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Fire/smoke barriers are designed to isolate building spaces into manageable compartments that resist the spread of fire and/or smoke, but there are situations in which these life-safety barriers are purposely compromised. Firestopping is a construction and postconstruction activity used to maintain the integrity of fire/smoke barriers. The activity of firestopping is typically the responsibility of either the contractor(s) that caused the penetration or a designated specialty contractor whose primary project function is to monitor and remediate barrier penetrations. There has been limited research on the classification and/or quantity of penetrations that are typically installed in the built environment. This case study collected data from the construction of two separate healthcare construction projects along Colorado's Front Range. Results of this case study across both buildings showed that the majority of penetrations were the results of electrical/low-voltage scopes of work, followed by plumbing, mechanical, fire, structural, and pneumatic tube system penetrations. Life-safety barriers are common in certain building types, and penetrating these barriers is often necessary. This paper provided a method and classification for penetrations of these barriers. Being able to classify the type of penetration and responsible party allows contractors and designers the ability to manage the mitigation efforts. This process also provides a benchmark for owners and designers to quantify the impact of barrier penetrations on building design and maintenance requirements. This may result in building designs that minimize the number of penetrations and provide access areas for building operators to easily inspect and maintain these penetrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an overview of his book with Lowell Gallaway, Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America, Richard Vedder (1993: 1) states: 'Not only has the government contributed to [...]

This paper tests three theories of class size determination: that schools assign better-behaved students, higher quality teachers, or higher-achieving students into larger classes. Furthermore, we estimate how these methodologies differ between public and private schools. Using a nationally representative sample from the USA, we show that, within public schools, third-grade class size is correlated with first-grade ability and, to a lesser extent, first-grade behavior. Private schools, however, appear to assign teachers reporting greater control over school policy to larger classes and teachers with more experience to smaller classes. Class size determination is due to uniquely different processes within public and private schools. (Contains 3 tables and 20 notes.)

While the Special Forces pipeline trains Soldiers in the SF basic skills, SF advanced skills make Soldiers more lethal, better able to gather intelligence and harder to detect during infiltration [...]

During the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom, situation reports from United States Army special-operations soldiers in the field showed that those soldiers were having a substantial problem executing terminal-air-control [...]

Working Paper 2004-31 November 2004 Abstract: This article introduces original annual average years of schooling measures for each state from 1840 to 2000. The paper also combines original data on [...]