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OBJECTIVES: Depressive symptoms, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are common morbidities among coal miners, but the risk of these morbidities has not been analyzed relative to other occupations taking into account relevant covariates. METHODS: Using random digit dialing, we surveyed men aged 50 or over with a history of employment who resided in counties in Appalachia with high coal workers pneumoconiosis (CWP) mortality rates. We used the Primary Care Post-Traumatic Stress (PTSD) Screen and the Brief Trauma Questionnaire to query specific traumatic experiences. We used the Patient Health Questionnaire scale to assess depression symptoms and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder questionnaire to measure anxiety. Multivariable logistic regression analyzed associations between coal mining and depression, anxiety, and PTSD, adjusting for trauma, smoking and demographics. RESULTS: Of 1,428 participants, 233 (16.3%) reported coal mining employment. Coal mining was associated with increased odds of depression (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.1 to 2.4) and anxiety (OR 1.7; 95% CI 1.1 to 2.7). Among those with any trauma (n = 711), coal mining was not associated with increased risk of PTSD (OR 0.80; 95% CI 0.5 to 1.3]. Non-coal trauma was associated with three-fold increased odds of anxiety (OR 3.2; 95% CI 2.0 to 5.1); for coal trauma, anxiety was associated with six-fold increased odds (OR 6.0; 95% CI 2.9 to 12.4). CONCLUSIONS: Appalachian region coal miners carry an increased burden of depression and anxiety. This should be recognized by clinicians and at a population level, as worthy of individual and public health intervention.

This study analyzes the security implications of Proof-of-Work blockchains with respect to the stale block rate and the lack of a block verification process. The stale block rate is a crucial security metric that quantifies the proportion of rejected blocks in the blockchain network. The absence of a block verification process represents another critical security concern, as it permits the potential for invalid transactions within the network. In this article, we propose and implement a quantitative and analytical model to capture the primary operations of Proof-of-Work blockchains utilizing the Performance Evaluation Process Algebra. The proposed model can assist blockchain designers, architects, and analysts in achieving the ideal security level for blockchain systems by determining the proper network and consensus settings. We conduct extensive experiments to determine the sensitivity of security to four aspects: the number of active miners and their mining hash rates, the duration between blocks, the latency in block propagation, and the time required for block verification, all of which have been shown to influence the outcomes. We contribute to the findings of the existing research by conducting the first analysis of how the number of miners affects the frequency of stale block results, as well as how the delay in block propagation influences the incentives received by rational miners who choose to avoid the block verification process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on Raynaud's phenomenon (RP) in the feet is scarce, especially in the occupational setting. The primary aim of our study was to investigate the occurrence of RP in the feet of miners. As part of the MineHealth project, written surveys and clinical examinations were completed by 260 Arctic open-pit miners working in northern Sweden and Norway (participation rate 53.6%). Data on RP were collected using standardised colour charts and questionnaire items. Clinical examination included assessing the perception of vibration and pain in both feet. There were eight women and three men who reported RP in the feet. Four also had RP in their hands but none acknowledged any first-degree relatives with the condition. Nine reported exposure to foot-transmitted vibration and one to hand-arm vibration. Seven showed signs of neurosensory injury in the feet. To conclude, the occurrence of RP in the feet of miners was 4.4%. Most cases with RP in the feet did not report the condition in the hands and were exposed to vibration transmitted directly to the feet. There were no reports of a hereditary component. Most cases with RP in the feet also had clinical findings suggestive of peripheral neuropathy in the feet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonstandard miner behavior can have adverse effects on coal mine safety production. Therefore, accurately capturing miner behavior in complex environments is particularly important. In the intelligent mine monitoring system, using visual perception to detect miner behavior is a challenging task due to high behavioral similarity and difficult temporal relationships. In this paper, a new deep learning framework is proposed to construct a coal miner behavior recognition model with a spatio-temporal dual-branch structure and transposed attention representation mechanism. The spatio-temporal dual-branch structure extracts rich spatial semantic information from intrinsic safety video sensor input video sequences while ensuring effective capture of rapidly changing human behavior. Subsequently, considering the discrimination of miner behavior similarity, a merged transposed weighted representation mechanism (TWR) is introduced to guide the model in extracting feature information more strongly related to the classification target, thereby effectively improving the model's ability to classify highly similar behaviors. Experiments were conducted on UCF101, HMDB51, and a self-built miner behavior dataset, achieving significant improvements compared to other state-of-the-art methods. This collaborative structure further creates a more discriminative behavior detection model, contributing to the reliability of miner behavior detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental fatigue is a psychophysiological state that adversely impacts performance in cognitive tasks, increasing risk of occupational hazards. Given its manifestation as a conscious sensation, it is often measured through subjective self-report. However, subjective measures are not always true measurements of objective fatigue. In this study, we investigated the relationship between objective and subjective fatigue measurements with the preventive AccessPoint fatigue assay in Chilean mine workers. Subjective fatigue was measured through the Samn-Perelli scale, objective fatigue through a neurocognitive reaction time task. We found that objective and subjective fatigue do not correlate (−0.03 correlation coefficient, p < 0.001). Moreover, severe fatigue cases often displayed absence of subjective fatigue coupled with worse cognitive performance, a phenomenon we denominated Perceptual Blindness to fatigue. These findings highlight the need for objective fatigue measurements, particularly in high-risk occupational settings such