Synthesis of decision making in a distributed intelligent personnel health management system on offshore oil platform

This paper proposes a methodological approach for the decision synthesis in a geographically distributed intelligent health management system for oil workers working in offshore industry. The decision-making methodology is based on the concept of a person-centered approach to managing the health and safety of personnel, which implies the inclusion of employees as the main component in the control loop. This paper develops a functional model of the health management system for workers employed on offshore oil platforms and implements it through three phased operations that is monitoring and assessing the health indicators and environmental parameters of each employee, and making decisions. These interacting operations combine the levels of a distributed intelligent health management system. The paper offers the general principles of functioning of a distributed intelligent system for managing the health of workers in the context of structural components and computing platforms. It presents appropriate approaches to the implementation of decision support processes and describes one of the possible methods for evaluating the generated data and making decisions using fuzzy pattern recognition. The models of a fuzzy ideal image and fuzzy real images of the health status of an employee are developed and an algorithm is described for assessing the deviation of generated medical parameters from the norm. The paper also compiles the rules to form the knowledge bases of a distributed intelligent system for remote continuous monitoring. It is assumed that embedding this base into the intelligent system architecture will objectively assess the trends in the health status of workers and make informed decisions to eliminate certain problem

Loading and testing a light scattering cell with a binary fluid mixture near its critical composition

Critical phenomena has been the subject of physics research for many years. However, only in recent years has the research effort become intense. The current intensity has caused the study of critical phenomena to be grouped into a previous older era and a present contemporary era. Turbidity cell filling with methanol cyclohexane is one of the first steps toward a further understanding of critical phenomena. Work performed during the research period is outlined. During this period, research was spent developing apparatus and techniques that will make it possible to study critical phenomena through turbidity measurements on methanol cyclohexane. Topics covered range from the orientation of turbidity cell parts for assembly to the filling apparatus and procedure used when th cell is built. The last section will briefly cover some of the observations made when viewing the cell in a controlled water bath. However, before mention is made of the specifics of the summer research, a short introduction to critical phenomena and turbidity and how they relate to this experiment is provided

Characterization of Asphalt Treated Base Course Material

INE/AUTC 11.0

Does "thin client" mean "energy efficient"?

The thick client –a personal computer with integral disk storage and local processing capability, which also has access to data and other resources via a network connection – is accepted as the model for providing computing resource in most office environments. The Further and Higher Education sector is no exception to that, and therefore most academic and administrative offices are equipped with desktop computers of this form to support users in their day to day tasks. This system structure has a number of advantages: there is a reduced reliance on network resources; users access a system appropriate to their needs, and may customise “their” system to meet their own personal requirements and working patterns. However it also has disadvantages: some are outside the scope of this project, but of most relevance to the green IT agenda is the fact that relatively complex and expensive (in first cost and in running cost) desktop systems and servers are underutilised – especially in respect of processing power. While some savings are achieved through use of “sleep” modes and similar power reducing mechanisms, in most configurations only a small portion of the overall total available processor resource is utilised. This realisation has led to the promotion of an alternative paradigm, the thin client. In a thin client system, the desktop is shorn of most of its local processing and data storage capability, and essentially acts as a terminal to the server, which now takes on responsibility for data storage and processing. The energy benefit is derived through resource sharing: the processor of the server does the work, and because that processor is shared by all users, a number of users are supported by a single system. Therefore – according to proponents of thin client – the total energy required to support a user group is reduced, since a shared physical resource is used more efficiently. These claims are widely reported: indeed there are a number of estimation tools which show these savings can be achieved; however there appears to be little or no actual measured data to confirm this. The community does not appear to have access to measured data comparing thin and thick client systems in operation in the same situation, allowing direct comparisons to be drawn. This is the main goal of this project. One specific question relates to the overall power use, while it would seem to be obvious that the thin client would require less electricity, what of the server? Two other variations are also considered: it is not uncommon for thin client deployments to continue to use their existing PCs as thin client workstations, with or without modification. Also, attempts by PC makers to reduce the power requirements of their products have given rise to a further variation: the incorporation of low power features in otherwise standard PC technology, working as thick clients. This project was devised to conduct actual measurements in use in a typical university environment. We identified a test area: a mixed administrative and academic office location which supported a range of users, and we made a direct replacement of the current thick client systems with thin client equivalents; in addition, we exchanged a number of PCs operating in thin and thick client mode with devices specifically branded as “low power” PCs and measured their power requirements in both thin and thick modes. We measured the energy consumption at each desktop for the duration of our experiments, and also measured the energy draw of the server designated to supporting the thin client setup, giving us the opportunity to determine the power per user of each technology. Our results show a significant difference in power use between the various candidate technologies, and that a configuration of low power PC in thick client mode returned the lowest power use during our study. We were also aware of other factors surrounding a change such as this: we have addressed the technical issues of implementation and management, and the non-technical or human factors of acceptance and use: all are reported within this document. Finally, our project is necessarily limited to a set of experiments carried out in a particular situation, therefore we use estimation methods to draw wider conclusions and make general observations which should allow others to select appropriate thick or thin client solutions in their situation

Daylight and Architectural Simulation of the Egebjerg School (Denmark): Sustainable Features of a New Type of Skylight

This article discusses the performance of a new skylight for standard classrooms at the Egebjerg School (Denmark), which was built ca. 1970. This building underwent important reforms under a European project to which the authors contributed. This research aimed to create a new skylight prototype that is useful for several schools in the vicinity, since there is a lack of educational facilities. The former skylights consisted of plastic pyramids that presented serious disadvantages in terms of sustainability matters. During the design process, the priority changed to studying the factors that correlate daylighting with energy and other environmental aspects in a holistic and evocative approach. Accordingly, the new skylight features promote the admittance and di usion of solar energy through adroit guidance systems. In order to simulate di erent scenarios, we employed our own simulation tool, Diana X. This research-oriented software works with the e ects of direct solar energy that are mostly avoided in conventional programs. By virtue of Lambert’s reciprocity theorem, our procedure, which was based on innovative equations of radiative transfer, converts the energy received by di usive surfaces into luminous exitance for all types of architectural elements. Upon completion of the skylights, we recorded onsite measurements, which roughly coincided with the simulation data. Thus, conditions throughout the year improved

Analysis of the extraterrestrial life detection problem

Analysis of extraterrestrial life detection proble

A study on the impact of a music looping technology intervention upon pre-service generalist teachers’ self-efficacy to teach music in primary schools

In Australia, in the current climate of economic rationalism in which there has been an increasing emphasis on literacy and numeracy, funding for specialised subjects like music has been reducing. As a result, generalist classroom teachers are being given more responsibility for delivering effective music education in primary schools. However, the time dedicated to training pre-service teachers in music education in tertiary institutions has diminished. Further, time constraints involved in building pre-service knowledge and skills in teaching music may impact many pre-service teachers’ beliefs about their ability to teach music. Within these constraints, digital technology may provide a key to improving pre-service teacher training in music education in universities, resulting in better quality delivery of music in schools. This study investigates the potential of digital looping technology to build generalist pre-service teachers’ knowledge of and efficacy for teaching music in primary schools. The study involved three stages of investigation: Stage One: an experimental and control intervention involving measuring the self-efficacy of pre-service teachers before and after they completed one unit of study incorporating looping technology; Stage Two: video analysis in a practicum setting; and Stage three: participant self-reflections following the practicum to investigate the transferability of pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy from university-based learning to classroom practice. Based upon the study, this thesis makes a number of recommendations for future practice in terms of generalist pre-service teacher training, as well as recommendations for future research

A Study of Porosity and Permeability in Bituminous Mixtures

This report provides an insight into the content of the project and its significance, namely `A study of porosity and permeability in bituminous mixtures'. The study is divided into two (2) elements which cover the porosity and permeability of a bituminous mixture. Both elements focus on different bituminous mixtures by varying the types of aggregates and gradations. The types of aggregates used are crushed granite and crushed limestone; and each of them was employed to produce two aggregate gradations, which are well-graded and gap-graded. There is strong evidence from this investigation that porosity and permeability plays an important factor in determining the performance of the bituminous mixture. A number of tests have been conducted to characterize the material used relating to this study and the results were compared with the specifications of the Jabatan Kerja Raya (JKR). Parallel to the investigation on the amount of porosity and permeability characteristics of the mixtures, the study was further continued to analyze the performance of the bituminous mixtures. Performance tests relating to deformation (rutting) and fatigue (cracking) were conducted. There is reason to believe that granite with gap-graded gradation is a better highway building material as it performed better in terms of rutting and fatigue cracking. All the observations and results gathered were discussed in this repor

A systematic definition of sentence topic

Bibliography: leaves 43-46Supported in part by the National Institute of Education under contract no. HEW-NIE-C-400-76-011