A Judge Judges Judges

If judges are to be judged, they would doubtless prefer to be judged by judges, whose critical judgments on their brothers are certainly tempered by sympathy and founded in experience. My viewpoint must be that of one on the inside looking out. Time does not permit my approach to be historical; I shall try not to make it hysterical. Since many within sound of my voice (which includes rather a wide area) are not versed in the lore and language of the law, I shall not be technical, and, as I believe in safe and sane celebrations, I shall use my utmost endeavor not to be pyrotechnical

Miniature mobile sensor platforms for condition monitoring of structures

In this paper, a wireless, multisensor inspection system for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of materials is described. The sensor configuration enables two inspection modes-magnetic (flux leakage and eddy current) and noncontact ultrasound. Each is designed to function in a complementary manner, maximizing the potential for detection of both surface and internal defects. Particular emphasis is placed on the generic architecture of a novel, intelligent sensor platform, and its positioning on the structure under test. The sensor units are capable of wireless communication with a remote host computer, which controls manipulation and data interpretation. Results are presented in the form of automatic scans with different NDE sensors in a series of experiments on thin plate structures. To highlight the advantage of utilizing multiple inspection modalities, data fusion approaches are employed to combine data collected by complementary sensor systems. Fusion of data is shown to demonstrate the potential for improved inspection reliability

Meilleurs services de santé communautaires dans les cités de Chine

Version anglaise disponible dans la Bibliothèque numérique du CRDI: Strengthening community - based health care in urban Chin

Strengthening community - based health care in urban China

French version available in IDRC Digital Library: Meilleurs services de santé communautaires dans les cités de Chin

Community Resilience Management : Reflections and Strategies from Corporate Sustainability

Creating community resilience is a daunting task, both in scope and application, therefore it is useful to examine related efforts to inform our strategy. Sustainability, specifically corporate sustainability, has developed through similar challenges and provides insight into the possible trajectory of community resilience management. We find that both concepts reflect similar origins, developmental paths and merging goals at a scale that can be systematically managed. Therefore, we describe four strategies from corporate sustainability management that can be applied to community resilience 1) consider the community context while implementing an increasingly broad view of responsibility; 2) integrate and engage across constructs; 3) employ strategic approaches including performance measurement and assessment of progress; 4) communicate with and engage stakeholders; In doing this, we can leverage our efforts, experience, and successes to transform scorecards into strategies, programs into processes, results into sustained performance and engagement into capable, robust and resilient communities

Data-driven analysis of ultrasonic pressure tube inspection data

Pressure tubes are critical components of the CANDU reactors and other pressurized heavy water type reactors, as they contain the nuclear fuel and the coolant. Manufacturing flaws, as well as defects developed during the in-service operation, can lead to coolant leakage and can potentially damage the reactor. The current inspection process of these flaws is based on manually analyzing ultrasonic data received from multiple probes during planned, statutory outages. Recent advances on ultrasonic inspection tools enable the provision of high resolution data of significantly large volumes. This is highlighting the need for an efficient autonomous signal analysis process. Typically, the automation of ultrasonic inspection data analysis is approached by knowledge-based or supervised data-driven methods. This work proposes an unsupervised data-driven framework that requires no explicit rules, nor individually labeled signals. The framework follows a two-stage clustering procedure that utilizes the DBSCAN density-based clustering algorithm and aims to provide decision support for the assessment of potential defects in a robust and consistent way. Nevertheless, verified defect dimensions are essential in order to assess the results and train the framework for unseen defects. Initial results of the implementation are presented and discussed, with the method showing promise as a means of assessing ultrasonic inspection data

Miniaturised SH EMATs for fast robotic screening of wall thinning in steel plates

Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) are well suited to generating and detecting a variety of different ultrasonic wavemodes, without the need for couplant, and they can be operated through some coatings. EMATs can be used to generate shear horizontal (SH) waves, which show promise for fast screening of wall thinning and other defects. However, commercial SH-wave EMATs are not suitable for robotic implementation on ferritic steel due to the large magnetic drag force from the magnets. This article describes the design and characterisation of miniaturised SH guided wave EMATs, which significantly reduce the magnetic drag and enable mounting onto a small crawler robot for sample scanning. The performance of the miniaturised EMATs is characterised and compared to a commercial EMAT. It is shown that signal to noise ratio is reduced, but remains within an acceptable range to use on steel. The bandwidth and directivity are increased, depending on the exact design used. Their ability to detect flat bottomed holes mimicking wall thinning is also tested