WorldWideScience

Sample records for performance end-use monitoring

  1. Hybrid monitoring scheme for end-to-end performance enhancement of multicast-based real-time media

    Science.gov (United States)

    Park, Ju-Won; Kim, JongWon

    2004-10-01

    As real-time media applications based on IP multicast networks spread widely, end-to-end QoS (quality of service) provisioning for these applications have become very important. To guarantee the end-to-end QoS of multi-party media applications, it is essential to monitor the time-varying status of both network metrics (i.e., delay, jitter and loss) and system metrics (i.e., CPU and memory utilization). In this paper, targeting the multicast-enabled AG (Access Grid) a next-generation group collaboration tool based on multi-party media services, the applicability of hybrid monitoring scheme that combines active and passive monitoring is investigated. The active monitoring measures network-layer metrics (i.e., network condition) with probe packets while the passive monitoring checks both application-layer metrics (i.e., user traffic condition by analyzing RTCP packets) and system metrics. By comparing these hybrid results, we attempt to pinpoint the causes of performance degradation and explore corresponding reactions to improve the end-to-end performance. The experimental results show that the proposed hybrid monitoring can provide useful information to coordinate the performance improvement of multi-party real-time media applications.

  2. Internet end-to-end performance monitoring for the High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics community

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Matthews, W.

    2000-01-01

    Modern High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics (HENP) experiments at Laboratories around the world present a significant challenge to wide area networks. Petabytes (1015) or exabytes (1018) of data will be generated during the lifetime of the experiment. Much of this data will be distributed via the Internet to the experiment's collaborators at Universities and Institutes throughout the world for analysis. In order to assess the feasibility of the computing goals of these and future experiments, the HENP networking community is actively monitoring performance across a large part of the Internet used by its collaborators. Since 1995, the pingER project has been collecting data on ping packet loss and round trip times. In January 2000, there are 28 monitoring sites in 15 countries gathering data on over 2,000 end-to-end pairs. HENP labs such as SLAC, Fermi Lab and CERN are using Advanced Network's Surveyor project and monitoring performance from one-way delay of UDP packets. More recently several HENP sites have become involved with NLANR's active measurement program (AMP). In addition SLAC and CERN are part of the RIPE test-traffic project and SLAC is home for a NIMI machine. The large End-to-end performance monitoring infrastructure allows the HENP networking community to chart long term trends and closely examine short term glitches across a wide range of networks and connections. The different methodologies provide opportunities to compare results based on different protocols and statistical samples. Understanding agreement and discrepancies between results provides particular insight into the nature of the network. This paper will highlight the practical side of monitoring by reviewing the special needs of High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics experiments and provide an overview of the experience of measuring performance across a large number of interconnected networks throughout the world with various methodologies. In particular, results from each project

  3. Internet end-to-end performance monitoring for the High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics community

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Matthews, W.

    2000-02-22

    Modern High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics (HENP) experiments at Laboratories around the world present a significant challenge to wide area networks. Petabytes (1015) or exabytes (1018) of data will be generated during the lifetime of the experiment. Much of this data will be distributed via the Internet to the experiment's collaborators at Universities and Institutes throughout the world for analysis. In order to assess the feasibility of the computing goals of these and future experiments, the HENP networking community is actively monitoring performance across a large part of the Internet used by its collaborators. Since 1995, the pingER project has been collecting data on ping packet loss and round trip times. In January 2000, there are 28 monitoring sites in 15 countries gathering data on over 2,000 end-to-end pairs. HENP labs such as SLAC, Fermi Lab and CERN are using Advanced Network's Surveyor project and monitoring performance from one-way delay of UDP packets. More recently several HENP sites have become involved with NLANR's active measurement program (AMP). In addition SLAC and CERN are part of the RIPE test-traffic project and SLAC is home for a NIMI machine. The large End-to-end performance monitoring infrastructure allows the HENP networking community to chart long term trends and closely examine short term glitches across a wide range of networks and connections. The different methodologies provide opportunities to compare results based on different protocols and statistical samples. Understanding agreement and discrepancies between results provides particular insight into the nature of the network. This paper will highlight the practical side of monitoring by reviewing the special needs of High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics experiments and provide an overview of the experience of measuring performance across a large number of interconnected networks throughout the world with various methodologies. In particular, results

