The availability of data for the size of the “Underground Economy” is important for macroeconomic policy. We use fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic to construct an annual time-series for the (unobservable) New Zealand underground economy over the period 1968 to 1994. Two input variables are used – the effective tax rate and an index of the degree of regulation. The resulting underground economy t...

This paper presents an underground navigation app “mUvi”. For the indoor navigation of underground users, it only exploits the information from the environment of the user, collected by the internal sensors of the user’s smartphone. Based on an experimental study on the use of smartphone sensors for underground navigation the mobile app uses a combination of microphone and two additional sensor...

With the wide-spreading use of e-transactions in enterprises, information security risk management (ISRM) is becoming essential for establishing a safe environment for their activities. This paper is concerned with introducing a new and comprehensive ISRM framework that enables the effective establishment of the target safe environment. The framework has two structural dimensions; and two proce...

In extra-thick coal seams, mining operations can lead to large-scale disturbances, complex overburden structures, and frequent and strong strata behavior in the stope, which are serious threats to mine safety. This study analyzed the overburden structure and strata behavior and proposed the technique of confined blasting in water-filled deep holes as a measure to prevent strong rock pressure. I...

The results of the interaction between coal failure and mining pressure field evolution during mining are presented. Not only the mechanical model of stope and its relative structure division, but also the failure and behavior characteristic of coal body under different mining stages are built and demonstrated. Namely, the breaking arch and stress arch which influence the mining area are quanti...

BACKGROUND Between September 17 and October 3, 2009, hundreds of workers employed in a manufacturing factory in Shenzhen, a city in south China developed a sudden onset of acute gastroenteritis. A retrospective cohort study is designed to identify the risk factors and control this outbreak. METHODS Information on demographic characteristics, working place, the history of contact with a person...

The projected increases in World population and need for food have recently motivated adoption of information technology solutions in crop fields within precision agriculture approaches. Internet of underground things (IOUT), which consists of sensors and communication devices, partly or completely buried underground for real-time soil sensing and monitoring, emerge from this need. This new par...

In underground mines and tunnels accurate and continuous positioning of moving machines and humans has been studied extensively. Geomagnetic field based positioning is an interesting possibility for this measurement need. Using a commercial smart phone and a new calculation service provided by a Finnish company, a feasibility and accuracy assertion tests were done in Finnish underground mine. F...

Wireless Underground Sensor Networks (WUSNs) are the networks of wireless sensors that operate in the underground soil medium. In this monograph, to realize reliable and efficient WUSNs, two enabling techniques are developed to address the challenges brought by the underground soil medium, including the EM wave-based WUSNs and the MI-based WUSNs. For EM wave-based WUSNs, the heterogeneous netwo...