A Customer Value Assessment Process (CVAP) for Ballistic Missile Defense

A systematic customer value assessment process (CVAP) was developed to give system engineering teams the capability to qualitatively and quantitatively assess customer values. It also provides processes and techniques used to create and identify alternatives, evaluate alternatives in terms of effectiveness, cost, and risk. The ultimate goal is to provide customers (or decision makers) with objective and traceable procurement recommendations. The creation of CVAP was driven by an industry need to provide ballistic missile defense (BMD) customers with a value proposition of contractors’ BMD systems. The information that outputs from CVAP can be used to guide BMD contractors in formulating a value proposition, which is used to steer customers to procure their BMD system(s) instead of competing system(s). The outputs from CVAP also illuminate areas where systems can be improved to stay relevant with customer values by identifying capability gaps. CVAP incorporates proven approaches and techniques appropriate for military applications. However, CVAP is adaptable and may be applied to business, engineering, and even personal every-day decision problems and opportunities. CVAP is based on the systems decision process (SDP) developed by Gregory S. Parnell and other systems engineering faculty at the Unites States Military Academy (USMA). SDP combines Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) decision analysis philosophy with Multi-Objective Decision Analysis (MODA) quantitative analysis of alternatives. CVAP improves SDP’s qualitative value model by implementing Quality Function Deployment (QFD), solution design implements creative problem solving techniques, and the qualitative value model by adding cost analysis and risk assessment processes practiced by the U.S DoD and industry. CVAP and SDP fundamentally differ from other decision making approaches, like the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), by distinctly separating the value/utility function assessment process with the ranking of alternatives. This explicit value assessment allows for straightforward traceability of the specific factors that influence decisions, which illuminates the tradeoffs involved in making decisions with multiple objectives. CVAP is intended to be a decision support tool with the ultimate purpose of helping decision makers attain the best solution and understanding the differences between the alternatives. CVAP does not include any processes for implementation of the alternative that the customer selects. CVAP is applied to ballistic missile defense (BMD) to give contractors ideas on how to use it. An introduction of BMD, unique BMD challenges, and how CVAP can improve the BMD decision making process is presented. Each phase of CVAP is applied to the BMD decision environment. CVAP is applied to a fictitious BMD example

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Coping Methods for Social Work Students

The purpose of the following study was to explore and examine the prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and coping methods among social work students at a Southern California university. The literature on ACE scores suggests that higher levels of ACE can impact well-being and functioning in adults, yet, provides limited information relating to social work. A quantitative survey instrument constructed by Felitti and colleagues (1998) and two additional questions relating to coping methods and strategies were constructed by the researchers were used to gather data for the purpose of this study. Data for the following study was collected through a self-administered, online questionnaire distributed by a Southern California university school of social work administration via Qualtrics online survey software. The data was analyzed with SPSS software, using descriptive statistics, frequencies, and independent sample t-tests. The study’s results suggest that social work students, in general, have higher ACE scores than are found in the general population. The majority of respondents reported having more than 2 instances of ACE. Yet, less than half of respondents reported using effective, healthy coping methods to cope with experiences of childhood hood trauma. These findings suggest that schools of social work, and the agencies that employee their graduates, should consider providing enhances, supports, and training for social work students and professionals coping with ACE events

Affirmative Action: Oppressive In Nature?

Pozitivne mjere, suprotno vjerovanju mnogih, pogađaju baš one za koje se pretpostavlja da bi im trebale pomoći: članove manjinskih skupina.Affirmative action, contrary to the views of many, hurts the very people it was presumably enacted to help: members of minority groups

