Structural studies in the Southern Province, South of Sudbury, Ontario

Rocks correlated with the Hough Lake and Quirke Lake Groups of the Huronian Supergroup form part of a northeasterly trending corridor that separates 1750 Ma granitic intrusive rocks of the Chief Lake batholith from the 1850 Ma mafic intrusive rocks of the Sudbury Igneous Complex. This corridor is dissected by two major structural features; the Murray Fault Zone (MFZ) and the Long Lake Fault (LLF). Detailed structural mapping and microstructural analysis indicates that the LLF, which has juxtaposed Huronian rocks of different deformation style and metamorphism grade, was a more significant plane of dislocation than the MFZ. The sense of displacement along the LLF is high angle reverse in which rocks to the southeast have been raised relative to those in the northwest. South of the LLF Huronian rocks underwent ductile defonnation at amphibolite facies conditions. The strain was constrictional, defined by a triaxial strain ellipsoid in which X > Y > z. Calculations of a regional k value were approximately 1.3. Penetrative ductile defonnation resulted in the development of a preferred crystallographic orientation in quartz as well as the elongation of quartz grains to fonn a regional southeast-northwest trending, subvertical lineation. Similar lithologies north of the LLF underwent dominantly brittle deformation under greenschist facies conditions. Deformation north of the LLF is characterized by the thrusting of structural blocks to form angular discordances in bedding orientation which were previously interpreted as folds. Ductile deformation occurred between 1750 and 1238 Ma and is correlated with a regional period of south over north reverse faulting that effected much of the southern Sudbury region. Post dating the reverse faulting event was a period of sedimentation as a conglomerate unit was deposited on vertically bedded Huronian rocks. Rocks in the study area were intruded by both mafic and felsic dykes. The 1238 Ma mafic dykes appear to have been offset during a period of dextral strike slip displacement along the major fault'). Indirect evidence indicates that this event occurred after the thrusting at 950 to 1100 Ma associated with the Grenvillian Orogeny.

Structural analysis of interior layered deposits in north and south Coprates Chasma, Mars

Interior layered deposits within an embayment in the northern as well as near the southern wall of Coprates Chasma in the Valles Marineris, Mars are studied using HRSC, CTX, HiRISE and CRISM data. In the northern embayment, layered deposits outcrop in three separate locations (a western deposit, a central deposit and an eastern deposit). The central layered deposit in the north has a stratigraphic thickness of 2 km. The western layered deposit abuts against the chasma wall appearing to have a relatively un-eroded depositional surface. The eastern deposit is near a landslide scar which appears to have exposed basement layering showing downward displacement. This northern embayment is suggested to have been an ancestral basin. The triangular edged deposit near the southern wall of Coprates Chasma has an elongated mound protruding from the central edge and is suggested to be the outer limits of a fault block which is back rotated 6° south. The rotation may be the result of the Valles Marineris opening.

A comparative study of the resilience of coal logistics chains in Australia, South Africa and Canada

Au cours des dernières années l'industrie du charbon a connu un essor important. L'importance du charbon dans l'économie mondiale provient d'une demande mondiale soutenue et de niveaux de production en hausse constante. De ce fait, le nombre élevé d'importateurs et d'exportateurs est à l'origine d'un système d'échange complexe où la compétition est féroce. En effet, un nombre grandissant de pays importateurs se partagent les sources d'approvisionnement tandis qu'un nombre limité de pays exportateurs s'efforcent de répondre à la demande tout en essayant de s'accaparer le plus de parts du marché mondial. L'objectif de cette recherche s'inscrit dans ce contexte en démontrant les bénéfices associés aux chaînes logistiques résilientes pour tout acteur de l'industrie soucieux de devancer la compétition. Une analyse de la logistique de l'industrie du charbon permet entre autres de se pencher sur les questions suivantes: Comment les infrastructures influencent-elles la résilience d'une chaîne logistique? Quels risques est-ce que les catastrophes naturelles présentent pour une chaîne logistique? Comment la gouvernance influence-t-elle la résilience d'une chaîne logistique? Une chaîne logistique représente le trajet effectué par un bien ou produit au cours de son cycle de vie, du point d'origine au point de consommation. Ceci étant dit, le meilleur moyen de régler les problèmes inhérents aux chaînes logistiques est de maintenir de hauts niveaux de résilience. Cette recherche évaluera donc la résilience de chaînes logistiques du charbon des industries australienne, sud-africaine et canadienne. Pour ce faire, trois variables seront étudiées: les infrastructures, les catastrophes naturelles et la gouvernance. La comparaison des trois cas à l'étude se fera par un nombre défini d'indicateurs (12 au total) pour chacune des variables étudiées. Les résultats de cette recherche démontrent que la résilience des trois cas à l'étude se ressemble. Cependant, certaines chaînes logistiques détiennent des avantages comparatifs qui améliorent grandement leur résilience et leur compétitivité. Plusieurs sujets de recherche pourraient être utilisés pour compléter cette recherche. L'analyse comparative pourrait être appliquée à d'autres chaînes logistiques pour vérifier la viabilité des résultats. Une analyse semblable pourrait également être entreprise pour le secteur en aval de la chaîne logistique. Finalement, une méthodologie basée sur des interviews pourrait ajouter un regard différent sur les questions abordées.

