An impact assessment of current rural Alaska village solid waste management systems: a case study

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2016The purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of current and alternative solid waste management practices of two rural Alaskan villages. The EASETECH life-cycle assessment modeling tool was used to compare the current solid waste management systems for the remote villages of Kalskag and Fort Yukon across eight alternative scenarios. Annual waste generation and composition data for these two villages and data specific to processes and functions for each waste system were collected and used to modify templates within the EASETECH program to provide a life-cycle assessment for current and proposed waste management practices. The results indicate that integrated waste management practices for these remote villages may not be economically feasible or environmentally favorable. Waste management options, though limited for these remote villages, may benefit from minor system changes. These changes include transport services and burn practices that only slightly increase operating costs, but significantly reduce local social and environmental impacts. Local, accurate, and complete waste stream data could help support future management planning for the solid waste management systems of these rural villages.Chapter 1. Introduction -- 1.1. Introduction to Integrated Solid Waste Management Systems -- 1.2. Solid Waste Management in Alaska -- 1.3. Rural Alaska Village Economics -- 1.4. Rural Alaska Landfills -- 1.5. Thesis Problem and Statement -- 1.6. Thesis Outline -- Chapter 2. Case Study -- 2.1. Kalskag and Fort Yukon Solid Waste Characterization -- 2.2. The Rural Villages of Kalskag and Fort Yukon -- 2.3. Waste Stream Characterization Methods -- 2.4. Waste Stream Characterization Results -- Chapter 3. Evaluation of Rural Alaska Waste Management Systems -- 3.1. Systems Modelling Approach and Life-Cycle Assessment -- 3.2. The EASETECH Model -- 3.3. Impact Categories -- 3.4. Materials and Methods -- 3.5. Results -- Chapter 4. Discussion -- References -- Appendices

Improving performance of the hospitalization process by applying the principles of Lean Thinking

Purpose: The goal was to improve the quality of the hospitalization process and the management of patients, allowing the reduction of costs and the minimization of the preoperative Length of Hospital Stay (LOS). Design/methodology/approach: The methodology used to improve the quality of the hospitalization process and patient management was Lean Thinking. Therefore, the Lean tools (Value stream map and Ishikawa diagram) were used to identify waste and inefficiencies, improving the process with the implementation of corrective actions. The data was collected through personal observations, patient interviews, brainstorming and from printed medical records of 151 patients undergoing oral cancer surgery in the period from 2006 to 2018. Findings: The authors identified, through Value Stream Map, waste and inefficiencies during preoperative activities, consequently influencing preoperative LOS, considered the best performance indicator. The main causes were identified through the Ishikawa diagram, allowing reflection on possible solutions. The main corrective action was the introduction of the pre-hospitalization service. A comparative statistical analysis showed the significance of the solutions implemented. The average preoperative LOS decreased from 4.90 to 3.80 days (−22.40%) with a p-value of 0.001. Originality/value: The methodology allowed to highlight the improvement of the patient hospitalization process with the introduction of the pre-hospitalization service. Therefore, by adopting the culture of continuous improvement, the flow of hospitalization was redrawn. The benefits of the solutions implemented are addressed to the patient in terms of lower LOS and greater service satisfaction and to the hospital for lower patient management costs and improved process quality. This article will be useful for those who need examples on how to apply Lean tools in healthcare

A Dual-Stream architecture based on Neural Turing Machine and Attention for the Remaining Useful Life Estimation problem

Estimating in a reliable way the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of a mechanical component is a fundamental task in the field of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM). In recent years a greater availability of high quality sensors and easiness of data gathering gave rise to data-driven models based on deep learning for this task, which has recently seen the introduction of \u201cdual-stream\u201d architectures. In this paper we propose a dual-stream architecture to address the RUL estimation problem through the exploitation of a Neural Turing Machine (NTM) and a Multi-Head Attention (MHA) mechanism. The NTM is a content-based memory addressing system which gives each of the streams the ability to access to and interact with the memory and acts as a fusion technique. The MHA is an attention mechanism added as a mean for our architecture to identify the existing relations between different sensor data in order to reveal hidden patterns among them. To evaluate the performance of our model, we considered the C-MAPSS dataset, a benchmark dataset published by NASA consisting of several time series related to the life of turbofan engines. We show that our approach achieves the best prediction score (which measures the safety of the predictions) in the available literature on two of the C-MAPSS subdatasets