Cal Poly India Project

This report documents the research, ideation, and development of a solution, implemented by the Cal Poly India Sanitation Team per the request of Mr. Harish Bhutani, to solve the problem of hazardous human waste management in poor villages in India. The sponsor envisioned a universal design that would give each household in those villages access to a private toilet system because the current solution is open defecation in water sources and farming fields. The initial constraints required the project be low cost, not use of electricity or water, have the ability to cater to an 8-10 person household, and be easily manufacturable and maintainable. Investigating this problem began with research into both the culture of India and the existing solutions. Our initial observations indicated some barriers that would add to the constraints of the design. The research showed that there were many ideas existing that have been either already established or in the early stages of laying the groundwork, but there was an interesting trend with the success rate and contingencies of these past projects. The past projects have not lasted very long due to poorly educating the users, lack of an infrastructure to handle continued maintenance, and lack of efficacy in the users to care for the systems. This last point had a lot to do with cultural taboos of touching human waste and being seen as a low class citizen. With all of this in mind, the brainstorming led to a design that is a hybrid of the past projects. The design implements a concrete-lined pit latrine with a hand pump used every six months to empty the pit and move the waste to an offsite facility. The user will have access to a personal shelter, made of compressed earth blocks, to safely defecate. A key feature includes a water bottle light to magnify the existing light in the shelter. This idea considers the user interaction with the waste, which will be no contact at all. The hope is that this design will also create job opportunities for people when the removal is needed. This would form a tight infrastructure that is integral to the success of this design because the people will be able to make this structure a part of their daily lives without this waste disposal system seeming like a burden. After this design was finalized, construction for the prototype began. The necessary part were ordered and the parts were manufactured to size and assembled. Design considerations that changed during this process included changing the internal metals to steel because of availability and militating on the tooling needed. The prototype was then tested for cyclical performance, as well as strength testing and materials testing. Some final conclusions drawn from the this project are that this a simple manufacturing process and easily maintainable, but in order to have this implemented in a region there needs to be a waste education done as well as continued supervisor and teaching of the users on how to properly care for this system

Counting Carbon: A Survey of Factors Influencing the Emissions of Machine Learning

Machine learning (ML) requires using energy to carry out computations during the model training process. The generation of this energy comes with an environmental cost in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, depending on quantity used and the energy source. Existing research on the environmental impacts of ML has been limited to analyses covering a small number of models and does not adequately represent the diversity of ML models and tasks. In the current study, we present a survey of the carbon emissions of 95 ML models across time and different tasks in natural language processing and computer vision. We analyze them in terms of the energy sources used, the amount of CO2 emissions produced, how these emissions evolve across time and how they relate to model performance. We conclude with a discussion regarding the carbon footprint of our field and propose the creation of a centralized repository for reporting and tracking these emissions

Niveles de cal en el tratamiento terciario de aguas residuales domésticas para uso agrícola Subtanjalla Ica 2021

El presente trabajo tuvo como objetivo evaluar los niveles de cal en el tratamiento terciario de aguas residuales domésticas para uso agrícola Subtanjalla Ica 2021, es aplicativo, experimental, para el cual se tuvo 20 litros de agua residual de muestra, los tratamientos fueron las dosis de (0.65, 0.85 y 1.10 gr/L) de óxido de calcio (cal viva) y cada uno con 3 repeticiones y se planteó bajo un diseño completamente al azar. Los resultados fueron significativos (p > 0.05) para todos los tratamientos orgánicos y microbiológicos y de acuerdo a la prueba tukey el mejor tratamiento 3 con (1.10 gr/L) cuyos valores fueron: pH 9.07, DQO, 149 mg/L, DBO 73 mg/L, coliformes termo tolerantes 220 NMP/100ml, sin embargo, para los parámetros inorgánicos fueron no significativos (P < 0.05) y fueron cantidades mínimas que estuvieron por debajo de los estándares de calidad ambiental (<0.001, <0.002, <0.002). Se concluye que el óxido de calcio es un buen floculador además de ser económico y en cantidades controladas no daña al medio ambiente

Anticuerpos anti-beta2-glicoproteina I:Prevalencia en pacientes portadores de insuficiencia real cronica en hemodialisis

50 p.Los Anticuerpos Anti-Fosfolípido-Proteína (aFL-P) se encuentran en el Síndrome Antifosfolípido Primario (SAF), enfermedades autoinmunes y otras afecciones. Se han asociado con trombosis arterial o venosa, trombocitopenia y pérdidas fetales recurrentes. Estos anticuerpos se unen a proteínas con afinidad por fosfolípidos aniónicos como la Beta 2- glicoproteína I (132GPI) y otras. Los anticuerpos anti-Beta2GPI (anti-132GPI) han sido asociados especialmente a trombosis. Esta Tesis tiene como propósito: (a) Purificar 132GPI a partir de plasma humano para ser utilizada como anfígeno en un enzimainmunoensayo destinado a pesquisar anti-132GPI, (b) determinar la prevalencia de dichos anticuerpos en pacientes portadores de Insuficiencia Renal Crónica (IRCr) y (c) estudiar su eventual asociación con trombosis de la fístula arterio-venosa (FAV). La prevalencia de anti-132GPI en los pacientes portadores de IRCr en hemodiálisis fue 3.9%. Los isotipos encontrados fueron IgG (66.7%) e IgM (22.2%). No se encontró correlación entre la presencia de estos anticuerpos y trombosis de la FAV