as mining. Our results open new avenues for researching mechanisms underlying fatigue perception and its implications for occupational health and safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the natural course of silicosis among fluorspar miners after the cessation of the dust environment, which has been unstudied until now. The findings of this study extend the overall understanding of silicosis's flow up after dust cessation and prognostic factors for the progression of silicosis. Objective: This study aimed to delineate the natural progression of silicosis in fluorspar miners after the termination of dust exposure and identify its prognostic factors. Methods: This retrospective cohort study, conducted from 2000 to 2019, included 67 former miners. Radiological images were evaluated by comparing the initial and most recent radiographs using the International Classification of Radiographs of Pneumoconiosis. Cox multivariate proportional hazard models were used to estimate the hazard ratios using follow-up time to analyze the multivariable study of associated prognostic factors. Results: Among the participants, 50 (75%) exhibited progression over 2 to 16 years (median, 5.8 years). The Cox analysis highlighted older age as a likely precursor to the progression of significant opacities. Additionally, higher International Labour Organization category grades at onset were associated with disease progression. Conclusions: Nearly three-quarters of the miners diagnosed with silicosis demonstrated radiological progression even after the termination of dust exposure. Advancement in age and the degree of initial radiological opacity were associated with progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intractable challenges faced by female mine workers have come to dominate the discourse and scholarship on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) operations. However, the extensive focus on the informal and labour-intensive segments has engendered a failure to capture the nuances in the duality of ASM operations and how it impacts female outcomes. Drawing on intersectionality as a lens, in this article the authors map the dynamics on how issues related to the gender, situatedness and positionality of female mine workers interact to shape their situated labour outcomes. Highlighting the differentiated outcomes for female mine workers within the contingencies of the broader socio-cultural context in which ASM work is organised, the article sheds light on how the social identity structures such as gender, sexuality and class interact to give form to the marginalisation, occupational roles, the 'boom town' narrative and occupational and health challenges that characterise the ASM gendered economic space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency used in the blockchain, has miners join mining pools and get rewarded for the proportion of hash rate they have contributed to the mining pool. This work proposes the prediction of the relativegain of the miners by machine learning and deep learning models, the miners' selection of higher relativegain by the Q‐learning model, and an optional stopping theorem for honest miners in the presence of selfish mining attacks. Relativegain is the ratio of the number of blocks mined by selfish miners in the main canonical chain to the blocks of other miners. A Q‐learning agent with ε$\epsilon$‐greedy value iteration, which seeks to increase the relativegain for the selfish miners, that takes into account all the other quintessential parameters, including the hash rate of miners, time warp, the height of the blockchain, the number of times the blockchain was reorganized, and the adjustment of the timestamp of the block, is implemented. Next, the ruin of the honest miners and the optional stopping theorem are analyzed so that the honest miners can quit the mining process before their complete ruin. We obtain a low mean square error of 0.0032 and a mean absolute error of 0.0464 in our deep learning model. Our Q‐learning model exhibits a linearly increasing curve, which denotes the increase in the relativegain caused by the selection of the action of performing the reorganization attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the economic and social dynamics animating kin-like relations amongst workers on the Zambian Copperbelt, their implications in everyday life and broader conceptions of family they engender. The article argues that the ability of mineworkers’ families to cope with the deteriorating economic situation that accompanied the privatisation of the mines in Zambia has, besides their close family members, the house and the union, rested on their ability to craft and maintain kin-like social relationships in the workplace and in their communities. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in the underground mines and mineworkers’ families conducted in 2015, between 2016 and 2021 and for a short period in 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses historical and ethnographic methods to examine the primarily East-Central European Interoceanmetal Joint Organization (IOM). I ask how and why the IOM has survived as an institution since its inception in 1987, working especially with the personal archive of Vratislav Kubišta. Kubišta was a metallurgist and former Deputy Director General at IOM who after retirement sought to develop a local deep-sea mining museum. This is a story about the work that archives do, but even more about how institutions maintain archives. I draw on recent work in the history and anthropology of time and archival practice to situate IOM's history and Kubišta's collection in narratives of ruin, the unbuilt, and the experience of multiple temporalities within spaces of resource speculation and anticipation. I suggest that IOM's history highlights the contingencies of resources in the temporality of indefinite pause, their attendant data, and scientific labor and life under the shifting political, economic, and scientific circumstances of the ongoing not-yet. In broadening the history of what is once more a hotly contested potential resource, this account speaks to the claims of contemporary would-be seabed miners, who frequently frame the practice in terms of innovation, urgency, and novelty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anthracite mineworkers of Northeastern Pennsylvania fomented a series of insurgencies during the first three decades of the twentieth century. This study focuses on their activism in the northern-most of three ‘hard coal’ fields, located around the cities of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. Following several failed unionization attempts between 1848 and 1895, the United Mine Workers of America (UMAW) entered anthracite in the mid-1890s, organized the workforce, and called a successful strike in 1902. However, the discontent continued prompting the Industrial Workers of the World to enter the field in 1907. Drawing mainly on immigrant support, especially from the