  4. Evaluation of Techniques to Detect Significant Network Performance Problems using End-to-End Active Network Measurements

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Cottrell, R.Les; Logg, Connie; Chhaparia, Mahesh; /SLAC; Grigoriev, Maxim; /Fermilab; Haro, Felipe; /Chile U., Catolica; Nazir, Fawad; /NUST, Rawalpindi; Sandford, Mark

    2006-01-25

    End-to-End fault and performance problems detection in wide area production networks is becoming increasingly hard as the complexity of the paths, the diversity of the performance, and dependency on the network increase. Several monitoring infrastructures are built to monitor different network metrics and collect monitoring information from thousands of hosts around the globe. Typically there are hundreds to thousands of time-series plots of network metrics which need to be looked at to identify network performance problems or anomalous variations in the traffic. Furthermore, most commercial products rely on a comparison with user configured static thresholds and often require access to SNMP-MIB information, to which a typical end-user does not usually have access. In our paper we propose new techniques to detect network performance problems proactively in close to realtime and we do not rely on static thresholds and SNMP-MIB information. We describe and compare the use of several different algorithms that we have implemented to detect persistent network problems using anomalous variations analysis in real end-to-end Internet performance measurements. We also provide methods and/or guidance for how to set the user settable parameters. The measurements are based on active probes running on 40 production network paths with bottlenecks varying from 0.5Mbits/s to 1000Mbit/s. For well behaved data (no missed measurements and no very large outliers) with small seasonal changes most algorithms identify similar events. We compare the algorithms' robustness with respect to false positives and missed events especially when there are large seasonal effects in the data. Our proposed techniques cover a wide variety of network paths and traffic patterns. We also discuss the applicability of the algorithms in terms of their intuitiveness, their speed of execution as implemented, and areas of applicability. Our encouraging results compare and evaluate the accuracy of our

  5. Performance monitoring for brain-computer-interface actions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schurger, Aaron; Gale, Steven; Gozel, Olivia; Blanke, Olaf

    2017-02-01

    When presented with a difficult perceptual decision, human observers are able to make metacognitive judgements of subjective certainty. Such judgements can be made independently of and prior to any overt response to a sensory stimulus, presumably via internal monitoring. Retrospective judgements about one's own task performance, on the other hand, require first that the subject perform a task and thus could potentially be made based on motor processes, proprioceptive, and other sensory feedback rather than internal monitoring. With this dichotomy in mind, we set out to study performance monitoring using a brain-computer interface (BCI), with which subjects could voluntarily perform an action - moving a cursor on a computer screen - without any movement of the body, and thus without somatosensory feedback. Real-time visual feedback was available to subjects during training, but not during the experiment where the true final position of the cursor was only revealed after the subject had estimated where s/he thought it had ended up after 6s of BCI-based cursor control. During the first half of the experiment subjects based their assessments primarily on the prior probability of the end position of the cursor on previous trials. However, during the second half of the experiment subjects' judgements moved significantly closer to the true end position of the cursor, and away from the prior. This suggests that subjects can monitor task performance when the task is performed without overt movement of the body. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. CASTOR end-to-end monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rekatsinas, Theodoros; Duellmann, Dirk; Pokorski, Witold; Ponce, Sebastien; Rabacal, Bartolomeu; Waldron, Dennis; Wojcieszuk, Jacek

    2010-01-01

    With the start of Large Hadron Collider approaching, storage and management of raw event data, as well as reconstruction and analysis data, is of crucial importance for the researchers. The CERN Advanced STORage system (CASTOR) is a hierarchical system developed at CERN, used to store physics production files and user files. CASTOR, as one of the essential software tools used by the LHC experiments, has to provide reliable services for storing and managing data. Monitoring of this complicated system is mandatory in order to assure its stable operation and improve its future performance. This paper presents the new monitoring system of CASTOR which provides operation and user request specific metrics. This system is build around a dedicated, optimized database schema. The schema is populated by PL/SQL procedures, which process a stream of incoming raw metadata from different CASTOR components, initially collected by the Distributed Logging Facility (DLF). A web interface has been developed for the visualization of the monitoring data. The different histograms and plots are created using PHP scripts which query the monitoring database.

