19 Sinkholes in karst areas may cause subsidence damage in transportation infrastructures, 20 demolition of buildings and even the loss of human lives when they occur in a 21 catastrophic way. Differential Interferometry (DInSAR) is a promising technology for 22 detecting and characterizing sinkholes, as well as for reducing the associated risk when 23 combined with other sources of data such a...

In this paper, we present the ZenRobotics Recycler, a system that sorts construction and demolition (CND) waste by picking valuable objects from a conveyor belt using robotic hands. It is the first CND recycling system that reaches a useful purity of wood, stone, and metal without resorting to human sorters. We describe how we applied machine learning to solve some of the key problems such as r...

Dust pollution arising out of building demolition has serious health implications on workers, as well the neighboring communities. Existing research shown that regulatory and engineering control methods are most popular for dust sites. Though effective in suppressing pollution, they have enormous cost companies. Therefore, accurate prediction treatment costs is an important element planning pro...

Recent years have seen an increase in demand for the demolition of obsolete and potentially hazardous structures, including reinforced concrete (RC) using blasting techniques. However, because risk failure is significantly higher when applying to demolish RC structures than mechanical dismantling, it critical achieve optimal design conditions by taking into account major factors affecting a str...

Assuming an average latency of 42 years, the authors predict that incidence rates will peak in 2009 and that diagnoses will peak in 2014. However, they caution that ongoing use of chrysotile asbestos (which has been implicated but not conclusively established as a cause of mesothelioma) and the release of asbestos fibers from older buildings during demolition or reno­ vation may slow the projec...

• Refurbishment of social housing can deliver significant improvements in energy, environmental and health performance, which can lead to costs savings and improved living standards for residents. • Refurbishments can have lower overall lifetime costs than demolition and construction and can cause less disruption to communities and residents. • Engaging residents in regeneration decisions is cr...

We introduce the concept of cloning for classes of observables and classify cloning machines for qubit systems according to the number of parameters needed to describe the class under investigation. A no-cloning theorem for observables is derived and the connections between cloning of observables and joint measurements of noncommuting observables are elucidated. Relationships with cloning of st...