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Effects Analysis (effects + analysis)
Selected AbstractsAn alternative evaluation of FMEA: Fuzzy ART algorithmQUALITY AND RELIABILITY ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL, Issue 6 2009en Ayd, n Keskin Abstract Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a technique used in the manufacturing industry to improve production quality and productivity. It is a method that evaluates possible failures in the system, design, process or service. It aims to continuously improve and decrease these kinds of failure modes. Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) is one of the learning algorithms without consultants, which are developed for clustering problems in artificial neural networks. In the FMEA method, every failure mode in the system is analyzed according to severity, occurrence and detection. Then, risk priority number (RPN) is acquired by multiplication of these three factors and the necessary failures are improved with respect to the determined threshold value. In addition, there exist many shortcomings of the traditional FMEA method, which affect its efficiency and thus limit its realization. To respond to these difficulties, this study introduces the method named Fuzzy Adaptive Resonance Theory (Fuzzy ART), one of the ART networks, to evaluate RPN in FMEA. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Cortical mechanisms of smooth pursuit eye movements with target blanking.EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, Issue 5 2004An fMRI study Abstract Smooth pursuit eye movements are evoked by retinal image motion of visible moving objects and can also be driven by the internal representation of a target due to extraretinal mechanisms (e.g. efference copy). To delineate the corresponding neuronal correlates, functional magnetic resonance imaging at 1.5 T was applied during smooth pursuit at 10 °/s with continuous target presentation and target blanking for 1 s to 16 right-handed healthy males. Eye movements were assessed during scanning sessions by infra-red reflection oculography. Smooth pursuit performance was optimal when the target was visible but decreased to a residual velocity of about 30% of the velocity observed during continuous target presentation. Random effects analysis of the imaging data yielded an activation pattern for smooth pursuit in the absence of a visual target (in contrast to continuous target presentation) which included a number of cortical areas in which extraretinal information is available such as the frontal eye field, the superior parietal lobe, the anterior and the posterior intraparietal sulcus and the premotor cortex, and also the supplementary and the presupplementary eye field, the supramarginal gyrus, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, cerebellar areas and the basal ganglia. We suggest that cortical mechanisms such as prediction, visuo-spatial attention and transformation, multimodal visuomotor control and working memory are of special importance for maintaining smooth pursuit eye movements in the absence of a visible target. [source] Health service costs in Europe: cost and reimbursement of primary hip replacement in nine countriesHEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue S1 2008Tom Stargardt Abstract This paper assesses variations in the cost of primary hip replacement between and within nine member states of the European Union (EU). It also compares the cost of service with public-payer reimbursements. To do so, data on cost and reimbursement were surveyed at the micro-level in 42 hospitals in Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. The total cost of treatment ranged from ,1290 (Hungary) to ,8739 (The Netherlands), with a mean cost of ,5043 (STD±,2071). The main cost drivers were found to be implants (34% of total cost on average) and ward costs (20.9% of total cost on average). A one-way random effects analysis of variance model indicated that 74.0% of variation was between and only 26% of variation was within countries. In a two-level random-intercept regression model, purchasing-power parities explained 79.4% of the explainable between-country variation, while the percentage of uncemented implants used and the number of beds explained 12.1 and 1.6% of explainable within-country variation, respectively. The large differences in cost and reimbursement between Poland, Hungary, and the other EU member states shows that primary total hip replacement is a highly relevant case for cross-border care. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Perspectives on ecological risk assessment of chiral compoundsINTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2009Jacob K Stanley Abstract Enantiomers of chiral contaminants can significantly differ in environmental fate as well as in effects. Despite this fact, such differences are often ignored in regulation and in practice, injecting uncertainty into the estimation of risk of chiral compounds. We review the unique challenges posed by stereochemistry to the ecological risk assessment of chiral contaminants and existing regulatory guidance for chiral pharmaceuticals and pesticides in the United States. We identify the advantages of obtaining data on fate and effects of each individual enantiomer of chiral contaminants that are either distributed as or may end up as enantiomer mixtures in the environment due to enantiomerization. Because enantiomers of the same compound are highly likely to coexist in the environment with each other