On the use of fuzzy inference techniques in assessment models : part II : industrial applications

In this paper, we study the applicability of the monotone output property and the output resolution property in fuzzy assessment models to two industrial Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) problems. First, the effectiveness of the monotone output property in a single-input fuzzy assessment model is demonstrated with a proposed fuzzy occurrence model. Then, the usefulness of the two properties to a multi-input fuzzy assessment model, i.e., the Bowles fuzzy Risk Priority Number (RPN) model, is assessed. The experimental results indicate that both the fuzzy occurrence model and Bowles fuzzy RPN model are able to fulfill the monotone output property, with the derived conditions (in Part I) satisfied. In addition, the proposed rule refinement technique is able to improve the output resolution property of the Bowles fuzzy RPN model.

Georg Simmel, the stranger and the sociology of knowledge

The Simmelian stranger has been extensively studied and critiqued. This paper suggests that although this body of literature has contributed to a conceptual refinement of the category, its analysis confines itself to Simmel’s seminal essay on the stranger. A broader and deeper analysis of Simmel’s stranger is possible when we contextualise it within Simmel’s broader intellectual project and link it to his conception of historical knowledge, 10 his reflections on the third element, the cosmopolitan aesthetic sensibility and the genius. It is suggested that the affinities between the stranger and other ideas within his work allow us to ponder the contribution that Simmel can make to the debate on standpoint epistemologies.

Evaluation of an alcohol intervention training program for nurses in rural Australia

Aim: This paper reports on the development, implementation and evaluation of the Alcohol Intervention Training Program (AITP) designed to enhance nurses’ capacity to work with farming men and women who misuse alcohol.

Background: In rural and regional areas where alcohol-related behaviours and problems are relatively elevated, nurses may be the key health professionals dealing with individuals who misuse alcohol. However, they are often ill-equipped to do this, have low confidence in their ability to do so, and perceive numerous barriers. Training is required for these nurses.

Methods: We developed the AITP to enhance nurses’ capacity to work with people with alcohol-related problems. The data were collected during 2010. An intervention group of 15 rural nurses completed the AITP. Nurses’ perceived barriers, attitudes, and perceived performance in working with clients with alcohol problems, and the frequency of engaging with this client group were evaluated. Scores on these measures were compared to those of a control group of 17 nurses’ pre-treatment, post-treatment and at 3-month follow-up.

Results: Participation in the AITP resulted in initial improvements in attitudes to working with alcohol problems, but no change in perceived barriers to doing so. The level of engagement with clients having alcohol-related problems increased, as did perceptions of work performance.

Conclusion: The AITP enhances the ability of rural nurses to address the alcohol and associated health issues of clients in rural and regional areas. However, the program needs refinement and further evaluation.

Contact zones, third spaces, and the act of interpretation

The conceptual understanding of museums as ‘contact zones’ has been widely appropriated in the museum literature and beyond. But the discussion lacks empirical insights into actual experiences: What does ‘contact’ mean for the person experiencing it? How is it lived, negotiated and contested? Drawing on a long-term narrative study of global visitors to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), this paper offers an empirical interrogation and theoretical refinement of the ‘contact zone’. It moves beyond the more usual focus on museological production by shedding light on the meanings made by museum visitors. This paper augments current normative and theoretical approaches with an ethnographic study of processes of intercultural mediation during cross-cultural encounters, translation and dialogue. This is done through a hermeneutic analysis of visitors’ acts of interpretation that facilitates an understanding of ‘cultural action’ in ‘contact zones’ as an interpretive ontological endeavour of the shifting Self within a pluralist cosmopolitan space.

A simple-to-use calculator for determining the total solar heat gain of a glazing system

Architects and designers could readily use a quick and easy tool to determine the solar heat gains of their selected glazing systems for particular orientations, tilts and climate data. Speedy results under variable solar angles and degree of irradiance would be welcomed by most. Furthermore, a newly proposed program should utilise the outputs of existing glazing tools and their standard information, such as the use of U-values and Solar Heat Gain Coefficients (SHGC’s) as generated for numerous glazing configurations by the well-known program WINDOW 6.0 (LBNL, 2001). The results of this tool provide interior glass surface temperature and transmitted solar radiation which link into comfort analysis inputs required by the ASHRAE Thermal Comfort Tool –V2 (ASHRAE, 2011). This tool is a simple-to-use calculator providing the total solar heat gain of a glazing system exposed to various angles of solar incidence. Given basic climate (solar) data, as well as the orientation of the glazing under consideration the solar heat gain can be calculated. The calculation incorporates the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient function produced for the glazing system under various angles of solar incidence WINDOW 6.0 (LBNL, 2001). The significance of this work rests in providing an orientation-based heat transfer calculator through an easy-to-use tool (using Microsoft EXCEL) for user inputs of climate and Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (WINDOW-6) data. We address the factors to be considered such as solar position and the incident angles to the horizontal and the window surface, and the fact that the solar heat gain coefficient is a function of the angle of incidence. We also discuss the effect of the diffuse components of radiation from the sky and those from ground surface reflection, which require refinement of the calculation methods. The calculator is implemented in an Excel workbook allowing the user to input a dataset and immediately produce the resulting solar gain. We compare this calculated total solar heat gain with measurements from a test facility described elsewhere in this conference (Luther et.al., 2012).

Transition to motherhood in type 1 diabetes : design of the pregnancy and postnatal well-being in transition questionnaires

Background : Life transitions are associated with high levels of stress affecting health behaviours among people with Type 1 diabetes. Transition to motherhood is a major transition with potential complications accelerated by pregnancy with risks of adverse childbirth outcomes and added anxiety and worries about pregnancy outcomes. Further, preparing and going through pregnancy requires vigilant attention to a diabetes management regimen and detailed planning of everyday activities with added stress on women. Psychological and social well-being during and after pregnancy are integral for good pregnancy outcomes for both mother and baby. The aim of this study is to establish the face and content validity of two novel measures assessing the well-being of women with type 1 diabetes in their transition to motherhood, 1) during pregnancy and 2) during the postnatal period.

Methods : The approach to the development of the Pregnancy and Postnatal Well-being in T1DM Transition questionnaires was based on a four-stage pre-testing process; systematic overview of literature, items development, piloting testing of questionnaire and refinement of questionnaire. The questionnaire was reviewed at every stage by expert clinicians, researchers and representatives from consumer groups. The cognitive debriefing approach confirmed relevance of issues and identified additional items.

Results : The literature review and interviews identified three main areas impacting on the women’s postnatal self-management; (1) psychological well-being; (2) social environment, (3) physical (maternal and fetal) well-being. The cognitive debriefing in pilot testing of the questionnaire identified that immediate postnatal period was difficult, particularly when the women were breastfeeding and felt depressed.

Conclusions : The questionnaires fill an important gap by systematically assessing the psychosocial needs of women with type 1 diabetes during pregnancy and in the immediate postnatal period. The questionnaires can be used in larger data collection to establish psychometric properties. The questionnaires potentially play a key role in prospective research to determine the self-management and psychological needs of women with type 1 diabetes transitioning to motherhood and to evaluate health education interventions.

Multiscale modelling of stress and strain partitioning in high strength dual phase steels

Multiscale modelling of stress and strain partitioning in DP steel was carried out using both realistic microstructure-based RVE models as well as stochastic microstructures generated by Monte Carlo method. The stochastic microstructure models were shown to resemble that of realistic microstructures, enabling research on the specific aspects of the microstructure that could be difficult to control and study during experimental work. One such feature of the realistic microstructures studied in this work was the grain size and microstructure morphology. The microstructures were generated with varying average grain sizes while all other parameters, such as boundary conditions, material properties and volume fractions of martensite and ferrite were kept constant. It is found that the effect of grain size is much more pronounced during the initial localisation of the plastic deformation at and around the interface of the phases. In addition, the decrease in ductility and increase in strength of the DP steels are directly related to the refinement of grain sizes of each phase and the stress-strain partitioning in between them.

Carbon dioxide corrosion inhibition : an overview of recent research on new inhibitor development

Since the introduction of inhibitors to the oil and gas industry in the 1940’s, corrosion inhibition has played a key role in carbon dioxide (CO2) corrosion control. Major inhibitor discoveries occurred from the late 1940's to the late 1960's, followed by the refinement of formulations and the development of improved application methods. Over the past two to three decades, although some new derivatives of existing inhibitors such as amide, amine and imidazoline have been reported, there have been few if any discoveries of new CO2 corrosion inhibitors. In recent years, the development of environmentally friendly inhibitors and the inhibition of localised corrosion have become driving forces behind new advances in corrosion inhibitor technology. Recently a rare earth metal organic compound, lanthanum 4-hydroxy cinnamate has been found to be an efficient corrosion inhibitor for mild steel in CO2 containing aqueous media. A resorcinarene acid has been found to provide effective localised corrosion inhibition by promoting a random distribution of insignificant anodic currents. The advent of advanced scanning probe techniques and an electrochemical integrated multi-electrode array have facilitated the discovery of corrosion inhibitors. This paper provides a brief overview of recent progress in this field.

