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The history of mining education in late Qing China has received relatively little attention in scholarly literature. Through the lens of institutionalising global mining knowledge, this article addresses the following questions: How did the demand for expertise within the framework of mining bureaucracy evolve under the impact of Western imperialism? How did mining education enter scholarly discourse and become eventually institutionalised in the late Qing China? Drawing on evidence from the collections of Sheng Xuanhuai's archive series, it investigates two previously overlooked 'failures' of Sheng's mining-related enterprises, namely his earliest mining practices in Hubei in the 1870s and his proposal for establishing a mining school in Shandong in 1888–89. It then reconnects these efforts with the histories of Western learning, late Qing mining bureaucracy, the monetary crisis of that era, and the global recruitment of engineers despite a pronounced distrust of foreign expertise. It argues that these seemingly discrete efforts or 'failures' in fact paved the way for initiating China's first engineering university as well as other mining colleges in around 1895 and eventually led to the rise of engineering education before the entire educational system was transformed in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The longwall method is one of the feasible and efficient underground mining methods for greater depth of workings. Recently, Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL), the largest coal-producing government company in the Southern part of India, has deployed a high capacity (2 - 1152T capacity) power support system in its Adriyala Longwall Project (ALP) at a depth of 375 m. There was a concern about the stability of the longwall workings and the protective pillars. Thus, research work was carried out with the geotechnical instruments and numerical modelling tools to analyze the stability while retreating the longwall panels. The outcomes revealed that the convergence in the gate roads increased with the longwall face advancement and the area of exposure. The pressure of the powered support legs on the dip side was less than the rise side legs, which implies a stable roof condition over the longwall face. An abutment zone was identified ahead of the line of extraction up to 10e25 m and presumed from the Factor of Safety (FoS) criterion that within this zone, the longwall pillar possibly will be of better stability at every stage of extraction. The results obtained from this study would be helpful for the mining engineers to understand the behaviour of underground strata in longwall workings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bylye Gody is the property of Cherkas Global University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper deals with the publication of materials with more than 200 years of history, deposited in the archives of the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. The materials in question are several schemes and a drawing from the “Album of Drawings of Various Siberian Antiquities” by P.K. Frolov. There are two Mongolian sites of the 13th–14th centuries which are known as Khirkhira fortress and Konduy town located in the southeast of Zabaykalsky Krai. A comparison of historical information and graphic materials from the album demonstrated that the time of their preparation cannot be dated to the period of P.K. Frolov’s official trip to Nerchinsk factories in 1798–1800. According to a comparison of the figure captions by P.K. Frolov with the construction start date of the Konduisky temple erected in honor of the Holy Mother and the saint martyrs Cyricus and Julitta, the schemes of Konduy town could not have been eliminated earlier than 1806 since the building materials of the archaeological monument were used in the construction of the church and not later than 1817 when the collection was purchased by the Imperial Public Library. Nevertheless, the schemes and drawings from the “Siberian Album” are the first graphic source on the history of the region’s archaeological sites, have a high level of craftsmanship, and contain information that unfortunately has not survived until today. In 1818 the materials from Frolov's Siberian album were used by G.I. Spassky, probably with the author’s permission. He wrote a paper for the “Siberian Bulletin” journal, published by him in St. Petersburg, and was rather unsuccessful in making copies of the materials. The publication of Frolov's schemes and maps will make it possible to clarify and complement some of the current reconstructions proposed by Russian architects.

