Decoupling Extreme Programming From Byzantine Fault Tolerance in Multicast Algorithms

Unified embedded archetypes have led to many practical advances, including fiber-optic cables and Internet QoS. In fact, few biologists would disagree with the simulation of agents, demonstrates the significant importance of machine learning. Kapia, our new heuristic for the con- struction of extreme programming, is the solution to all of these problems

Racial Bias And Its Relationship With Moral Blame

The proposed studies incorporate a reaction time paradigm and a moral updating paradigm in order to test the effects of both explicit and implicit racial biases on the process of moral blame. This will also help distinguish between two theories on moral blame. The first being that when biases are presented, that only the outcome of the blame judgment is affected, and the second being that people with high bias versus people with low bias process information differently, leading to different blame judgments

Modeling of Oceanic Gas Hydrate Instability and Methane Release in Response to Climate Change

Paleooceanographic evidence has been used to postulate that methane from oceanic hydrates may have had a significant role in regulating global climate, implicating global oceanic deposits of methane gas hydrate as the main culprit in instances of rapid climate change that have occurred in the past. However, the behavior of contemporary oceanic methane hydrate deposits subjected to rapid temperature changes, like those predicted under future climate change scenarios, is poorly understood. To determine the fate of the carbon stored in these hydrates, we performed simulations of oceanic gas hydrate accumulations subjected to temperature changes at the seafloor and assessed the potential for methane release into the ocean. Our modeling analysis considered the properties of benthic sediments, the saturation and distribution of the hydrates, the ocean depth, the initial seafloor temperature, and for the first time, estimated the effect of benthic biogeochemical activity. The results show that shallow deposits--such as those found in arctic regions or in the Gulf of Mexico--can undergo rapid dissociation and produce significant methane fluxes of 2 to 13 mol/yr/m{sup 2} over a period of decades, and release up to 1,100 mol of methane per m{sup 2} of seafloor in a century. These fluxes may exceed the ability of the seafloor environment (via anaerobic oxidation of methane) to consume the released methane or sequester the carbon. These results will provide a source term to regional or global climate models in order to assess the coupling of gas hydrate deposits to changes in the global climate

Auditory In-Vehicle Technologies to Support Older Drivers

OBJECTIVES Population aging, in combination with improved health care and more active lifestyles well into advanced age, have resulted in an increased number of older adults driving more miles than ever before. Unfortunately, these older drivers are over-represented in motor vehicle crashes and crash-related fatalities. Rather than the risk-tasking behaviors observed in young drivers, the collisions of older drivers frequently involve perceptual-cognitive errors. Advanced in-vehicle technologies have the potential to function as sensory-cognitive aids and may offset the negative impact of age-related changes in sensory and cognitive abilities. Collision Avoidance Systems (CASs) function as sensory aids to augment hazard detection capabilities, and therefore may be of particular benefit to older drivers. Navigation aids can offset the working memory requirements of wayfinding, and auditory guidance directions may reduce the visual demands of searching for street signs and reading maps. However, these advanced systems also have the potential to increase the information processing demands of the driving task or distract drivers, particularly if they are not designed in accordance with the sensory and perceptual capabilities of older adults. A series of experiments aimed at examining the impact of sensory-cognitive characteristics of auditory navigational aids on driver wayfinding, performance on a visual peripheral detection task, and neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective indices of driver mental workload and performance were conducted. METHODS Results of two investigations will be discussed. The first investigation examined the impact of amplitude level on working memory. Older adults frequently exhibit reduced complex working memory span. However, recent evidence indicates that increasing a sound’s amplitude increases its duration in echoic memory (Baldwin, in press). Based on these findings, we hypothesized that increasing the amplitude of verbal material would improve working memory efficiency. RESULTS In support of this hypothesis, a strong positive correlation between the amplitude level at which the verbal material was presented and complex working memory span as measured by a version of Daneman and Carpenter’s (1980) Listening span task was observed. This positive relationship OBJECTIVES Population aging, in combination with improved health care and more active lifestyles well into advanced age, have resulted in an increased number of older adults driving more miles than ever before. Unfortunately, these older drivers are over-represented in motor vehicle crashes and crash-related fatalities. Rather than the risk-tasking behaviors observed in young drivers, the collisions of older drivers frequently involve perceptual-cognitive errors. Advanced in-vehicle technologies have the potential to function as sensory-cognitive aids and may offset the negative impact of age-related changes in sensory and cognitive abilities. Collision Avoidance Systems (CASs) function as sensory aids to augment hazard detection capabilities, and therefore may be of particular benefit to older drivers. Navigation aids can offset the working memory requirements of wayfinding, and auditory guidance directions may reduce the visual demands of searching for street signs and reading maps. However, these advanced systems also have the potential to increase the information processing demands of the driving task or distract drivers, particularly if they are not designed in accordance with the sensory and perceptual capabilities of older adults. A series of experiments aimed at examining the impact of sensory-cognitive characteristics of auditory navigational aids on driver wayfinding, performance on a visual peripheral detection task, and neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective indices of driver mental workload and performance were conducted. METHODS Results of two investigations will be discussed. The first investigation examined the impact of amplitude level on working memory. Older adults frequently exhibit reduced complex working memory span. However, recent evidence indicates that increasing a sound’s amplitude increases its duration in echoic memory (Baldwin, in press). Based on these findings, we hypothesized that increasing the amplitude of verbal material would improve working memory efficiency. RESULTS In support of this hypothesis, a strong positive correlation between the amplitude level at which the verbal material was presented and complex working memory span as measured by a version of Daneman and Carpenter’s (1980) Listening span task was observed. This positive relationshi

