Engine Data Interpretation System (EDIS), phase 2

A prototype of an expert system was developed which applies qualitative constraint-based reasoning to the task of post-test analysis of data resulting from a rocket engine firing. Data anomalies are detected and corresponding faults are diagnosed. Engine behavior is reconstructed using measured data and knowledge about engine behavior. Knowledge about common faults guides but does not restrict the search for the best explanation in terms of hypothesized faults. The system contains domain knowledge about the behavior of common rocket engine components and was configured for use with the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). A graphical user interface allows an expert user to intimately interact with the system during diagnosis. The system was applied to data taken during actual SSME tests where data anomalies were observed

Predicting Beef Palatability

The search for factors influencing the palatability of beef continues. The relative importance of variables in the USDA quality grading system that currently predicts acceptability and palatability has been questioned. The effect of marbling on palatability is one of the more controversial aspects. Marbling is one of the prime factors in determining the quality grade of a beef carcass and researchers have shown that other variables may play an equal or more important role influencing the eating quality of beef. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of commonly-used predictors of palatability and to consider the possible influence of other carcass measures as predictors of palatability. Palatability, as defined in this study, was measured by the subjective taste panel scores for flavor, juiciness and tenderness. Tenderness mas measured objectively with the Warner-Bratzler shear instrument

Education, Resilience, and Scenarios: Creating Capacity for Community- Based Observations through Youth Engagement

Education and learning possess powerful potential in affecting future resilience and community-based monitoring. This research focuses on examining the connections and feedbacks between social-environmental systems (SESs), resilience, and compulsory education. We suggest scenarios development as a way to link local-scale interest in change to education and monitoring of key variables for resilience. SESs have been problematized as frequently having a poor fit between environmental change and policy solutions. This has led to discussion and debate over the role of schools in addressing local knowledge, environmental changes, and community priorities. In Alaska and other Arctic countries, the role of public schools in improving this fit has been largely overlooked. This research explains that as extensions of governments, public schools offer an opportunity to create better linkages between societies and environments through governance. Secondarily, at the individual level, education is a vital component of resilience, but such education must embrace multiple perspectives in its curriculum in order to honor and access the diversity offered by local, traditional ecological knowledge and Western methods. Scenarios are inherently transdisciplinary processes that integrate different knowledge perspectives as participants consider what matters the most and what is most uncertain in the long-range future. We report research results from two linked scenarios projects. The Northern Alaska Scenarios Project (NASP) drew resident expert participants from the North Slope and Northwest Arctic Boroughs and the Arctic Future Makers project (AFM) that completed a scenarios exercise with high school students from across the Northwest Arctic Borough

What makes good management?

Wherever cost finding has failed to produce expected results, the failure has been that of management, not that of information. Costs are a basic part of the information requisite for the safe and intelligent conduct of business, but it is evident that cost information is of little value unless it is used by management as a guide to action. Hence comes the emphasis on management in the present work of the Committee. Management is the big question of the day in business. The Association is seeking earnestly and persistently to focus the attention of its members on management and to help develop them as managers. If it succeeds in even a small way, its expenditure of energy, time and money will be justified by result

Management and commodity profit and loss figures

In a casket business commodity profit and loss figures will show profits or losses netted by varnished caskets, cloth-covered caskets, metal caskets, rough boxes, varnished boxes, drygoods, robes and linings, vaults, hardware, fluids, and sundries, or by any other commodity departmental division that the manager may desire. With such figures and the apportionment of investment by commodity departments, the manager will have two important pieces of knowledge, namely: His earnings according to investment by commodity departments. The rate of turnover by commodity departments

