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Normal Operations (normal + operations)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	33%

Selected Abstracts

Hybrid Control of Smart Structures Using a Novel Wavelet-Based Algorithm

COMPUTER-AIDED CIVIL AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING, Issue 1 2005
Hongjin Kim
A new hybrid control system is presented through judicious combination of a passive supplementary damping system with a semi-active TLCD system. The new model utilizes the advantages of both passive and semi-active control systems, thereby improving the overall performance, reliability, and operability of the control system during normal operations as well as a power or computer failure. The robust wavelet-hybrid feedback least mean square (LMS) control algorithm developed recently by the authors is used to find optimal values of the control parameters. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed hybrid damper-TLCD system in reducing the vibrations under various seismic excitations are evaluated through numerical simulations performed for an eight-story frame using three different simulated earthquake ground accelerations. It is found that the new model is effective in significantly reducing the response of the structure under various seismic excitations. [source]

Global Stakeholders: corporate accountability and investor engagement

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2004
Duncan McLaren
In this age of transnational capitalism most victims of corporate malpractice have no means to hold the wrongdoers to account , especially those whose lives are blighted day-in, day-out by the "normal" operations of companies within the letter of the law. This paper argues that corporate social and environmental abuses are rooted in a lack of accountability of corporations to their stakeholders. It explores how governance mechanisms such as corporate engagement by "socially responsible" investors could enhance stakeholder accountability. It identifies and contrasts two paradigms in socially responsible investment engagement, and relates them to voluntary and regulatory responses to corporate abuses. It concludes that the development of standards for stakeholder-oriented engagement and governance could help stimulate effective regulatory measures to protect stakeholder interests. [source]

Calibration and deployment of custom-designed bioreporters for protecting biological remediation consortia from toxic shock

ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY, Issue 2 2005
Siouxsie Wiles
Summary We have previously described the development of a panel of site-specific lux -based bioreporters from an industrial wastewater treatment system remediating coking effluents. The Pseudomonad strains carry a stable chromosomal copy of the luxCDABE operon from Photorhabdus luminescens and display proportional responses in bioluminescence decay with increasing phenol concentration up to 800 mg l,1. In this work we describe their deployment to provide a strategic sensing network for protecting bacterial communities involved in the biological breakdown of coking effluents. This evaluation demonstrated the utility of strategic placement of reporters around heavy industry treatment systems and the reliability of the reporter strains under normal operational conditions. Mono-phenol or total phenolic variation within the treatment system accounted for >,65,80% of the luminescence response. The reporters exhibited stable luminescence output during normal operations with maximum standard deviations of luminescence over time of c. 5,15% depending on the treatment compartment. Furthermore, deployment of the bioreporters over a 5-month period allowed the determination of an operational range (OR) for each reporter for effluent samples from each compartment. The OR allowed a convenient measure of toxicity effects between treatment compartments and accurately reflected a specific pollution event occurring within compartments of the treatment system. This work demonstrates the utility of genetic modification to provide ecologically relevant bioreporters, extends the sensing capabilities currently obtained through marine derived biosensors and significantly enhances the potential for in situ deployment of reporting agents. [source]

The Boys from Bothaville, or the Rise and Fall of King Maize: A South African Story

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 4 2004
HENRY BERNSTEIN
This paper tells the story, for the first time, of a maverick maize farmers' association in South Africa during the period of apartheid. NAMPO (National Maize Producers' Organization), that grew out of SAMPI (South African Maize Producers' Institute), ultimately achieved a unique, if short-lived, breach in the normal operations of ,organized agriculture': a set of relations and practices that bound together white farmers, the National Party and the state. The paper provides an account of SAMPI/NAMPO's project of ,King Maize' and an explanation of its fall after a brief period of victory from 1981 to 1985. This explanation draws on broader patterns of agrarian change in contemporary capitalism combined with the fracturing of the original agrarian bloc of apartheid in the 1980s, marking the end of a ,second moment' of South Africa's version of a Prussian path of capitalist development. [source]

Bridging Research and Practice: The Challenge of ,Normal Operations' Studies

JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2002
Mathile Bourrier
The article will present some possible explanations of the difficulty to bridge research and practice in the domain of risk management. A first block of reasons has to do with the very content of the analyses themselves. Of great importance is also the time chosen for them to be carried out. The second argument will bring to the foreground the difficulty for a lot of fruitful research to permeate into management spheres. One way to reconcile experts, scholars and decision makers may come from new attention devoted to organisational design and formal structures. This calls for the study of normal operations as opposed to relying too exclusively on accident cases and crisis situations. We believe that this perspective can help us improve our level of understanding of complex organisations, because it focuses on the duality of organisational life: the dark side and the bright side, always tightly coupled. [source]

Nonstationary fault detection and diagnosis for multimode processes

AICHE JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010
Jialin Liu
Abstract Fault isolation based on data-driven approaches usually assume the abnormal event data will be formed into a new operating region, measuring the differences between normal and faulty states to identify the faulty variables. In practice, operators intervene in processes when they are aware of abnormalities occurring. The process behavior is nonstationary, whereas the operators are trying to bring it back to normal states. Therefore, the faulty variables have to be located in the first place when the process leaves its normal operating regions. For an industrial process, multiple normal operations are common. On the basis of the assumption that the operating data follow a Gaussian distribution within an operating region, the Gaussian mixture model is employed to extract a series of operating modes from the historical process data. The local statistic T2 and its normalized contribution chart have been derived for detecting abnormalities early and isolating faulty variables in this article. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2010 [source]