Vectorization of a penalty function algorithm for well scheduling

In petroleum engineering, the oil production profiles of a reservoir can be simulated by using a finite gridded model. This profile is affected by the number and choice of wells which in turn is a result of various production limits and constraints including, for example, the economic minimum well spacing, the number of drilling rigs available and the time required to drill and complete a well. After a well is available it may be shut in because of excessive water or gas productions. In order to optimize the field performance a penalty function algorithm was developed for scheduling wells. For an example with some 343 wells and 15 different constraints, the scheduling routine vectorized for the CYBER 205 averaged 560 times faster performance than the scalar version

Socio-economic and health status of sandstone miners: a case study of Sorya village, Karauli, Rajasthan

Background: This study is carried out with aims to assess socio-economic and health status of the miners in Sorya Village of Karauli district of Rajasthan, India. Mining has always been among the most hazardous of occupations and rapidly increasing demand for metal and minerals to meet the demand for growing infrastructure has greatly increased the importance of mining. The quarrying and crushing are carried out in many parts of India and majority of stone mines are unorganized.Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 126 miners in Sorya village, Karauli during 20 to 30 May 2014.Results: Average ages of miner were 41 and average household sizes of the miners were six. Around 80 % miners addicted to substance abuse and spend average Rs. 17 daily. Average monthly incomes of them were Rs. 3200 and 39 % has miners are in debt of more than 1 lakh. One of the reasons of debt was father died in debt and carried forward to the children. Seventy-seven percent of miners belong to lower caste and rest of them belongs to other backward class. Average BMI of miners was 19.7 kg/m2 and 38% miner were malnourished (BMI <18.5 kg/m2). Health problem reported by most of them were TB, silicosis, chest pain, back pain, Cough and Musculoskeletal disorder. Some of miners reported about low vision and hearing loss too.Conclusion: From the study, it can be concluded that one reason for miner’s indebtedness is father carry forward. Sandstone mining leads to Silicosis, TB and body pain and musculoskeletal disorder. Large sample size studies will give a clearer picture that will helpful in policy implication for more than 2.5 million miners in Rajasthan, India.

Are sandstone miners abused in India?

Despite engaged in economic activities, the situation of sandstone miners is very poor in India. They are abused in many ways like in socioeconomic status, in Physical health, by doctors, by&nbsp;thekedars&nbsp;(contractor), by dacoits and by the administration. This report is compiled on the basis of author Ph.D. field work scheduled in May to September 2014 in 10 sampled villages in Karauli, Rajasthan and collected information from more than 300 mine workers and two in-depth interviews from local newspaper journalists. Karauli is a district of Rajasthan in western India, located at 26.5°N 77.02°E and encompasses an area of 5530 sq km. Located at a distance of 190 km from pink city Jaipur; the maximum temperature here reaches 470C in summers and minimum drops to about 40C in winters! The area is mainly famous for pink colored construction stone used for carving and other decorative materials. The livelihood of the rural population of this district is mainly agriculture, animal husbandry, and mining; with about one-third population dependent on mining for their livelihood. The sandstone famously called Karauli stone is mined here, mostly as an unorganized way. Despite engaged in economic activities and mentioned in the census under Industrial category (Mining and quarrying), the situation of these miners is very poor. They are abused in many ways like in socioeconomic status, in Physical health, by doctors, by&nbsp;thekedars&nbsp;(contractor), by dacoits and by the administration. &nbsp

Coupling Life Cycle Assessment and Socioeconomic Scenarios for Climate Change Adaptation of the Energy-Water Nexus

The interdependency of water and energy resources is known as energy-water-nexus (EWN). Water is necessary for energy production and energy is integral to water acquisition and distribution. The carbon emissions associated with both water and energy sectors drive climate change. Climate change in return poses increasing stress on the energy water nexus and makes tradeoffs between resources necessary and increasingly challenging, given the constraints and uncertainty around resources. This dissertation focuses on the tradeoffs between greenhouse gas mitigation and water conservation in the energy-water-nexus and how adaptation policy can influence these tradeoffs.To quantitatively understand these tradeoffs especially under future development pathways, a modeling framework is developed to first develop socioeconomic storylines that contain local information around energy water nexus, and a life cycle assessment model that quantifies the energy and water footprints for an energy system based on input data assessing various policy and technology pathways. In this dissertation, such a framework is developed and tested and applied in the context of shale gas production in Barnett Texas.Three collaborative research manuscripts developed for this dissertation are presented as three chapters following an Introduction and summed up with a Conclusion. Chapter 1 develops sub-national and sectoral extensions of the global shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), as nested qualitative storylines, in order to identify future socioeconomic challenges for adaptation for the United States on national, regional and local scales. Chapter 2 develops a life-cycle assessment (LCA) model to evaluate the global warming potential and water scarcity footprints associated with multiple wastewater management options associated with shale gas production in the Barnett Shale play of Texas. Chapters 3 combines the two frameworks developed in Chapters 1 and 2, by testing the nested SSPs for Texas, by developing shared policy assumptions and quantifying them as input parameters to the LCA model, to evaluate energy and technology pathways around adaptation of hydraulic fracturing and water use in Texas. The Conclusion synthesizes the main findings from the three chapters and discusses opportunities to use the research to improve future policy decisions related to climate change and energy-water nexus

Event-based media monitoring methodology for Human Rights Watch

Executive Summary This report, prepared by a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota for Human Rights Watch (HRW), investigates the use of event-based media monitoring (EMM) to review its application, identify its strengths and weaknesses, and offer suggestions on how HRW can better utilize EMM in its own work. Media monitoring systems include both human-operated (manual) and automated systems, both of which we review throughout the report. The process begins with the selection of news sources, proceeds to the development of a coding manual (for manual searches) or “dictionary” (for automated searches), continues with gathering data, and concludes with the coding of news stories. EMM enables the near real-time tracking of events reported by the media, allowing researchers to get a sense of the scope of and trends in an event, but there are limits to what EMM can accomplish on its own. The media will only cover a portion of a given event, so information will always be missing from EMM data. EMM also introduces research biases of various kinds; mitigating these biases requires careful selection of media sources and clearly defined coding manuals or dictionaries. In manual EMM, coding the gathered data requires human researchers to apply codebook rules in order to collect consistent data from each story they read. In automated EMM, computers apply the dictionary directly to the news stories, automatically picking up the desired information. There are trade-offs in each system. Automated EMM can code stories far more quickly, but the software may incorrectly code stories, requiring manual corrections. Conversely, manual EMM allows for a more nuanced analysis, but the investment of time and effort may diminish the tool’s utility. We believe that both manual and automated EMM, when deployed correctly, can effectively support human rights research and advocacy

A Machine Learning Approach on Providing Recommendations for the Vacant Lot Problem

Modeling municipal or urban decisions is challenging due to the abundance of variables that guide end results. One such challenging issue is the existence of vacant lots in a city, which causes poorer standard of living for the community. As a result, reclaiming these properties and putting them into productive use is a primary concern. However, each time community leaders had to ``reinvent the wheel\u27\u27 and make decisions from scratch. To this end, we propose the creation of a vacant lot model and utilizing it to provide recommendations for vacant lot conversions, providing a starting point for such decision making. We define a vacant lot model in terms of determinants to a vacant lot\u27s impact, and evaluate the proposed method on real-world vacant lot datasets from the cities of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Baltimore, Maryland. Our results indicate that our prediction model performs accurately on cities with a centralized approach to vacant lot conversion

Statistical PT-symmetric lasing in an optical fiber network

PT-symmetry in optics is a condition whereby the real and imaginary parts of the refractive index across a photonic structure are deliberately balanced. This balance can lead to a host of novel optical phenomena, such as unidirectional invisibility, loss-induced lasing, single-mode lasing from multimode resonators, and non-reciprocal effects in conjunction with nonlinearities. Because PT-symmetry has been thought of as fragile, experimental realizations to date have been usually restricted to on-chip micro-devices. Here, we demonstrate that certain features of PT-symmetry are sufficiently robust to survive the statistical fluctuations associated with a macroscopic optical cavity. We construct optical-fiber-based coupled-cavities in excess of a kilometer in length (the free spectral range is less than 0.8 fm) with balanced gain and loss in two sub-cavities and examine the lasing dynamics. In such a macroscopic system, fluctuations can lead to a cavity-detuning exceeding the free spectral range. Nevertheless, by varying the gain-loss contrast, we observe that both the lasing threshold and the growth of the laser power follow the predicted behavior of a stable PT-symmetric structure. Furthermore, a statistical symmetry-breaking point is observed upon varying the cavity loss. These findings indicate that PT-symmetry is a more robust optical phenomenon than previously expected, and points to potential applications in optical fiber networks and fiber lasers.Comment: Submitted to Nature Communications, Pages 1-19: Main manuscript; Pages 20-38: Supplementary material