and can result in nonadditive effects, we recommend treatment of enantiomers as components of a mixture using widely accepted mixture models from achiral risk assessment. We further propose the enantiomer hazard ratio for retrospectively characterizing relative enantiomer risk and examine uncertainty factor magnitudes for effects analysis. [source] The integration of ecological risk assessment and structured decision making into watershed managementINTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2007Dan W Ohlson Abstract Watershed management processes continue to call for more science and improved decision making that take into account the full range of stakeholder perspectives. Increasingly, the core principles of ecological risk assessment (i.e., the development and use of assessment endpoints and conceptual models, conducting exposure and effects analysis) are being incorporated and adapted in innovative ways to meet the call for more science. Similarly, innovative approaches to adapting decision analysis tools and methods for incorporating stakeholder concerns in complex natural resource management decisions are being increasingly applied. Here, we present an example of the integration of ecological risk assessment with decision analysis in the development of a watershed management plan for the Greater Vancouver Water District in British Columbia, Canada. Assessment endpoints were developed, ecological inventory data were collected, and watershed models were developed to characterize the existing and future condition of 3 watersheds in terms of the potential risks to water quality. Stressors to water quality include sedimentation processes (landslides, streambank erosion) and forest disturbance (wildfire, major insect or disease outbreak). Three landscape-level risk management alternatives were developed to reflect different degrees of management intervention. Each alternative was evaluated under different scenarios and analyzed by explicitly examining value-based trade-offs among water quality, environmental, financial, and social endpoints. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how the integration of ecological risk assessment and decision analysis approaches can support decision makers in watershed management. [source] Cognitive-behavioral treatment for chronic nightmares in trauma-exposed persons: assessing physiological reactions to nightmare-related fearJOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2010Jamie L. Rhudy Abstract Cognitive-behavioral treatments (CBTs) that target nightmares are efficacious for ameliorating self-reported sleep problems and psychological distress. However, it is important to determine whether these treatments influence objective markers of nightmare-related fear, because fear and concomitant physiological responses could promote nightmare chronicity and sleep disturbance. This randomized, controlled study (N=40) assessed physiological (skin conductance, heart rate, facial electromyogram) and subjective (displeasure, fear, anger, sadness, arousal) reactions to personally relevant nightmare imagery intended to evoke nightmare-related fear. Physiological assessments were conducted at pretreatment as well as 1-week, 3-months, and 6-months posttreatment. Results of mixed effects analysis of variance models suggested treatment reduced physiological and subjective reactions to nightmare imagery, gains that were generally maintained at the 6-month follow-up. Potential implications are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 66: 1,18, 2010. [source] A framework for capturing and analyzing the failures due to system/component interactionsQUALITY AND RELIABILITY ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2008Bimal P. Nepal Abstract To keep up with the speed of globalization and growing customer demands for more technology-oriented products, modern systems are becoming increasingly more complex. This complexity gives rise to unpredictable failure patterns. While there are a number of well-established failure analysis (physics-of-failure) models for individual components, these models do not hold good for complex systems as their failure behaviors may be totally different. Failure analysis of individual components does consider the environmental interactions but is unable to capture the system interaction effects on failure behavior. These models are based on the assumption of independent failure mechanisms. Dependency relationships and interactions of components in a complex system might give rise to some new types of failures that are not considered during the individual failure analysis of that component. This paper presents a general framework for failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) to capture and analyze component interaction failures. The advantage of the proposed methodology is that it identifies and analyzes the system failure modes due to the interaction between the components. An example is presented to demonstrate the application of the proposed framework for a specific product architecture (PA) that captures interaction failures between different modules. However, the proposed framework is generic and can also be used in other types of PA. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A very unlevel playing field indeedBIOFUELS, BIOPRODUCTS AND BIOREFINING, Issue 3 2009Bruce E. Dale Editor-in-Chief Indirect effects analysis applied selectively against biofuels is intellectually bankrupt. © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd [source] | ||||||||||