  7. Distributed Large Data-Object Environments: End-to-End Performance Analysis of High Speed Distributed Storage Systems in Wide Area ATM Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnston, William; Tierney, Brian; Lee, Jason; Hoo, Gary; Thompson, Mary

    1996-01-01

    We have developed and deployed a distributed-parallel storage system (DPSS) in several high speed asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) wide area networks (WAN) testbeds to support several different types of data-intensive applications. Architecturally, the DPSS is a network striped disk array, but is fairly unique in that its implementation allows applications complete freedom to determine optimal data layout, replication and/or coding redundancy strategy, security policy, and dynamic reconfiguration. In conjunction with the DPSS, we have developed a 'top-to-bottom, end-to-end' performance monitoring and analysis methodology that has allowed us to characterize all aspects of the DPSS operating in high speed ATM networks. In particular, we have run a variety of performance monitoring experiments involving the DPSS in the MAGIC testbed, which is a large scale, high speed, ATM network and we describe our experience using the monitoring methodology to identify and correct problems that limit the performance of high speed distributed applications. Finally, the DPSS is part of an overall architecture for using high speed, WAN's for enabling the routine, location independent use of large data-objects. Since this is part of the motivation for a distributed storage system, we describe this architecture.

  8. Tolerance analysis of null lenses using an end-use system performance criterion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rodgers, J. Michael

    2000-07-01

    An effective method of assigning tolerances to a null lens is to determine the effects of null-lens fabrication and alignment errors on the end-use system itself, not simply the null lens. This paper describes a method to assign null- lens tolerances based on their effect on any performance parameter of the end-use system.

  9. End-tidal carbon dioxide monitoring during flexible fiberoptic ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Arterial oxygen saturation is usually monitored with pulse oximetry Spo2) during FFB; END-TIDAL Pco2) (ET-Pco2) monitoring is not routinely used. Two-hundred patients were studied between May 1998 till April 2003, at the divisions of chest surgery and pulmonolgy at King Hussein Medical Center, (khmc). Their ages ...

  10. PingER: Internet performance monitoring -- How do collisions make better physics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Matthews, W.

    2000-01-01

    Internet connectivity is critical infrastructure for modern high energy nuclear and particle physics experiments at laboratories around the world. Achieving the ambitious computing goals is dependent on reliable and fast connections between collaborators in geographically separate regions. The ambitious computing goals of experiments such as BaBar, RHIC and the LHC place internet connectivity in a highly critical position. More over the ability to monitor performance and identify weak points for upgrades has become pivotal to recruiting collaborators not only overseas from the location of the experiment but in locations previously considered remote. The methodology of the Internet End-to-End Performance Monitoring (IEPM) project and long-term trends in regional and trans-oceanic performance measured by the PingER tools has previously been described. The project has grown significantly and now 593 nodes at 424 sites in 72 countries are monitored by 28 monitoring sites in 15 countries. A total of 2,138 end-to-end pairs are monitored, making PingER probably the largest performance monitoring project in the world. Recently particular effort has been made to extend the monitoring of locations in East Europe and the former USSR and to Central and South America and the Middle East, reflecting the increasing reach of high energy nuclear and particle physics research

  11. Monitoring worksite clinic performance using a cost-benefit tool.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tao, Xuguang; Chenoweth, David; Alfriend, Amy S; Baron, David M; Kirkland, Tracie W; Scherb, Jill; Bernacki, Edward J

