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This paper highlights a crucial public safety issue due to falling objects from tall residential buildings in Singapore. A systematic façade inspection regime and a system of evaluation of severity for the detection and assessment of potential falling objects from tall buildings are presented.

The research uses qualitative case study approach with 450 tall residential buildings sampled for the study. The common materials, elements, components with high risk of falling objects, the nature and type of the falling, the critical factors affecting the falling, the respective level of severity, and the effectiveness of various diagnostic techniques and protocols, are summarised.

Façade for tall residential buildings in Singapore comprises mainly cementitious materials cast in situ or precast, with fixtures and architectural features, all of which have potential of falling. The common anomalies arising from each material and fixture/features are identified, the causes evaluated and their implications to future design, construction and maintenance analysed.

This study provides original and significant information to a crucial public safety issue, setting design and construction criteria that will serve as a benchmark for new and existing facades, applicable to all cities dominated by tall buildings. The paper presents original figures, checklists and guides as a basis for readers' consideration to use according to their respective unique conditions.

The future construction site will be pervasive, context aware and embedded with intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to explore and define the concept of the digital skin of the future smart construction site.

The paper provides a systematic and hierarchical classification of 114 articles from both industry and academia on the digital skin concept and evaluates them. The hierarchical classification is based on application areas relevant to construction, such as augmented reality, building information model-based visualisation, labour tracking, supply chain tracking, safety management, mobile equipment tracking and schedule and progress monitoring. Evaluations of the research papers were conducted based on three pillars: validation of technological feasibility, onsite application and user acceptance testing.

Technologies learned about in the literature review enabled the envisaging of the pervasive construction site of the future. The paper presents scenarios for the future context-aware construction site, including the construction worker, construction procurement management and future real-time safety management systems.

Based on the gaps identified by the review in the body of knowledge and on a broader analysis of technology diffusion, the paper highlights the research challenges to be overcome in the advent of digital skin. The paper recommends that researchers follow a coherent process for smart technology design, development and implementation in order to achieve this vision for the construction industry.

Despite the fact that there being a large literature on simulation, there is as yet no generic paradigm or architecture to develop a three-dimensional (3-D) simulator which depends on autonomous intelligent objects. This has motivated us to introduce a 3-D simulation system based on intelligent objects for Physics Experimentation. We formulated the system’s components as an object-orientation model. So, the entities in every experiment’s work cell are modeled by characterizing their properties and functions into classes and objects of the system hierarchy. Intelligent objects are realized by developing a knowledge base (KB) that captures a set of rules/algorithms that operate on 3-D objects. Rules fall into two categories: action and property rules. In the simulation layer, the student is allowed, by using the virtual system, to stroll throughout the Physics laboratory in light of a walking model. Student gets to a simulation region to do an experiment through the detection of mathematical collision. From software engineering perspective, the proposed system facilitates the Physics experiment through making the specification of its applicable parts more modular and reusable. Moreover, a major pedagogical objective is achieved by permitting the student tuning parameters, fixing component of a device then visualizing outputs. This provides student well interpretation by viewing how distinct parameters affect the outcomes of the experiment. With the objective of student performance measuring, we utilized an exploratory group relying upon pre- and post-testing. The application results demonstrate that the simulator contributes positively to student performance in regard to practical Physics.

As one ages, the risk of experiencing a fall increases and poses a number of serious consequences; 30 per cent of individuals over 65 years of age fall each year. Evidence-based falls prevention programmes demonstrate efficacy in reducing the rate and risk of falls among older adults, but their use in Irish occupational therapy practice is unknown. This study aims to investigate the implementation of falls prevention programmes by occupational therapists working with older adults in Ireland.

A cross-sectional survey was used to gather data on the use of falls prevention programmes among occupational therapists working with older adults in any clinical setting across Ireland. Purposeful, convenience and snowball sampling methods were used. The Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland acted as a gatekeeper. Descriptive statistics and summative content analysis were used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.

In all, 85 survey responses were analysed. Over 85 per cent of respondents reported “Never” using any of the evidence-based falls prevention programmes. The “OTAGO” Exercise Programme was the most “Frequently” used programme (9.5 per cent, n = 7); 29 respondents reported using “in-department” developed falls prevention programmes and 14 provided additional comments regarding current falls prevention practices in Ireland.

In the absence of Irish data on the subject, this study provides a benchmark to describe the use of evidence-based falls programmes by Irish occupational therapists with older adults.

Ensuring quality is one of the most significant challenges in microtask crowdsourcing tasks. Aggregation of the collected data from the crowd is one of the important steps to infer the correct answer, but the existing study seems to be limited to the single-step task. This study aims to look at multiple-step classification tasks and understand aggregation in such cases; hence, it is useful for assessing the classification quality.

The authors present a model to capture the information of the workflow, questions and answers for both single- and multiple-question classification tasks. They propose an adapted approach on top of the classic approach so that the model can handle tasks with several multiple-choice questions in general instead of a specific domain or any specific hierarchical classifications. They evaluate their approach with three representative tasks from existing citizen science projects in which they have the gold standard created by experts.

The results show that the approach can provide significant improvements to the overall classification accuracy. The authors’ analysis also demonstrates that all algorithms can achieve higher accuracy for the volunteer- versus paid-generated data sets for the same task. Furthermore, the authors observed interesting patterns in the relationship between the performance of different algorithms and workflow-specific factors including the number of steps and the number of available options in each step.

Due to the nature of crowdsourcing, aggregating the collected data is an important process to understand the quality of crowdsourcing results. Different inference algorithms have been studied for simple microtasks consisting of single questions with two or more answers. However, as classification tasks typically contain many questions, the proposed method can be applied to a wide range of tasks including both single- and multiple-question classification tasks.

Marx suggested that it is infeasible and wrong to arrange the economic categories according to the order by which they have worked in history. Their order is determined by their interrelationship in the modern bourgeois society, which is in contrast to their natural sequence or that which is in accordance with the course of history. Sometimes, a logical sequence is precisely opposite to the historical sequence. There are many efforts to be done in the study of China’s economic and social issues with Marxist logical and historical methods. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

When reading Das Kapital, we can clearly see the historical materialism methods. Another method of Marxist political economics is the scientific abstract method.

This is based on the new development idea to carry out scientific and technological innovation and change the focus of development from quantity to quality. With regard to the supply side structural reform as the main focus, people’s ever-growing demand for a better life can be satisfied and the higher level dynamic supply–demand balance can be kept.

In fact, measures to remedy unbalanced and inadequate development of the social principal contradiction have been plainly indicated in the report delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is based on the new development idea to carry out scientific and technological innovation and change the focus of development from quantity to quality.

Construction organizations must maintain a productive workforce without sacrificing their health and safety. The global construction sector loses billions of dollars yearly to poor health and safety practices. This study aims to investigate benefits derivable from using wearable technologies to improve construction health and safety. The study also reports the challenges associated with adopting wearable technologies.

The study adopted a quantitative design, administering close-ended questions to professionals in the Nigerian construction industry. The research data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

The study found that the critical areas construction organizations can benefit from using WSDs include slips and trips, sensing environmental concerns, collision avoidance, falling from a high level and electrocution. However, key barriers preventing the organizations from adopting wearable technologies are related to cost, technology and human factors.

The time and cost lost to H&S incidents in the Nigerian construction sector can be reduced by implementing the report of this study.

Studies on WSDs have continued to increase in developed countries, but Nigeria is yet to experience a leap in the research area. This study provides insights into the Nigerian reality to provide directions for practice and theory.

The study examines the responsibilisation of an ethnocentric consumer in commercial, meta-organisational discourses. In addition to nationalistic and patriotic discourses, the focus is on wider conceptualisations of consumer responsibility.

The paper uses critical discourse analysis as a methodological approach to conduct an empirical case study on the texts of two producer-driven labelling campaigns.

The campaign texts create possibilities for ethnocentric consumption with positioning, argumentative and classificatory discourses. Patriotic responsibilisation is emphasised, together with rationales to take action on environmental concerns.

The study highlights the responsibility of marketers over their corporate responsibility communication, suggesting that ethnocentric promotions may have the power to alter how consumers take action on various responsibility concerns.

The study surfaces the tensions that responsible consumption can entail for consumers. Indeed, nationalistic and patriotic discourses may alter our understanding of responsibility issues that may seem completely separate from the concepts of nationalism and patriotism.

The paper shows how different organisational texts are deployed to bring about the idea of ethnocentric consumption and how this relates to responsibility discourses, nationalism and patriotism.

This paper aims to shed light on how children's literature in Africa deserves to be studied because African writers “decolonize” the minds of African children and children and adults around the world.

This paper defines children's literature from an African perspective and the “decolonization of the mind.” This is done to examine how two African writers provide narratives for children inspired by their cultures. They deal with themes, characters and symbols that interest children and adults.

Achebe and Youssef crossed many borders: the world of children and adults, animals and humans, vice and virtue, supernatural and real. Their stories take the reader on journeys that involve enriching, engaging and inspiring adventures.

Youssef and Achebe are prolific writers. Providing a survey of what is available in Arabic and Nigerian literature for children, is beyond the scope of this paper.

This paper sends a message to those in charge of the curriculum in schools in Egypt, the Arab countries, Africa and the world at large: decolonize the syllabi in schools because the world is not black and white. Literature for children that encourages critical thinking is available by African writers in Egypt, Nigeria and elsewhere.

The works discussed show that African writers are creative, and their works inspire the African child with pride in his/her identity, culture and heritage.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, no one has compared Egyptian and Nigerian literature for children before. Youssef and Achebe provide evidence that “Good literature gives the child a place in the world … and the world a place in the child.” – Astrid Lindgren.

Statistics show that the construction sector has the second-highest number of accident cases in Malaysia. A total of 100, 000 construction workers suffer from work-related bad health each year. Scaffolding accidents are the second cause of accidents on construction sites. Therefore, this present research provided answers to the following questions: (1) what are the causes of scaffolding accidents and (2) what are the possible measures to reduce scaffolding accidents?

The research developed a questionnaire instrument that included 24 causes of scaffolding accidents and 21 remedial actions. The research was based on a cross-sectional survey questionnaire administered to 129 members of construction organizations.

Data revealed that scaffolding-related cases caused a total of 70% of the deaths/injuries on sites. Furthermore, scaffolding accidents were mainly caused by a lack of guard rails on scaffoldings, poor inspections, improper assembly, a poor safety culture, poor attitudes towards safety, poor footing of scaffoldings and unsecured planking. To reduce scaffolding accidents, there must be a lifeline on scaffolding, proper guardrails and proper assembling of scaffoldings, and preventing access to incomplete or defective scaffoldings. The 24 causes are structured into six factors through factor analysis and the 21 remedial actions into six factors.

This research serves as the first attempt to conduct broad research on the causes and remedial actions concerning scaffolding accidents on construction sites in Malaysia. Theoretically, the research has provided fresh insights into the impact of scaffolding accidents.