• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.986-991
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• 2005

Intense competition existing in construction market creates an industry that is dominated by the client groups. Numerous studies dealing with private clients' needs and expectations from contractor firms exist in the literature. However in the unique construction industry, in addition to clients, consultants as representatives of clients will almost always have very important roles to play as well. By presenting survey findings of 50 consultant firms, this study provides insights into consultants' general needs and expectations from contracting organizations on behalf of their clients by using the data from Northern Cyprus private building construction market.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.116-124
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• 2017

The study makes an attempt to investigate the causal nexus between carbon dioxide emissions, GDP per capita, industrialization and population with an evidence from Rwanda by employing a time series data spanning from 1965 to 2011 using the autoregressive distributed lag model. Evidence from the study shows that carbon dioxide emissions, GDP per capita, industrialization and population are co-integrated and have a long-run equilibrium relationship. Evidence from the Granger-causality shows a unidirectional causality running from industrialization to GDP per capita, population to carbon dioxide emissions, population to GDP per capita and population to industrialization. Evidence from the long-run elasticities has policy implications for Rwanda; a 1% increase in GDP per capita will decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 1.45%, while a 1% increase in industrialization will increase carbon dioxide emissions by 1.64% in the long-run. Increasing economic growth in Rwanda will therefore reduce environmental pollution in the long-run which appears to support the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. However, industrialization leads to more emissions of carbon dioxide, which reduces environment, health and air quality. It is noteworthy that the Rwandan Government promotes sustainable industrialization, which improves the use of clean and environmentally sound raw materials, industrial process and technologies.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.40-54
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• 2017

According to FAO, "agricultural sectors are particularly exposed to the effects of climate change and increases climate variability". As a result, the study makes an attempt to answer the question: Is there a causal effect between agricultural production and carbon dioxide emissions in Ghana? By employing a time series data spanning from 1960 to 2015 using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag method. There was evidence of a long-run equilibrium relationship running from copra production, corn production, green coffee production, milled rice production, millet production, palm kernel production and sorghum production to carbon dioxide emissions. The short-run equilibrium relationship shows that, a 1% increase in copra and green coffee production will increase carbon dioxide emissions by 0.22% and 0.03%, a 1% increase in millet and sorghum production will decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 0.13% and 0.11% in the short-run while a 31% of future fluctuations in carbon dioxide emissions are due to shocks in corn production. There was bidirectional causality between milled rice production and carbon dioxide emissions, millet production and carbon dioxide emissions and, sorghum production and carbon dioxide emissions; and a unidirectional causality running from corn production to carbon dioxide emissions and carbon dioxide emissions to palm kernel production.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.66-73
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• 2021

Background: The objective was to assess the knowledge level, attitude, and practice of health care workers towards standard precautions, and to identify the related factors. Furthermore, it was attempted to identify the proportion of having the experience of needle stick injuries (NSIs) and associated factors among participants. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a teaching hospital among 233 health workers using a self-administrated questionnaire. The questionnaire included eight knowledge items, seven practice items, and five attitude items. Based on the mean score of each category, responses were grouped into "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory". Univariate, bivariate, and multivariable logistic regression analyses were done. Results: The mean age of the participants 32.95 (SD ± 9.70) and 62.2% of them were women. 57.5% of the staff had a satisfactory level of correct knowledge (>5 correct answers), 37.3% had a satisfactory positive attitude (>3 correct answers), and 30.9% had a satisfactory practice (>3 correct answers) towards standard precautions. The occupation was one of the predictors as doctors were less likely to have satisfactory knowledge and practice compared to nurses (OR = 0.269, 95% CI: 0.10-0.70 and OR = 0.248, 95% CI: 0.08-0.77, respectively). Out of 174 participants, 31.6% of them reported experiencing NSIs and support staff were 71% less likely to experience NSIs compared to nurses & paramedics. Conclusion: The findings revealed a substandard adherence of standard precautions among participants, which highlighted the necessity of the provision of a periodic, tailored training program based on the occupation and risk exposure.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.67 no.1
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• pp.69-78
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• 2018

The study presented herein focused on the change in hysteretic force-deformation behavior of lead rubber bearings (LRBs). The material model used to idealize response of LRBs under cyclic motion is capable of representing the gradual attrition in strength of isolator unit on account of lead core heating. To identify the effect of loading history on the hysteretic response of LRBs, a typical isolator unit is subjected to cyclic motions with different velocity, amplitude and number of cycles. Furthermore, performance of an LRB isolated single degree of freedom system is studied under different seismic input levels. Finally, the significance of lead core heating effect on LRBs is discussed by considering the current design approach for base isolated structures. Results of this study show that the response of an LRB is governed strongly by the amplitude and number of cycles of the motion and the considered seismicity level.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.193-202
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• 2017

