Problematising the construction of journal quality:an engagement with the mainstream

Journal ranking studies have generally adopted citation techniques or academic perceptions as the basis for assessing journal quality. They have traditionally been a source of information about potential research outlets, new journals, and an aid to developing a consensus about the relative merit of publications for promotion decisions. The aim of our research is to address specific shortcomings in the conventional literature and construct an alternative view of how we might more appropriately assess journal ‘quality’. We attempt to engage with the conventional literature by applying an approach that does not privilege either citation techniques or academic perceptions. We have adopted from Zeff (1996) an objective measure of academic journal library holdings, which Zeff describes as a ‘market test’. Our construct provides evidence of an important difference in journal holdings for the Australasian region that could significantly influence further research on journal quality. The method itself is entirely mundane but may be considered to reflect a complex of historic and more contemporary variables which impact on academic and administrative decisions, influencing the makeup of academic library holdings and providing a proxy for journal ‘quality’.

Depth propagation and surface construction in 3-D vision

In stereo vision, regions with ambiguous or unspecified disparity can acquire perceived depth from unambiguous regions. This has been called stereo capture, depth interpolation or surface completion. We studied some striking induced depth effects suggesting that depth interpolation and surface completion are distinct stages of visual processing. An inducing texture (2-D Gaussian noise) had sinusoidal modulation of disparity, creating a smooth horizontal corrugation. The central region of this surface was replaced by various test patterns whose perceived corrugation was measured. When the test image was horizontal 1-D noise, shown to one eye or to both eyes without disparity, it appeared corrugated in much the same way as the disparity-modulated (DM) flanking regions. But when the test image was 2-D noise, or vertical 1-D noise, little or no depth was induced. This suggests that horizontal orientation was a key factor. For a horizontal sine-wave luminance grating, strong depth was induced, but for a square-wave grating, depth was induced only when its edges were aligned with the peaks and troughs of the DM flanking surface. These and related results suggest that disparity (or local depth) propagates along horizontal 1-D features, and then a 3-D surface is constructed from the depth samples acquired. The shape of the constructed surface can be different from the inducer, and so surface construction appears to operate on the results of a more local depth propagation process.

The design and engineering of a reactor test facility for thermal processing of biomass

This thesis describes the design and engineering of a pressurised biomass gasification test facility. A detailed examination of the major elements within the plant has been undertaken in relation to specification of equipment, evaluation of options and final construction. The retrospective project assessment was developed from consideration of relevant literature and theoretical principles. The literature review includes a discussion on legislation and applicable design codes. From this analysis, each of the necessary equipment units was reviewed and important design decisions and procedures highlighted and explored. Particular emphasis was placed on examination of the stringent demands of the ASME VIII design codes. The inter-relationship of functional units was investigated and areas of deficiency, such as biomass feeders and gas cleaning, have been commented upon. Finally, plant costing was summarized in relation to the plant design and proposed experimental programme. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that pressurised gasification of biomass is far more difficult and expensive to support than atmospheric gasification. A number of recommendations have been made regarding future work in this area.

Economic aspects of safety in the Greek construction industry

The thesis addresses the economic impacts of construction safety in Greece. The research involved the development of a methodology for determining the overall costs of safety, namely the sum of the costs of accidents and the costs of safety management failures (with or without accident) including image cost. Hitherto, very little work has been published on the cost of accidents in practical case studies. Moreover, to the author’s belief, no research has been published that seeks to determine in real cases the costs of prevention. The methodology developed is new, transparent, and capable of being replicated and adapted to other employment sectors and to other countries. The methodology was applied to three construction projects in Greece to test the safety costing methodology and to offer some preliminary evidence on the business case for safety. The survey work took place between 1999 and 2001 and involved 27 months of costing work on site. The study focuses on the overall costs of safety that apply to the main (principal) contractor. The methodology is supported by 120 discrete cost categories, and systematic criteria for determining which costs are included (counted) in the overall cost of safety. A quality system (in compliance with ISO9000 series) was developed to support the work and ensure accuracy of data gathering. The results of the study offer some support for the business case for safety. Though they offer good support for the economics of safety as they demonstrate need for cost effectiveness. Subject to important caveats, those projects that appeared to manage safety more cost-effectively achieved the lowest overall safety cost. Nevertheless, results are significantly lower than of other published works for two main reasons; first costs due to damages with no potential to injury were not included and second only costs to main constructor were considered. Study’s results are discussed and compared with other publish works.

