Optimizing Postdisaster Reconstruction Planning for Damaged Transportation Networks

The limited availability of reconstruction resources is one of the main challenges that often confront postdisaster recovery of damaged transportation networks. This requires an effective and efficient deployment and utilization of these limited resources in order to minimize both the performance loss of the damaged transportation network and the reconstruction costs. This paper presents the development of a robust model for planning postdisaster reconstruction efforts that is capable of: (1) optimizing the allocation of limited reconstruction resources to competing recovery projects; (2) assessing and quantifying the overall functional loss of damaged transportation networks during the recovery efforts; (3) evaluating the impact of limited availability of resources on the reconstruction costs; and (4) minimizing the performance loss of transportation networks and reconstruction costs. The model utilizes the user equilibrium algorithm to enable the assessment of the transportation network performance losses and a multiobjective genetic algorithm to enable the generation of optimal tradeoffs between the two recovery planning objectives. An application example is analyzed to demonstrate the use and capabilities of the recovery planning model.     

Normative issues in cost effectiveness analysis

Cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) and cost-utility analysis are increasingly used to compare competing uses for limited health care resources, informing policy decisions at governmental, payer, and clinical levels of the health system. The authors discuss various methodologic choices in CEA and the normative (value) assumptions and implications of those choices. The treatment of adult onset diabetes is used as a simplified case example to illustrate the choice of perspective, cost inclusion and exclusion, benefit measurement and aggregation, and how these and other aspects of CEA can implicitly influence policy decisions with consequences for individuals and groups. CEA can be a valuable source of information, but it is a poor "technologic fix" for the thorny problem of allocating limited health care resources.     

Applying management principles to the occupational health unit

This paper presents the occupational health unit as a subsystem competing with other subsystems in the organization for limited resources. By applying management principles the nurse can design a program to show management its results in dollar terms. This will enable the health unit to compete more favorably with the other subsystems for limited resources. An example of how this approach can be applied to the problem of absenteeism is presented.     

The diffusion of new hospital technologies in the United States

Increases in the real resources used in hospital care have been an important cause behind rising hospital costs in the United States. Many of these resources have taken the form of new hospital technologies, and this paper begins by reviewing the trends in adoption of new hospital technologies over the years 1950-1974. The resource requirements, costs , and to the extent possible the patient benefits, of two of these technologies are then discussed in more detail: intensive care, a widespread facility with many variations, has been a major contributor to hospital costs; radiotherapy has been characterized by a succession of competing technologies. Regulatory efforts such as certificiate-of-need reviews would be more effective if they viewed hospitals as flexible collections of such technologies-with the costs and patient benefits of each to be weighed separately-rather than primarily in terms of numbers of beds. A national center to collect information on the separate technological functions of hospitals and make it available to interested groups would make a useful contribution to hospital regulation.     

Resource Sharing in Linear Construction

In the method developed, the conventional method of allocating resources are not used. Instead, resource‐hour units are employed. This enables to allocate resources precisely and the analysis becomes realistic unlike any other method. The method uses linear programming to determine the maximum rate of construction and the resource requirements in various activities. Sharing of resources which are available in limited quantities and balanced trades are all catered for in this development. The economics of using additional resources, working overtime and the optimal usage of all resources are the more important aspects of this paper. The step by step process of introducing additional resources and overtime ease the decision making process considerably. The method also helps to determine whether it is more economical to invest in additional resources or introduce work on overtime. If there is no proper method to compute resource requirements, a considerable waste in resource utilization would result. If resources are under utilized, even by a very small quantity, a considerably large delay of time would incur.     

Flotation Kinetics

Abstract

The physical variables that influence the rate of flotation are examined. The probabilistic model of flotation is used to establish the effect of the particle si2e and density, bubble size and agitation on the rate of flotation

In quiescent flotation, it appears that the flotation rate is limited by the particle-bubble collision and subsequent attachment of the particle to the bubble. For fine (<20 μm) or low density particles the remedy for low recovery rates would be to either use small bubbles of the order of 100 μm, or to use moderate to high agitation with larger bubbles

In the usual turbulent conditions, the limit is set by the destruction of the bubble-particle aggregates. Broadly speaking, the same parameters favour both attachment and detachment so that the ultimate flotation rate is a compromise between these two competing mechanisms

The bounds which define the best agitation level and bubble size to use are strong functions of the particle size and density. This results in conflicting requirements for the optimum flotation of the fine and the coarse particles. Best conditions for the flotation of each are indicated.     

科学合理配煤 降低配煤成本

我国煤炭资源丰富,但优质炼焦煤资源有限,科学合理配煤不仅是保证焦炭质量和满足焦炉生产要求的基本措施,也是合理利用煤炭资源、扩大炼焦煤资源、节约优质炼焦煤、降低配煤成本的有效途径.     

Food cravings consume limited cognitive resources.

