during contact with a corrosive environment, which led to a change like a fracture from ductile to ductile with brittleness.

A Graph Neural Network and Pointer Network-Based Approach for QoS-Aware Service Composition

Quality-of-service (QoS)-aware service composition aims to aggregate multiple existing services to meet users' complex functional and nonfunctional requirements that cannot be met by simple services. The accumulation of user tasks and service composition solutions makes it possible to mine empirical rules from those historical compositions to reduce the search space and thus improve the composition efficiency. Traditional empirical rule-based methods focus on mining with well-designed rules, ignoring the underlying correlations between tasks and between services. Meanwhile, infrequently used services are not valued by these methods, but these services may still be used in constructing optimal service solutions. In addition, many methods use reinforcement learning to compose services to efficiently construct service solutions, but they do not achieve the same effect as traditional metaheuristic methods. In view of the above shortcomings, considering the ability of graphs to express relationships, we first construct tasks and services as graphs and then use a graph neural network (GNN) to mine underlying correlations and predict the probability that each service will be used to construct the solution corresponding to the task. Next, based on these high-probability services, we utilize pointer network (PN)-based reinforcement learning to efficiently construct the initial service solution. The PN is often used to solve combinatorial optimization problems and is noninferior to metaheuristics for small-scale data. To increase the generalization ability of the network, we superimpose another layer on the PN. Finally, to take advantage of infrequently used services, we use the local whale optimization algorithm (WOA) to fine-tune the initial solution and obtain a high-quality solution. The experimental results show that our approach outperforms several existing methods in terms of both composition efficiency and solution quality.

Electroencephalogram-based mental workload prediction for using Augmented Reality head mounted display in construction assembly: A deep learning approach

Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Displays (AR HMD) are considered a promising technology for assisting on-site construction tasks such as assembly. However, concerns about creating information overload and becoming a distraction to workers outweigh the potential benefits to productivity and task performance. Previous research investigated workers' mental workloads as impacted by AR-based displays for assembly tasks. Within that context, this paper proposes a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) based approach to predict mental workload when using AR HMD for construction assembly, to forecast users' cognitive status under such complex working condition. Thirty participants were recruited to finish a wood frame assembly using an AR HMD projecting a 3D conformal model on the workspace. The proposed method provided a reliable prediction of real-time electroencephalogram (EEG) signal and mental workload. The outcomes validated the feasibility of LSTM model for EEG-based mental workload prediction and specifically provided a usable method for evaluating AR HMD use in construction tasks.

Міжнародний досвід повоєнної відбудови житлового фонду та вирішення житлових проблем ВПО

The article analyses the international experience of solving the housing problems of forcibly displaced persons during the post-war recovery of the economy and socio-humanitarian space. The author characterises the role of the state in developing strategies, determining priorities, consolidating efforts, and institutionally ensuring the process of restoring living space, rebuilding housing and social infrastructure, as well as ensuring control over the use of funds, residential premises, and structures, the use of technologies and standards of construction and reconstruction. National priorities have been determined in the organisation of measures to provide housing for victims of hostilities and forced migrants, prioritisation of reconstruction, and new construction tasks. The necessity of accumulation and optimal use of internal resources, as well as the expediency of attracting foreign investments and the use of external financial assistance for the reconstruction of living space, industrial and social infrastructure with observance of systematicity and compliance with the trends of structural, technological and social development, are argued. The paper clarifies the mechanisms of interaction between the government and private investors, stimulation of entrepreneurial activity, encouragement and support of citizens in their actions regarding the independent restoration of housing, and arrangement of adjacent territories. It was found that the excessive bureaucratisation of assessing the damage caused and drawing up an application for assistance significantly slowed down the process of restoring damaged housing, which caused additional budget costs for providing IDPs with temporary housing. Ignoring the historical and cultural differences of the inhabitants of different territories and the accumulation of socially vulnerable and marginal elements led to an increase in social tension at the local level, and people affected by the war formed a permanent dependence on state aid. The need to consider positive and negative foreign experiences in the state management of the post-war reconstruction of the country’s housing stock is substantiated.

Associations and indirect effects between LEGO® construction and mathematics performance.

There is a known association between LEGO® construction ability and mathematics achievement, yet the mechanisms which drive this association are largely unknown. This study investigated the spatial mechanisms underlying this association, and whether this differs for concrete versus digital construction. Between January 2020 and July 2021, children aged 7-9 years (N = 358, 189 female, ethnicity not recorded) completed spatial and mathematics tasks, and either a concrete or digital Lego construction task. Mediation analyses examining direct and indirect pathways (through spatial skills) between Lego construction ability and mathematics explained 8.4% to 26.6% of variance in mathematics scores. Exploratory moderated mediation analyses revealed that only the indirect path through mental rotation differed between Lego conditions. Findings are discussed in relation to theories of spatial-numerical associations and the potential of Lego training for mathematics improvement.

A Computational Investigation on Rho-related GTP-binding Protein RhoB through Molecular Modeling and Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study

Background: An indispensable member of the Rho family, RhoB is an isoprenylated small GTPases that modulate the cellular cytoskeletal organization. While DNA gets damaged, it takes part in the neoplastic apoptotic mechanism. In this study, we evaluated the structure of Rho-related GTP-binding protein RhoB due to the unavailability of 3D structure in the protein data bank database. Results: The expected pI value of RhoB was 5.10 (acidic). The target–template alignment was computed using the GMQE value meanwhile 6hxu.1.A from Homo sapiens was selected as the template structure. The Swiss model was exploited to complete the model construction task. The structural compatibility and stability were revealed after a 100ns molecular dynamics simulation using GROMACA employing the OPLS-AA force field. Based on their fluctuating activity and their location between 100 and 110 and 140 and 150, PCA analysis discovered relevant residues. Conclusion: By providing an insight into the biophysical phenomenon of Rho-related GTP-binding protein RhoB inhibitors, this study will assist future investigations addressing the relationship between gene mutation and abnormalities produced by protein Rho-related GTP-binding protein RhoB in apoptotic events.

The urgent task of mass construction of «passive houses» in Ukraine

An analysis of energy consumption per m2 of housing showed that in the EU countries the average value of energy for heating is about 95 kWh/(m2) per year, while in Ukraine this value is about 200-250 kWh/(m2) per year. The main mechanisms for reducing energy costs for heating residential premises in the EU countries are shown and the dynamics of this decrease to the level of 15 kWh/(m2) per year is disclosed. The role of the «passive house» strategic building standard (nZEB) as a pioneer in reducing residential energy consumption is shown. Data on the number of "passive houses" built around the world, and data on single houses of this type in Ukraine are given. The urgent task need for the use of the "passive house" standard in Ukraine to reduce the consumption of thermal energy for heating housing, as well as harmful emissions into the atmosphere, has been identified. The topic of availability in our country of local constructive and heat-insulating building materials, technologies and engineering systems was discussed. The basic principles of creating a "passive house", its main digital technical characteristics are listed and it is shown that they are suitable for the climatic conditions of Ukraine. Recommendations are given on the use of structural and thermal insulation materials, special windows, air tightness, mechanical ventilation with exhaust air heat recovery and design of buildings without cold bridges. It has been determined that a "passive house" with simple engineering heating (cooling) systems is more sustainability and anti-crisis. The main methods for calculating a "passive house" are analyzed, the need to involve additional 3D modeling programs is determined to obtain more accurate numerical characteristics of the building and the choice of engineering systems. It is emphasized that the creation in Ukraine of entire eco-settlements from such houses will affect the general increase in the awareness of our society, broad awareness of new technologies and, as a result, the breakdown of the inertia of the entire system and the introduction of new, innovative building codes, which will entail the mass construction of "passive houses”, significant savings in energy resources throughout the country, reducing harmful emissions and improving the quality of life of people.

КОМПОЗИТНА АРМАТУРА В БУДІВЕЛЬНІ ГАЛУЗІ:ТЕНДЕНЦІЇ РОЗШИРЕННЯВИКОРИСТАННЯ

Scientific and technical progress largely ensures the production and use of new effective building construction materials with predetermined properties. The article considers the prospects of using a relatively new modern material in construction -composite reinforcement (AC), which has anumber of advantages compared to traditional metal reinforcement and at the same time is characterized by properties that limit its use in the production technology of modern concrete structures. In connection witha number of circumstances associated with the expansion of the operating conditions of reinforced concrete structures in highly aggressive environments, where it is difficult to ensure the corrosion resistance of steel reinforcement, composite reinforcement is used. The prospects of using composite reinforcement in ensuring the dielectric properties of some products and structures are shown. The global experience of using AK is summarized, the modern regulatory framework for its use in modern construction isgiven. It is shown that the use of AK on a par with steel reinforcement according to current standards regarding mechanical, technological and operational properties is sufficient to solve the vast majority of construction tasks. Reasons for the expansion of the use of composite reinforcement,taking into account the high energy intensity of traditional steel reinforcement and the inevitability of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with Ukraine's international obligations, are given.

Managing Quartz Exposure in Apartment Building and Infrastructure Construction Work Tasks.

The present report describes exposure to respirable silica and dust in the construction industry, as well as means to manage them. The average exposure in studied work tasks (n = 148) amounted to 64% of the Finnish OEL value of 0.05 mg/m3. While 10% of exposure estimates exceeded the OEL, the 60% percentile was well below 10% of the OEL, as was the median exposure. In other words, exposure was low in more than half of the tasks. Work tasks where exposure was low included construction cleaning, work management, installation of concrete elements, rebar laying, driving work machines equipped with cabin air intake filtration, and landscaping, in addition to some road construction tasks. Excessive exposure (>OEL) was related to not using respiratory protection at all or not using it for long enough after the dusty activity ceased. Excessive exposures were found in sandblasting, dismantling facade elements, diamond drilling, drilling hollow-core slabs, drilling with a drilling rig, priming of explosives, tiling, use of cabinless earthmoving machines, and jackhammering, regardless of whether the hammering took place in an underpressurized compartment or not. Even in these tasks, it was possible to perform the work safely, following good dust prevention measures and, when necessary, using respiratory protection suitable for the job. Furthermore, in all tasks with generally low exposure, one could be significantly exposed through the general air or by making poor choices in terms of dust control.

The Grammars of the Empty Tomb

In his book, Grammars of Resurrection (Robinette 2009: 7), Brian D. Robinette uses ‘grammar’ as that term refers to the resurrection of Jesus as providing ‘the framework and ambience for all Christian discourse and imagination’. In this article, I adopt his use of ‘grammars’ with reference to the empty tomb. Grammar is the substructural level of language providing structure, meaning and system to language. So, the question to be addressed here is this: What does the empty tomb speak? Or, what message may be elicited from the various texts about the empty tomb in the New Testament? This is, of course, a theological and constructive task, as we look at what these texts together bring to our topic.

Thermal image-based hand gesture recognition for worker-robot collaboration in the construction industry: A feasible study

Worker-robot collaboration (WRC) is a promising solution for complex construction tasks, which can integrate the robots’ advantages in strength and accuracy with human ability in intuitive decision-making and adaptability. A new imperative objective for real-world WRC is to design a user-friendly interface to support safe and efficient worker-robot interactions. Vision-based hand gesture is a simple but effective solution. However, existing methods mainly depend on 3-channel RGB images captured by visible cameras, which are prone to be affected by on-site environmental disturbances, such as poor illumination, fog, and dust. Moreover, previous networks strive for high accuracy, neglecting computational efficiency (e.g., model size and latency) when implementing the network on resource-constrained devices like mobile construction robots. Against this backdrop, this research presented a feasibility study to investigate whether hand signals can be detected from thermal images and designed a lightweight network that has fewer parameters and obtains lower latency without compromising accuracy. Experimental results indicated that thermal images were robust to different lighting conditions, and the proposed model achieved a high classification accuracy (97.54 %) with 1.8 M parameters. The comparative study demonstrated the superiority of our model to other advanced lightweight models, illustrating the feasibility of the developed method in supporting safe WRC applications by recognizing workers’ hand signals.

A multidimensional taxonomy for human-robot interaction in construction

Despite the increased interest in construction robotics both in academia and the industry, insufficient attention has been given to aspects related to Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Characterizing HRI for construction tasks can help researchers organize knowledge in a structured manner that allows for classifying construction robotics applications and comparing and benchmarking different studies. This paper builds upon existing taxonomies and empirical studies in HRI in various industries (e.g., construction, manufacturing, and military, among others) to propose a multidimensional taxonomy to characterize HRI applications in the construction industry. The taxonomy design followed a systematic literature review in which common themes were identified and grouped into 16 categories. The proposed taxonomy can be used as a foundation for systematic reviews and meta-analyses of HRI applications in construction and can benefit the construction industry by informing the design of collaborative tasks performed by human-robot teams.

Верификация требований охраны труда при производстве работ по устройству и ремонту кровли

In the field of scientific and technical activities, one of the priority tasks in construction and housing and communal services is to improve occupational safety in order to reduce occupational risks. Work on the installation of roofing is attributed to work at high altitude, which means a high level of danger. The emergence of new building materials, technological methods of manufacturing structures, methods of performing repair and construction work leads to the need for constant updating of the regulatory framework of construction. Within the framework of this study, a set of regulatory documents is considered, considering construction and repair and construction roofing works of construction objects. The purpose of the work is to analyze the regulatory framework at this stage, as well as to identify a list of regulatory documents that require adjustments and additions for roofing repair work.