Bringing a construction site into the lab:a context-relevant lab-based evaluation of a multimodal mobile application

Mobile technology has not yet achieved widespread acceptance in the Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. This paper presents work that is part of an ongoing research project focusing on the development of multimodal mobile applications for use in the AEC industry. This paper focuses specifically on a context-relevant lab-based evaluation of two input modalities – stylus and soft-keyboard v. speech-based input – for use with a mobile data collection application for concrete test technicians. The manner in which the evaluation was conducted as well as the results obtained are discussed in detail.

Using overlay test to evaluate fracture properties of field-aged asphalt concrete

Field material testing provides firsthand information on pavement conditions which are most helpful in evaluating performance and identifying preventive maintenance or overlay strategies. High variability of field asphalt concrete due to construction raises the demand for accuracy of the test. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to propose a reliable and repeatable methodology to evaluate the fracture properties of field-aged asphalt concrete using the overlay test (OT). The OT is selected because of its efficiency and feasibility for asphalt field cores with diverse dimensions. The fracture properties refer to the Paris’ law parameters based on the pseudo J-integral (A and n) because of the sound physical significance of the pseudo J-integral with respect to characterizing the cracking process. In order to determine A and n, a two-step OT protocol is designed to characterize the undamaged and damaged behaviors of asphalt field cores. To ensure the accuracy of determined undamaged and fracture properties, a new analysis method is then developed for data processing, which combines the finite element simulations and mechanical analysis of viscoelastic force equilibrium and evolution of pseudo displacement work in the OT specimen. Finally, theoretical equations are derived to calculate A and n directly from the OT test data. The accuracy of the determined fracture properties is verified. The proposed methodology is applied to a total of 27 asphalt field cores obtained from a field project in Texas, including the control Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) and two types of warm mix asphalt (WMA). The results demonstrate a high linear correlation between n and −log A for all the tested field cores. Investigations of the effect of field aging on the fracture properties confirm that n is a good indicator to quantify the cracking resistance of asphalt concrete. It is also indicated that summer climatic condition clearly accelerates the rate of aging. The impact of the WMA technologies on fracture properties of asphalt concrete is visualized by comparing the n-values. It shows that the Evotherm WMA technology slightly improves the cracking resistance, while the foaming WMA technology provides the comparable fracture properties with the HMA. After 15 months aging in the field, the cracking resistance does not exhibit significant difference between HMA and WMAs, which is confirmed by the observations of field distresses.

An integrated multi-agent framework for optimizing time, cost and environmental impact of construction processes

Environmentally conscious construction has received a significant amount of research attention during the last decades. Even though construction literature is rich in studies that emphasize the importance of environmental impact during the construction phase, most of the previous studies failed to combine environmental analysis with other project performance criteria in construction. This is mainly because most of the studies have overlooked the multi-objective nature of construction projects. In order to achieve environmentally conscious construction, multi-objectives and their relationships need to be successfully analyzed in the complex construction environment. The complex construction system is composed of changing project conditions that have an impact on the relationship between time, cost and environmental impact (TCEI) of construction operations. Yet, this impact is still unknown by construction professionals. Studying this impact is vital to fulfill multiple project objectives and achieve environmentally conscious construction. This research proposes an analytical framework to analyze the impact of changing project conditions on the relationship of TCEI. This study includes green house gas (GHG) emissions as an environmental impact category. The methodology utilizes multi-agent systems, multi-objective optimization, analytical network process, and system dynamics tools to study the relationships of TCEI and support decision-making under the influence of project conditions. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied to the evaluation of environmental impact in terms of GHG. The mixed method approach allowed for the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. Structured interviews of professionals in the highway construction field were conducted to gain their perspectives in decision-making under the influence of certain project conditions, while the quantitative data were collected from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for highway resurfacing projects. The data collected were used to test the framework. The framework yielded statistically significant results in simulating project conditions and optimizing TCEI. The results showed that the change in project conditions had a significant impact on the TCEI optimal solutions. The correlation between TCEI suggested that they affected each other positively, but in different strengths. The findings of the study will assist contractors to visualize the impact of their decision on the relationship of TCEI.

