Role conflict and role ambiguity in construction projects

Role conflict happens when a person faces different and incompatible expectations regarding a particular social status which they occupy. The literature on role conflict is reviewed for a better understanding of project dynamics in construction teams. The discussion focuses on issues surrounding the miscommunication of role expectations and tensions owing to differences in expectations of the same role. This ongoing doctoral study involves a qualitative research design, based on interviews with practicing professionals. Analysis will focus on the relation between formal expectations, as evidenced in contracts and other types of written communication, and informal expectations as observed from the interviews. Insights from the literature review suggest: 1. that the differences between formal and informal expectations is a major sources of role conflict in construction teams and 2. that this effect is exacerbated by the failure of team members to recognise it and take it into account.

Humanitarian law, human rights law and the bifurcation of armed conflict

This article offers a fresh examination of the distinction drawn in international humanitarian law (IHL) between international and non-international armed conflicts. In particular, it considers this issue from the under-explored perspective of the influence of international human rights law (IHRL). It is demonstrated how, over time, the effect of IHRL on this distinction in IHL has changed dramatically. Whereas traditionally IHRL encouraged the partial elimination of the distinction between types of armed conflict, more recently it has been invoked in debates in a manner that would preserve what remains of the distinction. By exploring this important issue, it is hoped that the present article will contribute to the ongoing debates regarding the future development of the law of non-international armed conflict.

The application of social marketing in reducing road traffic accidents amoung young male drivers: an investigation using physical fear threat appeals

There were 338 road fatalities on Irish roads in 2007. Research in 2007 by the Road Safety Authority in Ireland states that young male drivers (17 – 25 years) are seven times more likely to be killed on Irish roads than other road users. The car driver fatality rate was found to be approximately 10 times higher for young male drivers than for female drivers in 2000. Young male drivers in particular demonstrate a high proclivity for risky driving behaviours. These risky behaviours include drink driving, speeding, rug-driving and engaging in aggressive driving. Speed is the single largest contributing factor to road deaths in Ireland. Approximately 40% of fatal accidents are caused by excessive or inappropriate speed. This study focuses on how dangerous driving behaviours may be addressed through social marketing. This study analyses the appropriate level of fear that needs to be induced in order to change young male driving behaviour.

Post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding

Civil wars are the most common type of large scale violent conflict. They are long, brutal and continue to harm societies long after the shooting stops. Post-conflict countries face extraordinary challenges with respect to development and security. In this paper we examine how countries can recover economically from these devastating conflicts and how international interventions can help to build lasting peace. We revisit the aid and growth debate and confirm that aid does not increase growth in general. However, we find that countries experience increased growth after the end of the war and that aid helps to make the most of this peace dividend. However, aid is only growth enhancing when the violence has stopped, in violent post-war societies aid has no growth enhancing effect. We also find that good governance is robustly correlated with growth, however we cannot confirm that aid increases growth conditional on good policies. We examine various aspects of aid and governance by disaggregating the aid and governance variables. Our analysis does not provide a clear picture of which types of aid and policy should be prioritized. We find little evidence for a growth enhancing effect of UN missions and suggest that case studies may provide better insight into the relationship between security guarantees and economic stabilization.

Protections for persons deprived of their liberty in international armed conflict

This contribution is about the protection of detained persons in international armed conflict. In particular, it compares how the relationship between IHL and IHRL is understood depending on whether one is speaking of the substantive or the procedural rules of protection for detainees. It will be suggested that, whereas the relationship between IHL and IHRL raises fewer problems when speaking of substantive rules, the situation is very different when speaking of procedural rules.

Regulating non-international armed conflicts: a review essay of 'The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict' by Sandesh Sivakumaran

This review essay engages with Sandesh Sivakumaran’s book The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict, exploring its significance both in international humanitarian law and international law more generally.

