Assessment of Noise Exposure of Sawmill Workers in Southwest,Nigeria

Economic wood processing employs the use of industrial machines for cutting, shaping, milling, and sawing timber, thereby leading to the generation of high levels of noise. Published data from empirical studies have categorized noise as an environmental hazard of global significance. Furthermore, noise exposure limits for different industries and all the industrial machines available has not been formally established as it presently exists in developed nations around the world. Therefore, this study assessed the daily exposure of sawmills workers to noise in Southwestern Nigeria. Reconnaissance surveys were first carried out in Osun, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Lagos, and Ogun States to select sawmills that were fully operational and fit for the study. Two fully functional sawmills in two cities of each State were eventually selected for data collection, making a total of 24 sawmills, while the Circular Machines (CM), Planer Machines (PM), and Band-saw Machines (BM) were the machines in each sawmill considered. Two machines each of CM, PM, and BM were considered in each sawmill, making a total of forty-eight (48) machines each of CM, PM, and BM. Sound data were collected between 7 am and 7 pm each day for six days (between Monday and Saturday) using Extech 407732 sound level meter and all stabilized measurements were taken three times at different intervals. The data collected were in three different periods: Machine No-work Period (NP_m), Machine Idle Period (IP_m), and Machine Working Period (WP_m). A two–way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was carried out at P < 0.05 to determine whether there is a significant difference in the sound level average before and after the break, for both the idle and working periods of the three machines considered. This was also done to determine whether there is a significant difference between the sound level average of the results collected during idle and working periods of the three machines. Noise Pollution Levels (L_np) ranged from 83.20 dB (PM) to 107.65 (BM) and 93.42 (CM and PM) – 116.00 (BM) respectively, while IP_m also gave the least noise pollution level of 95.79 dB and WP_m gave the highest level of 102.88 dB. The results revealed that all the machines’ L_np values in the working period are more than the 90 dB acceptable limit the recommendation value of 90 dB while 89.6% of CMs, 75% of PMs, and 89.6% of BM had their L_np above 90 dB in the idle period respectively. The minimum and the maximum noise dose levels for IP_m, WP_m and overall are 0.09 (BM) and 2.37 (CM), 0.50 (CM), and 4.77 (PM) and 0.69 (BM) and 6.64 (PM) respectively. The study found out that the fundamental contributing factors to the high noise levels in sawmills are poor machine maintenance, use of old and obsolete machines, poor housekeeping strategy, limited space, workers’ negligence, lack of PPE, and lack of occupational safety training. The study recommends that proper workplace practices such as use of personal protective equipment, new and modern machines, training, and occupational safety programmes be implemented in the considered sawmills.     

An Improved Gradient Projection-based Decomposition Technique for Support Vector Machines

In this paper we propose some improvements to a recent decomposition technique for the large quadratic program arising in training support vector machines. As standard decomposition approaches, the technique we consider is based on the idea to optimize, at each iteration, a subset of the variables through the solution of a quadratic programming subproblem. The innovative features of this approach consist in using a very effective gradient projection method for the inner subproblems and a special rule for selecting the variables to be optimized at each step. These features allow to obtain promising performance by decomposing the problem into few large subproblems instead of many small subproblems as usually done by other decomposition schemes. We improve this technique by introducing a new inner solver and a simple strategy for reducing the computational cost of each iteration. We evaluate the effectiveness of these improvements by solving large-scale benchmark problems and by comparison with a widely used decomposition package.     

Kthe-Bochner空间的凸性(英文)

本文利用Kothe函数空间的性质以及Kothe函数空间与Kothe-Bochner空间的关系,讨论了Kothe-Bochner空间E(X)的凸性,主要结果如下: (a)给出E(X)的端点的充分条件,得到了E(X)严格凸的判据,相应地推广了Lp(μ,X) 以及Lφ(X)的结果; (b)讨论了E(X)的弱局部一致凸和局部完全k-凸; (c)刻画了E(X)的强凸,给出了F(X)强凸的充要条件．     

R-拟连续模的不可分分解

设R是环,M是R-拟连续左R-模.如果R关于形如l（m）,m∈M的左理想满足升链条件,则M可写成一致子模的直和.     

K(o)the-Bochner空间的凸性

本文利用K(o)the函数空间的性质以及K(o)the函数空间与K(o)the-Bochner空间的关系,讨论了K(o)the-Bochner空间E(X)的凸性,主要结果如下:(a)给出E(X)的端点的充分条件,得到了E(X)严格凸的判据,相应地推广了Lp(μ,X)以及LΦ(X)的结果;(b)讨论了E(X)的弱局部一致凸和局部完全k-凸;(c)刻画了E(X)的强凸,给出了E(X)强凸的充要条件.     

Slutsky定理的一个推广

本文应用紧集上的连续函数是一致连续的性质，推广并证明了著名的Slutsky定理。     

On many‐sorted algebraic closure operators

A theorem of Birkhoff‐Frink asserts that every algebraic closure operator on an ordinary set arises, from some algebraic structure on the set, as the corresponding generated subalgebra operator. However, for many‐sorted sets, i.e., indexed families of sets, such a theorem is not longer true without qualification. We characterize the corresponding many‐sorted closure operators as precisely the uniform algebraic operators. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Existence and uniform decay for Euler–Bernoulli beam equation with memory term

In this article we prove the existence of the solution to the mixed problem for Euler–Bernoulli beam equation with memory term. The existence is proved by means of the Faedo–Galerkin method and the exponential decay is obtained by making use of the multiplier technique combined with integral inequalities due to Komornik. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.