Information systems to support decision-making in *construction owner organizations: A data warehousing approach

Construction organizations typically deal with large volumes of project data containing valuable information. It is found that these organizations do not use these data effectively for planning and decision-making. There are two reasons. First, the information systems in construction organizations are designed to support day-to-day construction operations. The data stored in these systems are often non-validated, non-integrated and are available in a format that makes it difficult for decision makers to use in order to make timely decisions. Second, the organizational structure and the IT infrastructure are often not compatible with the information systems thereby resulting in higher operational costs and lower productivity. These two issues have been investigated in this research with the objective of developing systems that are structured for effective decision-making. ^ A framework was developed to guide storage and retrieval of validated and integrated data for timely decision-making and to enable construction organizations to redesign their organizational structure and IT infrastructure matched with information system capabilities. The research was focused on construction owner organizations that were continuously involved in multiple construction projects. Action research and Data warehousing techniques were used to develop the framework. ^ One hundred and sixty-three construction owner organizations were surveyed in order to assess their data needs, data management practices and extent of use of information systems in planning and decision-making. For in-depth analysis, Miami-Dade Transit (MDT) was selected which is in-charge of all transportation-related construction projects in the Miami-Dade county. A functional model and a prototype system were developed to test the framework. The results revealed significant improvements in data management and decision-support operations that were examined through various qualitative (ease in data access, data quality, response time, productivity improvement, etc.) and quantitative (time savings and operational cost savings) measures. The research results were first validated by MDT and then by a representative group of twenty construction owner organizations involved in various types of construction projects. ^

A model for continuous measurement of drilled shaft diameter during construction

Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) of deep foundations has become an integral part of the industry's standard manufacturing processes. It is not unusual for the evaluation of the integrity of the concrete to include the measurement of ultrasonic wave speeds. Numerous methods have been proposed that use the propagation speed of ultrasonic waves to check the integrity of concrete for drilled shaft foundations. All such methods evaluate the integrity of the concrete inside the cage and between the access tubes. The integrity of the concrete outside the cage remains to be considered to determine the location of the border between the concrete and the soil in order to obtain the diameter of the drilled shaft. It is also economic to devise a methodology to obtain the diameter of the drilled shaft using the Cross-Hole Sonic Logging system (CSL). Performing such a methodology using the CSL and following the CSL tests is performed and used to check the integrity of the inside concrete, thus allowing the determination of the drilled shaft diameter without having to set up another NDT device.^ This proposed new method is based on the installation of galvanized tubes outside the shaft across from each inside tube, and performing the CSL test between the inside and outside tubes. From the performed experimental work a model is developed to evaluate the relationship between the thickness of concrete and the ultrasonic wave properties using signal processing. The experimental results show that there is a direct correlation between concrete thicknesses outside the cage and maximum amplitude of the received signal obtained from frequency domain data. This study demonstrates how this new method to measuring the diameter of drilled shafts during construction using a NDT method overcomes the limitations of currently-used methods. ^ In the other part of study, a new method is proposed to visualize and quantify the extent and location of the defects. It is based on a color change in the frequency amplitude of the signal recorded by the receiver probe in the location of defects and it is called Frequency Tomography Analysis (FTA). Time-domain data is transferred to frequency-domain data of the signals propagated between tubes using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Then, distribution of the FTA will be evaluated. This method is employed after CSL has determined the high probability of an anomaly in a given area and is applied to improve location accuracy and to further characterize the feature. The technique has a very good resolution and clarifies the exact depth location of any void or defect through the length of the drilled shaft for the voids inside the cage. ^ The last part of study also evaluates the effect of voids inside and outside the reinforcement cage and corrosion in the longitudinal bars on the strength and axial load capacity of drilled shafts. The objective is to quantify the extent of loss in axial strength and stiffness of drilled shafts due to presence of different types of symmetric voids and corrosion throughout their lengths.^