Using Tiffany's (1990) cognitive model of drug use and craving as a theoretical basis, the present experiments investigated whether cravings for food expend limited cognitive resources. Cognitive performance was assessed by simple reaction time (Experiment 1) and an established measure of working memory capacity, the operation span task (Experiment 2). In each experiment, female undergraduate students were randomly assigned to a craving or control condition. Participants in the craving condition abstained from eating chocolate for 24 hours prior to testing and performed the cognitive task in the presence of chocolate, a manipulation that successfully elicited chocolate cravings. In both experiments, there was no main effect of craving condition on cognition, but there was a significant interaction between condition and trait chocolate craving. In support of Tiffany's model, our results show that habitual food cravers direct limited cognitive resources to craving-related cues, at the cost of competing cognitive demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stimulus competition between a discrete cue and a training context: Cue competition does not result from the division of a limited resource.

Several associative learning theories explain cue competition as resulting from the division of a limited resource among competing cues. This leads to an assumption that behavioral control by 2 cues competing with each other should always reflect a tradeoff, resulting in apparent conservation of total reinforcer value across all competing cues. This assumption was tested in 3 conditioned lick suppression experiments with rats, investigating the effects of changing the conditioned stimulus (CS) duration (Experiment 1), administering pretraining exposures to the CS (Experiment 2), and presenting nonreinforced CSs during the intertrial interval (Experiment 3) on Pavlovian conditioned responding to both the CS and the conditioning context. Fear conditioned to the context and to the CS decreased when the CS was of longer duration, massively preexposed before being paired with the reinforcer, or presented alone during the intertrial interval. These observations are problematic for the theories that explain cue competition as the division of a limited resource and suggest that the total reinforcer value across competing cues is not always fixed for a given reinforcer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characterizing attentional resources.

Other studies have found that it is easier to divide attention when messages can be discriminated on the basis of stimulus and response features. The present study extended these results and explored whether dual-task performance is a function of similarity of central processing and, more specifically, the semantic similarity of the competing messages. In a dichotic listening task, subjects detected targets in concurrent messages that either differed semantically and required different central processing (the mixed condition) or were semantically similar and required similar central processing (the same condition). Three criteria are developed to determine whether the tasks in the mixed condition call upon distinct resources. The results are discussed in terms of three metaphors for resources: fuel, structure, and skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nutrition and shock in pediatric patients

Critically ill patients, including those in shock, often present with significant metabolic derangement in protein and energy metabolism characterized by: increased protein breakdown which is not suppressed by protein or energy intake; reprioritization of protein synthesis with increased synthesis of acute-phase proteins; decreased synthesis of structural proteins; and high protein turnover. In addition, there is also glucose and lipid intolerance. Adequate nutritional and metabolic support of the critically ill child under these conditions is a challenging endeavor. Traditionally, critically ill children have received nutritional requirements based on those of healthy children despite the fact that the critically ill population is physiologically and metabolically different. Furthermore, nutritional requirements in healthy children are largely based on limited data. With emerging knowledge of non-nutritional functions of nutrients, adequacy of nutritional support and requirements will eventually depend on the goals to be achieved: nutritional, physiologic, and/or pharmacologic.     

Feelings don't come easy: Studies on the effortful nature of feelings.

We propose that experience of emotion is a mental phenomenon, which requires resources. This hypothesis implies that a concurrent cognitive load diminishes the intensity of feeling since the 2 activities are competing for the same resources. Two sets of experiments tested this hypothesis. The first line of experiments (Experiments 1–4) examined the intensity of participants' feelings as they performed a secondary (backward counting) task. The results showed that the intensity of both negative and positive feelings diminished under a cognitive load and that this attenuation of feeling was not mediated by either distraction from external stimuli or demand characteristics. In the second set of experiments (Experiments 5–6), load was created by asking the participants to focus on the feelings. Even in these circumstances, the participants who were under load reported a lower intensity of feeling than those who were not under load. We explain these findings in terms of a resource-dependent model of emotional experience. Possible implications of our findings for a broader class of phenomenological experiences are succinctly discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analysis of the renal transplant waiting list: application of a parametric competing risk method

BACKGROUND: The strong competition for scarce renal graft resources jeopardizes an individual patient's chances of a transplantation within a reasonable time scale. This study was undertaken to quantify these chances of receiving a transplant. METHODS: All patients registered for their first renal allograft between January 1980 and December 1993 (n=40,636) in Eurotransplant were selected. The influence of patient characteristics, such as age, HLA phenotype frequency, % panel-reactive antibodies, period of registration, and ABO blood group, on the waiting list outflow was studied. The competing risk method was applied, and Poisson models were built to estimate the risk factor effects. RESULTS: The chance of transplantation within 10 years after registration was overestimated by Kaplan-Meier (84%); using the competing risk method it was only 74%. The predicted chance for death on the waiting list was overestimated by 33% (45% Kaplan-Meier vs. 12% competing risk). A time-varying covariate effect on the chances of waiting list outflow was observed. Favorable factors for quick transplantation, such as blood group AB or a common HLA phenotype, were no longer seen to be driving forces for transplantation once 5 to 6 years of waiting time had been accrued. CONCLUSION: When multiple outcomes exist, Kaplan-Meier estimates should not be interpreted as survival rates, while competing risk estimates yield appropriate chances. A significantly decaying effect of the usual allocation parameters is observed with ongoing waiting time. This phenomenon is the statistical basis for redesigning allocation strategies. Organ exchange algorithms should have the potential to adapt to these time-varying effects.     

