Risk Allocation and Risk Handling of Highway Projects in Taiwan

Risks always exist in construction projects and often cause schedule delay or cost overrun. Risk management is a key issue in project management. The first step of risk management is risk identification. It includes the recognition of potential risk event conditions in the project and the clarification of risk responsibilities. We conducted multiple-case studies using a systematic analytical procedure to identify risks in highway projects in Taiwan, to recognize risk allocation by contract clauses, and to analyze the influence of risk allocation on the contractor’s risk handling strategies. The results show that the owner allocates risks by stipulating specific contract clauses into five kinds of risk allocation conditions. If a risk is more controllable by the contractor, the owner has a greater tendency to allocate the risk to the contractor. Risk allocation determines which kinds of risks the contractor would take and influences the contractor’s risk handling decisions. The analysis furthermore indicates that, if the probability of a certain risk event condition is uncontrollable, then with the increasing possibility of taking the risk, the contractor’s tendency of risk handling changes from actively transferring the risk to passively retaining the risk. In contrast, if a risk is controllable and certainly allocated to the contractor, the contractor tends to take the initiative to reduce the impact caused by the risk event rather than retain the risk.     

Young children's understanding of interpretive diversity between different-age listeners.

Tested children's understanding of interpretive diversity by assessing their attributions of knowledge to a mother and a preverbal baby, who both had access to an informative verbal message. In Exp 1, most children between ages 4 and 8 yrs overattributed knowledge to the preverbal baby after an informative message. Exps 1a and 1b demonstrated that overattributions were not due to conflating the speaker's intent to inform with the informativeness of the message, nor were they due to overestimating babies' limited knowledge. In Exp 2, 6- and 8-yr-olds acknowledged interpretive differences between the baby and adult listener if the message was not obviously informative. It is concluded that children do not readily view individual differences as related to interpretive differences, especially in the absence of cues inherent to a message that might suggest that the message has multiple interpretations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analysis of a grating metal structure with broad back-scatteringfield pattern for applications in vehicle collision avoidancesystem

In this paper, grating metal structures with broad and flat back-scattering field patterns are studied for possible applications in a vehicle collision avoidance system. The two-dimensional TE scattering of a planar grating structure and a curved grating structure are analyzed at a frequency of 77 GHz. For the planar structure, the method of moments and Floquet's theorem are used to solve the induced current and the resultant back-scattering field. Based on the results of the planar structure, the scattering field of the curved grating structure is obtained by using a perturbation method. The influence on the field pattern of the curvature as well as other structure parameters, such as the width and geometry of each period in the grating structure, is investigated     

Growth temperature dependence of low-noise MESFET in molecular-beam epitaxy

The substrate growth temperature dependence of electrical properties for a low-noise MESFET fabricated on MBE-grown material has been demonstrated. The optimum noise figure and its associated gain were attributed to the higher epilayer quality and mobility at a growth temperature of 650°C between temperatures of 550°C and 700°C.     

Mechanism of inhibition of tannic acid and related compounds on the growth of intestinal bacteria

Tannic acid, propyl gallate and methyl gallate, but not gallic acid, were found to be inhibitory to the growth of intestinal bacteria Bacteroides fragilis ATCC 25285, Clostridium clostridiiforme ATCC 25537, C. perfringens ATCC 13124, C. paraputrificum ATCC 25780, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Enterobacter cloacae ATCC 13047, Salmonella typhimurium TA98 and S. typhimurium YG1041 at 100-1000 microg/ml in culture broth. Neither Bifidobacterium infantis ATCC 15697 nor Lactobacillus acidophilus ATCC 4356 was inhibited by any of the above compounds up to 500 microg/ml. Tannic acid has a much greater relative binding efficiency to iron than propyl gallate, methyl gallate or gallic acid. The inhibitory effect of tannic acid to the growth of intestinal bacteria may be due to the strong iron binding capacity of tannic acid; whereas the effect of propyl gallate and methyl gallate probably occurs by a different mechanism. The growth of E. coli was restored by the addition of iron to the medium after the precipitate caused by tannic acid was removed. Neither B. infantis nor L. acidophilus require iron for growth. This probably contributes to their resistance to tannic acid. Because tannins are abundant in the human diet, tannins may affect the growth of some intestinal bacteria and thus may have an impact on human health.     

Treatment of Styrene-Contaminated Airstream in Biotrickling Filter Packed with Slags

This paper reports the result of studies using a biotrickling filter with blast-furnace slag packings (sizes = 2–4 cm and specific surface area = 120 m2∕m3) for treatment of styrene in an airstream. The effects of volumetric styrene loading L, superficial gas velocity U0 and liquid recirculation rate VL on the styrene elimination capacity K, and the removal efficiency K∕L were tested. Variations of styrene concentration with packing height as well as rates of nutrient utilization were also tested. The results show that for L< 30 g∕m3?h, K∕L was nearly independent of U0 in the range of 29–67 m∕h and was independent of VL in the range of 3.84–9.60 m∕h. In this range, the rate of styrene removal was both reaction and diffusion limited and the reaction was of zero-order kinetics. For higher loadings, K∕L decreased with increasing U0 and increased with increasing VL and the system approached the condition of reaction limitation.     

An optimal instruction scheduler for superscalar processor

Performance in superscalar processing strongly depends on the compiler's ability to generate codes that can be executed by hardware in an optimal or near optimal order. Generating optimal code is an NP-complete problem. However, there is a need for highly optimized code, such as in superscalar or real-time systems. In this paper, an instruction scheduling scheme for optimizing a program trace is proposed. Optimized code can be arrived at without much redundant work, if some important features in code are well explored and utilized in scheduling. To formalize the task, two abstract models, one for a superscalar processor and the other for a program trace, are given. These two models reflect most of the characteristics of the scheduling problem. The interrelations between instructions and partial schedules are thoroughly studied, and dominance and equivalence relations on them are defined. These relations are then used to reduce the solution space and eventually help to produce optimal schedules. The results of experiments that show the promise of the proposed scheme are also presented     

Loss of precious metal from Pt-Rh alloy under refractory oxide environments

Loss of precious metals from a Pt-10 wt% Rh alloy was studied at 1300° C in refractory oxides and fused quartz environments. After 60 and 150 h annealings, samples exposed to gaseous environments showed significant weight loss. The surface was attacked and characterized by micron-sized pits, as well as river-like striations. The pits were found to be enriched with silicon and/or aluminium depending upon the heating environment. Laser Raman microprobe identified that the major compound formed in the pits is -cristobalite.Direct solid state contact of Pt-Rh with Al₂O₃ and SiO₂ showed interactions between materials. The interaction was more extensive between Pt-Rh with SiO₂ than with Al₂O₃. On the other hand, no evidence of interaction except pitting and striation was observed on Pt-Rh when exposed to a vapour environment.The presence of pits and striation patterns indicated that refractory oxides attacked Pt-Rh under atmospheric conditions, and gave rise to the weight loss. Calculation of weight loss by an oxidation mechanism shows one to two orders of magnitude lower value than the actual weight loss. A new loss mechanism is proposed and discussed in this article.