Information systems to support decision-making in construction owner organizations : a data warehousing approach

Construction organizations typically deal with large volumes of project data containing valuable information. It is found that these organizations do not use these data effectively for planning and decision-making. There are two reasons. First, the information systems in construction organizations are designed to support day-to-day construction operations. The data stored in these systems are often non-validated, nonintegrated and are available in a format that makes it difficult for decision makers to use in order to make timely decisions. Second, the organizational structure and the IT infrastructure are often not compatible with the information systems thereby resulting in higher operational costs and lower productivity. These two issues have been investigated in this research with the objective of developing systems that are structured for effective decision-making. A framework was developed to guide storage and retrieval of validated and integrated data for timely decision-making and to enable construction organizations to redesign their organizational structure and IT infrastructure matched with information system capabilities. The research was focused on construction owner organizations that were continuously involved in multiple construction projects. Action research and Data warehousing techniques were used to develop the framework. One hundred and sixty-three construction owner organizations were surveyed in order to assess their data needs, data management practices and extent of use of information systems in planning and decision-making. For in-depth analysis, Miami-Dade Transit (MDT) was selected which is in-charge of all transportation-related construction projects in the Miami-Dade county. A functional model and a prototype system were developed to test the framework. The results revealed significant improvements in data management and decision-support operations that were examined through various qualitative (ease in data access, data quality, response time, productivity improvement, etc.) and quantitative (time savings and operational cost savings) measures. The research results were first validated by MDT and then by a representative group of twenty construction owner organizations involved in various types of construction projects.

Design construction and testing of a heat loop for study of fouling and its interrelationship to corrosion in heat exchanger tubes

A heat loop suitable for the study of thermal fouling and its relationship to corrosion processes was designed, constructed and tested. The design adopted was an improvement over those used by such investigators as Hopkins and the Heat Transfer Research Institute in that very low levels of fouling could be detected accurately, the heat transfer surface could be readily removed for examination and the chemistry of the environment could be carefully monitored and controlled. In addition, an indirect method of electrical heating of the heat transfer surface was employed to eliminate magnetic and electric effects which result when direct resistance heating is employed to a test section. The testing of the loop was done using a 316 stainless steel test section and a suspension of ferric oxide and water in an attempt to duplicate the results obtained by Hopkins. Two types of thermal ·fouling resistance versus time curves were obtained . (i) Asymptotic type fouling curve, similar to the fouling behaviour described by Kern and Seaton and other investigators, was the most frequent type of fouling curve obtained. Thermal fouling occurred at a steadily decreasing rate before reaching a final asymptotic value. (ii) If an asymptotically fouled tube was cooled with rapid cir- ·culation for periods up to eight hours at zero heat flux, and heating restarted, fouling recommenced at a high linear rate. The fouling results obtained were observed to be similar and 1n agreement with the fouling behaviour reported previously by Hopkins and it was possible to duplicate quite closely the previous results . This supports the contention of Hopkins that the fouling results obtained were due to a crevice corrosion process and not an artifact of that heat loop which might have caused electrical and magnetic effects influencing the fouling. The effects of Reynolds number and heat flux on the asymptotic fouling resistance have been determined. A single experiment to study the effect of oxygen concentration has been carried out. The ferric oxide concentration for most of the fouling trials was standardized at 2400 ppM and the range of Reynolds number and heat flux for the study was 11000-29500 and 89-121 KW/M², respectively.