Italians, the ‘Wobblies’ suffered defeat in the Strikes of 1916 and left the area. The grassroots rebellions nevertheless persisted undere the Cmmunist-inspired National Miners Union between 1928 and 1931, the United Anthracite Miners of Pennsylvania between 1933 and 1934, and the Progressive Miners Association in 1939. The rear-guard actions ended during the post-World War II years and the decline of the industry. Through it all, the workers, who were originally British and German but by 1900 mainly Eastern and Southern Europeans, were motivated by grievances agaisnt the coal companies and the UMWA, and sustained by a deep well of family, community, and religous solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial co-location pattern discovery (SCPD), a kind of knowledge discovery process, aims at discovering potentially unknown co-location patterns (co-locations). Co-locations have been widely used in many aspects, including life services, ecological environment, business research, etc. Many methods have been proposed to discover co-locations. However, these methods only discovered co-locations consisting of fine-grain spatial features, since the user knowledge is ignored, many interesting and general patterns are still undiscovered. Meanwhile, co-locations that are discovered by current frameworks are quantity-numerous and independent; thus, their usefulness is strongly limited. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper introduces the user knowledge into the process of SCPD, to discover general and intrinsic co-locations and help users quickly find their interested patterns. First, a framework OCPM (Co-location Pattern Miner using Ontology) is proposed, where an ontology is employed to integrate user knowledge to guide the process of SCPD. Second, a new co-location consisting of ontology concepts is proposed. Under the guidance of the ontology, we propose the prevalent semantic multi-level co-locations (PSMCs) consisting of ontology concepts to represent richer knowledge. Third, we design two different ways, i.e., the Apriori-like and clique-based ways, to meet the requirements of OCPM and propose a novel clique-based algorithm named IDG to discover PSMCs. Meanwhile, a top-down search strategy is proposed to help users quickly find interesting knowledge via the ontology. Finally, we validate OCPM and IDG on both real and synthetic datasets, respectively, the experimental results demonstrate their effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Objectives Depressive symptoms, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are common morbidities among coal miners, but the risk of these morbidities has not been analyzed relative to other occupations taking into account relevant covariates. Methods Using random digit dialing, we surveyed men aged 50 or over with a history of employment who resided in counties in Appalachia with high coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP) mortality rates. We used the Primary Care Post-Traumatic Stress (PTSD) Screen and the Brief Trauma Questionnaire to query specific traumatic experiences. We used the Patient Health Questionnaire scale to assess depression symptoms and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder questionnaire to measure anxiety. Multivariable logistic regression analyzed associations between coal mining and depression, anxiety, and PTSD, adjusting for trauma, smoking and demographics. Results Of 1,428 participants, 233 (16.3%) reported coal mining employment. Coal mining was associated with increased odds of depression (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.1 to 2.4) and anxiety (OR 1.7; 95% CI 1.1 to 2.7). Among those with any trauma (n = 711), coal mining was not associated with increased risk of PTSD (OR 0.80; 95% CI 0.5 to 1.3]. Non-coal trauma was associated with three-fold increased odds of anxiety (OR 3.2; 95% CI 2.0 to 5.1); for coal trauma, anxiety was associated with six-fold increased odds (OR 6.0; 95% CI 2.9 to 12.4). Conclusions Appalachian region coal miners carry an increased burden of depression and anxiety. This should be recognized by clinicians and at a population level, as worthy of individual and public health intervention.

Issues of political consciousness amidst early industrial mining workers in Bolivia is discussed. Despite notable illiteracy, early Andean proletarianization reveals high engagement with modernity and the emergence of anti-imperialist activism.

This research aims to design a pattern for managers' professional ethics factors focusing on the mine workers' mental health. This research's method, which is based on the interpretative paradigm, is developmental, respecting the goal, and it has an exploratory-analytical nature by an inductive approach adoption, and it has used mixed research (qualitative/quantitative) from the statistical community of industry and university experts through a targeted sampling method. Three steps have been considered to achieve the research's main goal. The factors of the managers' professional ethics have been identified in the research's first step through investigating the published articles at the national and international level with content analysis method by NVIVO software, and then, the 15 main factors were finalized and confirmed through the Delphi method and using EXCEL software in the second step in order to naturalize the factors extracted from the articles emphasizing its effect on mine workers' mental health. The factors rating and pattern presentation were done in the third step using the ISM method. The present research has provided the factors of professional ethics of Iranian mine managers and the relationships between these factors emphasizing the mine workers' mental health to be applied by the mining industries' managers of Iran and invited them to pay extra attention to factors such as characteristic traits and perceptual skills which are the most effective variables through presenting a pattern of managers' professional ethics factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To clarify the influencing factors and mechanisms of safety cognition among coal mine workers, reduce the occurrence of unsafe behaviors and accidents, and take safety attitude as a mediator, a hypothesis of the relationship between safety cognition, safety attitude, and safety cognition influencing factors is proposed. A structural process model is constructed using AMOS software. The research results indicate that all four factors have a significant positive impact on the safety awareness of miners, and the enterprise safety management system has the greatest impact; enterprise safety education and training, as well as the enterprise safety atmosphere, indirectly affect safety awareness through safety attitudes; on the one hand, the safety management system of enterprises and the safety support of managers directly affect safety awareness, and on the other hand, indirectly affect safety awareness by influencing individual safety attitudes.