中国勘探钻行业发展现状与问题

在获取地下资源信息和地质勘探事业发展中钻机钻探是最能真实获得地下信息与资源的。伴随我国经济的高速发展、人民物质生活水平的不断提高,对地下资源开采的要求也越来越高。为了提高经济获取更多的地下资源而盲目开采,钻探施工安全置于一旁钻机生产与素质跟不上,出现了管理成本等诸多问题,制约了钻机发展,国家迫切需要一批高精尖的综合性人才效力钻探事业发展。针对这些要求对钻机上出现的问题和现状进行了一下总结。     

The Role of Σ9 Boundaries in Grain Boundary Engineering

In a grain-boundary-engineered (GBE) microstructure, Σ9 boundaries are the second most abundant boundary type. This article presents data showing that, in GBE copper, most Σ9s were special. Σ9 boundaries are also a geometrically necessary component of a GBE microstructure. It is suggested that there are competing requirements for Σ9s; during iterative GBE processing, they are required to be mobile, whereas afterward, it is desirable that they are special boundaries.     

Some effects of situational threat on group behavior.

It was found that situational threat affected behavior in three main areas of functioning: interpersonal relations, utilization of actors' and other group members' resources, and effectiveness of the group. An attempt was made to analyze and interpret these results within the framework of a competing response theory of anxiety. 20 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Logistic Constraints in Developing Dedicated Large-Scale Bioenergy Systems in the Southeastern United States

Multiple biomass-for-energy feedstock resources have been proposed and many or all of these may ultimately be needed. This paper focuses on perennial lignocellulosic feedstocks. In the United States, Perlack and colleagues estimated that by 2050 1.3 billion Mg of biomass could be sustainably harvested annually. However, over half of the herbaceous biomass in their estimate was derived from crop residues, a source that presents numerous concerns. Availability of land resources and the economic prospects for diverting land from food to energy production is further clouded by unknown variables such as the impact of increased human populations and higher living standards. Much effort is currently being given to corn and other starch or grain crops that can be readily converted to ethanol. Although these crops have served to jumpstart the fuel ethanol industry, they have much less potential to meet the growing demand, much greater potential for negative environmental impacts, and their use feeds the “food versus fuel” debate. The 2007 Energy Bill mandated annual production of 136 billion L of fuel (ethanol, etc.) from renewable feedstocks by 2022, a goal that will greatly impact U.S. agriculture. From 2009, all increases in renewable fuel production are to come from nonstarch sources, yet production of “cellulosic ethanol” is currently limited by the conversion technologies. In addition to conversion constraints, all bioenergy technologies will require equipment systems that can cost effectively collect, store, and deliver bulky distributed biomass to the bioenergy plant. These systems will emulate commercial systems that move herbaceous crops (e.g., cotton and sugarcane) to processing plants; however they must be fine tuned to address the requirements of the crop and the constraints of the land base. Important interactions occur between each component of the supply chain—agronomy, logistics, and processing—that are best not studied in isolation. Significant social issues also stand to influence landowner decisions regarding market entry and these will affect the function and profitability of a bioenergy plant. The business plan must provide a “win-win” for both the feedstock supplier and the plant owner. Other large questions about the development of bioenergy resources reside outside the system, e.g., bioenergy systems may be more cost competitive if the policy allows them to benefit from the potential ecosystem services they provide such as sequestering carbon.     

Feedback and the rationing of time and effort among competing tasks.

The study described here tested a model of how characteristics of the feedback environment influence the allocation of resources (time and effort) among competing tasks. Results demonstrated that performers invest more resources on tasks for which higher quality (more timely and more specific) feedback is available; this effect was partially mediated by task salience and task expectancies. Feedback timing and feedback specificity demonstrated both main and interaction effects on resource allocations. Results also demonstrated that performers do better on tasks for which higher quality feedback is available; this effect was mediated by resources allocated to tasks. The practical and theoretical implications of the role of the feedback environment in managing performance are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention and intelligence.

Reviews empirical evidence to show that 2 concepts—attention and intelligence—are related at the empirical level. Data are presented to demonstrate that intelligence correlates with different types of attention, including sustained attention, search, attention switching, and vigilance. The most significant findings are derived from work on divided attention (dual or competing tasks) in which 2 markers for primary factors were given simultaneously on different channels. Under these conditions, the correlation between the components increases, relative to the single-task condition, implying an increase in the general factor loading. The theoretical implications of this finding are discussed in terms of attentional resources and working memory. These results are considered in relation to theories of the structure of abilities and particularly in relation to the theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence. (67 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)