Apparatus for making curved reflectors Patent

Forming mold for polishing and machining curved solar magnesium reflector with reinforcing rib

Process sequence produces strong, lightweight reflectors of excellent quality

Large compound curved surfaces for collecting and concentrating radiation are fabricated by the use of several common machining and forming processes. Lightweight sectors are assembled into large reflectors. With this concept of fabrication, integrally stiffened reflective sectors up to 25 square feet in area have been produced

Method and apparatus for making curved reflectors Patent

Fabrication of curved reflector segments for solar mirro

Measuring and improving safety culture in the aviation industry

Europe has approximately 40 air navigation service providers employing over 50,000 staff and coordinating up to 30,000 flights a day. Two mid-air collisions, Milan Linate in 2001 and Überlingen in 2002, revealed serious problems in the safety culture of these service providers. Tom Reader developed a methodology for systematically measuring safety culture in air traffic management, which has contributed to stronger European air safety

Stakeholder safety communication: patient and family reports on safety risks in hospitals

Safety communication relates to the sharing of safety information within organizations in order to mitigate hazards and improve risk management. Although risk researchers have predominantly investigated employee safety communication behaviors (e.g. voice), a growing body of work (e.g. in healthcare, transport) indicates that public stakeholders also communicate safety information to organizations. To investigate the nature of stakeholder safety communication behaviors, and their possible contribution to organizational risk management, accounts from patients and families – recorded in a government public inquiry – about trying to report safety risks in an unsafe hospital were examined. Within the inquiry, 410 narrative accounts of patients and families engaging in safety communication behaviors (voicing concerns, writing complaints, and whistleblowing) were identified and analyzed. Typically, the aim of safety communication was to ensure hospital staff addressed safety risks that were apparent and impactful to patients and families (e.g. medication errors, clinical neglect), yet unnoticed or uncorrected by clinicians and administrators. However, the success of patient and family safety communication in ameliorating risk was variable, and problems in hospital safety culture (e.g. high workloads, downplaying safety problems) meant that information provided by patients and families was frequently not acted upon. Due to their distinct role as independent service-users, public stakeholders can potentially support organizational risk management through communicating on safety risks missed or not addressed by employees and managers. However, for this to happen, there must be capacity and openness within organizations for responding to safety communication from stakeholders

GOOD FAITH: SURVEILLANCE AND EVALUATION OF 911 GOOD SAMARITAN LAWS IN THE UNITED STATES

To fight soaring overdose mortality rates in the United States, lawmakers adopted a variety of harm reduction tools. Among these, 911 Good Samaritan Laws (GSLs) derive their name from the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, a bystander who broke cultural convention to come to the aid of a man beset by thieves. These laws provide limited criminal immunity for bystanders in possession of controlled substances to encourage them to report drug overdoses. While previous studies associate GSLs with a modest reduction in opioid mortality, analyses often model them as equivocal or divide them coarsely across individual provisions. Evaluating these laws inductively reveals substantial heterogeneity. Laws passed in some states protect Good Samaritans engaged in a breadth of offenses and provide robust protection beyond immunity from arrest or prosecution. Conversely, other laws place burdensome obligations on the Good Samaritan or exempt many from immunity altogether. Differences among these laws can be charted visually to reveal patterns in their provisions. These patterns may be clustered into five groups: Minimal laws provide scant immunity for a limited range of offenses; Moderate laws are designed simply to apply to most emergency scenarios while offering constrained protection; Narrow laws are acutely described to immunize possession of controlled substances and provide strong immunity, while excepting other offenses or violations; Rigorous laws require substantial compliance on the part of the Good Samaritan, but award potent protection to those who obey; and Strong laws, which exhibit the theme of the parable by immunizing virtually all persons in most imaginable substance-related circumstances so long as they act in good faith. These groups provide an alternative method of modeling the relationship between overdose mortality and GSLs. Indeed, Strong laws save lives. Following adoption of a Strong law, states experience a reliable decrease in overdose mortality. However, the effect is not conserved over time. Ratifying Rigorous laws, conversely, predicts an increase in general overdose mortality. Together, this evidence substantiates the ability of good faith harm reduction policy to save vulnerable lives. However, prioritizing compliance over compassion, in contravention of the parable, does more harm than good

UK Sugar Beet Farm Productivity Under Different Reform Scenarios: A Farm Level Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect that the imminent reform in the European Union (EU) sugar regime may have on farm productivity in the United Kingdom (UK). We perform the analysis on a sample of sugar beet farms representative of all the UK sugar beet regions. To estimate the changes in productivity, we estimate a multi-output cost function representing the cropping part of the farm, which is the component that would be mostly affected by the sugar beet reform. We use this cost function to compute the new allocation of outputs and inputs after the changes in the sugar beet quota and price support. This are subsequently used to compute measures of total factor productivity. Our results show slight decreases in the productivity at the individual farm level under both quota and price support reduction. However, when considering the aggregate level, the reduction in the price support shows significant increases in productivity, in contrast to the results obtained from a reduction in quota.EU sugar reform, UK agriculture, UK sugar beet production, multi-output cost function, total factor productivity, Agricultural and Food Policy, Productivity Analysis, Q00, D24,