The study estimated the relationship between carbon dioxide, crop and livestock production index in Ghana: Estimating the long-run elasticities and variance decomposition by employing a time series data spanning from 1960-2013 using both fit regression and ARDL models. There was evidence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, crop production index and livestock production index. Evidence from the study shows that a 1% increase in crop production index will increase carbon dioxide emissions by 0.52%, while a 1% increase in livestock production index will increase carbon dioxide emissions by 0.81% in the long-run. There was evidence of a bidirectional causality between a crop production index and carbon dioxide emissions and a unidirectional causality exists from livestock production index to carbon dioxide emissions. Evidence from the variance decomposition shows that 37% of future fluctuations in carbon dioxide emissions are due to shocks in the crop production index while 18% of future fluctuations in carbon dioxide emissions are due to shocks in the livestock production index. Efforts towards reducing pre-production, production, transportation, processing and post-harvest losses are essential to reducing food wastage which affects Ghana's carbon footprint.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.279-292
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• 2018

Inspired by the energy harvesting eel, a flexible flag behind a D-shape cylinder in a uniform viscous flow was simulated by using the immersed boundary method (IBM) along with low-speed wind tunnel experimentation. The flag in the wake of the cylinder was strongly influenced by the vortices shed from the upstream cylinder under the vortex-vortex and vortex-body interactions. Geometric and flow parameters were optimized for the flexible flag subjected to passive flapping. The influence of length and bending coefficient of the flexible flag, the diameters (D) of the cylinder and the streamwise spacing between the cylinder and the flag, on the energy generation was examined. Constructive and destructive vortex interaction modes, unidirectional and bidirectional bending and the different flapping frequency were found which explained the variations in the energy of the downstream flag. Voltage output and flapping behavior of the flag were also observed experimentally to find a more direct relationship between the bending of the flag and its power generation.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.532-539
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• 2020

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to assess the effect of nutrition education received by fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in state schools in Famagusta, Northern Cyprus, on their students. SUBJECTS/METHODS: The aim of this study is to assess the effect of nutrition education received by fourth- and fifth-grade teachers (n = 27) in state schools in Famagusta on their students. Participants (n = 718) were selected through a regional pilot scheme. The teachers were instructed on nutrition by the researcher and provided with a researcher-prepared nutrition education book "I Am Learning about Healthy Nutrition". Before receiving their nutrition education, the teachers were pretested to assess their baseline nutrition knowledge. Following receipt of their nutrition education, a posttest, which included the same questions as those in the pretest, was administered to the teachers to assess the effectiveness of the training session. Similarly, students were asked pretest researcher-prepared questions to evaluate their baseline nutrition knowledge level. The teachers were then given a period of three to four weeks to instruct the students in nutrition education. Following this instructional period, a posttest that included the same questions as those in the pretest was administered to the students. RESULTS: The results showed that there were significant differences between the pre- and posttest scores of both teachers and students; in both groups, the nutrition knowledge level increased (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: These results show that the provision of nutrition education training to teachers positively affected the nutrition knowledge level of both teachers and students.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.2
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• pp.203-215
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• 2018

A large body of experiments have been conducted to date to evaluate the punching shear strength of flat slab-column connections, but it is noted that only a few of them have been considered for the development of the ACI Code provisions. The limited test results used for the development of the code provisions fall short of predicting accurately the punching shear strength of such connections. In an effort to address this shortfall and to gain an insight into the factors that control the punching shear strength of flat slab-column connections, we report a qualified database of 650 punching shear test results in this article. All slabs examined in this database were tested under gravity loading and do not contain shear reinforcement. In order to justify including any test result for evaluation punching shear database, we have developed an approved set of criteria. Carefully established set of criteria represent the actual characteristics of structures that include minimum compressive strength, effective depths of slab, flexural and compression reinforcement ratio and column size. The key parameters that significantly affect the punching shear strength of flat slab-column connections are then examined using ACI 318-14 expression. The results reported here have paramount significance on the range of applicability of the ACI Code provision and seem to indicate that the ACI provisions do not sufficiently capture many trends identified through regression of the principal parameters, and fall on the unsafe side for the prediction of the punching shear strength of flat slab-column connections.