Improving Graduate Students’ Research Skills: The Graduate Student Research Series at the University of Florida

This chapter describes an effort at the University of Florida to address the needs of graduate students and broaden library offerings to this constituency. First, we outline the development and implementation of this library program, the Graduate Student Research Series, which was created to provide more thorough, holistic research assistance to graduates. We describe the nature and contributions of this program and discuss issues that we encountered as well as the lessons we learned along the way. We conclude by offering some best practice guidelines for libraries interested in pursuing this broader type of approach

Small Modular Reactors (SMR) Probabilistic Risk As

A key area of the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Pro

The Fukushima Daiichi Accident Study Information Portal

This paper presents a description of The Fukushima Daiichi Accident Study Information Portal. The Information Portal was created by the Idaho National Laboratory as part of joint NRC and DOE project to assess the severe accident modeling capability of the MELCOR analysis code. The Fukushima Daiichi Accident Study Information Portal was created to collect, store, retrieve and validate information and data for use in reconstructing the Fukushima Daiichi accident. In addition to supporting the MELCOR simulations, the Portal will be the main DOE repository for all data, studies and reports related to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. The data is stored in a secured (password protected and encrypted) repository that is searchable and accessible to researchers at diverse locations

A Framework to Expand and Advance Probabilistic Risk Assessment to Support Small Modular Reactors

During the early development of nuclear power plants, researchers and engineers focused on many aspects of plant operation, two of which were getting the newly-found technology to work and minimizing the likelihood of perceived accidents through redundancy and diversity. As time, and our experience, has progressed, the realization of plant operational risk/reliability has entered into the design, operation, and regulation of these plants. But, to date, we have only dabbled at the surface of risk and reliability technologies. For the next generation of small modular reactors (SMRs), it is imperative that these technologies evolve into an accepted, encompassing, validated, and integral part of the plant in order to reduce costs and to demonstrate safe operation. Further, while it is presumed that safety margins are substantial for proposed SMR designs, the depiction and demonstration of these margins needs to be better understood in order to optimize the licensing process

Fukushima Daiichi accident study : status as of April 2012.

Abstract Not Provide

Schwieder, David

While motivation is recognized as central to various as- pects of information behavior, motives remain surpris- ingly underemphasized in information behavior research. Major theories focus almost exclusively on other psy- chological elements, primarily cognition, while studies of motivation have been limited or absent in a variety of important respects. In this paper, I suggest that a stronger emphasis on motives is warranted. Drawing on recent trends in social psychology research, I argue that a "motivated information behavior" approach can o er a variety of bene ts: it can improve our explanations of information behavior, unify disparate research areas, and illuminate some of the mechanisms underlying important information behavior phenomena

Augmenting Probabilistic Risk Assesment with Malevolent Initiators

As commonly practiced, the use of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) in nuclear power plants only considers accident initiators such as natural hazards, equipment failures, and human error. Malevolent initiators are ignored in PRA, but are considered the domain of physical security, which uses vulnerability assessment based on an officially specified threat (design basis threat). This paper explores the implications of augmenting and extending existing PRA models by considering new and modified scenarios resulting from malevolent initiators. Teaming the augmented PRA models with conventional vulnerability assessments can cost-effectively enhance security of a nuclear power plant. This methodology is useful for operating plants, as well as in the design of new plants. For the methodology, we have proposed an approach that builds on and extends the practice of PRA for nuclear power plants for security-related issues. Rather than only considering 'random' failures, we demonstrated a framework that is able to represent and model malevolent initiating events and associated plant impacts

What Do We Know About Knowledge? Citizen Competence, "Psychological Realism" and Political Information

166 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000.My analysis also yields several larger points. First, knowledge has much in common with other political cognitions. Like attitudes, knowledge can result from constructed judgments, and, like attitudes or values, knowledge can comprise organized structures and systems. Second, though scholars typically assume that "more knowledge is better," more knowledge can sometimes have undesirable effects. Incorrect "misbeliefs" can skew attitudes, and when core preferences are advanced but not anchored this can also have undesirable effects. Third, previous research may have overstated the role of knowledge in facilitating "citizen competence." While I find that knowledge is important, I also find that cognitive skills are crucial as well.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD