9,102 research outputs found
Resilience markers for safer systems and organisations
If computer systems are to be designed to foster resilient
performance it is important to be able to identify contributors to resilience. The
emerging practice of Resilience Engineering has identified that people are still a
primary source of resilience, and that the design of distributed systems should
provide ways of helping people and organisations to cope with complexity.
Although resilience has been identified as a desired property, researchers and
practitioners do not have a clear understanding of what manifestations of
resilience look like. This paper discusses some examples of strategies that
people can adopt that improve the resilience of a system. Critically, analysis
reveals that the generation of these strategies is only possible if the system
facilitates them. As an example, this paper discusses practices, such as
reflection, that are known to encourage resilient behavior in people. Reflection
allows systems to better prepare for oncoming demands. We show that
contributors to the practice of reflection manifest themselves at different levels
of abstraction: from individual strategies to practices in, for example, control
room environments. The analysis of interaction at these levels enables resilient
properties of a system to be âseenâ, so that systems can be designed to explicitly
support them. We then present an analysis of resilience at an organisational
level within the nuclear domain. This highlights some of the challenges facing
the Resilience Engineering approach and the need for using a collective
language to articulate knowledge of resilient practices across domains
Exploring the importance of reflection in the control room
While currently difficult to measure or explicitly design for, evidence suggests that providing people
with opportunities to reflect on experience must be recognized and valued during safety-critical
work. We provide an insight into reflection as a mechanism that can help to maintain both individual
and team goals. In the control room, reflection can be task-based, critical for the 'smooth' day-to-day
operational performance of a socio-technical system, or can foster learning and organisational change
by enabling new understandings gained from experience. In this position paper we argue that
technology should be designed to support the reflective capacity of people. There are many
interaction designs and artefacts that aim to support problem-solving, but very few that support
self-reflection and group reflection. Traditional paradigms for safety-critical systems have focussed
on ensuring the functional correctness of designs, minimising the time to complete tasks, etc. Work
in the area of user experience design may be of increasing relevance when generating artefacts that
aim to encourage reflection
Field Work Reflections: Journeys in Knowing and Not-Knowing
In this paper, I retrace my interest in narrative forms of inquiry. I begin by revisiting a series of research projects that I conducted early in my career, describing some of my own dissatisfactions with the methods I used at the time. I move on to a detailed reexamination of my first piece of narrative research, completed during my PhD. In that project I used a narrative pointed psychosocial method in an attempt to develop new knowledge in the field of drugs, âraceâ and ethnicity. In the final section, I consider what I have learned from this approach in terms of knowing and not-knowing and how I have used this experience to explore different approaches to narrative inquiry. I finish by drawing out some lessons I have learned from these different studies, which I hope might be of relevance to other social work researchers
Effects of inhalation of Freon 113 on laboratory animals
Four monkeys, 8 dogs, 40 mice, and 50 rats were exposed continuously to 2000 ppm Freon 113 in a Thomas Dome for 14 days. This exposure produced no mortalities nor adverse symptomology. There were no significant alterations in hematological values, clinical chemistries, electroencephalographic findings, body weights, or organ to body weight ratios. The effect of 2% Freon 113 on nicotinic transmission through the stellate ganglion of the spinal dog was also evaluated. The exposure induced a reduction in nicotinic transmission comparable to 2% halothane
Fission Hindrance in hot 216Th: Evaporation Residue Measurements
The fusion evaporation-residue cross section for 32S+184W has been measured
at beam energies of E_beam = 165, 174, 185, 196, 205, 215, 225, 236, 246,and
257 MeV using the ATLAS Fragment Mass Analyzer. The data are compared with
Statistical Model calculations and it is found that a nuclear dissipation
strength, which increases with excitation energy, is required to reproduce the
excitation function. A comparison with previously published data show that the
dissipation strength depends strongly on the shell structure of the nuclear
system.Comment: 15 pages 9 figure
Studies of multiplicity in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
In this talk I'll review the present status of charged particle multiplicity
measurements from heavy-ion collisions. The characteristic features of
multiplicity distributions obtained in Au+Au collisions will be discussed in
terms of collision centrality and energy and compared to those of p+p
collisions. Multiplicity measurements of d+Au collisions at 200 GeV
nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy will also be discussed. The results will
be compared to various theoretical models and simple scaling properties of the
data will be identified.Comment: "Focus on Multiplicity" Internationsl Workshop on Particle
Multiplicity in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions, Bari, Italy, June 17-19,
2003, 16 pages, 15 figure
Implementation of a local principal curves algorithm for neutrino interaction reconstruction in a liquid argon volume
A local principal curve algorithm has been implemented in three dimensions
for automated track and shower reconstruction of neutrino interactions in a
liquid argon time projection chamber. We present details of the algorithm and
characterise its performance on simulated data sets.Comment: 14 pages, 17 figures; typing correction to Eq 5, the definition of
the local covariance matri
Caudal cervical vertebral morphological variation is not associated with clinical signs in Warmblood horses
Background Variation in equine caudal cervical spine morphology at C6 and C7 has high prevalence in Warmblood horses and is suspected to be associated with pain in a large mixed-breed group of horses. At present no data exist on the relationship between radiographic phenotype and clinical presentation in Warmblood horses in a case-control study. Objectives To establish the frequency of radiographically visible morphologic variation in a large group of Warmblood horses with clinical signs and compare this with a group without clinical signs. We hypothesised that occurrence of morphologic variation in the case group would not differ from the control group, indicating there is no association between clinical signs and morphologic variation. Study design Retrospective case-control. Methods Radiographic presence or absence of morphologic variation of cervical vertebrae C6 and C7 was recorded in case (n = 245) and control horses (n = 132). Case and control groups were compared by univariable Pearson's Chi-square and multivariable logistic regression for measurement variables age, sex, breed, degenerative joint disease and morphologic variation at C6 and C7. Odds ratio and confidence intervals were obtained. A P <= 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Morphologic variation at C6 and C7 (n = 108/377 = 28.6%; Cases 58/245 = 23.7%; Control 50/132 = 38%) was less frequent in horses with clinical signs in univariable testing (OR 0.48, 95% CI 0.3-0.8, P = 0.001). Age, sex, breed and degenerative joint disease were not retained in the final multivariable logistic regression step whereas morphologic variation remained significantly less present in horses with clinical signs. Main limitations Possible demographic differences between equine clinics. Conclusions Morphologic variation in the caudal cervical spine was detected more frequently in horses without clinical signs. Therefore, radiographic presence of such variation does not necessarily implicate the presence of clinical signs
Coupled-Channels Approach for Dissipative Quantum Dynamics in Near-Barrier Collisions
A novel quantum dynamical model based on the dissipative quantum dynamics of
open quantum systems is presented. It allows the treatment of both
deep-inelastic processes and quantum tunneling (fusion) within a fully quantum
mechanical coupled-channels approach. Model calculations show the transition
from pure state (coherent) to mixed state (decoherent and dissipative) dynamics
during a near-barrier nuclear collision. Energy dissipation, due to
irreversible decay of giant-dipole excitations of the interacting nuclei,
results in hindrance of quantum tunneling.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Invited talk by A. Diaz-Torres at the FUSION08
Conference, Chicago, September 22-26, 2008, To appear in AIP Conference
Proceeding
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