The article examines the role of representatives of the Auerbach dynasty of engineers in the development of mining in the Russian Empire in the second half of the XIXth - early XXth centuries. For the first time the main directions of Auerbach's professional activity - science, rationalization, entrepreneurship and public education - were comprehensively researched. On the basis of archival sources and published materials, it has been proved that A.A. Auerbach and V.A. Auerbach, as representatives of the Russian engineering and technical intelligentsia, played an extremely important role in the development of scientific knowledge about mining, in the improvement of mining production, in the formation and development of stock corporations in the Urals and southern Russia, in the popularization of mining education and in the solving of social issues associated with the protection of the interests of mining workers. It is shown that the representatives of the Auerbach dynasty of engineers were characterized by the following features: a high level of education, exceptional diligence, the ability to achieve a set goal, a desire to combine scientific achievements and production practices, an openness to everything new and advanced, a readiness for critical understanding and the use of foreign experience in the development of mining, taking into account changes in the conjuncture of the Russian economy, and a significant personal contribution to the development of science, enginery and technology in mining. Scientific works and practical developments made by A.A. Auerbach and V.A. Auerbach became an important basis for the further development of mining in our country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Queensland Smelting Company smelters were established in 1890 to treat base metal ores for all of Queensland, the first time it had been done in the colony. The choice of a site at Aldershot on Saltwater Creek 17 kms north of Maryborough was largely due to the investors' ownership of the land there. Aldershot smelters are an example of British investment in the Australian mining industry in the 1880s. The company employed one of the world's most acclaimed smelter managers, Ernest Weinberg from Anaconda in the United States. The smelters worked efficiently but the company failed for lack of ore and closed in 1906. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article is a translation of 'Sept Mois au Pays de l'Étain. Perak (Presqu'ile de Malacca)', by J. Errington de la Croix, which was published in the Bulletin de la société de géographie (Paris), 7th Series no. 6 (1885): 394-432. The accompanying maps appeared in the same journal in 1883 together with an earlier article by the same author entitled "Le royaume de Perak" (pp. 333-52; the maps follow p. 380). John Errington de la Croix (1848-1905), was a mining engineer. He travelled to Southeast Asia with Xavier Brau de Saint Pol Lias (1840-1914), an explorer and diplomat with a strong interest in French colonial expansion. The footnotes are those in the French text unless otherwise indicated. The author visited Aceh prior to coming to Perak, and adopted Dutch colonial conventions for writing Malay, using Tj for a ch sound (written in modern Malay as c), ou for u, and so on. In this translation, spellings have been left as in the French text and have not been glossed unless the meaning is obscure. In referring to 'la Malaisie', the author follows a nineteenth century convention that applied 'Malaysia' to the Malay world. The French text sometimes refers to the Malay Peninsula as presqu'île de Malacca and sometimes as la peninsule malaise, both of which are translated here as Malaya. The adjective Malaise is translated as Malay and the noun Malais as Malays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pressure as a result of economic, political and environmental factors determines the limited possibility of using the free space on the surface, so that the underground space becomes one of the few areas which may be used without a further degradation of the environment on the surface. This paper focuses on the need, advantages and disadvantages of using the underground space, especially the one created by the mining sector. Among the multiple possible uses of this space, we should pay attention to the storage of hazardous waste, in general, and mainly to a pilot storehouse project proposed for Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

S. Garforth Pearson was a mining engineer, and an employee of the South West Africa Company, Ltd., an Anglo-German mining and concessionary company founded in 1892 and operating in what was then the German colony of South West Africa. He kept a diary that gives an account of the northern part of the Kaokoveldt expedition that his company undertook in 1895-1896. Pearson was sent by the company to explore the Kaokoveldt region for any mineral resources, particularly gold, and that mineral was not only the chief object of his searches, but it also occupied his imagination as well. His careful, and frequently arrogant, narrative presented here for the first time is revealing about the conditions of the European occupation of Namibia in the late nineteenth century. It includes important information on 'trekking', the geography and wildlife of Namibia, gold mining frauds, white traders, the German colonial soldier, European towns, European-Boer, and European-African 'race relations' in the very young German colony of South West Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Scientific Bulletin of National Mining University is the property of National Mining University, State Higher Educational Institution and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As a type of general layout problems, dig-limits optimization focuses on generating the orewaste boundaries of a bench sector in an open-pit mining operation. Typically, blast holes are dense; therefore, selective mining units (SMUs) are small, which is not compatible with loading equipment. Loader cannot select ore-waste boundaries of SMUs because the arm of the excavator is generally longer than SMU sizes. Therefore, clusters of SMUs being compatible with loader movements need to be formed. In this paper, the dig-limits optimization problem is shown to be NP-hard and formulated to maximize profit to be obtained from a mining sector such that ore and waste clusters corresponding to mine excavator movements are considered and solved by mixed-integer linear programming. To see the efficiency of the proposed approach, a case study is conducted on seven sectors of a bench in a gold mine. The results showed that the approach is practical and has potential to increase the value of operation. The resulting average economic value of seven sectors is $129,060. Additionally, optimal design of one bench solved by the model is compared to a manual design of a mining engineer and a deviation of 6.4% has been observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, mining engineers plan an open pit mine considering pre-established conditions of operation of the plant(s) derived from a previous plant optimization. By contrast, mineral processing engineers optimize the processing plants by considering a regular feed from the mine, with respect to quantity and quality of the materials. The methods implemented to optimize mine and metallurgical plans simultaneously are known in the mining industry as global or simultaneous optimizers. The development of these methods has been of major concern for the mining industry over the last decade. Some algorithms are available in commercial mining software packages however, these algorithms ignore the inherent