The Use of Horizontal Wells in Gas Production from Hydrate Accumulations

The amounts of hydrocarbon gases trapped in natural hydrate accumulations are enormous, leading to a recent interest in the evaluation of their potential as an energy source. Earlier studies have demonstrated that large volumes of gas can be readily produced at high rates for long times from gas hydrate accumulations by means of depressurization-induced dissociation, using conventional technology and vertical wells. The results of this numerical study indicate that the use of horizontal wells does not confer any practical advantages to gas production from Class 1 deposits. This is because of the large disparity in permeabilities between the hydrate layer (HL) and the underlying free gas zone, leading to a hydrate dissociation that proceeds in a horizontally dominant direction and is uniform along the length of the reservoir. When horizontal wells are placed near the base of the HL in Class 2 deposits, the delay in the evolution of a significant gas production rate outweighs their advantages, which include higher rates and the prevention of flow obstruction problems that often hamper the performance of vertical wells. Conversely, placement of a horizontal well near to top of the HL can lead to dramatic increases in gas production from Class 2 and Class 3 deposits over the corresponding production from vertical wells

Government review of the Mod-2 wind turbine (as-built)

The findings and recommendations of the Government committee formed to conduct an as-built review of the three Mod-2 wind turbine units at Goldendale, Washington are given. The purpose of the review was to identify any critical deficiencies in machine components that could result in failure, and to recommend any necessary corrective action before resuming safe machine operation. The review concluded that one of the deficiencies identified would preclude planned attended or unattended operation, provided that certain corrective actions were implemented

The Impact of State Mandated Healthcare-Associated Infection Reporting on Infection Prevention and Control Departments in Acute Care Hospitals: Results from a National Survey

Background: In addition to federally mandated reporting, most US states have adopted legislation requiring hospitals to submit healthcare-associated infection (HAI) data. Evidence that state HAI laws have increased patient safety and reduced HAI rates is inconsistent, however, and resources needed to comply are considerable. We evaluated the impact of state HAI laws on infection prevention and control departments (IPCD). Methods: Web-based survey of a national sample of hospital IPCD was conducted in Fall 2011; all non-VA hospitals enrolled in the National Healthcare Safety Network were eligible to participate. States with HAI laws effective prior to Fall 2011 were identified using systematic legal review. Variations in IPCD resources and characteristics in states with and without laws were compared using χ2or Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney tests. Multinomial logistic regression was used to identify increases or decreases, vs no change, in resources and characteristics. Results: 1,038 IPCD provided complete data (30% response rate); 756 (73%) were located in states with laws. When asked how mandatory reporting affected their IPCD, more respondents in states with laws reported differences in resources (42% vs 33%, p \u3c 0.01), time for routine activities other than for mandatory reporting (79% vs 71%, p \u3c 0.01), influence in hospital decision making (55% vs 48%, p \u3c 0.05), and visibility of their department (75% vs 65%, p \u3c 0.001); they also spent more hours per week fulfilling mandatory reporting requirements (17 vs 13, p \u3c 0.0001). Based on regression analysis, respondents in states with laws were more likely to report increased resources (p = 0.02) and influence (p = 0.04) and decreased time for routine activities (p \u3c 0.01). Perception of visibility in the hospital was mixed with reports of both increased (p \u3c 0.001) and decreased (p = 0.01) visibility vs the same. Conclusion: Respondents in states with laws reported a significantly higher burden to their IPCD, beyond what was required by federally mandated HAI reporting alone. However, they also reported receiving increased resources to offset demands on time for routine activities and fulfilling reporting requirements. Further research is needed to investigate resources necessary to comply with state HAI laws, and to evaluate their unintended consequences

Strategies for Gas Production From Oceanic Class 3 Hydrate Accumulations

Gas hydrates are solid crystalline compounds in which gas molecules are lodged within the lattices of ice crystals. Vast amounts of CH4 are trapped in gas hydrates, and a significant effort has recently begun to evaluate hydrate deposits as a potential energy source. Class 3 hydrate deposits are characterized by an isolated Hydrate-Bearing Layer (HBL) that is not in contact with any hydrate-free zone of mobile fluids. The base of the HBL in Class 3 deposits may occur within or at the edge of the zone of thermodynamic hydrate stability.In this numerical study of long-term gas production from typical representatives of unfractured Class 3 deposits, we determine that simple thermal stimulation appears to be a slow and inefficient production method. Electrical heating and warm water injection result in very low production rates (4 and 12 MSCFD, respectively) that are orders of magnitude lower than generally acceptable standards of commercial viability of gas production from oceanic reservoirs. However, production from depressurization-based dissociation based on a constant well pressure appears to be a promising approach even in deposits characterized by high hydrate saturations. This approach allows the production of very large volumes of hydrate-originating gas at high rates (>15 MMSCFD, with a long-term average of about 8.1 MMSCFD for the reference case) for long times using conventional technology. Gas production from hydrates is accompanied by a significant production of water. However, unlike conventional gas reservoirs, the water production rate declines with time. The low salinity of the produced water may require care in its disposal. Because of the overwhelming advantage of depressurization-based methods, the sensitivity analysis was not extendedto thermal stimulation methods. The simulation results indicate that depressurization-induced gas production from oceanic Class 3 deposits increases (and the corresponding water to-gas ratio decreases) with increasing hydrate temperature (which defines the hydrate stability), increasing intrinsic permeability of the HBL, and decreasing hydrate saturation although depletion of the hydrate may complicate the picture in the latter case