OIL SPILL MODELING FOR IMPROVED RESPONSE TO ARCTIC MARITIME SPILLS: THE PATH FORWARD

Maritime shipping and natural resource development in the Arctic are projected to increase as sea ice coverage decreases, resulting in a greater probability of more and larger oil spills. The increasing risk of Arctic spills emphasizes the need to identify the state-of-the-art oil trajectory and sea ice models and the potential for their integration. The Oil Spill Modeling for Improved Response to Arctic Maritime Spills: The Path Forward (AMSM) project, funded by the Arctic Domain Awareness Center (ADAC), provides a structured approach to gather expert advice to address U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC) core needs for decision-making. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Response & Restoration (OR&R) provides scientific support to the USCG FOSC during oil spill response. As part of this scientific support, NOAA OR&R supplies decision support models that predict the fate (including chemical and physical weathering) and transport of spilled oil. Oil spill modeling in the Arctic faces many unique challenges including limited availability of environmental data (e.g., currents, wind, ice characteristics) at fine spatial and temporal resolution to feed models. Despite these challenges, OR&R’s modeling products must provide adequate spill trajectory predictions, so that response efforts minimize economic, cultural and environmental impacts, including those to species, habitats and food supplies. The AMSM project addressed the unique needs and challenges associated with Arctic spill response by: (1) identifying state-of-the-art oil spill and sea ice models, (2) recommending new components and algorithms for oil and ice interactions, (3) proposing methods for improving communication of model output uncertainty, and (4) developing methods for coordinating oil and ice modeling efforts

Identification of the human factors contributing to maintenance failures in a petroleum operation

Objective: This research aimed to identify the most frequently occurring human factors contributing to maintenance-related failures within a petroleum industry organization. Commonality between failures will assist in understanding reliability in maintenance processes, thereby preventing accidents in high-hazard domains. Background: Methods exist for understanding the human factors contributing to accidents. Their application in a maintenance context mainly has been advanced in aviation and nuclear power. Maintenance in the petroleum industry provides a different context for investigating the role that human factors play in influencing outcomes. It is therefore worth investigating the contributing human factors to improve our understanding of both human factors in reliability and the factors specific to this domain. Method: Detailed analyses were conducted of maintenance- related failures (N = 38) in a petroleum company using structured interviews with maintenance technicians. The interview structure was based on the Human Factor Investigation Tool (HFIT), which in turn was based on Rasmussen’s model of human malfunction .Results: A mean of 9.5 factors per incident was identified across the cases investigated. The three most frequent human factors contributing to the maintenance failures were found to be assumption (79% of cases), design and maintenance (71%), and communication (66%).Conclusion: HFIT proved to be a useful instrument for identifying the pattern of human factors that recurred most frequently in maintenance-related failures. Application: The high frequency of failures attributed to assumptions and communication demonstrated the importance of problem-solving abilities and organizational communication in a domain where maintenance personnel have a high degree of autonomy and a wide geographical distribution

Independent, No.20, March 25, 1993

The Independent was a student-run newspaper created in 1960 at Newark State College, now Kean University. The proceeding title was The Reflector. The editor of this issue was Reid Bundonis.https://digitalcommons.kean.edu/independent_1990-1994/1071/thumbnail.jp

AN INVESTIGATION OF VIETNAMESE EFL TEENAGE LEARNERS’ KNOWLEDGE OF COMMON ENGLISH IDIOMS: IMPLICATIONS FOR IDIOM INSTRUCTION

This article explores the EFL teenage learners’ knowledge of common English idioms in a Vietnamese context. Seventy-six teenage students between 14 to 17 years old, including 33 males and 43 females participated in an idiom test. The test consisted of 50 idioms selected from common English proficiency test books and the lists of common idioms by Grant (2007) and Liu (2003). Descriptive statistics showed that the students had very limited idiomatic knowledge. This finding uncovers the needs for idiom instruction. Based on the literature, the current paper proposes an instructional direction for improving their knowledge of idioms.  Article visualizations

Independent, No.13, January 28, 1993

The Independent was a student-run newspaper created in 1960 at Newark State College, now Kean University. The proceeding title was The Reflector. The editor of this issue was Reid Bundonis.https://digitalcommons.kean.edu/independent_1990-1994/1064/thumbnail.jp

Commonwealth Times 1975-02-14

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/com/1224/thumbnail.jp