The adoption and use of Through-life Engineering Services within UK Manufacturing Organisations

Manufacturing organisations seek ever more innovative approaches in order to maintain and improve their competitive position within the global market. One such initiative that is gaining significance is ‘through-life engineering services’. These seek to adopt ‘whole life’ service support through the greater understanding of component and system performance driven by knowledge gained from maintenance, repair and overhaul activities. This research presents the findings of exploratory research based on a survey of UK manufacturers who provide through-life engineering services. The survey findings illustrate significant issues to be addressed within the field before the concept becomes widely accepted. These include a more proactive approach to maintenance activities based on real-time responses; standardisation of data content, structure, collection, storage and retrieval protocols in support of maintenance; the development of clear definitions, ontologies and a taxonomy of through-life engineering services in support of the service delivery system; lack of understanding of component and system performance due to the presence of ‘No Fault Found’ events that skew maintenance metrics and the increased use of radio-frequency identification technology in support of maintenance data acquisition

Diagnostic Laboratories - Are These Radiation Safe?

The demand for Diagnostic Centers in India is propelled by changes in culture, increase in population, rise in infectious disease, increase in healthcare expenditure and rising adoption of preventive health check-ups. The Private diagnostic market in India has limited number of organized players and the overall market is driven by unorganized laboratories. The Diagnostic Imaging equipments such as X-ray, CT (Computed Tomography) Scanner and BMD (Bone Mineral Densitometer) need to be handled with utmost care as they have human made ionizing radiation exposure risks. India is one of the largest consumers of refurbished diagnostic imaging equipments and the beneficiaries include Diagnostic Centers, Corporate Hospitals and Chain of Diagnostic Laboratories. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Body (AERB) in India regulates the usage of diagnostic imaging equipments by evolving policies and procedures to be strictly followed by Diagnostic Centers for containing excessive radiation. The changes in procurement policy made by AERB in September 2015 have restricted importing of used diagnostic imaging equipments up to a maximum of 7 years. This regulatory change has triggered a research question, Diagnostic Laboratories - Are these Radiation Safe? This research was conducted with the objective of assessing whether diagnostic centers follow the best practices mandated by AERB. The researcher has conducted a very structured assessment on AERB compliance using 7 different parameters namely, Regulatory, Layout Engineering, Technician Competency, Human Safety, Operations Knowhow, Radiation Exposure Monitoring and Top Management Commitment. This study was conducted in 192 diagnostic centers across multiple cities in Tamil Nadu, with a structured questionnaire contained 34 questions. Based on the responses received on the actual practices followed by diagnostic centers to contain Radiation risk, Radiological Compliance Index (RCI) was estimated. The analysis has revealed that Top Management Commitment was very low with a RCI score of 2.02 (Moderate Presence of AERB recommended best practices) and Operations “Know-Know” was high with a score of 4.40 (High Presence of AERB recommended best practices). The comparative analysis of RCI between National Accreditation Board for testing and Laboratories (NABL) accredited (RCI Score 3.19) and Non NABL (RCI Score 3.18) diagnostic centers has indicated that the accreditation did not significantly influence the compliance. The Pearson correlation co-efficient has established moderately positive correlation with Revenue (+ 0.321) & Patient Queue size (+0.293) on RCI. This study has concluded with sufficient evidence and analysis that Private Diagnostic Centers need to focus on appointing Radiation Safety Officer, monitoring radiation exposure dosage, periodical equipment service, continuous training of their staff and periodical QA tests for equipment fitness in order to achieve significant regulatory compliance maturity levels. This research has further recommended similar research in private diagnostic laboratories in other states in India and comparative analysis of compliance to AERB guide lines between Government Hospitals and Private Diagnostic Centers

Study of Uniaxial Tensile Properties of Hexagonal Boron Nitride Nanoribbons

Uniaxial tensile properties of hexagonal boron nitride nanoribbons and dependence of these properties on temperature, strain rate, and the inclusion of vacancy defects have been explored with molecular dynamics simulations using Tersoff potential. The ultimate tensile strength of pristine hexagonal boron nitride nanoribbon of 26 nm x 5 nm with armchair chirality is found to be 100.5 GPa. The ultimate tensile strength and strain have been found decreasing with increasing the temperature while an opposite trend has been observed for increasing the strain rate. Furthermore, the vacancy defects reduce ultimate tensile strength and strain where the effect of bi-vacancy is clearly dominating over point vacancy