Management and budgeting

In the years of comparative stability before the World War, simple cost accounting was a sufficiently effective tool to meet all requirements. Knowing his costs, a manager could plan with certainty, for business was on a cost plus, or, in some cases, a cost minus basis. But then followed a succession of rapid changes divided into three periods, the pre-war period, the war period and the post-war period. It quickly became evident to thinking managers that no accounting system confining itself to already established facts would satisfy the needs of these three periods and of the years ahead. That is how it has come about that budgeting and planning have pushed to the fore in the last few years as subjects of consequence to managers. Budgeting and planning have become a particularly conspicuous need since the beginning of the deflationary movement early in 1920. As long as the market was advancing and the demand for commodities was insatiable, the manager could be sure of success if his planning were only conservative enough. He did not have to be accurate. All he had to be sure of was that his errors would be in his own favor. Granting that they were in his own favor, he could make a multitude of mistakes and come out with a profit. In fact, there was a time when the more mistakes he made in his own favor the greater his profit. This was the era of easy money when price and quality were lost sight of in the shadow of the overwhelming demand for deliver

Screen Use and Mental Health Symptoms in Canadian Children and Youth during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Importance: Longitudinal research on specific forms of electronic screen use and mental health symptoms in children and youth during COVID-19 is minimal. Understanding the association may help develop policies and interventions targeting specific screen activities to promote healthful screen use and mental health in children and youth. Objective: To determine whether specific forms of screen use (television [TV] or digital media, video games, electronic learning, and video-chatting time) were associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, conduct problems, irritability, hyperactivity, and inattention in children and youth during COVID-19. Design, Setting, and Participants: A longitudinal cohort study with repeated measures of exposures and outcomes was conducted in children and youth aged 2 to 18 years in Ontario, Canada, between May 2020 and April 2021 across 4 cohorts of children or youth: 2 community cohorts and 2 clinically referred cohorts. Parents were asked to complete repeated questionnaires about their children\u27s health behaviors and mental health symptoms during COVID-19. Main Outcomes and Measures: The exposure variables were children\u27s daily TV or digital media time, video game time, electronic-learning time, and video-chatting time. The mental health outcomes were parent-reported symptoms of child depression, anxiety, conduct problems and irritability, and hyperactivity/inattention using validated standardized tools. Results: This study included 2026 children with 6648 observations. In younger children (mean [SD] age, 5.9 [2.5] years; 275 male participants [51.7%]), higher TV or digital media time was associated with higher levels of conduct problems (age 2-4 years: β, 0.22 [95% CI, 0.10-0.35]; P \u3c.001; age ≥4 years: β, 0.07 [95% CI, 0.02-0.11]; P =.007) and hyperactivity/inattention (β, 0.07 [95% CI, 0.006-0.14]; P =.04). In older children and youth (mean [SD] age, 11.3 [3.3] years; 844 male participants [56.5%]), higher levels of TV or digital media time were associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, and inattention; higher levels of video game time were associated with higher levels of depression, irritability, inattention, and hyperactivity. Higher levels of electronic learning time were associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety. Conclusions and Relevance: In this cohort study, higher levels of screen use were associated poor mental health of children and youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings suggest that policy intervention as well as evidence-informed social supports are needed to promote healthful screen use and mental health in children and youth during the pandemic and beyond

Manifesto for a European research network into Problematic Usage of the Internet

Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The Internet is now all-pervasive across much of the globe. While it has positive uses (e.g. prompt access to information, rapid news dissemination), many individuals develop Problematic Use of the Internet (PUI), an umbrella term incorporating a range of repetitive impairing behaviours. The Internet can act as a conduit for, and may contribute to, functionally impairing behaviours including excessive and compulsive video gaming, compulsive sexual behaviour, buying, gambling, streaming or social networks use. There is growing public and National health authority concern about the health and societal costs of PUI across the lifespan. Gaming Disorder is being considered for inclusion as a mental disorder in diagnostic classification systems, and was listed in the ICD-11 version released for consideration by Member States (http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/revision/timeline/en/). More research is needed into disorder definitions, validation of clinical tools, prevalence, clinical parameters, brain-based biology, socio-health-economic impact, and empirically validated intervention and policy approaches. Potential cultural differences in the magnitudes and natures of types and patterns of PUI need to be better understood, to inform optimal health policy and service development. To this end, the EU under Horizon 2020 has launched a new four-year European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action Programme (CA 16207), bringing together scientists and clinicians from across the fields of impulsive, compulsive, and addictive disorders, to advance networked interdisciplinary research into PUI across Europe and beyond, ultimately seeking to inform regulatory policies and clinical practice. This paper describes nine critical and achievable research priorities identified by the Network, needed in order to advance understanding of PUI, with a view towards identifying vulnerable individuals for early intervention. The network shall enable collaborative research networks, shared multinational databases, multicentre studies and joint publications.Peer reviewe

