Constructing a short form of the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire with adolescents and young adults.

The goal of the present studies was to construct and validate a short form of the 50-item Smoking Consequences Questionnaire (SCQ; T. H. Brandon & T. B. Baker, 1991), a measure of smoking outcome expectancies. In Study 1, a 21-item short form (S-SCQ) was derived from a sample of 107 young adults previously treated for substance abuse. In Study 2, the measure was cross-validated on 125 adolescents in treatment for substance abuse. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed good model fit and factorial invariance for the 4 S-SCQ subscales across both samples. Validation analyses on each sample found that subscale scores generally correlated significantly with smoking-related variables. The present studies provide initial evidence for the utility of the S-SCQ when used with young adults and adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing Consequences of Substance Use: Psychometric Properties of the Inventory of Drug Use Consequences.

Negative consequences are an important component of the substance use change process, yet no standardized measure exists to assess consequences of use. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Inventory of Drug Use Consequences, a self-report measure assessing drinking and drug use consequences. Participants (N=252) were assessed at entry into outpatient substance abuse treatment. Items loaded strongly on 1 factor, and internal consistency of the total scale was high. Fifteen items with the highest correlations with the total scale were chosen to represent the construct. The shortened measure exhibited good internal consistency, convergent and discriminant validity, and detected change over time and may be the measure of substance use consequences that is lacking in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consequences and conjectures in preordered sets

In a preordered set, or preset, consequence operators in the sense of Tarski, defined on families of subsets, are introduced. From them, the corresponding sets of conjectures, hypotheses, speculations and refutations are considered, studying the relationships between these sets and those previously defined on ortholattices. All the concepts introduced are illustrated with three particular consequence operators, whose behavior is studied in detail. The results obtained are applied to the case of fuzzy sets endowed with the usual pointwise ordering.     

Modeling and analysis of uncertainties for risk-informed decisions in infrastructures engineering

Engineers deal with uncertainties in all their activities, and must often make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and risk. Infrastructures engineering is no exception—design codes are developed to ensure a desired level of safety and performance, or to ensure a specified operational life with a prescribed level of reliability; the required decisions must often be formulated without complete information and thus contain uncertainties. In considering uncertainties, it is important to recognize two broad types; namely, the aleatory type which is associated with natural randomness and the epistemic type which is associated with imperfect knowledge. Proposed here is a framework for the proper modeling and treatment of each type of uncertainty in the formulation of risk-informed engineering decisions. The concepts are illustrated with applications to bridges and offshore marine structures.     

关于消防救援队伍执勤车辆配备的几点思考

执勤车辆是消防装备的核心,具有基础性、平台性、战略性的重要地位,当前人员装备投送方式正由摩托化向机械化转变,同时又向信息化数字化智能化方向发展,所以车辆配备关系到消防救援队伍能否加快转型升级成为有效生成战斗力.文章简要分析了当前消防救援队伍执勤车辆配备的现状发展趋势,结合当今技术发展,论述执勤消防车辆配备可能存在的机遇和挑战.     

All Night Long: The Architectural Jazz of the Texas Rangers

In the mid-1950s, a group of young faculty at the University of Texas School of Architecture in Austin - aka the Texas Rangers - entertained themselves with weekly sessions of a sophisticated, collective drawing game, ‘Dot-the-Dot’, in which there was an emphasis on inventive fluency in hand drawing as well as an innate knowledge of historic European city plans. What happened when Mark Morris , Visiting Associate Professor at Cornell University, decided in a design studio to ask present-day students to revive the game?     

Assessment of an explosive LPG release accident: a case study

In the present paper, an accident occurred during a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tank filling activity has been taken into consideration. During the transfer of LPG from the source road tank car to the receiving fixed storage vessel, an accidental release of LPG gave rise to different final consequences ranging from a pool fire, to a fireball and to the catastrophic rupture of the tank with successive explosion of its contents. The sequence of events has been investigated by using some of the consequence calculation models most commonly adopted in risk analysis and accident investigation. On one hand, this allows to better understand the link between the various events of the accident. On the other hand, a comparison between the results of the calculations and the damages actually observed after the accident, allows to check the accuracy of the prediction models and to critically assess their validity. In particular, it was shown that the largest uncertainty is associated with the calculation of the energy involved in the physical expansion of the fluid (both liquid and vapor) after the catastrophic rupture of the tank.     

放射状配电系统可靠性分析

采用建立故障模式及后果分析表的方法,对典型放射状配电系统的可靠性进行了分析,作为对比,对手动分段干线为环形的配电系统的可靠性也进行了分析.分别计算了两种配电系统的SAIFI、SAIDI、CAIDI、ASAI等指标.通过实例计算表明,手动分段干线为环形的配电系统的供电可靠性优于放射状配电系统,提出了提高配电系统可靠性的措...     

贫化铀的环境污染影响及其对人体健康的危害

贫化铀是铀富集过程中产生的副产品。由于其独特的物理特性,被广泛开发利用到民用和军事用途。“海湾战争综合症”和“巴尔干综合症”引起了人们对贫铀使用后,对环境污染的影响和对人体健康效应研究的重视。贫铀的危害来自化学毒性和放射性毒性两个方面。由于贫铀的放射性比活度低,而且主要发射α粒子,所以来自贫铀的辐射伤害主要是吸入贫铀气溶胶后对肺和其他器官较长时间的内照射。