Optimal scheduling of reliability development activities

Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management is a collection of papers presented at the PSAM 7 - ESREL '04 Conference in June 2004. The joint Conference provided a forum for the presentation of the latest developments in methodology and application of probabilistic and reliability methods in various industries. Innovations in methodology as well as practical applications in the areas of probabilistic safety assessment and of reliability analysis are presented in this six volume set. The aim of these applications is the optimisation of technological systems and processes from the perspective of a risk-informed safety management while also taking economic and environmental aspects into account. The joint Conference in particular achieved an enhanced communication, the sharing of experience and integration of approaches not only among the various industries but also on a truly global basis by bringing together leading experts from all over the world. Over the last four decades, contemporary researchers have continuously been working to provide modern societies with a systematic, self-consistent and coherent framework for making decisions on at least one class of risks, those stemming from modern technological applications. Most of the effort has been spent in developing methods and techniques for assessing the dependability of technological systems, and assessing or estimating the levels of safety and associated risks. A wide spectrum of engineering, natural and economic sciences has been involved in this assessment effort. The developments have moved beyond research endeavours, they have been applied and utilised in real socio-technical environments and have become established - while modern technology continues to present new challenges and to raise new questions. Consequently, Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management covers both well-established practices and open issues in the fields addressed by the Conference, identifying areas where maturity has been reached and those where more development is needed. The papers reflect a wide variety of disciplines, such as principles and theory of reliability and risk analysis, systems modelling and simulation, consequence assessment, human and organisational factors, structural reliability methods, software reliability and safety, insights and lessons from risk studies and management/decision making. A diverse range of application areas are represented including aviation and space, chemical processing, civil engineering, energy, environment, information technology, legal, manufacturing, health care, defence, transportation and waste management

Alien Registration- Quigley, James W. (Eastport, Washington County)

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Alien Registration- Quigley, Phoebe W. (Eastport, Washington County)

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Gene expression of endangered coral (Orbicella spp.) in flower garden banks National Marine Sanctuary after Hurricane Harvey

About 190 km south of the Texas–Louisiana border, the East and West Flower Garden Banks (FGB) have maintained > 50% coral cover with infrequent and minor incidents of disease or bleaching since monitoring began in the 1970s. However, a mortality event, affecting 5.6 ha (2.6% of the area) of the East FGB, occurred in late July 2016 and coincided with storm-generated freshwater runoff extending offshore and over the reef system. To capture the immediate effects of storm-driven freshwater runoff on coral and symbiont physiology, we leveraged the heavy rainfall associated with Hurricane Harvey in late August 2017 by sampling FGB corals at two time points: September 2017, when surface water salinity was reduced (∼34 ppt); and 1 month later when salinity had returned to typical levels (∼36 ppt in October 2017). Tissue samples (N = 47) collected midday were immediately preserved for gene expression profiling from two congeneric coral species (Orbicella faveolata and Orbicella franksi) from the East and West FGB to determine the physiological consequences of storm-derived runoff. In the coral, differences between host species and sampling time points accounted for the majority of differentially expressed genes. Gene ontology enrichment for genes differentially expressed immediately after Hurricane Harvey indicated increases in cellular oxidative stress responses. Although tissue loss was not observed on FGB reefs following Hurricane Harvey, our results suggest that poor water quality following this storm caused FGB corals to experience sub-lethal stress. We also found dramatic expression differences across sampling time points in the coral’s algal symbiont, Breviolum minutum. Some of these differentially expressed genes may be involved in the symbionts’ response to changing environments, including a group of differentially expressed post-transcriptional RNA modification genes. In this study, we cannot disentangle the effects of reduced salinity from the collection time point, so these expression patterns could also be related to seasonality. These findings highlight the urgent need for continued monitoring of these reef systems to establish a baseline for gene expression of healthy corals in the FGB system across seasons, as well as the need for integrated solutions to manage stormwater runoff in the Gulf of Mexico.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.00672/fullPublished versionPublished versio

Citizens who inject drugs: the 'Fitpack' study

Most injecting drug users have never been in drug treatment yet much research is done on samples with high treatment rates drawn from agency and peer recruited populations. This study accessed drug injectors with little or no prior drug treatment, described their characteristics, BBVI risk behaviours and feedback on services. Its results challenge some stereotypes about citizens who inject drugs. A sample of 511 'hidden' drug injectors, of whom only 28.7% had any specialist drug treatment agency contact, completed a questionnaire which was distributed with 'Fitpack' needle packs sold through community pharmacies in WA. The mean age of respondents was 26.2 years, 43.4% were women, 44.3% were living with their sexual partner, 41.7% were parents, and 46.4% were employed, mostly in full time work. In the previous month 61.2% had injected less frequently than daily. The study accessed a diverse group of drug injectors not typically seen in agency and peer recruited research. They provided useful feedback about how harm reduction strategies among injectors can be improved. However, they also reported higher rates of injecting and sharing than previously found in traditionally recruited samples of injectors which suggests there is no room for complacency regarding the potential for BBVI transmission in this grou

Bifidobacterium breve with α-Linolenic Acid and Linoleic Acid Alters Fatty Acid Metabolism in the Maternal Separation Model of Irritable Bowel Syndrome

peer-reviewedThe aim of this study was to compare the impact of dietary supplementation with a Bifidobacterium breve strain together with linoleic acid & α-linolenic acid, for 7 weeks, on colonic sensitivity and fatty acid metabolism in rats. Maternally separated and non-maternally separated Sprague Dawley rats (n = 15) were orally gavaged with either B. breve DPC6330 (109 microorganisms/day) alone or in combination with 0.5% (w/w) linoleic acid & 0.5% (w/w) α-linolenic acid, daily for 7 weeks and compared with trehalose and bovine serum albumin. Tissue fatty acid composition was assessed by gas-liquid chromatography and visceral hypersensitivity was assessed by colorectal distension. Significant differences in the fatty acid profiles of the non-separated controls and maternally separated controls were observed for α-linolenic acid and arachidonic acid in the liver, oleic acid and eicosenoic acid (c11) in adipose tissue, and for palmitoleic acid and docosahexaenoic acid in serum (p<0.05). Administration of B. breve DPC6330 to MS rats significantly increased palmitoleic acid, arachidonic acid and docosahexaenoic acid in the liver, eicosenoic acid (c11) in adipose tissue and palmitoleic acid in the prefrontal cortex (p<0.05), whereas feeding B. breve DPC6330 to non separated rats significantly increased eicosapentaenoic acid and docosapentaenoic acid in serum (p<0.05) compared with the NS un-supplemented controls. Administration of B. breve DPC6330 in combination with linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid to maternally separated rats significantly increased docosapentaenoic acid in the serum (p<0.01) and α-linolenic acid in adipose tissue (p<0.001), whereas feeding B. breve DPC6330 with fatty acid supplementation to non-separated rats significantly increased liver and serum docosapentaenoic acid (p<0.05), and α-linolenic acid in adipose tissue (p<0.001). B. breve DPC6330 influenced host fatty acid metabolism. Administration of B. breve DPC6330 to maternally separated rats significantly modified the palmitoleic acid, arachidonic acid and docosahexaenoic acid contents in tissues. The effect was not observed in non-separated animals.This work was supported by the Science Foundation of Ireland – funded Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology, the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre

Optimal discrete stopping times for reliability growth tests

Often, the duration of a reliability growth development test is specified in advance and the decision to terminate or continue testing is conducted at discrete time intervals. These features are normally not captured by reliability growth models. This paper adapts a standard reliability growth model to determine the optimal time for which to plan to terminate testing. The underlying stochastic process is developed from an Order Statistic argument with Bayesian inference used to estimate the number of faults within the design and classical inference procedures used to assess the rate of fault detection. Inference procedures within this framework are explored where it is shown the Maximum Likelihood Estimators possess a small bias and converges to the Minimum Variance Unbiased Estimator after few tests for designs with moderate number of faults. It is shown that the Likelihood function can be bimodal when there is conflict between the observed rate of fault detection and the prior distribution describing the number of faults in the design. An illustrative example is provided

Environmental Agency in Read-Alouds

Despite growing interest in helping students become agents of environmental change who can, through informed decision-making and action-taking, transform environmentally detrimental forms of human activity, science educators have reduced agency to rationality by overlooking sociocultural influences such as norms and values. We tackle this issue by examining how elementary teachers and students negotiate and attribute responsibility, credit, or blame for environmental events during three environmental read-alouds. Our verbal analysis and visual representation of meta-agentive discourse revealed varied patterns of agential attribution. First, humans were simultaneously attributed negative agentive roles (agents of endangerment and imbalance) and positive agentive roles (agents of prevention, mitigation, and balance). Second, while wolves at Yellowstone were constructed as intentional (human-like) agents when they crossed over into the human world to kill livestock in nearby farms, polar bears in the Arctic were denied any form of agential responsibility when they approached people’s homes. Third, anthropogenic causation of global warming was constructed as distal and indirect chains of cause and effect (i.e., sophisticated sequences of ripple effects), whereas its mitigation and prevention assumed the form of simple and unidirectional causative links (direct and proximal causality). Fourth, the notion of balance of nature was repeatedly used as a justification for environmental conservation but its cause and dynamic nature remained unclear. And, fifth, while one teacher promoted environmental agency by encouraging students to experience positive emotions such as love of nature, freedom, and oneness with nature, the other teachers encouraged students to experience negative emotions such as self-blame and guilt. This study’s main significance is that it highlights the need for environmental educators who set out to promote environmental agency to expand the focus of their instructional efforts beyond rational argumentation and reasoning. It also underscores the importance of increasing school teachers’ awareness of implicit discursive messages in particular patterns of environmental agency attribution when discussing environmental issues with students and implementing pedagogical strategies centered on oral deliberation such as read-alouds