Influence of surface mechanical attrition treatment attrition media on the surface contamination and corrosion of magnesium

Surface mechanical attrition treatment (SMAT) is a mechanical peening process used to generate ultrafine grain surfaces on a metal. SMAT was carried out on pure magnesium using different attrition media (zirconia [ZiO2], alumina [Al2O3], and steel balls) to observe the effect on microstructure, surface residual stress, surface composition, and corrosion. Surface contamination from SMAT was characterized using glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy (GDOES). The SMAT process produced a refined grain structure on the surface of Mg but resulted in a region of elemental contamination extending ~10 μm into the substrate, regardless of the media used. Consequently, SMAT-treated surfaces showed an increased corrosion rate compared to untreated Mg, primarily through increased cathodic kinetics. This study highlights the issue of contamination resulting from the SMAT process, which is a penalty that accompanies the significant grain refinement of the surface produced by SMAT. This must be considered if attempting to exploit grain refinement for improving corrosion resistance.

A representation construction approach

In this chapter we lay out the principles of an approach to teaching and learning science based on student generation, negotiation and refinement of representations in a guided inquiry process. We first tell the story of how we developed this perspective, building on Chapters 1 and 2, and the research approach that led to these principles. The principles of the representation construction approach are described, then exemplified using detailed analysis of parts of classroom learning sequences on force, and substances. We then give examples of teacher responses and beliefs, and finally provide evidence of student conceptual, and meta-representational learning, from this approach.

Automatic face recognition for film character retrieval in feature-length films

The objective of this work is to recognize all the frontal faces of a character in the closed world of a movie or situation comedy, given a small number of query faces. This is challenging because faces in a feature-length film are relatively uncontrolled with a wide variability of scale, pose, illumination, and expressions, and also may be partially occluded. We develop a recognition method based on a cascade of processing steps that normalize for the effects of the changing imaging environment. In particular there are three areas of novelty: (i) we suppress the background surrounding the face, enabling the maximum area of the face to be retained for recognition rather than a subset; (ii) we include a pose refinement step to optimize the registration between the test image and face exemplar; and (iii) we use robust distance to a sub-space to allow for partial occlusion and expression change. The method is applied and evaluated on several feature length films. It is demonstrated that high recall rates (over 92%) can be achieved whilst maintaining good precision (over 93%).

An illumination invariant face recognition system for access control using video

Illumination and pose invariance are the most challenging aspects of face recognition. In this paper we describe a fully automatic face recognition system that uses video information to achieve illumination and pose robustness. In the proposed method, highly nonlinear manifolds of face motion are approximated using three Gaussian pose clusters. Pose robustness is achieved by comparing the corresponding pose clusters and probabilistically combining the results to derive a measure of similarity between two manifolds. Illumination is normalized on a per-pose basis. Region-based gamma intensity correction is used to correct for coarse illumination changes, while further refinement is achieved by combining a learnt linear manifold of illumination variation with constraints on face pattern distribution, derived from video. Comparative experimental evaluation is presented and the proposed method is shown to greatly outperform state-of-the-art algorithms. Consistent recognition rates of 94-100% are achieved across dramatic changes in illumination.

A hazardous substance exposure prevention rating method for intervention needs assessment and effectiveness evaluation: the small business exposure index

Aims This paper describes the refinement and adaptation to small business of a previously developed method for systematically prioritizing needs for intervention on hazardous substance exposures in manufacturing worksites, and evaluating intervention effectiveness. Methods We developed a checklist containing six unique sets of yes/no variables organized in a 2 × 3 matrix of exposure potential versus exposure protection at three levels corresponding to a simplified hierarchy of controls: materials, processes, and human interface. Each of the six sets of indicator variables was reduced to a high/moderate/low rating. Ratings from the matrix were then combined to generate an exposure prevention 'Small Business Exposure Index' (SBEI) Summary score for each area. Reflecting the hierarchy of controls, material factors were weighted highest, followed by process, and then human interface. The checklist administered by an industrial hygienist during walk-through inspection (N = 149 manufacturing processes/areas in 25 small to medium-sized manufacturing worksites). One area or process per manufacturing department was assessed and rated. A second hygienist independently assessed 36 areas to evaluate inter-rater reliability. Results The SBEI Summary scores indicated that exposures were well controlled in the majority of areas assessed (58% with rating of 1 or 2 on a 6-point scale), that there was some room for improvement in roughly one-third of areas (31% of areas rated 3 or 4), and that roughly 10% of the areas assessed were urgently in need of intervention (rated as 5 or 6). Inter-rater reliability of EP ratings was good to excellent (e.g., for SBEI Summary scores, weighted kappa = 0.73, 95% CI 0.52–0.93). Conclusion The SBEI exposure prevention rating method is suitable for use in small/medium enterprises, has good discriminatory power and reliability, offers an inexpensive method for intervention needs assessment and effectiveness evaluation, and complements quantitative exposure assessment with an upstream prevention focus.