Statistical Modeling of the Serviceability of Sewage Pumps

Sewage pumping stations represent an element of the sewer system, which is directly responsible for affecting serviceability; i.e., failing pumps may result in combined sewer overflows or flooding. However, failures of sewage pumps are not yet incorporated in sewer assessments due to lack of data. This paper presents the analysis of pump failure data provided by two sewer management authorities in The Netherlands. Pump failures have been studied accounting for the nature of the failures, the operation and maintenance procedures of the management authority, the aging of the pumps, and the changes in the environment of pumps. The analysis shows that sewage pumps fail relatively often due to the composition of sewage and the discontinuous operation of the pumps. The interarrival time and the duration of failures are highly variable and independent of the specific function of the pump. Resulting pump failure characteristics are applied in a Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the impact of failures on combined sewer overflow volumes. The results indicate that the serviceability of sewer systems is significantly affected by failing pumps. Therefore, including pump availability in sewer system assessments should be considered.     

Flow-Induced Failure of Cable-Tied Blocks

An experimental study of flow-induced failure of cable-tied blocks is presented. The particular failure mechanism studied is overturning and rolling up of the leading edge of a cable-tied block mat. Individual blocks were investigated also. The block size, flow depth, and block (mat) protrusion above the surrounding bed were systematically varied. The results are presented in terms of the critical dimensionless shear stress θc for block (mat) failure. A relationship between θc, block size and block protrusion, and flow depth is given.     

Understanding smoking cessation: The role of smokers' quit history.

Many studies have found smokers' quit history to correlate with quitting smoking, but little is known about the psychological processes explaining this relationship. This study uses the integrative model of behavioral prediction to examine how quit history affects quit intention. Data from 3,428 Dutch smokers demonstrate that quit history affects (a) beliefs about quitting and (b) the degree to which self-efficacy predicts quit intention. It seems that a relatively unsuccessful history of prior quit attempts reduces self-efficacy over quitting and strengthens the relationship of self-efficacy with the intention to quit. The results are used to call for more process-oriented research in order to advance our understanding of the relationship between quit history and quit intention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Low-cost static performance prediction of parallel stochastic task compositions

Current analytic solutions to the execution time distribution of a parallel composition of tasks having stochastic execution times are computationally complex, except for a limited number of distributions. In this paper, we present an analytical solution based on approximating execution time distributions in terms of the first four statistical moments. This low-cost approach allows the parallel execution time distribution to be approximated at ultra-low solution complexity for a wide range of execution time distributions. The accuracy of our method is experimentally evaluated for synthetic distributions as well as for task execution time distributions found in real parallel programs and kernels (NAS-EP, SSSP, APSP, Splash2-Barnes, PSRS, and WATOR). Our experiments show that the prediction error of the mean value of the parallel execution time for N-ary parallel composition is in the order of percents, provided the task execution time distributions are sufficiently independent and unimodal.     

Cones and foci: A mechanical framework for protocol verification

We define a cones and foci proof method, which rephrases the question whether two system specifications are branching bisimilar in terms of proof obligations on relations between data objects. Compared to the original cones and foci method from Groote and Springintveld, our method is more generally applicable, because it does not require a preprocessing step to eliminate τ-loops. We prove soundness of our approach and present a set of rules to prove the reachability of focus points. Our method has been formalized and proved correct using PVS. Thus we have established a framework for mechanical protocol verification. We apply this framework to the Concurrent Alternating Bit Protocol.

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Efficient parametric coding of transients

In this paper, methods for improved parametric coding of transients are presented. We propose a signal model for coding of transients consisting of a sum of sinusoids each being amplitude-modulated by a different gamma envelope. These envelopes are characterized by an onset time, an attack and a decay parameter. An efficient method for estimating these parameters is presented. Further, methods are proposed that combine this transient model with a constant-amplitude sinusoidal model in order to achieve efficient coding of both stationary and transient signal parts. By rate-distortion optimization using a perceptual distortion measure, we combine variable rate bit allocation and segmentation in an optimal way. Formal, as well as informal, listening tests show that significant improvements can be achieved with the proposed model as compared to a state-of-the-art sinusoidal coder by the combination of optimal segmentation and amplitude modulated sinusoidal audio coding.     

Essential Factors for Successful Software Security Awareness Training

As organizations flesh out their enterprise software security framework (ESSF), they quickly spot an overwhelming gap between their current state of practice and their eventual goals for building secure applications. To address this gap, the application security group must bring ESSF plans to other parts of the organization: corporate, engineering, business, training, and IT groups, to name a few. Such socialization helps organizational participants understand their role in framework adoption and roll out, and it should cover what tools people will need, how they'll interact with each other, and what levels of effort they can expect to put forth     

A constructive approach to calculate parameter ranges for systems of geometric constraints

Geometric constraints are at the heart of parametric and feature-based CAD systems. Changing values of geometric constraint parameters is one of the most common operations in such systems. However, because allowable parameter values are not known to the user beforehand, this is often a trial-and-error process. We present an approach for automatically determining the allowable range for parameters of geometric constraints. Considered are systems of distance and angle constraints on points in 3D that can be decomposed into triangular and tetrahedral subproblems, by which most practical situations in parametric and feature-based CAD systems can be represented. Our method uses the decomposition to find critical parameter values for which subproblems degenerate. By solving one problem instance for each interval between two subsequent critical values, the exact parameter range is determined for which a solution exists.