    2009-10-01

    The purpose of this study was to explore the usefulness of continuously assessing the return on investment (ROI) of worksite medical clinics as a means of evaluating clinic performance. Visit data from January 1, 2007, to December 31, 2008, were collected from all the on-site clinics operated for the Pepsi Bottling Group. An average system-wide ROI was calculated from the time of each clinic's opening and throughout the study period. A multivariate linear regression model was used to determine the association of average ROI with penetration/utilization rate and plant size. A total of 26 on-site clinics were actively running as of December 2008. The average ROI at the time of start up was 0.4, which increased to 1.2 at approximately 4 months and 1.6 at the end of the first year of operation. Overall, it seems that the cost of operating a clinic becomes equal to the cost of similar care purchased in the community (ROI = 1) at approximately 3 months after a clinic's opening and flattens out at the end of the first year. The magnitude of the ROI was closely related to the number of visits (a function of the penetration/utilization rate) and the size of the plant population served. Serial monitoring of ROIs is a useful metric in assessing on-site clinic performance and quantifying the effect of new initiatives aimed at increasing a clinic's cost effectiveness.

  12. Mainstream end-tidal carbon dioxide monitoring in the neonatal intensive care unit.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rozycki, H J; Sysyn, G D; Marshall, M K; Malloy, R; Wiswell, T E

    1998-04-01

    Continuous noninvasive monitoring of arterial carbon dioxide (CO2) in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patients would help clinicians avoid complications of hypocarbia and hypercarbia. End-tidal CO2 monitoring has not been used in this population to date, but recent technical advances and the introduction of surfactant therapy, which improves ventilation-perfusion matching, might improve the clinical utility of end-tidal monitoring. To determine the accuracy and precision of end-tidal CO2 monitoring in NICU patients. Nonrandomized recording of simultaneous end-tidal and arterial CO2 pairs. Two university NICUs. Forty-five newborn infants receiving mechanical ventilation who had indwelling arterial access, and a predefined subsample of infants who were NICU patients is as accurate as capillary or transcutaneous monitoring but less precise than the latter. It may be useful for trending or for screening patients for abnormal arterial CO2 values.

  13. High-Performance Monitoring Architecture for Large-Scale Distributed Systems Using Event Filtering

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maly, K.

    1998-01-01

    Monitoring is an essential process to observe and improve the reliability and the performance of large-scale distributed (LSD) systems. In an LSD environment, a large number of events is generated by the system components during its execution or interaction with external objects (e.g. users or processes). Monitoring such events is necessary for observing the run-time behavior of LSD systems and providing status information required for debugging, tuning and managing such applications. However, correlated events are generated concurrently and could be distributed in various locations in the applications environment which complicates the management decisions process and thereby makes monitoring LSD systems an intricate task. We propose a scalable high-performance monitoring architecture for LSD systems to detect and classify interesting local and global events and disseminate the monitoring information to the corresponding end- points management applications such as debugging and reactive control tools to improve the application performance and reliability. A large volume of events may be generated due to the extensive demands of the monitoring applications and the high interaction of LSD systems. The monitoring architecture employs a high-performance event filtering mechanism to efficiently process the large volume of event traffic generated by LSD systems and minimize the intrusiveness of the monitoring process by reducing the event traffic flow in the system and distributing the monitoring computation. Our architecture also supports dynamic and flexible reconfiguration of the monitoring mechanism via its Instrumentation and subscription components. As a case study, we show how our monitoring architecture can be utilized to improve the reliability and the performance of the Interactive Remote Instruction (IRI) system which is a large-scale distributed system for collaborative distance learning. The filtering mechanism represents an Intrinsic component integrated

  14. Thermal performance monitoring and optimisation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sunde, Svein; Berg; Oeyvind

    1998-01-01

    Monitoring of the thermal efficiency of nuclear power plants is expected to become increasingly important as energy-market liberalisation exposes plants to increasing availability requirements and fiercer competition. The general goal in thermal performance monitoring is straightforward: to maximise the ratio of profit to cost under the constraints of safe operation. One may perceive this goal to be pursued in two ways, one oriented towards fault detection and cost-optimal predictive maintenance, and another determined at optimising target values of parameters in response to any component degradation detected, changes in ambient conditions, or the like. Annual savings associated with effective thermal-performance monitoring are expected to be in the order of $ 100 000 for power plants of representative size. A literature review shows that a number of computer systems for thermal-performance monitoring exists, either as prototypes or commercially available. The characteristics and needs of power plants may vary widely, however, and decisions concerning the exact scope, content and configuration of a thermal-performance monitor may well follow a heuristic approach. Furthermore, re-use of existing software modules may be desirable. Therefore, we suggest here the design of a flexible workbench for easy assembly of an experimental thermal-performance monitor at the Halden Project. The suggested design draws heavily on our extended experience in implementing control-room systems featured by assets like high levels of customisation, flexibility in configuration and modularity in structure, and on a number of relevant adjoining activities. The design includes a multi-computer communication system and a graphical user's interface, and aims at a system adaptable to any combination of in-house or end user's modules, as well as commercially available software. (author)