AbstractAirborne particulates in iron ore mining are a risk factor for adverse human lung effects. In this study, fine particulates deposited on surfaces of about 1.5 m above the ground and 6 meters from a milling unit of the Gol-e-Gohar iron ore mine were collected through wipe sampling. Dust particles less than 5 µm in diameter were separated with an electronic sieve. Aliquots were prepared from the sieved iron ore dust estimated to be equivalent to respiratory exposure in the iron ore mill in the concentrations of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 250 µg/mL, which were intended to represent equivalent inhaled doses from working one month to a working life (25 years) in the mine. The airborne concentration of respirable particles was about five times the threshold limit value given (TLV®) for iron oxide published by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. The in vitro toxicity range was estimated to be equivalent to an accumulated dose associated with working from one month to a working life in the mine. Treatment of the A549 cells resulted in decreased dehydrogenase activity and cell glutathione content and increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, mitochondrial membrane permeability, and cell apoptosis-necrosis rates. The results of this study revealed the possibility of lung damage at cell doses for respirable airborne iron oxide particles estimated to be equivalent to accumulated lifetime exposures among Gol-e-Gohar miners. Further studies are recommended to investigate the effect of actual contaminants in the workplace on the occurrence of health effects on workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain networks continue to gain attraction in cutting‐edge applications and mining within these networks has become increasingly popular. To get rewards, miners solve cryptographic puzzles and add new blocks to blockchain networks using the proof‐of‐work (PoW) consensus mechanism. Numerous miners opt to participate in mining pools due to the challenges of solo mining. However, selecting reputed miners for pool mining poses a significant challenge, given the decentralized nature of the blockchain system. This paper addresses this challenge by introducing a new ranking model that evaluates miners' performance and reputation through trust scores. It provides a method for optimizing pool mining performance by identifying highly reputed miners within mining pools, enhancing overall pool profitability. This endeavor necessitates the development of ranking algorithms tailored to the unique dynamics of mining pools. The research offers a meticulously designed ranking model that identifies reputed miners. We extensively evaluate the proposed model using the hyperledger blockchain framework, guaranteeing strong performance across vital metrics like block authorization time, Processing time, block creation time, validation time, and confirmation time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for the importance of understanding storytelling as a socio-material practice growing from engagements with the environment and its constituents. Based on an ethnography of guided tours on Svalbard, the article reveals how storytelling arises from encounters and engagements with particular constituents of the environment, such as terrain or ice, as well as from bodily experiences such as walking, feeling, touching, looking or (not) hearing. The practice of storytelling then shifts looking at and receiving information about something to seeing and knowing it through embodied experience – a shift that is, however, limited by incommensurable temporalities of diverse constituents of the environment. Storytelling as a practice thus contains not only verbal information about miners or (glacier) ice but also arises from and shapes the ways of being with (constituents of) the environment, knowing them and seeing them. Consequentially, relations between the tour group and the terrain, ice or weather elements that are emerging, are all a configurative part of the socio-material practice of storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The place of women in the history of UK coalfield communities remains under-researched. This paper addresses this lacuna through an examination of the life of County Durham miner's wife, Annie Errington, who emerged as an important political leader in her community in the interwar period. Situating her life story in the context of her community, characterised by strong cooperative and socialist values, the paper assembles her political biography from fragmented sources. It identifies her key role in local government, her visit to Soviet Russia in 1926 and as a leader of a mass movement of miners' wives in interwar Britain. While avowedly a miner's wife, Annie Errington emerges as an important political leader, albeit her role was limited by prevailing orthodoxies about gender relations, some of which she endorsed herself. The paper contributes to the feminist historiography of mining communities, which has largely overlooked—and at times denied—the extent of political activism of women in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobbing is a widespread, vocally coordinated behaviour where species approach and harass a threat. The noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) is a notorious native Australian honeyeater, well‐known for its hyperaggressive mobbing. Numerous studies have identified negative impacts of their mobbing behaviour, highlighting the exclusion of competitors from colony areas and the resulting loss of woodland‐bird biodiversity. Despite this, few studies have investigated mobbing itself, and our understanding of the factors which influence its expression remains limited. Here, we use a field‐based playback experiment to investigate whether mobbing responses vary in relation to colony borders and caller familiarity. Noisy miners were more likely to respond, reacted more quickly and responded more strongly to mobbing calls broadcast inside as opposed to outside the colony. These behavioural differences likely arise from variation in the relative costs and benefits of responding. When noisy miners did mob outside the colony, more individuals joined in response to unfamiliar as opposed to familiar callers. Our results reveal that noisy miner mobbing may not be as indiscriminate as often assumed, with caller familiarity and location influencing this behaviour. We suggest there are benefits to greater consideration of the factors impacting noisy miner mobbing behaviour. Keywords: Avian biodiversity, interspecific aggression, mobbing behaviour, noisy miner, vocal communication [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent stabilization work at the Ludlow Massacre Site National Historic Landmark revealed new insights into memorialization activities over time. The site commemorates a battle between striking miners and the Colorado National Guard which culminated in the destruction of a striking miners 'tent colony by fire causing the deaths of two women and eleven children in a cellar. The United Mine Workers of America erected a monument and preserved that cellar in cement sometime after 1918. Unexpected finds encountered during preservation work on the cellar raise issues related to collective memory, memorialization, and scale. These finds offer new understandings of changes made at the site by the strikers and the UMWA since the massacre in 1914. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the recent fee mechanism EIP1559 of the Ethereum network. Whereas previous studies have focused on myopic miners, we here focus on strategic miners in the sense of miners being able to reason about the future blocks. We derive expressions for optimal miner behavior (in terms of setting block sizes) in the case of two‐block foresight and varying degrees of hashing power. Results indicate that a sufficiently large mining pool will have enough hashing power to gain by strategic foresight. We further use a simulation study to examine the impact of both two‐block and three‐block foresight. In particular, the simulation study indicates that for realistic levels of hashing power, mining pools do not gain from being able to reason more than two blocks ahead. Moreover, even though the presence of strategic miners increases the variation in block sizes and potentially empty blocks, overall system throughput tends to increase slightly compared with myopic mining. We further analyze the effect of varying the base fee updating rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lower back pain is a common occurrence among mine workers due to the nature of their work. Globally, workplace (occupational) and ergonomic risk factors have been reported to influence the prevalence of lower back pain among workers. This study aimed to determine ergonomic risk factors associated with lower back pain and associated risk factors (workplace and ergonomics) among mineworkers in a nickel mine in Zimbabwe. A cross-sectional study design was employed, and participants were randomly selected to complete a questionnaire that included the Dutch Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (DMQ). A total of 420 mine workers were interviewed, with the majority being male (n = 259, 61.7%) and aged between 31 and 44 years old (n = 159, 37.9%). The study found that the prevalence of lower back pain was 41.43% (n = 174). Several risk factors were found to be associated with lower back pain, including working overtime (AOR = 1.13, p < 0.01; 95% CI: 0.07–0.22), performing repetitive tasks (AOR = 8.06, p < 0.01; 95% CI: 4.67–13.93), bending (AOR = 7.77, p < 0.01; 95% CI: 3.97–15.22), and twisting (AOR = 3.32, p < 0.01; 95% CI: 1.83–6.03). Based on these findings, it is recommended that an ergonomic risk assessment and prevention program be implemented, which should include educational awareness about lower back pain and its prevention among mine workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to respirable crystalline silica dust is one of the most common and severe risks due to the associated health outcomes among workers and results in many occupational-related lung diseases, such as silicosis and lung cancer. The study aimed to determine knowledge, attitudes, and practices on occupation health and safety among mine workers exposed to crystalline silica dust in Lesotho. A descriptive retrospective cross-sectional study design was used in the study. A record review guide was used to retrieve secondary data from the Southern Africa Tuberculosis and Health Systems Support (SATBHSS) project, which were thereafter entered into STATA software, version 17 for descriptive and inferential analysis. The study participants were purposively selected. Most participants were between the ages of 31 to 40 years of age and there was a significant difference between the genders with 35 (9%) females and 350 (91%) males. The majority of the participants had a high school level of education (305, 79%). The knowledge was generally positive in the study with a knowledge score mean of 13.43 (standard deviation: 2.99). The miners agreed with most attitude statements except for A1 (25%), A2 (35%), A3 (18%), and A4 (31%). The practice of exposed mine workers in the study was influenced by working in a dolerite mine (p = 0.003), knowledge score (p ˂ 0.001), and having an attitude about health and safety rules at the mine (p ˂ 0.001; 95% CI: 0.92 to 0.79), while age was a protective factor in the study. The findings of this study highlighted positive knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward occupational health and safety among mine workers. However, more educational programs can be implemented to ensure all mine workers understand the importance of good knowledge, positive attitude, and appropriate practices towards occupational health and safety in their environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The security of any proof-of-work blockchain protocol is based upon the assumption that the probability of a miner finding the next valid block is proportional to that miner's hashing power and constant throughout the process of mining that block (i.e., that the mining process is a "memoryless" process). While the literature assumes that the mining process is indeed memoryless, in this paper we use deductive reasoning to show how, given the finiteness of hashing functions' domains, this is not the case. This implies that the Bitcoin protocol induces a centralization of miners' hashing power, which in turn threatens the long-term viability of Bitcoin and of other cryptocurrencies based on similar protocols. The novelty of this paper stems from our documenting of a previously unrecognized flaw in the incentive system sustaining Bitcoin's security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is rapidly evolving, promising to revolutionize financial services through blockchain technology. Successful integration of asset transfers across diverse DeFi platforms hinges on effective interoperability and transaction finality, ensuring security and cost efficiency. This paper introduces CrossDeFi, a novel cross-chain communication protocol tailored to address the challenges posed by heterogeneity in consensus mechanisms, smart contracts, and token systems. CrossDeFi introduces two key mechanisms: Miner and bridge selection (MBS) and improved transfer confirmation (ITC). The MBS mechanism optimizes the selection of miners and bridges based on the unique characteristics of each blockchain, significantly improving transfer accuracy, cost efficiency, and speed. Meanwhile, the ITC mechanism leverages cryptographic primitives to secure asset transfer confirmations, ensuring robust transaction finality. The protocol's effectiveness is demonstrated through detailed efficiency and security analyses, complemented by a prototype evaluation that showcases its capabilities in reducing transfer durations and costs. These findings underscore the potential of CrossDeFi to transform the DeFi ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A distributed ledger is a shared and synchronized database across multiple designated nodes, often referred to as miners, validators, or peers. These nodes record, distribute, and access data to ensure security and transparency. However, these nodes can be compromised and manipulated