Consequence modelling,vulnerability assessment and fuzzy fault tree analysis of hazardous storages in an industrial area

The hazards associated with major accident hazard (MAH) industries are fire, explosion and toxic gas releases. Of these, toxic gas release is the worst as it has the potential to cause extensive fatalities. Qualitative and quantitative hazard analyses are essential for the identitication and quantification of the hazards associated with chemical industries. This research work presents the results of a consequence analysis carried out to assess the damage potential of the hazardous material storages in an industrial area of central Kerala, India. A survey carried out in the major accident hazard (MAH) units in the industrial belt revealed that the major hazardous chemicals stored by the various industrial units are ammonia, chlorine, benzene, naphtha, cyclohexane, cyclohexanone and LPG. The damage potential of the above chemicals is assessed using consequence modelling. Modelling of pool fires for naphtha, cyclohexane, cyclohexanone, benzene and ammonia are carried out using TNO model. Vapor cloud explosion (VCE) modelling of LPG, cyclohexane and benzene are carried out using TNT equivalent model. Boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE) modelling of LPG is also carried out. Dispersion modelling of toxic chemicals like chlorine, ammonia and benzene is carried out using the ALOHA air quality model. Threat zones for different hazardous storages are estimated based on the consequence modelling. The distance covered by the threat zone was found to be maximum for chlorine release from a chlor-alkali industry located in the area. The results of consequence modelling are useful for the estimation of individual risk and societal risk in the above industrial area.Vulnerability assessment is carried out using probit functions for toxic, thermal and pressure loads. Individual and societal risks are also estimated at different locations. Mapping of threat zones due to different incident outcome cases from different MAH industries is done with the help of Are GIS.Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is an established technique for hazard evaluation. This technique has the advantage of being both qualitative and quantitative, if the probabilities and frequencies of the basic events are known. However it is often difficult to estimate precisely the failure probability of the components due to insufficient data or vague characteristics of the basic event. It has been reported that availability of the failure probability data pertaining to local conditions is surprisingly limited in India. This thesis outlines the generation of failure probability values of the basic events that lead to the release of chlorine from the storage and filling facility of a major chlor-alkali industry located in the area using expert elicitation and proven fuzzy logic. Sensitivity analysis has been done to evaluate the percentage contribution of each basic event that could lead to chlorine release. Two dimensional fuzzy fault tree analysis (TDFFTA) has been proposed for balancing the hesitation factor invo1ved in expert elicitation .

Rural households’ social capital and welfare: A case study of Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

In a household or nations production system, social capital has been recognized as an input having major implications for project design as well as policy development. Using a structured questionnaire, household level data was obtained from a representative sample of 300 rural households in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal. This study employed the conventional household economic behaviour model under constrained utility maximisation to examine the effect of social capital on the welfare of household, testing the hypothesis that the possession of social capital improves household welfare. The result shows that social capital endowments have a statistically significant positive effect on household welfare, in addition to the some household’s demographic and socio-economic characteristics. The study concluded that, access to social capital among other factors, is very crucial for improved rural household welfare and poverty reduction. It is therefore important for government to have knowledge of existing social groups and networks as this will improve the effectiveness of the present strategies aimed at reducing poverty.

Diversity, local uses and availability of medicinal plants and wild yams in the Mahafaly region of south-western Madagascar

Short summary: This study was undertaken to assess the diversity of plant resources utilized by the local population in south-western Madagascar, the social, ecological and biophysical conditions that drive their uses and availability, and possible alternative strategies for their sustainable use in the region. The study region, ‘Mahafaly region’, located in south-western Madagascar, is one of the country’s most economically, educationally and climatically disadvantaged regions. With an arid steppe climate, the agricultural production is limited by low water availability and a low level of soil nutrients and soil organic carbon. The region comprises the recently extended Tsimanampetsotsa National Park, with numerous sacred and communities forests, which are threatened by slash and burn agriculture and overexploitation of forests resources. The present study analyzed the availability of wild yams and medicinal plants, and their importance for the livelihood of the local population in this region. An ethnobotanical survey was conducted recording the diversity, local knowledge and use of wild yams and medicinal plants utilized by the local communities in five villages in the Mahafaly region. 250 households were randomly selected followed by semi-structured interviews on the socio-economic characteristics of the households. Data allowed us to characterize sociocultural and socioeconomic factors that determine the local use of wild yams and medicinal plants, and to identify their role in the livelihoods of local people. Species-environment relationships and the current spatial distribution of the wild yams were investigated and predicted using ordination methods and a niche based habitat modelling approach. Species response curves along edaphic gradients allowed us to understand the species requirements on habitat conditions. We thus investigated various alternative methods to enhance the wild yam regeneration for their local conservation and their sustainable use in the Mahafaly region. Altogether, six species of wild yams and a total of 214 medicinal plants species from 68 families and 163 genera were identified in the study region. Results of the cluster and discriminant analysis indicated a clear pattern on resource, resulted in two groups of household and characterized by differences in livestock numbers, off-farm activities, agricultural land and harvests. A generalized linear model highlighted that economic factors significantly affect the collection intensity of wild yams, while the use of medicinal plants depends to a higher degree on socio-cultural factors. The gradient analysis on the distribution of the wild yam species revealed a clear pattern for species habitats. Species models based on NPMR (Nonparametric Multiplicative Regression analysis) indicated the importance of vegetation structure, human interventions, and soil characteristics to determine wild yam species distribution. The prediction of the current availability of wild yam resources showed that abundant wild yam resources are scarce and face high harvest intensity. Experiments on yams cultivation revealed that germination of seeds was enhanced by using pre-germination treatments before planting, vegetative regeneration performed better with the upper part of the tubers (corms) rather than the sets of tubers. In-situ regeneration was possible for the upper parts of the wild tubers but the success depended significantly on the type of soil. The use of manure (10-20 t ha¹) increased the yield of the D. alata and D. alatipes by 40%. We thus suggest the promotion of other cultivated varieties of D. alata found regions neighbouring as the Mahafaly Plateau.

Robust fault detection using consistency techniques for uncertainty handling

Often practical performance of analytical redundancy for fault detection and diagnosis is decreased by uncertainties prevailing not only in the system model, but also in the measurements. In this paper, the problem of fault detection is stated as a constraint satisfaction problem over continuous domains with a big number of variables and constraints. This problem can be solved using modal interval analysis and consistency techniques. Consistency techniques are then shown to be particularly efficient to check the consistency of the analytical redundancy relations (ARRs), dealing with uncertain measurements and parameters. Through the work presented in this paper, it can be observed that consistency techniques can be used to increase the performance of a robust fault detection tool, which is based on interval arithmetic. The proposed method is illustrated using a nonlinear dynamic model of a hydraulic system

SQualTrack: A Tool for Robust Fault Detection

One of the techniques used to detect faults in dynamic systems is analytical redundancy. An important difficulty in applying this technique to real systems is dealing with the uncertainties associated with the system itself and with the measurements. In this paper, this uncertainty is taken into account by the use of intervals for the parameters of the model and for the measurements. The method that is proposed in this paper checks the consistency between the system's behavior, obtained from the measurements, and the model's behavior; if they are inconsistent, then there is a fault. The problem of detecting faults is stated as a quantified real constraint satisfaction problem, which can be solved using the modal interval analysis (MIA). MIA is used because it provides powerful tools to extend the calculations over real functions to intervals. To improve the results of the detection of the faults, the simultaneous use of several sliding time windows is proposed. The result of implementing this method is semiqualitative tracking (SQualTrack), a fault-detection tool that is robust in the sense that it does not generate false alarms, i.e., if there are false alarms, they indicate either that the interval model does not represent the system adequately or that the interval measurements do not represent the true values of the variables adequately. SQualTrack is currently being used to detect faults in real processes. Some of these applications using real data have been developed within the European project advanced decision support system for chemical/petrochemical manufacturing processes and are also described in this paper

Constraint satisfaction techniques under uncertain conditions for fault diagnosis in nonlinear dynamic systems