Exposure to ambient levels of particles emitted by traffic worsens emphysema in mice

Objectives: We investigated effects of chronic exposure (2 months) to ambient levels of particulate matter (PM) on development of protease-induced emphysema and pulmonary remodeling in mice. Methods: Balb/c mice received nasal drop of either papain or normal saline and were kept in two exposure chambers situated in an area with high traffic density. One of them received ambient air and the other had filters for PM. Results: mean concentration of PM10 was 2.68 +/- 0.38 and 33.86 +/- 2.09 mu g/m(3), respectively, in the filtered and ambient air chambers (p<0.001). After 2 months of exposure, lungs from papain-treated mice kept in the chamber with ambient air presented greater values of mean linear intercept, an increase in density of collagen fibers in alveolar septa and in expression of 8-isoprostane (p = 0.002, p < 0.05 and p = 0.002, respectively, compared to papain-treated mice kept in the chamber with filtered air). We did not observe significant differences between these two groups in density of macrophages and in amount of cells expressing matrix metalloproteinase-12. There were no significant differences in saline-treated mice kept in the two chambers. Conclusions: We conclude that exposure to urban levels of PM worsens protease-induced emphysema and increases pulmonary remodeling. We suggest that an increase in oxidative stress induced by PM exposure influences this response. These pulmonary effects of PM were observed only in mice with emphysema. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Comparative study in stingless bees (Meliponini) demonstrates that nest entrance size predicts traffic and defensivity

Stingless bees (Meliponini) construct their own species-specific nest entrance. The size of this entrance is under conflicting selective pressures. Smaller entrances are easier to defend; however, a larger entrance accommodates heavier forager traffic. Using a comparative approach with 26 species of stingless bees, we show that species with greater foraging traffic have significantly larger entrances. Such a strong correlation between relative entrance area and traffic across the different species strongly suggests a trade-off between traffic and security. Additionally, we report on a significant trend for higher forager traffic to be associated with more guards and for those guards to be more aggressive. Finally, we discuss the nest entrance of Partamona, known in Brazil as boca de sapo, or toad mouth, which has a wide outer entrance but a narrow inner entrance. This extraordinary design allows these bees to finesse the defensivity/traffic trade-off.

Cellular automaton model for molecular traffic jams

We consider the time evolution of an exactly solvable cellular automaton with random initial conditions both in the large-scale hydrodynamic limit and on the microscopic level. This model is a version of the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process with sublattice parallel update and thus may serve as a model for studying traffic jams in systems of self-driven particles. We study the emergence of shocks from the microscopic dynamics of the model. In particular, we introduce shock measures whose time evolution we can compute explicitly, both in the thermodynamic limit and for open boundaries where a boundary-induced phase transition driven by the motion of a shock occurs. The motion of the shock, which results from the collective dynamics of the exclusion particles, is a random walk with an internal degree of freedom that determines the jump direction. This type of hopping dynamics is reminiscent of some transport phenomena in biological systems.

Road and Traffic Signs Recognition using Vector Machines

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is a system that builds a safe, effective and integrated transportation environment based on advanced technologies. Road signs detection and recognition is an important part of ITS, which offer ways to collect the real time traffic data for processing at a central facility.This project is to implement a road sign recognition model based on AI and image analysis technologies, which applies a machine learning method, Support Vector Machines, to recognize road signs. We focus on recognizing seven categories of road sign shapes and five categories of speed limit signs. Two kinds of features, binary image and Zernike moments, are used for representing the data to the SVM for training and test. We compared and analyzed the performances of SVM recognition model using different features and different kernels. Moreover, the performances using different recognition models, SVM and Fuzzy ARTMAP, are observed.

A Unified Load Generator for Geographically Distributed Generation ofNetwork Traffic

During the last decade, the Internet usage has been growing at an enormous rate which has beenaccompanied by the developments of network applications (e.g., video conference, audio/videostreaming, E-learning, E-Commerce and real-time applications) and allows several types ofinformation including data, voice, picture and media streaming. While end-users are demandingvery high quality of service (QoS) from their service providers, network undergoes a complex trafficwhich leads the transmission bottlenecks. Considerable effort has been made to study thecharacteristics and the behavior of the Internet. Simulation modeling of computer networkcongestion is a profitable and effective technique which fulfills the requirements to evaluate theperformance and QoS of networks. To simulate a single congested link, simulation is run with asingle load generator while for a larger simulation with complex traffic, where the nodes are spreadacross different geographical locations generating distributed artificial loads is indispensable. Onesolution is to elaborate a load generation system based on master/slave architecture.