by selectively choosing which user transactions to include, exclude, or reorder, thereby gaining an unfair advantage. This is known as a miner/maximal extractable value (MEV) attack. Existing solutions can be classified into various categories, such as MEV auction platforms and time-based ordering properties, which rely on private transaction Mempools. In this paper, we first identify some architectural weaknesses inherent in the latest proposals that divide the block creation and execution roles into separate functions: block builders and block executors. The existing schemes mainly suffer from the verifiability of the decryption process, where a corrupted builder or executor can simply deny the inclusion of specific targeted transactions by exploiting the fact that all transactions are in plain format. To address this, we propose an enhanced version that incorporates a verifiable decryption process. On a very high level, within our proposal, whenever an Executor or a Builder performs a decryption, the decrypted values must be broadcasted. This enables any entity in the network to publicly verify whether the decryption was executed correctly, thus preventing malicious behavior by either party from going undetected. We also define a new adversary model for MEV and conduct a comprehensive security analysis of our protocol against all kinds of potential adversaries related to MEV. Finally, we present the performance analysis of the proposed solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractObjectiveMethodsResultsConclusionHealth-promoting behaviors carry substantial significance for miners’ overall health and well-being. This study aimed to examine the association between cumulative risk (CR) and miners’ health-promoting behaviors and test the mediating role of health beliefs in this relationship.Data were collected from a sequential survey conducted among 712 frontline miners (Mage=41.7 ± 10.1 years) in China. The survey entailed online questionnaire measurements at three distinct time points, each spaced two weeks apart. This study utilized the conceptual model of health-promoting behaviors, the CR model, and structural equation modeling in the analysis of relationships.CR was negatively related to health-promoting behaviors, with a negative acceleration effect. CR was positively associated with perceived threat in a gradient effect, while negatively associated with perceived benefits in a gradient effect. Furthermore, CR was negatively related to self-efficacy, following a negative acceleration effect. Perceived threat, perceived benefits, and self-efficacy emerged as significant mediators in the relationship between CR and health-promoting behaviors.This study highlights the critical role of considering both CR and health beliefs in shaping miners’ health-promoting behaviors. Understanding these dynamics is pivotal for developing interventions to enhance miners’ health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ground-breaking visual essay encapsulates a 20-year ethnographic study on manual sand miners in Koilwar, Bihar, India, along the River Sone. Highlighting the participant perspective of the miners, this work is the result of a close collaboration between the miners and the researchers. It traces the evolving lifestyle patterns of manual sand miners in Koilwar – depicting the humble beginnings, a peak phase, and a subsequent gradual decline. It underscores the decline of a once-sustainable manual sand mining culture, sacrificed in the pursuit of advancing the national economy and infrastructure in a developing country like India. This independent study is a collaboration between Puneet Gupta, a photography researcher and faculty member and Ashish Gupta, a documentary photographer. Ashish started photographing sand miners in 2003, and Puneet joined in 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional centralized federated learning relies on a trusted central server for model aggregation, creating a vulnerability to single-point failures. In contrast, existing decentralized federated learning schemes elect a node temporarily in each iteration cycle to aggregate the model, but cannot ensure the complete trustworthiness of the elected node. To solve the aforementioned issues, this paper proposed a blockchain-based federated learning model aggregation approach that assigned the task of model aggregation to numerous miners instead of a single node. Miners proposed various candidate aggregation solutions and generated corresponding blocks, then it determined the main chain based on the highest accuracy chain principle to achieve consensus among nodes. Additionally, to counteract malicious training nodes, it introduced a training node selection mechanism based on staking training coins, allowing nodes to participate in training by staking training coins, with the system rewarding or penalizing them based on their contribution to the model. Simulation results demonstrate that with 10%, 20% and 30% malicious nodes in the system, the accuracy of this approach is respectively 8.64, 19.89, and 22.93 percent point higher than that of the federated averaging (FedAvg) scheme, and it also performs well in non-IID data training scenarios. In conclusion, this approach enhances the credibility of the federated learning aggregation process and ensures the effectiveness of federated learning training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unsafe action of miners is one of the main causes of mine accidents. Research on underground miner unsafe action recognition based on computer vision enables relatively accurate real-time recognition of unsafe action among underground miners. A dataset called unsafe actions of underground miners (UAUM) was constructed and included ten categories of such actions. Underground images were enhanced using spatial- and frequency-domain enhancement algorithms. A combination of the YOLOX object detection algorithm and the Lite-HRNet human key-point detection algorithm was utilized to obtain skeleton modal data. The CBAM-PoseC3D model, a skeleton modal action-recognition model incorporating the CBAM attention module, was proposed and combined with the RGB modal feature-extraction model CBAM-SlowOnly. Ultimately, this formed the Convolutional Block Attention Module–Multimodal Feature-Fusion Action Recognition (CBAM-MFFAR) model for recognizing unsafe actions of underground miners. The improved CBAM-MFFAR model achieved a recognition accuracy of 95.8% on the NTU60 RGB+D public dataset under the X-Sub benchmark. Compared to the CBAM-PoseC3D, PoseC3D, 2S-AGCN, and ST-GCN models, the recognition accuracy was improved by 2%, 2.7%, 7.3%, and 14.3%, respectively. On the UAUM dataset, the CBAM-MFFAR model achieved a recognition accuracy of 94.6%, with improvements of 2.6%, 4%, 12%, and 17.3% compared to the CBAM-PoseC3D, PoseC3D, 2S-AGCN, and ST-GCN models, respectively. In field validation at mining sites, the CBAM-MFFAR model accurately recognized similar and multiple unsafe actions among underground miners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Coal mining is a vital sector in Colombia, contributing significantly to the nation's economy and