The speed of fault isolation is crucial for the design and reconfiguration of fault tolerant control (FTC). In this paper the fault isolation problem is stated as a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) and solved using constraint propagation techniques. The proposed method is based on constraint satisfaction techniques and uncertainty space refining of interval parameters. In comparison with other approaches based on adaptive observers, the major advantage of the presented method is that the isolation speed is fast even taking into account uncertainty in parameters, measurements and model errors and without the monotonicity assumption. In order to illustrate the proposed approach, a case study of a nonlinear dynamic system is presented

Fault diagnosis by refining the parameter uncertainty space of nonlinear dynamic systems

This paper deals with fault detection and isolation problems for nonlinear dynamic systems. Both problems are stated as constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) and solved using consistency techniques. The main contribution is the isolation method based on consistency techniques and uncertainty space refining of interval parameters. The major advantage of this method is that the isolation speed is fast even taking into account uncertainty in parameters, measurements, and model errors. Interval calculations bring independence from the assumption of monotony considered by several approaches for fault isolation which are based on observers. An application to a well known alcoholic fermentation process model is presented

Estimation of zero-sequence impedance of undergrounds cables for single-phase fault location in distribution systems with electric arc

This paper focus on the problem of locating single-phase faults in mixed distribution electric systems, with overhead lines and underground cables, using voltage and current measurements at the sending-end and sequence model of the network. Since calculating series impedance for underground cables is not as simple as in the case of overhead lines, the paper proposes a methodology to obtain an estimation of zero-sequence impedance of underground cables starting from previous single-faults occurred in the system, in which an electric arc occurred at the fault location. For this reason, the signal is previously pretreated to eliminate its peaks voltage and the analysis can be done working with a signal as close as a sinus wave as possible

Application for fault location in electrical power distribution systems

Fault location has been studied deeply for transmission lines due to its importance in power systems. Nowadays the problem of fault location on distribution systems is receiving special attention mainly because of the power quality regulations. In this context, this paper presents an application software developed in Matlabtrade that automatically calculates the location of a fault in a distribution power system, starting from voltages and currents measured at the line terminal and the model of the distribution power system data. The application is based on a N-ary tree structure, which is suitable to be used in this application due to the highly branched and the non- homogeneity nature of the distribution systems, and has been developed for single-phase, two-phase, two-phase-to-ground, and three-phase faults. The implemented application is tested by using fault data in a real electrical distribution power system

An Interval Intelligent-based Approach for Fault Detection and Modelling

Not considered in the analytical model of the plant, uncertainties always dramatically decrease the performance of the fault detection task in the practice. To cope better with this prevalent problem, in this paper we develop a methodology using Modal Interval Analysis which takes into account those uncertainties in the plant model. A fault detection method is developed based on this model which is quite robust to uncertainty and results in no false alarm. As soon as a fault is detected, an ANFIS model is trained in online to capture the major behavior of the occurred fault which can be used for fault accommodation. The simulation results understandably demonstrate the capability of the proposed method for accomplishing both tasks appropriately

Role of the cultural values as a key part in the implementing of healthy practices : exploratory research

El concepto de organización saludable cada vez toma más fuerza en el ámbito empresarial y académico, a razón de su enfoque integral y al impacto generado en distintos grupos de interés. Debido a su reciente consolidación como concepto, existe un limitado cuerpo de investigación en torno al tema. Para contribuir a la generación de conocimiento en este sentido, se desarrolló un estudio exploratorio el cual tenía como objetivo identificar la relación existente entre la implementación de prácticas saludables en las organizaciones y los valores culturales. En el estudio participaron 66 sujetos a quienes se les administró un cuestionario compuesto por nueve variables, cinco provenientes del modelo de Hofstede (1980) y cuatro más que evaluaban la implementación de prácticas organizacionales saludables. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que los valores culturales predicen la implementación de prácticas saludables.

Acciones de promoción de la salud organizacional y su relación con variables estructurales y el bienestar de los trabajadores: análisis desde un modelo de organizaciones saludables

El bienestar de los trabajadores es un imperativo categórico para las organizaciones tanto por razones éticas como por razones de competitividad. La creación de organizaciones o entornos laborales que promuevan el bienestar de los trabajadores constituye un gran reto para las organizaciones y un ámbito de estudio académico. En el presente artículo se describe la relación que existe entre un conjunto de factores organizacionales y su impacto en el bienestar de un grupo de trabajadores, expresado a través del engagement, la satisfacción con el trabajo y la ansiedad relacionada con el trabajo. Para probar las relaciones hipotetizadas se empleó un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales y los resultados obtenidos señalan que las acciones de promoción de la salud organizacional tiene un impacto significativo en los valores culturales y en la adopción de prácticas organizacionales