Winter Road Safety -A Case Study in Azumi Village, Nagano-

This comparative and case study, undertaken from May 2000 to February 2004 at locations in Washington, Alaska and finally Nagano, Japan, focuses on a winter thoroughfare called the Kamikochi Norikura Super Rindo(herein: Forest Road) in the Azumi Village, which has been accosted with avalanche incidents and accidents for a number of years despite large investment in avalanche protection measures. In Japan, problems that are associated with winter both mountain travel safety to outdoor recreation safety are in many ways characterized by the issues which surround the risk management planning, use and management of this road. The problem in Azumi is of how to reduce the avalanche hazard along the Forest Road. In this paper, as an introduction and general overview in support of the ideas and concepts brought up body text, the current situation of avalanche work worldwide and in Japan is presented. One tendency seen in Japan is for heavy reliance on permanent measures such as the 88 snowfences constructed on the Forest Road at a huge expenditure(153,353,000JPY) in Azumi over the last 23 years. Avalanche forecast-ing is also rare, as demonstrated by only recent inclusion snowfall parameters for road closure purposes in Azumi. In North America and Europe, active avalanche control, which is the process of artificially releasing avalanches through explosive use, is popular as a temporary measure. Such protocol is often used to and complement to permanent measures such as earthworks or snowfences which redirect or reduce velocity of snow flow. In Switzerland alone 10,000kg explosives are used annually in avalanche control work. For the purposes of this study, operating models of bombing routes using hand-deployed charges and bomb trams which carry explosives to avalanche start zones as seen on field trips and inspected in Highway departments and ski areas in the US are proposed as a solution for the Forest Road in Azumi Village, Nagano, and investigated with respect to applicability, safety of use, legality, etc. The only legally hand-deployable charge in Japan, and major topic in this study is a new product called ACE(Avalanche Control Explosive) the research of which is facilitated through elementary on-snow testing. Through the course of this study it became evident that underlying the snow safety issue are issues in forest policy, road use planning, measure selection and funds appropriation. Delving further, it became clear that village and higher government may not have had access to a full range of internationally accepted options in the search for answers to problems of avalanche hazard reduction. In Azumi this inaccessibility to technology has resulted in expensive construction of inadequate permanent protection measures. Assuming that a program including active control could be formally made available to road managers at an attractive price, either deployment of charges by hand or light cableway would be suitable, albeit with some Japan-specific modifications. ACE are relatively low in total energy and their use would require some modification in size, and with respect to tram use it would be necessary to solve small engineering problems and determine which type of charge is explosive material bakes best economic and operational sense for the village. Both measures would require increasing the caliber and accuracy of the current forecasting program as well as unprecedented cooperation with road maintenance crews.Article信州大学農学部AFC報告 2: 35-65(2004)departmental bulletin pape

Denim-fabric-polishing robot size optimization based on global spatial dexterity

This paper presents a novel method to make denim-fabric-polishing robots perform their primary task flexibly and efficiently within a limited workspace. Link lengths are optimized based on an adaptive fireworks algorithm to improve the comprehensive dexterity index. A forward kinematics analysis of the denim-fabric-polishing robot is conducted via the D–H method; the workspace is analyzed according to the needs at hand to determine the range of motion of each joint. To solve the movement condition number of the Jacobian matrix, the concept of low-condition-number probability is established, and a comprehensive dexterity indicator is constructed. The influence of the robot's size on the condition number and comprehensive dexterity index is determined. Finally, the adaptive fireworks algorithm is used to establish the objective optimization function by integrating the dexterity index and other performance indicators. The optimization results show that when the comprehensive dexterity index is taken as the optimization objective, the dexterity comprehensive index and other performance indices of the robot are the lowest; that is, the robot is more flexible. Compared with the traditional genetic algorithm and particle swarm algorithm, the adaptive fireworks algorithm proposed in this paper has better solving speed and solving precision. The optimized workspace of the robot meets the requirements of the polishing task. The design also yields a sufficiently flexible, efficient, and effective robot.</p

Disaster Prevention in Urban Environments

Disasters always have very undesirable consequences, especially when they occur in urban environments. This paper discusses some problems with regard to disaster prevention policy in the Netherlands. This policy was put to the test in May 2000, when a devastating fireworks accident in the Dutch town Enschede took place, destroying a significant part of the built environment of this town, with an investigation by an independent evaluation committee painfully highlighting the failure of the local and national authorities’ preventative policies. The Enschede disaster stimulated many new activities at various levels of government with regard to the need to improve disaster prevention and control. However, recent studies reveal that the lessons of Enschede have yet to be put into practice. This raises questions about the usefulness of a ‘command-and-control’ prevention approach. Alternative approaches are discussed and a comparison is made with the implementation of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)

In the Shadow of Big Oil A Media Content Analysis of the \u27Big Oil\u27 Stigma

This study examined media frames newspapers use in their coverage of the oil and gas industry. A content analysis was conducted to analyze if the oil and gas industry was portrayed positively or negatively in Louisiana newspapers compared to Texas newspapers and how the coverage between states differs. This comprehensive content analysis of print media coverage analyzed newspaper articles and provided a detailed explanation of results about how the oil and gas industry was portrayed over a five-year period of time as compared to other studies, which only analyzed the industry during a crisis period. Through categorization of the frames within the articles, results suggest that the proximity and location of where messages are distributed makes a difference in how the message is framed and what tone is prominent. Results also indicate a lack of distinction, in the media, between fully integrated companies and independent oil and gas companies. This study provides a further understanding of how framing of the oil and gas industry differs over time and between two states

Application of Analogical Reasoning for Use in Visual Knowledge Extraction

There is a continual push to make Artificial Intelligence (AI) as human-like as possible; however, this is a difficult task because of its inability to learn beyond its current comprehension. Analogical reasoning (AR) has been proposed as one method to achieve this goal. Current literature lacks a technical comparison on psychologically-inspired and natural-language-processing-produced AR algorithms with consistent metrics on multiple-choice word-based analogy problems. Assessment is based on “correctness” and “goodness” metrics. There is not a one-size-fits-all algorithm for all textual problems. As contribution in visual AR, a convolutional neural network (CNN) is integrated with the AR vector space model, Global Vectors (GloVe), in the proposed, Image Recognition Through Analogical Reasoning Algorithm (IRTARA). Given images outside of the CNN’s training data, IRTARA produces contextual information by leveraging semantic information from GloVe. IRTARA’s quality of results is measured by definition, AR, and human factors evaluation methods, which saw consistency at the extreme ends. The research shows the potential for AR to facilitate more a human-like AI through its ability to understand concepts beyond its foundational knowledge in both a textual and visual problem space

Causal Comparisons

Focusing on the multiple meanings of the statement A was a more important cause of C than was B, Professor Strassfeld considers the feasibility of comparative causation as a means of apportioning legal responsibility for harms. He concludse that by combining two different interpretations of more important cause --judgments of comparative counterfactual similarity and the Uniform Comparative Fault Act approach of comparative responsibility--we can effectively make causal comparisons and avoid the effort to compare such incommensurables as the defendant\u27s fault under a strict liability standard and the plaintiff\u27s failt for failure to exercise reasonable care