Flexible Data Streaming In Stream Cloud

Abstract: Most of the applications in some special domains such as Telecommunication systems, Share market, Fraud detection and network security which required online processing of incoming data. They produce very high incoming load which needs to process by multiple nodes. The current system is on single node bottleneck and with the static configuration and hence it is not able to scale with the input load. So in this paper we present stream cloud a high flexible data stream processing engine for processing bulky data stream. This is particularly suitable for applications in online transactions, monitoring financial data processing and fraud detection systems that require timely processing of continuous data. Stream cloud using novel parallelization technique which splits one query into sub queries which are independently allocates to individual nodes for execution. It is having some elastic protocols which is used to dynamic resource management and load balancing of incoming load. Keywords: Data stream, Load balancing, Elasticity, Scalability, Flexibility I. INTRODUCTION Number of applications where large amount of data need to be processed in quasi-real-time process which is having the limitations of store then process paradig

The role of artificial intelligence in healthcare: a structured literature review

BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION: Artificial intelligence (AI) in the healthcare sector is receiving attention from researchers and health professionals. Few previous studies have investigated this topic from a multi-disciplinary perspective, including accounting, business and management, decision sciences and health professions. METHODS: The structured literature review with its reliable and replicable research protocol allowed the researchers to extract 288 peer-reviewed papers from Scopus. The authors used qualitative and quantitative variables to analyse authors, journals, keywords, and collaboration networks among researchers. Additionally, the paper benefited from the Bibliometrix R software package. RESULTS: The investigation showed that the literature in this field is emerging. It focuses on health services management, predictive medicine, patient data and diagnostics, and clinical decision-making. The United States, China, and the United Kingdom contributed the highest number of studies. Keyword analysis revealed that AI can support physicians in making a diagnosis, predicting the spread of diseases and customising treatment paths. CONCLUSIONS: The literature reveals several AI applications for health services and a stream of research that has not fully been covered. For instance, AI projects require skills and data quality awareness for data-intensive analysis and knowledge-based management. Insights can help researchers and health professionals understand and address future research on AI in the healthcare field

Assessing the Benefits of Forested Riparian Zones: A Qualitative Index of Riparian Integrity Is Positively Associated with Ecological Status in European Streams

Developing a general, predictive understanding of ecological systems requires knowing how much structural and functional relationships can cross scales and contexts. Here, we introduce the CROSSLINK project that investigates the role of forested riparian buffers in modified European landscapes by measuring a wide range of ecosystem attributes in stream-riparian networks. CROSSLINK involves replicated field measurements in four case-study basins with varying levels of human development: Norway (Oslo Fjord), Sweden (Lake Malaren), Belgium (Zwalm River), and Romania (Arge River). Nested within these case-study basins include multiple, independent stream-site pairs with a forested riparian buffer and unbuffered section located upstream, as well as headwater and downstream sites to show cumulative land-use impacts. CROSSLINK applies existing and bespoke methods to describe habitat conditions, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning in aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Here, we summarize the approaches used, detail protocols in supplementary materials, and explain how data is applied in an optimization framework to better manage tradeoffs in multifunctional landscapes. We then present results demonstrating the range of riparian conditions present in our case-study basins and how these environmental states influence stream ecological integrity with the commonly used macroinvertebrate Average Score Per Taxon (ASPT) index. We demonstrate that a qualitative index of riparian integrity can be positively associated with stream ecological status. This introduction to the CROSSLINK project shows the potential for our replicated study with its panoply of ecosystem attributes to help guide management decisions regarding the use of forested riparian buffers in human-impacted landscapes. This knowledge is highly relevant in a time of rapid environmental change where freshwater biodiversity is increasingly under pressure from a range of human impacts that include habitat loss, pollution, and climate change

The effectiveness of riparian buffer zones for protecting waterways during harvest in the Pipiwai forest in Northland, New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science in Natural Resource Management, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The harvest of plantation forests has the potential to cause significant negative impacts on the waterways that flow through them. It has been proposed that to mitigate any such impacts waterways should be protected by undisturbed riparian buffer zones (RBZ). As such, this research has been conducted to investigate if RBZs protect plantation waterways during harvest. To do this a case study was carried out in the Pipiwai forest, one of Carter Holt Harvey Forests (CHHF) Northland plantations. In the investigation, 15 first order streams were sampled using an extended version of NIWA's stream health monitoring and assessment kit (SHMAK). The samples were taken from three different stream treatments, those harvested with undisturbed buffers, harvested with no buffers (clearcut) and standing mature pine forest. Each site had the quality of its aquatic and riparian habitats and invertebrate communities assessed via the SHMAK, which presented a rating for each streams health. Statistical analysis was also carried out to determine if any differences in the results were significant or simply an expression of the variation that could be expected in a single population. The management of the plantation was also investigated. CHHF managers were interviewed to determine the activities that could have impacted on the forest's waterways. The results showed that clearcut streams had degraded riparian and aquatic habitats through the loss of vegetation, exposed and eroding soil, and increased streambed sedimentation. This degradation was reflected in the invertebrate communities which were dominated by high numbers of pollutant tolerant species such as mollusks and midges. Buffered waterways, however, had no such degradation and their invertebrate communities had high numbers of pristine requiring invertebrates such as mayflies. Statistical analysis showed that the habitat and invertebrate scores of the clearcut sites were significantly lower than the buffered and pine sites, and it also showed there was no significant difference between the buffered sites and the mature pine sites. The results also showed that the management of the Pipiwai plantation was conducted to industry and council standards, but that this was insufficient to prevent the degradation of the waterways in the clearcut catchments. The two main conclusions of this research were that RBZs in the Pipiwai forest protected waterways from degradation during plantation harvest and maintained them in a state similar to that of standing mature pine forest, and that management practices and regulations in use at the time of harvest, though within industry and government standards, were unable to prevent waterway degradation and achieve results equal to those of the RBZs