geological uncertainty associated with the deposit being considered, which leads to shortfalls in production, quality, and expected cashflows. This paper presents a heuristic method to generate life-of-mine production schedules that consider operating alternatives for processing plants and incorporate geological uncertainty. The method uses iterative improvement by swapping periods and destinations of the mining blocks to generate the final solution. The implementation of the method at a copper deposit shows its ability to control mine and processing capacities while increasing the expected net present value by 30% when compared with a solution generated using a standard industry practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urgency of researching issue determined by creating a prognosis for analyzing specific mining and geological conditions and physical and mathematical properties of rocks in selecting types of mining machines like scrapers, bulldozers and combines. The aim of research: To search dependency between types of mining machines and properties of mining face and physical and mathematical characteristics of mined rock, to exclude possibility of risks and mistakes in projecting of surface mining objects using CAD systems. Methods of research: Mathematical and statistical modeling, analyzing of technical and project documentation of load and haul machines, prognosis of using special open-pit equipment with regard to researching of its quality, usability and high mobility, method of successive approximation, generalization, concretization, synthesis in studying of equipment performance, computer modeling. Results of research: Rising professional competency of students, as important factor of ecology, culture and education. Has been established determination of annual production rate of main open-pit equipment has been established. Have been developed engineer technologies and rational organization of running mining and loading works and load coefficient of open pit equipment. Have been conducted research and analyze of dependencies for production rate determination of scrapers, bulldozers and combines performance and developed fields of their application. Has been accomplished modeling of technological processes of bulldozer mined rocks. Practical meaning: This article aimed on adaptation of educational process to new conditions, in which it exists and orientated on development of perspective methodical and educational support of mining disciplines. Information represented by this article can be useful for professionals working in industry and projecting organizations which connected with open cast mining of complex structure ore deposits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been coherent with normal workings of Indian coal mining industry statutorily in response to the statutory mandate and international agenda of sustainable development. The mining engineers mainly formulate the CSR activities and are also responsible for the effective implementation in the field. This paper evaluates the perception of mining engineers in Indian coal mining sector towards CSR and its process of implementation. In this paper a qualitative research has been conducted to assess higher as well as lower level mining engineers. Results of this qualitative research indicated that mining engineers at higher positions in the organisation have more accurate perception about CSR than mining engineers at lower levels but a large proportion of mining engineers at all levels need further knowledge enrichment. The willingness to learn and gain more knowledge about CSR found from the survey has drawn a bright future for CSR integration in engineering process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selection of a mining method is one of the most important decisions made by mining engineers. An appropriate fully mechanized mining method is of great importance to mining design and capacity planning for thin coal seams. Therefore, the comprehensive evaluation of alternative mining methods is an important part of mining design. Several parameters should be considered in that evaluation, and the evaluation is therefore complex and must be compliant with a set of criteria. In this paper, a comprehensive method that combines two multi-criteria decision-making methods, the analytic hierarchy process and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution, was adopted for the evaluation. The most appropriate mining method, which involved a shearer, was then selected for panel 43101 in the Liangshuijing coal mine in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay concerning the role of former U.S. President Herbert Hoover for Great Depression is presented. Topics discussed include his career as a mining engineer, his initiative in creating relief commission for the victims of the World War I in Belgium, and the implication of his devotion in fiscal conservatism during the Great Depression.

The engineers who studied in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and who returned to Greece to work have been seen as bearers of scientific knowledge and the modernising effort. Actually, they were active historical agents contributing with their multiple scientific activities to the process of appropriation of science and technology and industrial modernisation in the specific historical environment. This article aims, through the study of a particular professional group of engineers, the mining engineers, to demonstrate the interaction between scientific and technical professional activities and participation in political and social affairs. For these mining engineers, the technical efficiency and economic growth that industrialisation would bring could not be dissociated from social order and a hierarchical form of social organisation. At the same time, the formation of their professional group, as well as the social organisation that they envisioned, were rooted in gendered and class relations of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the limits and pressures imposed on South African deep-level mining technology by changing economic and socio-political constraints that have obliged mining engineers to adapt their practices of "getting gold out of the ground." Initially employing straight-forward arguments about the importance of means for achieving ends, the paper eventually raises questions that complicate our understanding of practices that underlie simple conceptions of mining technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a significant need, there is very little South African research on the validation of the generic training priorities of engineers within the platinum mining industry. The purpose of this study was to validate the generic training priorities of engineers in the platinum mining industry in three provinces in South Africa. For this study, a quantitative research design was used, a four-point Likert-type questionnaire was designed, and a purposive sample was used. The results of this study indicated that theoretical knowledge, technical skills, management skills, and engineering principles are generic training priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers mining news briefs of Brazil. Mining engineer Francisco Sette Bicalho died on April 14, 2015 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The Brazilian Navy received the hydrographic research vessel "Vital de Oliveire" on July 23, 2015 to be used for water prospecting of mineral resources. The Instituto Brasileiro de Mineração (IBRAM) will be holding the 16th Brazilian Mining Congress and the International Mining Exhibition from September 14-17, 2015 in Belo Horizonte.