A Cloud Based Android System for Reporting Crimes Against Child Sexual Abuse

A cloud based android system for reporting crimes against child sexual abuse is a real time cloud-based system to be used by people to report crimes concerning sexual abuse of children to relevant organizations. Usually, when crimes of this kind happen, the victims or witnesses go to the police, or call related organizations to report crimes. The crimes are then processed through a paper-based system where the cases are recorded and them handled accordingly. This approach is usually slow and in sometimes reads to dissatisfactions to the victims and relatives. With the wide spread of android phones, android system to report the crimes would make the crime management easier and faster as the crimes will be reported in real time using an android phone. Management of the cases will also be fast as the crimes will be directly reported to a cloud database which will make crime tracing and management faster. A global positioning system which is already implemented in all android phones will be used to track the location of the person reporting the crime. Firebase real time database will be used to store the data reported. All the users of the system will be authenticated to make sure they are not eligible to use the application and for privacy of user information. Thus, a cloud based android system will be beneficial to both the public and the acting organizations and there by improve measures to reduce sex crimes against children

Are Student Self-Assessments a Valid Proxy for Direct Assessments in Efforts to Improve Information Systems Courses and Programs? An Empirical Study

Accrediting agencies in the United States require business schools to conduct ongoing assessment directed at continuous improvement of their instruction. Because direct assessment efforts are usually more time consuming and resource-intensive than indirect assessment, it would be helpful if indirect assessment could be used as an effective alternative, at least on occasion. The validity of one indirect method, student self-assessment, has been debated in the research literature. This study compares results of direct measures and student self-assessments for learning outcomes in an Information Systems course. We find student self-assessments are valid proxies for direct assessment when used with some types of learning outcomes but not others. We discuss possible reasons for the difference and the implications for assessment in Information System programs

Degradation study of heat exchangers

Abstract This study mainly deals with the evaluation of various degradation mechanisms that heat exchangers are susceptible to with an aim of evaluating future design requirements. A heat exchanger is a heat management system that uses fluids to transfer heat from one medium to the other; the most common types of fluids being air, water, oil or specialised coolant mixtures. As part of this study a failure analysis of heat exchangers was carried out on selected heat exchangers used in both aerospace and automotive sectors. This study was then extended to designing test-rigs supporting two types of heat exchangers. For this study, an air-to-air and an oil-to-air heat exchanger test rigs were designed. Temperature, pressure and flow sensors were introduced in the test rig designs to monitor the flow characteristics in order to determine if degradations occurring as a result of operation have an impact on them. As part of the initial evaluation both visual inspection and pulsed thermography inspection were selected as suitable inspection methods to evaluate their in-service condition. Some heat exchanger units where then subjected to accelerated corrosion tests and their performance was monitored using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) measurements. The outcomes of the study presented in this paper confirm the suitability and adaptability of thermography in detecting degradations occurring in heat exchangers

Implementing Direct and Indirect Assessment in the MIS Curriculum

Assessment and continuous improvement have become focus areas for accrediting agencies. The process used to develop assessment plans within a sequence of MIS courses at a major midwestern university is described. The process includes establishing student outcomes, developing assignments that tap into these outcomes, and utilizing both direct and indirect assessment measures. Actionable insights that can be gleaned to improve pedagogy from the use of both direct and indirect measures are described

Are Student Self-Assessments a Valid Proxy for Direct Assessments in Information Systems Programs?

In this report, we describe assessment efforts in the MIS curriculum at a major Midwestern U.S. university. We discuss both direct and indirect assessment measures that may either be used as complements or on a stand-alone basis. Because direct assessment efforts are usually more time consuming and work-intensive, it would be helpful for ongoing program assessment if indirect assessment could be used as an effective alternative, at least on occasion. The validity of student self-assessments has been debated in the assessment literature. This study compares results for common learning outcomes assessed with direct measures and student self –assessments. We find that for certain types of learning outcomes student self-assessments are valid proxies for direct assessment

How Does Online Education Compare to On-Campus with Respect to Skills Attainment Required for Employment in The Sphere of Business and Management of The Private and Public Sectors?

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to emphasize the requirement of online education as compared with on-campus education for employability skills attainment in the sphere of business and management of the private and public sectors. The increase in virtual education has provided the opportunity and impetus for the Guyanese government to invest in online education (Guyana Online Academy of Learning-GOAL) for the development of employability skills. Method: The use of secondary qualitative data from different articles and websites relevant to Guyana has been considered in this study in our data collection method. The data was analyzed using the content analysis technique. Findings: The study findings suggested that the increasing technological trend globally has provided significant attention to online learning. Many programs have been introduced, specifically to aim at increasing the technical skills of individuals. However, soft skills are of greater significance in today’s world. The focus on virtual learning environment resultantly has also increased with respect to soft skills in Guyana. Therefore, the analysis concluded that online education is also required along with on-campus education to increase the soft skills of the youths to make them more employable in the sphere of business and management of the private and public sectors. Recommendations: It is recommended that the Guyanese government increase its focus on soft skills development through both online and on-campus contexts. The universities are also advised to focus on soft skills education more through these settings