  15. SME2EM: Smart mobile end-to-end monitoring architecture for life-long diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Serhani, Mohamed Adel; Menshawy, Mohamed El; Benharref, Abdelghani

    2016-01-01

    Monitoring life-long diseases requires continuous measurements and recording of physical vital signs. Most of these diseases are manifested through unexpected and non-uniform occurrences and behaviors. It is impractical to keep patients in hospitals, health-care institutions, or even at home for long periods of time. Monitoring solutions based on smartphones combined with mobile sensors and wireless communication technologies are a potential candidate to support complete mobility-freedom, not only for patients, but also for physicians. However, existing monitoring architectures based on smartphones and modern communication technologies are not suitable to address some challenging issues, such as intensive and big data, resource constraints, data integration, and context awareness in an integrated framework. This manuscript provides a novel mobile-based end-to-end architecture for live monitoring and visualization of life-long diseases. The proposed architecture provides smartness features to cope with continuous monitoring, data explosion, dynamic adaptation, unlimited mobility, and constrained devices resources. The integration of the architecture׳s components provides information about diseases׳ recurrences as soon as they occur to expedite taking necessary actions, and thus prevent severe consequences. Our architecture system is formally model-checked to automatically verify its correctness against designers׳ desirable properties at design time. Its components are fully implemented as Web services with respect to the SOA architecture to be easy to deploy and integrate, and supported by Cloud infrastructure and services to allow high scalability, availability of processes and data being stored and exchanged. The architecture׳s applicability is evaluated through concrete experimental scenarios on monitoring and visualizing states of epileptic diseases. The obtained theoretical and experimental results are very promising and efficiently satisfy the proposed

  16. Healthcare Energy End-Use Monitoring

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sheppy, M.; Pless, S.; Kung, F.

    2014-08-01

    NREL partnered with two hospitals (MGH and SUNY UMU) to collect data on the energy used for multiple thermal and electrical end-use categories, including preheat, heating, and reheat; humidification; service water heating; cooling; fans; pumps; lighting; and select plug and process loads. Additional data from medical office buildings were provided for an analysis focused on plug loads. Facility managers, energy managers, and engineers in the healthcare sector will be able to use these results to more effectively prioritize and refine the scope of investments in new metering and energy audits.

  17. Analog front end circuit design of CSNS beam loss monitor system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Xiao Shuai; Guo Xian; Tian Jianmin; Zeng Lei; Xu Taoguang; Fu Shinian

    2013-01-01

    The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) beam loss monitor system uses gas ionization chamber to detect beam losses. The output signals from ionization chamber need to be processed in the analog front end circuit, which has been designed and developed independently. The way of transimpedance amplifier was used to achieve current-voltage (I-V) conversion measurement of signal with low repetition rate, low duty cycle and low amplitude. The analog front end circuit also realized rapid response to the larger beam loss in order to protect the safe operation of the accelerator equipment. The testing results show that the analog front end circuit meets the requirements of beam loss monitor system. (authors)

  18. End-user perspective of low-cost sensors for outdoor air pollution monitoring.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rai, Aakash C; Kumar, Prashant; Pilla, Francesco; Skouloudis, Andreas N; Di Sabatino, Silvana; Ratti, Carlo; Yasar, Ansar; Rickerby, David