A reliable prediction of the strata behavior and support capacity of longwall workings has always been a challenge for mining engineers. It is still difficult to quantitatively predict some important mining parameters, such as support capability and the interval of periodic caving of the major roof under given mining and strata conditions. The reason is that several factors controlling the strata behavior are difficult to determine, such as the bulk factor of the caving zone, strength factor of the major roof and load factor of the overlying rock strata. In this study, the back analysis method is employed to address this problem. This paper illustrates an integrated approach to predict the strata movement behavior and optimum capability of powered roof supports for safe mining. First, this approach uses the empirical method to qualitatively analyze the mining influence zone, then establishes a quantitative prediction model by theoretic analysis method, and solves the optimum values of the factors described in the model with the back analysis method. On the basis of the above research, the support capability and interval of periodic caving of the major roof under similar geological conditions may be calculated by using these suitable values of the factors. Finally, an illustration of the above process is presented in this paper to examine the reliability of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tecnura is the property of Tecnura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the transnational circulation of American mine engineers between the United States, southern Africa, and the Americas in the late nineteenth century. Technology and knowledge was diffused worldwide with the circulation of American engineers who styled themselves as expert race managers as they compared the labour practices of mines across the world. The article's focus is the extension of the United States’ global footprint to South Africa, where an expatriate ‘colony’ of American engineers created a resilient form of Anglo-American inter-imperial collaboration. As they worked the Rand, American engineers made transnational comparisons of South African and North and South American mines. In the process, they led a global discussion of the efficiency of mining labour that reified white management of other races. After leaving the Rand, American engineers migrated across the globe, many to Mexico, where the interwoven networks of expert knowledge, industrial capitalism, and transnational race-making that characterized late nineteenth-century global mining followed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On the basis of the proposed diagnosing techniques the authors studied the state and determined the levels of future mining engineer communicative competence development at the initial stage of scientific prospecting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has recognised operators' skill as important factors affecting performance and energy efficiency of mining equipment. Modern monitoring tools generate large, highly variable, and, often, skewed energy efficiency data sets. Well-conceived statistical tests should be used to assess the effect of operators on energy efficiency in such situations. However, in many cases in the mining literature, the choice of statistical tests to evaluate operator effects has not been systematic and rigorous and, often, the underlying assumptions of these tests have not been examined before their use. This work provides a systematic method, synthesised from the statistical literature, to rigorously evaluate the effect of operators on energy efficiency of mining equipment. Mine engineers and managers can use this method to evaluate whether differences exist in energy efficiency of their operators given sample data and focus on operator training, if they find cause to improve operator performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cost reduction via optimising the scheduling of waste rock placement has a very high potential of success, as large volumes of waste rock are involved in operating an open pit mine, along with high rehabilitation costs. Such scheduling must satisfy both mine planning and environmental considerations, for which mixed integer programming (MIP) models are a well suited methodology. A base MIP model, along with two variants, is created and implemented for a hypothetical mine site. Upon solving the MIP problem with more than two million possible combinations, optimised waste rock placement schedules are automatically generated. The detailed schedules will assist mine planning engineers in mine design and in improving the environmental performance of a waste rock dump. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during the late nineteenth century, concern about the existence of mining fraud--be it stock manipulation, salting, or straight-up false advertising--was prevalent in the mining community. The belief that fraud was endemic in the region forced the small community of mining engineers working there to tailor their presentation of themselves as technical professionals in relation to these pervasive concerns about fraud. The ways in which mining engineers in this time and place addressed the problem of fraud illustrates how technical-knowledge claims are mediated through the local concerns of professional engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper clarifies the process of a mining engineer training in terms of the innovation system of Ukraine. The authors analyze a number of normative documents concerning innovative activity in Ukraine in general and mining business in particular. In the process of implementation of innovations into mining industrial complex urgent problems are defined. The methodology of information and communication technologies (electronic, distance and mobile studies) usage in engineers training within the conditions of university education is offered. It is marked that the worked out methodology finds its practical introduction: e-learning involves creation of the portal "Electronic mentor"; distance learning is presented in the study of professional disciplines as an example of the course "Computer Technologies in Mining"; mobile learning is considered as an example of discipline "Computer Science and Engineering." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]