Extending The Jamaican Early Childhood Development Intervention

We review the development of the Jamaican home visiting intervention for children under 4 years and its evidence base. The intervention has focused on supporting mothers to promote the development of their children through interacting in a responsive way, labelling the environment and activities. The curriculum is structured and cognitively orientated. It has been used in 13 studies in 4 countries, 7 in Jamaica, 6 in Bangladesh, one each in Colombia and Peru. In all studies some benefit to children’s cognitive and language development has been found. Different types of children from severely malnourished to children living in poverty have benefited. Three long term follow ups have found sustained benefits to cognition; the longest study went to 22 years and found comprehensive benefits, to behaviour, school attainment and achievement, IQ, depression and wages. The curriculum is currently being used in 8 different countries and different delivery strategies are being evaluated including mother and child groups with meetings of different frequencies. A web package, Reach Up, to facilitate training with manuals and demonstration videos has been developed. Some unanswered questions include, what is the most effective age and duration for the intervention to have sustained benefits? Research is needed to find cost-effective implementation models and how to monitor and maintain intervention quality when going to scale

Alien Registration- Grantham, William A. (Bangor, Penobscot County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/15924/thumbnail.jp

Function-Based Failure Propagation for Conceptual Design

When designing a product, the earlier the potential risks can be identified, the more costs can be saved, as it is easier to modify a design in its early stages. Several methods exist to analyze the risk in a system, but all require a mature design. However, by applying the concept of “common interfaces” to a functional model and utilizing a historical knowledge base, it is possible to analyze chains of failures during the conceptual phase of product design. This paper presents a method based on these common interfaces to be used in conjunction with other methods such as risk in early design to allow a more complete risk analysis during the conceptual design phase. Finally, application of this method is demonstrated in a design setting by applying it to a thermal control subsystem

Breaking the Cycle-Preventing Failures by Leveraging Historical Data During Conceptual Design

Major engineering accidents are often caused by seemingly minor failures propagating through complex systems. One example of this is an accident involving a Bell 206 Rotorcraft where a fuel pump failure led to the severing of the tail boom. Cataloguing and communicating the knowledge of potential failures and failure propagations is critical to prevent further accidents. The need for effective failure prevention tools is not specific to rotorcrafts, however. Failure reporting systems have been adopted by various industries to aid and promote failure prevention. The catalogued failures usually consist of narratives describing which part of a product failed, how it failed, and the circumstances behind the failure. While this information is vital to learning from past mistakes; often, the narratives are designed simply to report the events, not to use the data for product improvements or new designs. Therefore, more effective systems for cataloguing and utilizing corporate memory of recorded failure events are needed. This paper presents the design of a computational database to support the failure prevention tool, the function based failure propagation (FFP) method. FFP promotes failure prevention by identifying failure propagation paths through a system as early as the conceptual phase of product design, where impacts of failure prevention are greatest. It uses a database populated by historical failure information to present specific paths that potential failures might take as they propagate through a system. The information communicated by the FFP method is the potential location of and likelihood failure propagations

Letters between A. E. Grantham and William Kerr\u27s secretary.

Letters concerning a position in agronomy at Utah Agricultural College

Design of bang-bang controller based on a fuzzy-neuro approach

A fuzzy-neuro approach for the design of bang-bang controller is presented in this paper. The approach has been used with success for the time optimal bang-bang control of a heating system. The improved bang-bang controller suppresses the oscillations often observed at the output of an on-off controller. A fuzzy system is used for the implementation of the on-off control. An extension of the fuzzy control is provided by an equivalent neural network of the fuzzy system. A test application, that of a house heating with a two-state furnace, is developed and evaluated with standard hysteresis switching, fuzzy control, and fuzzy-neuro control.published_or_final_versio

Evaluating GREEN as a New Risk Reduction and Mitigation Strategy in the Petroleum Industry

PresentationThe Petroleum industry uses different risk mitigation strategies to mitigate potential failures within its facilities. Yet, these strategies could not prevent major accidents, on different scales, from occurring as they negatively impact the industry. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Generated Risk Event Effect Neutralization (GREEN) as a new tool to select adequate risk mitigation strategy to prevent potential failures in petroleum industry. More than fifty major accidents in the industry underwent GREEN evaluation and compared with existing risk mitigation strategies used in to mitigate potential failures

What New Faculty Need to Know, But Don\u27t Know to Ask

A smooth transition to life at an academic institution and the surrounding community is essential to the professional careers of new faculty members. The transition begins during the hiring process and startup package negotiations. Once at an institution, aspects of academia including teaching, proposal writing, and the tenure process inevitably generate issues and concerns for new faculty members. Research has shown that mentoring new faculty members early in their academic career can have significant impact on professional success. This is especially true at a research-based institution where the demands of funded scholarship add an extra level of complexity. A survey was conducted of faculty members at Missouri University of Science & Technology (Missouri S&T) in their first three years of a tenure track appointment to determine areas of concern for new faculty members. This paper presents the survey results, discusses the issues raised by the survey, and makes recommendations for effective mentoring relationships. Specific questions for new faculty members discussed in this paper include: What to look for in a mentor? What to consider in selecting where to submit papers? When to say yes and when to say no to service? Where to begin the hunt for research funding? What are quality resources for teaching? The paper also provides insight to mentors relative to junior faculty members\u27 concerns. This paper evaluates issues that are critical to forming effective mentoring relationships. Guidance offered provides value to mentors in understanding which areas are of greatest concern to new faculty. It provides information to proteges as well in determining key characteristics of an effective mentor