the development of its regions. However, despite its importance, it has led to a gradual decline in the health of mine workers and nearby residents. While the adverse health effects of open-pit coal mining on exposed individuals have been well-documented in Colombia and globally, studies investigating genetic damage in underground coal miners are lacking. Methods: The aim of our study was to evaluate chromosomal and genotoxic damage, in peripheral blood samples from a group of underground coal miners and residents of areas exposed to coal, in the town of Samacá, Boyacá-Colombia, and in a group of unexposed individuals by using banding and molecular cytogenetic techniques, as well as cytokinesis block micronucleus assays. Results: Our results suggest that occupational exposure to coal induces chromosomal and genotoxic damage in somatic cells of underground coal miners. Chromosomal and genotoxic damage is an important step in carcinogenesis and the development of many other diseases. Our findings provide valuable insights into the effects of coal dust exposure on chromosomal integrity and genetic stability. Conclusion: Our pilot study suggests that occupational exposure to coal induces chromosomal damage in underground coal miners, highlighting the importance of validating these findings with a larger sample size. Our results highlight the need to implement prevention and protection measures, as well as educational programs for underground coal miners. Characterizing and estimating exposure risks are extremely important for the safety of people exposed occupationally and environmentally to coal and its derivatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus models, in particular, lack the resilience and efficiency necessary to meet today's high-speed, low-energy, secure, and robust data transaction requirements. These flaws have proven problematic, necessitating an urgent need for a more adaptable and resilient security model process. This paper proposes a novel consensus model that addresses these shortcomings by combining PoW and PoS consensus methodologies with Spatial and Temporal Trust Levels. During the block mining process, these levels are cleverly estimated by an advanced processing algorithm of miner node parameters, such as delay and energy requirements, throughput performance, Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) performance, and jitter performance. The model surpasses its predecessors by adopting a proactive stance in order to anticipate and mitigate potential risks while simultaneously optimizing performance metrics. Several empirical findings demonstrate that the proposed TSETC model is superior in various respects. The model accomplished better speed, lower energy consumption, improved throughput, and improved PDR levels. In addition, it maintained lower jitter, even during attacks, in comparison to recently proposed models. In essence, this paper presents a paradigm shift in the security models of blockchain-based deployments by introducing a novel, adaptable, and efficient solution that significantly improves the overall system's resilience and performance. This innovative strategy promises a safer, more environmentally friendly, and more reliable future for blockchain technology applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the current state of the problem of the influence of harmful and dangerous production factors on the health of mining enterprise workers as a factor in the development of occupational diseases. Production workers and support staff were examined as comparison groups, the authors analyzed the data of certification of production facilities and questionnaires. It has been established that the working conditions of workers who are exposed to constant and intense exposure to harmful and dangerous occupational factors in the course of their work contribute to a higher prevalence and a higher risk of developing occupational diseases. For an integrated approach to reduce the risk of developing occupational diseases in production workers, it is necessary to improve sanitary and hygienic working conditions, improve collective and personal protection against the effects of harmful and dangerous industrial factors, and develop preventive preventive measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Respirators, not furnished" is a phrase that appears in Muriel Rukeyser's poetic sequence The Book of the Dead , addressed to the catastrophic silicosis epidemic that afflicted miners of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel. Using the example of Rukeyser's text, which I taught as part of a course on extractionism during the early months of the pandemic and again in its aftermath, the essay asks what it means to read on the precipice of disaster and what disasters of reading are threatened by our current moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic rule mining can be used for both deriving task-agnostic or task-specific information within a Knowledge Graph (KG). Underlying logical inferences to summarise the KG or fully interpretable binary classifiers predicting future events are common results of such a rule mining process. The current methods to perform task-agnostic or task-specific semantic rule mining operate, however, a completely different KG representation, making them less suitable to perform both tasks or incorporate each other's optimizations. This also results in the need to master multiple techniques for both exploring and mining rules within KGs, as well losing time and resources when converting one KG format into another. In this paper, we use INK, a KG representation based on neighbourhood nodes of interest to mine rules for improved decision support. By selecting one or two sets of nodes of interest, the rule miner created on top of the INK representation will either mine task-agnostic or task-specific rules. In both subfields, the INK miner is competitive to the currently state-of-the-art semantic rule miners on 14 different benchmark datasets within multiple domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commercial mining of fluorspar in St. Lawrence Newfoundland began in 1933. Miners who worked underground were exposed to high levels of radon progeny, especially before ventilation was introduced into the mines in 1960. The mean cumulative radon exposure for underground miners in this cohort was 380.9 working level months (WLM). A series of studies of this cohort have characterized the increased risks of lung cancer mortality due to radon. We have extended the follow-up of this cohort an additional 15 years to provide additional insights on the risks of low levels of radon exposure, and the modifying effects of time since exposure, age at first exposure, attained age, duration of exposure, and cigarette smoking. The cohort consisted of 1,735 underground and 315 male surface miners who, combined, accrued 81,650 person-years of follow-up. The mortality experience of the cohort was determined from 1950–2016 through record linkage to Canadian national death data. Individual-level estimates of exposure to radon progeny, in WLMs, were determined for each year of employment. We compared the mortality experience of the underground miners to Newfoundland men using the standardized mortality ratio (SMR). Poisson regression models were fit to estimate excess relative risks (ERR) per 100 WLM. There were 236 lung cancer deaths identified, and of these, 221 occurred among underground workers. The SMR for lung cancer among underground miners compared to Newfoundland men was 2.67 (95% CI: 2.33, 3.04). The ERR per 100 WLM for lung cancer mortality, assuming a 5-year exposure lag, was 0.41 (95% CI: 0.23, 0.59). Attained age and time since exposure were important modifiers to the radon-lung cancer relationship. The joint relationship between smoking and radon on lung cancer risk was sub-additive, however, the smoking data were limited and available for only half of the cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVES: Radon is a ubiquitous occupational and environmental lung carcinogen. We aim to quantify the association between radon progeny and lung cancer mortality in the largest and most up-to-date pooled study of uranium miners. METHODS: The pooled uranium miners analysis combines 7 cohorts of male uranium miners with 7754 lung cancer deaths and 4.3 million person-years of follow-up. Vital status and lung cancer deaths were ascertained between 1946 and 2014. The association between cumulative radon exposure in working level months (WLM) and lung cancer was modelled as the excess relative rate (ERR) per 100 WLM using Poisson regression; variation in the association by temporal and exposure factors was examined. We also examined analyses restricted to miners first hired before 1960 and with

Writer and director Elaine McMillion Sheldon begins her latest documentary, King Coal , with a funeral rite. A multigenerational, multiracial procession of people in black clothing walks slowly up a country road. All is quiet except for the sound of insects and a steady drum. Who are these mourners? Sheldon lets the mystery linger. But we learn eventually that the solemn rite is for a king—King Coal—or perhaps for the past he represents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new algorithm, Yolov8n-FADS, has been proposed with the aim of improving the accuracy of miners' helmet detection algorithms in complex underground environments. By replacing the head part with Attentional Sequence Fusion (ASF) and introducing the P2 detection layer, the ASF-P2 structure is able to comprehensively extract the global and local feature information of the image, and the improvement in the backbone part is able to capture the spatially sparsely distributed features more efficiently, which improves the model's ability to perceive complex patterns. The improved detection head, SEAMHead by the SEAM module, can handle occlusion more effectively. The Focal Loss module can improve the model's ability to detect rare target categories by adjusting the weights of positive and negative samples. This study shows that compared with the original model, the improved model has 29% memory compression, a 36.7% reduction in the amount of parameters, and a 4.9% improvement in the detection accuracy, which can effectively improve the detection accuracy of underground helmet wearers, reduce the workload of underground video surveillance personnel, and improve the monitoring efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the mining industry can dramatically enhance the safety of workers while simultaneously decreasing monitoring costs. By implementing an IoT solution consisting of a number of interconnected smart devices and sensors, mining industries can improve response times during emergencies and also reduce the number of accidents, resulting in an overall improvement of the social image of mines. Thus, in this paper, a robust end-to-end IoT system for supporting workers in harsh environments such as in mining industries is presented. The full IoT solution includes both edge devices worn by the workers in the field and a remote cloud IoT platform, which is responsible for storing and efficiently sharing the gathered data in accordance with regulations, ethics, and GDPR rules. Extended experiments conducted to validate the IoT components both in the laboratory and in the field proved the effectiveness of the proposed solution in monitoring the real-time status of workers in mines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selfish mining is a sneaky way that some people cheat in blockchain networks or distributed digital ledger systems. They do it by mining a block in secret and keeping it hidden. Then, when the secret chain of these miners' are longer than the real one, they show it to everyone, and the blockchain system selects the longest chain as the valid chain. This leads to the network adopting the longest chain as the valid one, resulting in the effort put into mining by other miners becoming futile. By doing this, selfish miners in the blockchain network have a high potential to get more rewards. This behavior goes against the rules of blockchain networks, where everyone is supposed to play by the same rules and have an equal chance of getting rewards. This prejudiced action of selfish miners have motivated us to investigate systematically the existing methods that are being used to address the selfish mining attacks. Therefore, we conducted a SLR (systematic literature review) of 29 papers using the Kitchenham methodology and put that into PRISMA framework. This study aims to investigate methods for detecting and mitigating selfish mining attacks, their limitations, and future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand the ethical source of the selfless efforts as a prosocial behavior taken by mine workers during search and rescue operations after 6 February earthquakes. The study is qualitative and follows a phenomenological methodology. In this regard, face-to-face and online interviews with 17 individuals were conducted using the intentional and snowball sampling methods. Partici-pants are mine workers from TTK and private miners in Zonguldak who voluntarily helped in search and rescue operations following the earthquakes on February 6, 2023. A semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers was used as a data collecting technique, and the results were analyzed using the descriptive analysis method. Themes, categories, and codes were developed by reviewing the literature, research questions, and participant responses. The findings were analyzed under four themes: (i) description of the work performed during the search and rescue operations, (ii) ethical justification of the work done during the search and rescue operations, (iii) definition of success, (iv) challenges encountered during search and rescue operations and ways to overcome them. The results indicate that while a sense of community is the most essential aspect in justification prosocial behaviors, belief, conscience, and empathy are all important. Additionally, it has been found that in high-risk workplaces, at combination of ethical principles and professional skills enhances productivity. These results are predicted to contribute to moral and values education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]