Treatment of uncertainty in structural damage assessment

Structural damage assessment is a process that involves decision-making under uncertainty. Reasoning with or about uncertainty has been the focus of research in many fields in addition to civil engineering, such as decision analysis, philosophy, statistics and psychology. Several methods for the representation of reasoning under uncertainty have been developed. These methods, which the artificial intelligence community refers to as uncertain inference schemes, will be briefly discussed in this paper. One particular scheme, the causal network approach, will be examined in detail. Its application to post-earthquake damage assessment will be given. This particular application represents an approach that has not been used in the structural engineering field before.     

Smokeless tobacco topography and toxin exposure.

This study examined the relationship between oral smokeless tobacco (ST) topographical measures and biomarkers of tobacco and carcinogen exposure. During 2 weeks of baseline ad libitum ST use, 54 male participants (mean age=32.1+/-7.5 years) were required to record the time each dip was placed in and removed from their mouths. Urine samples were collected twice during baseline and analyzed for nicotine, cotinine, and their glucuronides (total nicotine and total cotinine) and for metabolites of the tobacco-specific carcinogen 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK), 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanol and its glucuronides (total NNAL). The results suggest that frequency and duration measures of ST use (p<.01 to p<.001), particularly total dip duration, are significantly correlated with total cotinine, total nicotine, and total NNAL. These results suggest that how long a ST user has tobacco in his mouth is most predictive of tobacco toxin exposure.     

Biomass cofiring at Seward Station

Sithe Energies, under a cooperative agreement with EPRI, the US Department of Energy, the Biomass Interest Group (BIG) and the Upgraded Coal Interest Group (UCIG), has developed a demonstration of cofiring biomass with pulverized coal at the Seward Generating Station on Boiler #12. This demonstration, constructed and tested by Foster Wheeler Development Corporation (FWDC) included construction of a facility to receive, screen, store and transport sawdust into a front-fired pulverized coal boiler. This facility has several distinctive features including the sawdust receiving system, the silo storage for processed biomass, and the injection system using the centerpipe of the coal burners. The biomass is prepared separately and transported separately from the coal. The wood waste is then injected into the center of the coal flame and burned there for optimum biofuel performance.

This demonstration, involving an extended period of cofiring testing, is based upon successful parametric tests conducted in December, 1996 and July, 1997. These tests documented the impact of cofiring, in the short term, on capacity, efficiency and emissions. Those results are now being evaluated over a long-term period. Additionally, operational and maintenance issues are being addressed with this demonstration and modifications have been made to improve the handling of the fuel. This paper describes the cofiring system, and reviews progress to date with the combustion tests.     

Biomarkers to assess the utility of potential reduced exposure tobacco products.

To date, we have no valid biomarkers that serve as proxies for tobacco-related disease to test potential reduced exposure products. This paper represents the deliberations of four workgroups that focused on four tobacco-related heath outcomes: Cancer, nonmalignant pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, and fetal toxicity. The goal of these workgroups was to identify biomarkers that offer some promise as measures of exposure or toxicity and ultimately may serve as indicators for future disease risk. Recommendations were based on the relationship of the biomarker to what is known about mechanisms of tobacco-related pathogenesis, the extent to which the biomarker differs among smokers and nonsmokers, and the sensitivity of the biomarker to changes in smoking status. Other promising biomarkers were discussed. No existing biomarkers have been demonstrated to be predictive of tobacco-related disease, which highlights the importance and urgency of conducting research in this area.     

Inactivation of gram-negative bacteria in milk and banana juice by hen egg white and lambda lysozyme under high hydrostatic pressure

The effect of hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL) and bacteriophage lambda lysozyme (LaL) in combination with high pressure (HP) treatment on the inactivation of four gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli O157:H7, Shigella flexneri, Yersinia enterocolitica and Salmonella typhimurium), was studied in skim milk (pH 6.8; a(w) 0.997) and in banana juice (pH 3.8; a(w) 0.971). In the absence of lysozymes, S. flexneri was more sensitive to HP in milk than in banana juice, while the opposite was observed for the other three bacteria. In combination with HP treatment, LaL was more effective than HEWL on all bacteria in both milk and banana juice. Depending on the bacteria, inactivation levels in banana juice were increased from 0.4-2.7 log units by HP treatment alone to 3.6-6.5 log units in the presence of 224 U/ml LaL. Bacterial inactivation in milk was also enhanced by LaL but only by 0.5-2.1 log units. Under the experimental conditions used, LaL was more effective in banana juice than in milk, while the effectiveness of HEWL under the same conditions was not significantly affected by the food matrix. This effect could be ascribed to the low pH of the banana juice since LaL was also more effective on E. coli in buffer at pH 3.8 than at pH 6.8. Since neither LaL nor HEWL are enzymatically active at pH 3.8, we analysed bacterial lysis after HP treatment in the presence of these enzymes, and found that inactivation proceeds through a non-lytic mechanism at pH 3.8 and a lytic mechanism at pH 6.8. Based on these results, LaL may offer interesting perspectives for use as an extra hurdle in high pressure food preservation.     

Beneficial effect of carbon–PVA colloid additives for lead–acid batteries

Based on the previous success of adding ultra-fine carbon–PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) colloid solution to restore performance of weak batteries, a large scale test programme of practical batteries including those used in forklift, golf cart, taxi cab, truck and bus applications from 150 companies was carried out. More than 95% of the tested batteries exhibited excellent recovery in performance parameters including the specific gravity (S.G.), voltage and operation time (Ah capacity). The work reported here includes basic research studies to understand better the beneficial action of the carbon–PVA colloid additive.