The roles of spatial scale and landscape change in mediating predator effects on stream fish communities

Doctor of PhilosophyDivision of BiologyKeith B. GidoThe role of predators in ecosystems has not only intrigued and puzzled ecologists over time, but predators are charismatic icons of conservation whose status indicates threats of global change. Through habitat alteration and fragmentation, climate change, and species introductions, predation pressure has been altered globally through the loss of apex predators, introduction of predators, and changes in predator distributions and abundance. While we know predators can influence ecosystems through top-down processes, managing changes in predation pressure requires quantifying effects of predators at scales relevant to management and conservation. In lotic systems, scales relevant to management often span across drainage basins, so predator effects must be quantified across stream networks. Because lotic communities also respond to landscape change, understanding the role of predators across stream networks requires careful consideration of local and broad scale abiotic factors influencing both predators and prey. I combined simulated, experimental, and observational data to 1) assess sampling strategies to determine effects of landscape change on stream fish communities, 2) measure changes in predator consumption rates across spatial scales and the role of prey behavior in driving scaling relationships, and 3) quantify the relationship between the presence of predators and stream fish community structure while controlling for abiotic variability across stream networks. In chapter 2, I compared how the distribution of sample sites (completely random, highly skewed, or uniform distributions) across landscape gradients influenced variability in measured responses of stream fish community metrics. Strong responses (species richness) to environmental gradients were robust to sample distributions, but large sample size and uniform distributions of samples across gradients were necessary to quantify more complex ecological responses (community composition). In chapter 3, I conducted a mesocosm study to quantify differences in per capita consumption across different arena sizes and measured three aspects of prey behavior hypothesized to be important in driving consumption rates: aggregation, movement, and spatial overlap with predators. Per capita consumption was highest in the largest arena relative to the smallest. I hypothesize the positive relationship between consumption and spatial scale was driven by lower group vigilance because prey aggregated less in large arenas. In chapter 4, I compared fish community structure, including richness and abundance of species, at sites in which a predatory fish, largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), were present or absent. I first identified which abiotic factors, including both natural stream attributes and anthropogenic landscape changes, drove the presence of largemouth bass and stream fish community structure. I then controlled for important abiotic factors to determine relationships between largemouth bass and stream fish community structure. Richness was higher than predicted based on abiotic factors at sites where bass were present. Several species associated with small impoundments exhibited significant co-occurrence patterns with largemouth bass, likely driving the heightened richness at sites with bass. Complex ecological phenomena such as community responses to predators are difficult to measures, especially in the context of landscape change. These studies highlight the importance of thoughtful study design, the scale-dependence of biotic interactions, and challenges of quantifying responses to predators at scales relevant to conservation and management

RFID-enabled Supply Chain Collaboration Services in a Networked Retail Business Environment

Since the early 1990s, there has been a growing understanding that supply chain management should be built around information sharing and collaboration among supply chain partners. The emergence of RFID technology is expected to revolutionize many of the collaborative supply chain processes and to empower new collaboration scenarios, such as anti-counterfeiting, product recall and reverse logistics, collaborative in-store promotion management and total inventory management. This paper proposes eight RFID-enabled supply chain collaboration services (e.g. dynamic pricing, smart recall, in-store promotion management, out-of-shelf response) in a networked retail business environment. The services are characterized, on a high-level, by the information shared between retailers and suppliers, the level of tagging (pallet/case/item level) and the location of the tag readers. Also, a scalable-distributed network architecture, building on the possibilities provided by web service orchestration and data stream management systems, is proposed to support these collaborative supply chain management processes. However, this paper introduces into a research-in-progress with the ultimate purpose to assess and categorize the RFID-enabled supply chain collaboration services according to four dimensions: the extent of collaboration required between retailers and suppliers, the RFID technology requirements, the transformation of existing (or the introduction of new) processes and the business performance impact of the RFID-enabled collaborative service. This research is partly funded by the European Commission (IST-2005, FP6) through the IST SMART research project with participating user companies being European grocery retailers and suppliers from the fast-moving consumer goods sector