Integration of Nondestructive Examination Reliability and Fracture Mechanics

In evaluating the integrity of a system using fracture mechanics analysis, it is necessary to know the maximum size of flaws which are likely to be present. The effectiveness in reliability of nondestructive examination techniques are used to establish the probability of detection curves for different types of flaws and for different flaw characteristics, i.e., size, shape, orientation, tightness, roughness and location. This information on flaws must be known in order to ensure the systems integrity. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has instituted a research program to establish the effectiveness and reliability of ultrasonic in-service inspections performed on light water reactor primary typing systems. This paper describes the results obtained to date and proposed methods of evaluating inspection reliability. A method has been developed for evaluating inspection reliability based on the measured variability of the inspection process. Estimates of the current level of inspection reliability have been made. Efforts are currently in progress to verify the results of these predictions and the effectiveness of the predictive model

Closing the Cracks and the Courts: A Comparative Analysis of Debt Collection Regulation in the United Kingdom and the United States

Consumers who borrow from a lender today cannot count on dealing with that same lender later if they default on their debt. In today\u27s world of debt collection, the lender will outsource collection to a thirdparty debt collector, or those consumers\u27 defaulted debt will be bought and sold numerous times for pennies on the dollar until eventually a debt buyer decides to pursue payment. Either way, under the current US debt collection laws and regulations, both third-party debt collectors and debt buyers can act outside the scope of debt collection regulation in the United States, and many will take that opportunity to engage in abusive debt collection practices, including abusing the courts as an enforcement mechanism. Through a comparative analysis of the central statutes and regulations governing debt collectors in the United States and the United Kingdom, this Note finds that the accountability gap for debt collectors in the United States stems from the US statute\u27s narrow scope and sparse restrictions on judicial action by debt collectors. In order to close this accountability gap, the United States should adopt the United Kingdom\u27s broad definition of debt collector and a version of the UK Debt Respite Scheme which allows consumers to delay judicial action by debt collectors

Personal Care Products: Where are the Phthalates?

Phthalates are chemicals that are commonly used as a plasticizer in personal care products. This class of compounds is added to help prevent products from drying out. Phthalates have been shown to have potential negative impacts on reproductive organs, cause birth defects, effect the endocrine system, as well as causing other ill effects. For example, previous work found that phthalates can have an effect on the endocrine system of adolescent individuals. In an intervention study, phthalate exposure was reduced when these products were not being used. The purpose of the present study is to examine phthalate abundance in personal care products and to design an intervention study to lessen exposure. To identify products containing phthalates, we used the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetic database. This database contains personal care products and their ingredients. We used the database to identify products that contain phthalates and the type of phthalates used. The most commonly used phthalate is polyethylene terephthalate, with it currently found in 610 products, with 314 of which are nail polish. There are also 12 other kinds of phthalates that are regularly used in personal care products, ranging from lipstick to sunscreen. We can see that there are still a multitude of products that contain potentially harmful phthalates. This study is the foundation to future work looking at exposure to phthalates in adult populations and assessing sources of exposure from personal care products

The Impact of Unplanned Remote Instruction on a CURE Paired with Cookbook-Style Laboratory Exercises

Course based-undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been well defined in the literature. These authentic research experiences can be designed in many different ways, ranging from fully faculty-guided to completely student-driven (Spell et al., 2014). The implementation of CUREs is growing within biology education because they have been shown to provide collaborative environments that foster engagement with the scientific process, while promoting iterative research through the process of discovery (Auchincloss et al., 2014). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the semester-long CURE developed by our group experienced a rapid transition to remote instruction, creating a pseudo-experimental condition to compare student performance across semesters in on-campus versus remote learning conditions. In this semester-long set of laboratory modules, students develop skills to assess exposure to environmental chemicals. As originally designed, students participate in hands-on cookbook-style labs to learn about sample extraction methods and are introduced to the CURE-project, which entails authentic sample extraction, data analysis, and presentation of a poster. Rather than completing the full set of modules, the COVID-19 cohort completed the canned labs, but were tasked with virtually viewing the experimental process and analyzing previously collected data. Previous work by Kirkpatrick et al. (2019), has determined that there was no significant difference in the positive impacts on students’ attitudes between students who completed a computer-based CURE versus a bench-based CURE. This study examines if that holds true when the same research project is taken to a remote format

Personal Care Products: Where are the Phthalates?

Phthalates are chemicals that are commonly used as a plasticizer in personal care products. This class of compounds is added to help prevent products from drying out. Phthalates have been shown to have potential negative impacts on reproductive organs, cause birth defects, effect the endocrine system, as well as causing other ill effects. For example, previous work found that phthalates can have an effect on the endocrine system of adolescent individuals. In an intervention study, phthalate exposure was reduced when these products were not being used. The purpose of the present study is to examine phthalate abundance in personal care products and to design an intervention study to lessen exposure. To identify products containing phthalates, we used the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetic database. This database contains personal care products and their ingredients. We used the database to identify products that contain phthalates and the type of phthalates used. The most commonly used phthalate is polyethylene terephthalate, with it currently found in 610 products, with 314 of which are nail polish. There are also 12 other kinds of phthalates that are regularly used in personal care products, ranging from lipstick to sunscreen. We can see that there are still a multitude of products that contain potentially harmful phthalates. This study is the foundation to future work looking at exposure to phthalates in adult populations and assessing sources of exposure from personal care products

Object Tracking in Vary Lighting Conditions for Fog based Intelligent Surveillance of Public Spaces

With rapid development of computer vision and artificial intelligence, cities are becoming more and more intelligent. Recently, since intelligent surveillance was applied in all kind of smart city services, object tracking attracted more attention. However, two serious problems blocked development of visual tracking in real applications. The first problem is its lower performance under intense illumination variation while the second issue is its slow speed. This paper addressed these two problems by proposing a correlation filter based tracker. Fog computing platform was deployed to accelerate the proposed tracking approach. The tracker was constructed by multiple positions' detections and alternate templates (MPAT). The detection position was repositioned according to the estimated speed of target by optical flow method, and the alternate template was stored with a template update mechanism, which were all computed at the edge. Experimental results on large-scale public benchmark datasets showed the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with state-of-the-art methods

The unresolved stochastic background from compact binary mergers detectable by next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave observatories

The next generation of ground-based gravitational-wave detectors will look much deeper into the Universe and have unprecedented sensitivities and low-frequency capabilities. Especially alluring is the possibility of detecting an early-Universe cosmological stochastic background that could provide important insights into the beginnings of our Universe and fundamental physics at extremely high energies. However, even if next-generation detectors are sensitive to cosmological stochastic backgrounds, they will be masked by more dominant astrophysical backgrounds, namely the residual background from the imperfect subtraction of resolvable compact binary coalescences (CBCs) as well as the CBC background from individually unresolvable CBCs. Using our latest knowledge of masses, rates, and delay time distributions, we present a data-driven estimate of the unresolvable CBC background that will be seen by next-generation detectors. Accounting for statistical and systematic errors, this estimate quantifies an important piece in the CBC noise budget for next-generation detectors and can help inform detector design and subtraction algorithms. We compare our results with predictions for backgrounds from several cosmological sources in the literature, finding that the unresolvable background will likely be a significant impediment for many models. This motivates the need for simultaneous inference methods or other statistical techniques to detect early-Universe cosmological backgrounds.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure