Understanding safety and production risks in rail engineering planning and protection

Much of the published human factors work on risk is to do with safety and within this is concerned with prediction and analysis of human error and with human reliability assessment. Less has been published on human factors contributions to understanding and managing project, business, engineering and other forms of risk and still less jointly assessing risk to do with broad issues of ‘safety’ and broad issues of ‘production’ or ‘performance’. This paper contains a general commentary on human factors and assessment of risk of various kinds, in the context of the aims of ergonomics and concerns about being too risk averse. The paper then describes a specific project, in rail engineering, where the notion of a human factors case has been employed to analyse engineering functions and related human factors issues. A human factors issues register for potential system disturbances has been developed, prior to a human factors risk assessment, which jointly covers safety and production (engineering delivery) concerns. The paper concludes with a commentary on the potential relevance of a resilience engineering perspective to understanding rail engineering systems risk. Design, planning and management of complex systems will increasingly have to address the issue of making trade-offs between safety and production, and ergonomics should be central to this. The paper addresses the relevant issues and does so in an under-published domain – rail systems engineering work.

Comunicación organizacional: desarrollo del manual de procedimientos del Departamento de Relaciones Públicas de la Dirección General de Aviación Civil

El propósito de este trabajo es la elaboración del Manual de Procedimientos de Comunicación Organizacional del Departamento de Relaciones Públicas de la Dirección General de Aviación Civil. La presente investigación se desarrolla a través de cuatro capítulos. En el primer capítulo se analizan aspectos generales que incluyen una introducción de aspectos particulares de la comunicación, se pone de relieve la comunicación organizacional y se destaca la importancia del Manual de Procedimientos en Comunicación. En el segundo capítulo se analiza concretamente el estudio del caso de la Dirección General de Aviación Civil y se realiza una reseña histórica de la comunicación en la DGAC, el organigrama institucional y la estrategia de comunicación del Departamento deRelaciones Públicas de la DGAC. En el tercer capítulo, se desarrolla el Manual de Procedimientos y de Bienvenida del Departamento de Relaciones Públicas de la DGAC. Se detalla el procedimiento en general del Departamento de Relaciones públicas, y su manejo de los procedimientos de comunicación interna/externa. Finalmente en el capítulo cuarto, se puntualizan algunas recomendaciones y conclusionescon la finalidad de conseguir mayor eficiencia y eficacia en el manejo de la comunicación organizacional en el Departamento de Relaciones Públicas de la DGAC.

General relationships between pressure, weight, and mass of a hydrostatic fluid

In curved geometries the hydrostatic pressure in a fluid does not equal the weight per unit area of the fluid above it. General weight–pressure and mass–pressure relationships for hydrostatic fluids in any geometry are derived. As an example of the mass–pressure relationship, we find a geometric reduction in surface pressure as large as 5 mbar on Earth and 39 mbar on Titan. We also present a thermodynamic interpretation of the geometric correction which, as a corollary, provides an independent proof of the hydrostatic relationship for general geometries.

Geo-Engineering to Confine Climate Change: Is it at all Feasible?

Paul Crutzen (2006) has suggested a research initiative to consider whether it would be feasible to artificially enhance the albedo of the planet Earth to counteract greenhouse warming. The enhancement of albedo would be achieved by intentionally injecting sulfur into the stratosphere. The rational for proposing the experiment is the observed cooling of the atmosphere following the recent major volcanic eruptions by El Chichon in 1984 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991 (Hansen et al., 1992). Although I am principally not against a research initiative to study such a potential experiment, I do have important reservations concerning its general feasibility. And its potential feasibility, I believe, must be the key motivation for embarking on such a study. Here I will bring up three major issues, which must be more thoroughly understood before any geo-engineering of climate could be considered, if at all. The three issues are (i) the lack of accuracy in climate prediction, (ii) the huge difference in timescale between the effect of greenhouse gases and the effect of aerosols and (iii) serious environmental problems which may be caused by high carbon dioxide concentration irrespective of the warming of the climate.

Computational Aspects of the Calculation of Isometry Groups in General Relativity

We describe the ideas behind the package 'isometry', implemented in Maple to calculate isometry groups of dimensions 2, 3 and 4 in General Relativity. The package extends the functionality of previous programs written to perform invariant classification of space-times in General Relativity. Programming solutions used to surmount problems encountered with the calculation of eigenvectors and the determination of the signs of expressions are described. We also show how the package can be used to find the Killing vectors of a space-time.

The wood for the civil engineering: A proposal of distance education

The majority of the Brazilian schools of Civil Engineering have taught the subject works with wood in the traditional only by disciplines of Metallic Structures and Wood at a topic in the content of the program on disciplines at the Materials of Civil Construction. To extend of the wood studies is being made possible that all the pupils have a wider understanding of this material and its adapted use is the goal of the proposal, that by the means of the education modality e-learning, disclosing the first one: Module I - Introduction to the Study of the Wood. This methodology tries to use the theoretical beddings in projects that are related to the pupil daily tasks and its practical professional. The article presents the theoretical bases of the conception proposal and its structure, and at the conclusions, the problems found during its application are displayed. Basically, the methodology considers that the professor and the pupil must share the learning, and adopt it as main in the interdisciplinary.

A model for computing vibration induced stresses of electronic components in a general flexible mounting

This paper develops a novel full analytic model for vibration analysis of solid-state electronic components. The model is just as accurate as finite element models and numerically light enough to permit for quick design trade-offs and statistical analysis. The paper shows the development of the model, comparison to finite elements and an application to a common engineering problem. A gull-wing flat pack component was selected as the benchmark test case, although the presented methodology is applicable to a wide range of component packages. Results showed very good agreement between the presented method and finite elements and demonstrated the usefulness of the method in how to use standard test data for a general application. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

General outlines of the Organization of a Civil Registration Service in Latin America (English summary)

Organized by the United Nations, through its Statistical Office, the Bureau of Technical Assistance Operations, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Latin American Demographic Centre, in co-operation with the Government of Peru, the Inter-American Statistical Institute, the Inter-American Children's Institute, the Pan American Health Organization and the Inter-American Civil Registration Association

A aprendizagem baseada em problemas (ABP): uma aplicação na disciplina “Gestão empresarial” do curso de Engenharia Civil

A metodologia da Aprendizagem Baseada em Problemas (ABP), diferentemente dos métodos de ensino convencionais, é uma metodologia que usa problemas para diminuir a lacuna entre a teoria e a prática no processo de aprendizagem. Além de favorecer a construção de conhecimentos, se propõe a contribuir para o desenvolvimento de algumas capacidades profissionais não técnicas, consideradas importantes para a prática do engenheiro em uma sociedade em constantes e rápidas transformações. Este trabalho, uma pesquisa-ação, buscou vivenciar e analisar a eficiência do método durante sua aplicação na disciplina “Gestão Empresarial”, ministrada a alunos do penúltimo e último semestre do Curso de Graduação em Engenharia Civil. Os dados para a análise foram coletados por meio de observação participante do professor/tutor da disciplina e de relatórios de avaliação, nos quais os alunos opinavam sobre a ABP, suas vantagens e desvantagens e seu potencial para atingir os objetivos propostos. Nos três estudos de caso realizados, apesar de aplicados em turmas diferentes, evidenciam-se através dos relatórios apresentados pelos alunos e de avaliações feitas durante todo o processo, a ocorrência tanto da aprendizagem dos conhecimentos quanto o desenvolvimento de algumas habilidades e atitudes objetivadas pela disciplina, tais como: capacidade de pesquisa, desenvolvimento de espírito empreendedor e busca de conhecimentos inovadores. De forma geral, os alunos reagiram positivamente à ABP, o que sugere sua possível utilização nos contextos estudados. A metodologia também demonstrou ser um instrumento interessante de desenvolvimento profissional para o professor/tutor, no que concerne ao aprimoramento docente.

A percepção de docentes, discentes e egressos do curso de engenharia civil - campus de Bauru: sobre algumas questões curriculares

Pós-graduação em Educação - FFC