Insight into Resolving Construction Disputes by Mediation/Adjudication in Hong Kong

Resolving construction disputes using an adversarial approach is considered to be in opposition of the maintenance of a harmonious relationship between two parties. The modern arbitration process may emulate the litigation proceeding leading to delay and cost escalation. During the past decade, the Hong Kong Government has implemented a mediation clause as an alternative mode for settlement of construction disputes. In this paper, the experience and insight into resolving construction disputes by integrating mediation and then arbitration in Hong Kong are highlighted. The state-of-the-art modern mediation process and its philosophical origins are reviewed. The shortcomings of the present system are pinpointed. The success of the adjudication now practiced in the United Kingdom may suggest that there is a place for another process of dispute resolution, which may help improve the situation. The prospect of the proposed mediation/adjudication and then arbitration mechanism is discussed with particular reference to the construction industry in Hong Kong.     

Heterogeneous InSb quantum well transistors on silicon for ultra-high speed, low power logic applications

The heterogeneous integration of InSb quantum well transistors onto silicon substrates is investigated for the first time. 85 nm gate length FETs with f_T = 305 GHz at V_ds = 0.5 V and DC performance suitable for digital logic are demonstrated on material with a buffer just 1.8 mum thick. An initial step towards integrating InSb FETs with mainstream Si CMOS for high-speed energy-efficient logic applications has been achieved.     

Haemolysis complicating acute viral hepatitis in patients with normal or deficient glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase activity

Haemolytic anaemia as a complication of acute hepatitis has been reported in up to 23% of patients. However, the incidence may rise up to 70-87% in patients who have glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency. Massive intravascular haemolysis with renal failure, hepatic encephalopathy and even death have been reported. In our retrospective study of patients with acute viral hepatitis, the overall incidence of acute haemolysis was 4% (17/434). Only 53% (9/17) of them had G6PD deficiency. Patients with acute haemolysis had a significantly higher peak bilirubin level and required more prolonged hospitalization. Since hepatitis A virus vaccination, unlike hepatitis B virus vaccination, is not yet recommended for routine immunization, we suggest subjects who are G6PD-deficient should be vaccinated against hepatitis A. In endemic areas of hepatitis A virus infection, universal immunization remains the definitive answer.     

Algorithms for constructing minimal deduction graphs

Two algorithms for constructing minimal deduction graphs (MDG) for inferring rules and facts in an extended version of the Horn clause logic are described. A deduction graph (DG) is minimal if the number of arcs in the graph is minimized. Horn clauses (HC) are extended to Horn formulas (HF), such that the head or the body of an HF can be a conjunction of positive literals or a disjunction of the bodies of some rule instances, respectively. Each algorithm constructs an MDG from its source to its sink, whose arcs infer the HF `if source then sink'. The construction of an MDG is based on a sound and complete set of inference rules of reflexivity, transitivity, and conjunction for HFs which proceeds by expanding a tree rooted at its sink until its source has a successful backtracking to the root. Then the MDG is extracted from the tree. The nodes being expanded in such a tree are classified into seven types, which are assigned by different priorities for their growing into subtrees or for their pruning to reduce the tree space     

A New Boundary Element for Plane Elastic Problems Involving Cracks and Holes

By applying the new boundary integral formulation proposed recently by Chau and Wang (1997) for two-dimensional elastic bodies containing cracks and holes, a new boundary element method for calculating the interaction between cracks and holes is presented in this paper. Singular interpolation functions of order r^-1/2 (where r is the distance measured from the crack tip) are introduced for the discretization of the crack near the crack tips, such that stress singularity can be modeled appropriately. A nice feature for our implementation is that singular integrands involved at the element level are integrated analytically. For each of the hole boundaries, an additional unknown constant is introduced such that the displacement compatibility condition can be satisfied exactly by the complex boundary function H(t), which is a combination of the traction and displacement density. Another nice feature of the present formulation is that the stress intensity factors (both K_{_I} and K_{_II}) at crack tips are expressed in terms of the nodal unknown of H(t) exactly, and no extrapolation of numerical data is required. To demonstrate the accuracy of the present boundary element method, various crack problems are considered: (i) the Griffith crack problem, (ii) the interaction problem between a circular hole and a straight crack subject to both far field tension and compression, and (iii) the interaction problem between a circular hole and a kinked crack subject to far field uniaxial tension. Excellent agreement with existing results is observed for the first two problems and also for the last problem if the crack-hole interaction is negligible. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Joint optimization of spectrum sensing and accessing in multiuser multiple‐input single‐output cognitive networks

In this paper, a joint spectrum sensing and accessing optimization framework for a multiuser cognitive network is proposed to significantly improve spectrum efficiency. For such a cognitive network, there are two important and limited resources that should be distributed in a comprehensive manner, namely feedback bits and time duration. First, regarding the feedback bits, there are two components: sensing component (used to convey various users' sensing results) and accessing component (used to feedback channel state information). A large sensing component can support more users to perform cooperative sensing, which results in high sensing precision. However, a large accessing component is preferred as well, as it has a direct impact on the performance in the multiuser cognitive network when multi‐antenna technique, such as zero‐forcing beamforming, is utilized. Second, the tradeoff of sensing and accessing duration in a transmission interval needs to be determined, so that the sum transmission rate is optimized while satisfying the interference constraint. In addition, the aforementioned two resources are interrelated and inversive under some conditions. Specifically, sensing time can be saved by utilizing more sensing feedback bits for a given performance objective. Hence, the resources should be allocation in a jointly manner. Based on the joint optimization framework and the intrinsic relationship between the two resources, we propose two joint resource allocation schemes by maximizing the average sum transmission rate in a multiuser multi‐antenna cognitive network. Simulation results show that, by adopting the joint resource allocation schemes, obvious performance gain can be obtained over the traditional fixed strategies.Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A choice experiment to estimate the effect of green experience on preferences and willingness-to-pay for green building attributes

As the number and complexities of green building developments are mainly driven by market demands, understanding of end-user behaviors towards their development eventually should play a crucial role on determining their successes. However, very few studies have been attempted to explore end-user behaviors towards green building development. This study successfully applied discrete choice experiments to reveal whether residents with green experience will have different preference and willingness-to-pay values for enhancements on various aspects of environmental performance in green buildings. Generally, both green and conventional residents had strong preferences and were willing to pay more for improving various aspects of environmental performance in green residential developments. They are found to be willing to pay more for energy conservation, than indoor air quality improvement, noise level reduction, landscape area enlargement, or water conservation. No significant differences are found in the preferences between green and conventional residents for energy conservation, indoor air quality improvement, indoor noise reduction, or water conservation, However, green residents were found to be willing to pay significantly less than the conventional residents for enlarging the landscape area within a residential development, despite it was perceived by green residents as one of the major elements that differentiate a green from a conventional development.