Assessment of the EEE-4 oral test: a discourse analysis based on complex networks.

With the development of information technology, the theory and methodology of complex network has been introduced to the language research, which transforms the system of language in a complex networks composed of nodes and edges for the quantitative analysis about the language structure. The development of dependency grammar provides theoretical support for the construction of a treebank corpus, making possible a statistic analysis of complex networks. This paper introduces the theory and methodology of the complex network and builds dependency syntactic networks based on the treebank of speeches from the EEE-4 oral test. According to the analysis of the overall characteristics of the networks, including the number of edges, the number of the nodes, the average degree, the average path length, the network centrality and the degree distribution, it aims to find in the networks potential difference and similarity between various grades of speaking performance. Through clustering analysis, this research intends to prove the network parameters’ discriminating feature and provide potential reference for scoring speaking performance.

Perceived Work-related Factors and Turnover Intention : A Case Study of a South Korean Construction Company

Purpose – Employee turnover entails considerable costs and is a major problem for the construction industry. By creating an extensive framework, this study aims to examine whether perceived work-related factors affect turnover intention in South Korean construction companies. Research design – The paper is based on the results of a questionnaire of 136 employees that was conducted and provided by a Korean construction company. Research hypotheses were tested via correlation analyses. The most influencing work-related factors, as well as differences among job levels, were determined by multiple regression analyses. Findings – Communication, immediate leaders, organizational commitment, and organizational pride substantially affect turnover intentions. All of these factors can be considered as relational factors. The most influencing factors differ among job levels. Discussion/practical implications – Immediate leaders should be aware of their role in retaining employees and enhance communication, organizational commitment and pride. This study shows how the importance of certain variables differs for groups of employees. Theoretical implications/limitations– This study is based on a sample of employees from a Korean construction company. Therefore, the generalizability of the findings has to be tested. Future research should test the proposed framework with other factors or resources. Originality/value – This study shed light on the turnover subject in the South Korean construction industry. It shows that different factors can influence turnover intention among job levels. A framework was created, which is based on 16 work-related factors including organizational factors, HRM practices and job attitudes.

Perceived Work-related Factors and Turnover Intention : - A Case Study of a South Korean Construction Company

Purpose – Employee turnover entails considerable costs and is a major problem for the construction industry. By creating an extensive framework, this study aims to examine whether perceived work-related factors affect turnover intention in South Korean construction companies. Research design – The paper is based on the results of a questionnaire of 136 employees that was conducted and provided by a Korean construction company. Research hypotheses were tested via correlation analyses. The most influencing work-related factors, as well as differences among job levels, were determined by multiple regression analyses. Findings – Communication, immediate leaders, organizational commitment, and organizational pride substantially affect turnover intentions. All of these factors can be considered as relational factors. The most influencing factors differ among job levels. Discussion/practical implications – Immediate leaders should be aware of their role in retaining employees and enhance communication, organizational commitment and pride. This study shows how the importance of certain variables differs for groups of employees. Theoretical implications/limitations– This study is based on a sample of employees from a Korean construction company. Therefore, the generalizability of the findings has to be tested. Future research should test the proposed framework with other factors or resources. Originality/value – This study shed light on the turnover subject in the South Korean construction industry. It shows that different factors can influence turnover intention among job levels. A framework was created, which is based on 16 work-related factors including organizational factors, HRM practices and job attitudes.

Development of a Durability Test for Asphalts, HR-124, Progress Report No. 3., 1969

Research Project HR-124, "Development of a Laboratory Durability Test for Asphalts," was initiated in 1966 as a long range comprehensive program. Its ultimate objective was to develop a simple, rapid laboratory test that could be used by highway engineers to select paving asphalt according to quality, to identify inferior asphalts, and to reasonably predict the useful life of asphalts once they were incorporated in the pavements. This report, designated Progress Report No. 3, summarizes the work accomplished during the second year of the HR-124 extension (1967 - 1969), i. e., the period from 1 October 1968 to 31 October 1969.