Radiation Effects in Rare-Earth Permanent Magnets.

Nd-Fe-B and Sm-Co permanent magnets have been irradiated with fission neutrons and gamma rays. Irradiated samples were periodically removed for room temperature measurements of the open-circuit remanence. Hysteresis loops were measured before and after irradiation. For neutron irradiation, two magnets showed a rapid loss of remanence, while a third decayed more slowly. Irradiation in the Omega West Reactor at Los Alamos with fast neutrons caused the fast-decay samples to have an initial loss of remanence of 1% for irradiation at 350 K to a fluence of 10/sup 15/ n/cm/sup 2/. Both SmCo/sub 5/ and Sm/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ magnets showed excellent resistance to radiation-induced loss of remanence for neutron irradiation to a fluence of 2.6 x 10/sup 18/ n/cm/sup 2/. Results for gamma irradiation are presented and discussed in terms of possible mechanisms for radiation-induced loss of magnetic properties

Mostly worse, occasionally better: impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of Canadian children and adolescents

This large cross-sectional study examined the impact of COVID-19 emergency measures on child/adolescent mental health for children/adolescents with and without pre-existing psychiatric diagnoses. Using adapted measures from the CRISIS questionnaire, parents of children aged 6–18 (N = 1013; 56% male; 62% pre-existing psychiatric diagnosis) and self-reporting children/adolescents aged 10–18 (N = 385) indicated changes in mental health across six domains: depression, anxiety, irritability, attention, hyperactivity, and obsessions/compulsions. Changes in anxiety, irritability, and hyperactivity were calculated for children aged 2–5 years using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. COVID-19 exposure, compliance with emergency measures, COVID-19 economic concerns, and stress from social isolation were measured with the CRISIS questionnaire. Prevalence of change in mental health status was estimated for each domain; multinomial logistic regression was used to determine variables associated with mental health status change in each domain. Depending on the age group, 67–70% of children/adolescents experienced deterioration in at least one mental health domain; however, 19–31% of children/adolescents experienced improvement in at least one domain. Children/adolescents without and with psychiatric diagnoses tended to experience deterioration during the first wave of COVID-19. Rates of deterioration were higher in those with a pre-exiting diagnosis. The rate of deterioration was variable across different age groups and pre-existing psychiatric diagnostic groups: depression 37–56%, anxiety 31–50%, irritability 40–66%, attention 40–56%, hyperactivity 23–56%, obsessions/compulsions 13–30%. Greater stress from social isolation was associated with deterioration in all mental health domains (all ORs 11.12–55.24). The impact of pre-existing psychiatric diagnosis was heterogenous, associated with deterioration in depression, irritability, hyperactivity, obsession/compulsions for some children (ORs 1.96–2.23) but also with improvement in depression, anxiety, and irritability for other children (ORs 2.13–3.12). Economic concerns were associated with improvement in anxiety, attention, and obsessions/compulsions (ORs 3.97–5.57). Children/adolescents with and without pre-existing psychiatric diagnoses reported deterioration. Deterioration was associated with increased stress from social isolation. Enhancing social interactions for children/adolescents will be an important mitigation strategy for current and future COVID-19 waves