A case study of factor influencing role improvisation in crisis response teams

Common characteristics of crisis situations are ambiguous and unplanned for events. The need for improvised roles can therefore be an imperative factor for the success of an operation. The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of the processes taking place during improvised work “as it happens”. A case study of a crisis management team at work is presented and provides an in-depth analysis of the information and communication flow of persons acting in improvised roles, including contextual factors influencing the task at hand. The analysis suggests that three main factors lay behind decreased performance by the team when some of its members were forced to take on roles for which they lacked professional training; lack of language skills, lack of domain knowledge and insufficient organizational structure of the tasks. Based on the observations from this case study, we suggest three ways of improving a team’s performance and hence resilience when forced to improvise due to lack of personnel in one or more required competence areas. These are training to take on the responsibility for tasks or roles outside ones professional area of specialization, developing formal routines for changes in roles and tasks and developing and using tools and routines for information sharing.     

Enhancing encoding capacity of combinational test stimulus decompressors

While scan-based compression is widely utilized in order to alleviate the test time and data volume problems,the overall compression level is dictated not only by the chain to channel ratio but also the ratio of encodable patterns.Aggressively increasing the number of scan chains in an effort to raise the compression levels may reduce the ratio of encodable patterns,degrading the overall compression level.In this paper,we present various methods to improve the ratio of encodable patterns.These methods are b...     

A computational study of vortex-airfoil interaction using high-order finite difference methods

Simulations of the interaction between a vortex and a NACA0012 airfoil are performed with a stable, high-order accurate (in space and time), multi-block finite difference solver for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations.We begin by computing a benchmark test case to validate the code. Next, the flow with steady inflow conditions are computed on several different grids. The resolution of the boundary layer as well as the amount of the artificial dissipation is studied to establish the necessary resolution requirements. We propose an accuracy test based on the weak imposition of the boundary conditions that does not require a grid refinement.Finally, we compute the vortex-airfoil interaction and calculate the lift and drag coefficients. It is shown that the viscous terms add the effect of detailed small scale structures to the lift and drag coefficients.     

Ultrastructural evidence for an innervation of epithelial enterochromaffine cells in the guinea pig duodenum

The innervation of the duodenal enterochromaffine cells (E.C.) of the guinea pig was studied at the electronmicroscopic level. Pretreatment with 5-OH-dopamine was performed to visualize catecholaminergic (CA) nervous elements. Near the basement membrane of all examined E.C. in the crypts, bundles of unmyelinated nerve processes were observed, only partly ensheathed in a Schwann cell cover. At least 4 types of processes could be observed. 1) Boutons containing only small clear vesicles, probably cholinergic fibres; 2) boutons with small clear vesicles, and in addition large (greater than 200 nm) granules with a dense matrix (P-type-fibres); 3) boutons with small electron-dense vesicles, probably CA-fibres; and 4) processes with few vesicles but having the appearance of dendrites. No typical synaptic arrangements were observed, but the minimal distance between the E.C. and the nerve bundles was 150 to 250 nm, thus well within the functional limits of the "autonomic gap". Thus epithelial E.C. may be influenced by several types of nervous elements, including CA-fibres.     

Eliminating the effect of freezing frames on user perceptive by using a time interleaving technique

Streaming video over a wireless network faces several challenges such as high packet error rates, bandwidth variations, and delays, which could have negative effects on the video streaming and the viewer will perceive a frozen picture for certain durations due to loss of frames. In this study, we propose a Time Interleaving Robust Streaming (TIRS) technique to significantly reduce the frozen video problem and provide a satisfactory quality for the mobile viewer. This is done by reordering the streaming video frames as groups of even and odd frames. The objective of streaming the video in this way is to avoid the losses of a sequence of neighbouring frames in case of a long sequence interruption. We evaluate our approach by using a user panel and mean opinion score (MOS) measurements; where the users observe three levels of frame losses. The results show that our technique significantly improves the smoothness of the video on the mobile device in the presence of frame losses, while the transmitted data are only increased by almost 9% (due to reduced time locality).     

哈锅670 t/h锅炉炉内冷态流场数值模拟

对 HG-670 /1 40 -9煤粉炉燃烧器改造后的炉内冷态流场进行数值模拟 ,分析了炉内燃烧区烟气的速度分布及压力分布。结果表明该型号锅炉改造后在额定工况下运行时炉内可形成良好的切圆 ,无一次风贴壁现象 ,不会发生壁面结渣 ,同时避免了壁面处高温腐蚀现象的发生     

Optimal recovery schemes in fault tolerant distributed computing

Clusters and distributed systems offer fault tolerance and high performance through load sharing. When all n computers are up and running, we would like the load to be evenly distributed among the computers. When one or more computers break down, the load on these computers must be redistributed to other computers in the system. The redistribution is determined by the recovery scheme. The recovery scheme is governed by a sequence of integers modulo n. Each sequence guarantees minimal load on the computer that has maximal load even when the most unfavorable combinations of computers go down. We calculate the best possible such recovery schemes for any number of crashed computers by an exhaustive search, where brute force testing is avoided by a mathematical reformulation of the problem and a branch-and-bound algorithm. The search nevertheless has a high complexity. Optimal sequences, and thus a corresponding optimal bound, are presented for a maximum of twenty one computers in the distributed system or cluster.Received: 26 May 2004, Published online: 14 March 2005     

Modification of haloperidol-induced pattern of c-fos expression by serotonin agonists

Acute challenge with clozapine and haloperidol produce different anatomical patterns of c-fos expression in the forebrain. The pharmacological profile of atypical antipsychotics suggests that serotonin might contribute to the unique therapeutic benefits of these drugs. In order to test this possibility, we examined the abilities of 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A/2c agonists to modify the pattern of c-fos expression induced by haloperidol and clozapine. Various groups of rats were pretreated with either saline, DOI, 8-OH-DPAT, and 8-OH-DPAT + DOI 30 min prior to haloperidol or clozapine administration. Rats were killed 90 min after antipsychotic administration. In saline-pretreated rats, haloperidol produced intense Fos-LI in all four striatal quadrants while the effect of clozapine was restricted to the medial part of the striatum. Prior administration of 8-OH-DPAT significantly reduced haloperidol-induced Fos-LI in all four striatal quadrants while DOI and 8-OHDPAT + DOI significantly reduced Fos-LI only in dorso- and ventrolateral quadrants. In the nucleus accumbens, haloperidol induced intense Fos-LI in the core and the shell regions whereas clozapine induced c-fos expression only in the shell. Pretreatment with 8-OHDPAT in haloperidol treated rats reduced Fos-LI in the core region yielding to a c-fos pattern similar to that induced by clozapine. In the prefrontal cortex of saline-pretreated rats, haloperidol produced a moderate c-fos expression compared with the intense expression produced by clozapine. Pretreatment with serotonin agonists before haloperidol brought the number of FOS-positive neurons to the same level as in clozapine treated rats. These results show the ability of 5-HT agonists to transform the typical pattern of c-fos expression induced by haloperidol into a pattern resembling that of clozapine.     

Dental embryology, anatomy, development, and aging

Equine practitioners should be knowledgeable of dental anatomy and development to enhance their skill of age estimation of horses. The permanent teeth of horses are continually undergoing changes in shape and appearance. These changes may be used to suggest a reasonable age range for a horse.