    2017-12-31

    Low-cost sensor technology can potentially revolutionise the area of air pollution monitoring by providing high-density spatiotemporal pollution data. Such data can be utilised for supplementing traditional pollution monitoring, improving exposure estimates, and raising community awareness about air pollution. However, data quality remains a major concern that hinders the widespread adoption of low-cost sensor technology. Unreliable data may mislead unsuspecting users and potentially lead to alarming consequences such as reporting acceptable air pollutant levels when they are above the limits deemed safe for human health. This article provides scientific guidance to the end-users for effectively deploying low-cost sensors for monitoring air pollution and people's exposure, while ensuring reasonable data quality. We review the performance characteristics of several low-cost particle and gas monitoring sensors and provide recommendations to end-users for making proper sensor selection by summarizing the capabilities and limitations of such sensors. The challenges, best practices, and future outlook for effectively deploying low-cost sensors, and maintaining data quality are also discussed. For data quality assurance, a two-stage sensor calibration process is recommended, which includes laboratory calibration under controlled conditions by the manufacturer supplemented with routine calibration checks performed by the end-user under final deployment conditions. For large sensor networks where routine calibration checks are impractical, statistical techniques for data quality assurance should be utilised. Further advancements and adoption of sophisticated mathematical and statistical techniques for sensor calibration, fault detection, and data quality assurance can indeed help to realise the promised benefits of a low-cost air pollution sensor network. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  19. A MEMS AC current sensor for residential and commercial electricity end-use monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Leland, E S; Wright, P K; White, R M

    2009-01-01

    This paper presents a novel prototype MEMS sensor for alternating current designed for monitoring electricity end-use in residential and commercial environments. This new current sensor design is comprised of a piezoelectric MEMS cantilever with a permanent magnet mounted on the cantilever's free end. When placed near a wire carrying AC current, the magnet is driven sinusoidally, producing a voltage in the cantilever proportional to the current being measured. Analytical models were developed to predict the applicable magnetic forces and piezoelectric voltage output in order to guide the design of a sensor prototype. This paper also details the fabrication process for this sensor design. Released piezoelectric MEMS cantilevers have been fabricated using a four-mask process and aluminum nitride as the active piezoelectric material. Dispenser-printed microscale composite permanent magnets have been integrated, resulting in the first MEMS-scale prototypes of this current sensor design

  20. Feasibility of evaluating the integrity of FTR duct to end fixture welds using acoustic emission monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Trantow, R.L.

    1975-11-01

    A method of applying real-time acoustic emission (AE) source location to evaluate the integrity of duct-to-end fixture welds was developed and evaluated using the HEDL R8-4 AE monitor coupled with a PDP-8e minicomputer. Operational software was developed to control the system's data acquisition, storage, and display functions. Performance was evaluated on the basis of comparisons between AE source location data and subsequent destructive examination of six duct-to-transition ring qualification welds. Ten separate discontinuities seen in the metallography performed at 35 locations along these welds correlated with the averaged acoustic emission activity revealed by the AE source location maps. This relationship is not presently considered to be usable as a system calibration method however, because of the limited range of discontinuity lengths (from 0.0003 to 0.004 in. long) that were correlated. The presence of six other discontinuities, found in regions showing low levels of emission activity, indicated that significant stress risers can go undetected under the conditions investigated

  1. Alignment performance monitoring for ASML systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chung, Woong-Jae; Temchenko, Vlad; Hauck, Tarja; Schmidt, Sebastian

    2006-03-01

    In today's semiconductor industry downscaling of the IC design puts a stringent requirement on pattern overlay control. Tighter overlay requirements lead to exceedingly higher rework rates, meaning additional costs to manufacturing. Better alignment control became a target of engineering efforts to decrease rework rate for high-end technologies. Overlay performance is influenced by known parameters such as "Shift, Scaling, Rotation, etc", and unknown parameters defined as "Process Induced Variation", which are difficult to control by means of a process automation system. In reality, this process-induced variation leads to a strong wafer to wafer, or lot to lot variation, which are not easy to detect in the mass-production environment which uses sampling overlay measurements for only several wafers in a lot. An engineering task of finding and correcting a root cause for Process Induced Variations of overlay performance will be greatly simplified if the unknown parameters could be tracked for each wafer. This paper introduces an alignment performance monitoring method based on analysis of automatically generated "AWE" files for ASML scanner systems. Because "AWE" files include alignment results for each aligned wafer, it is possible to use them for monitoring, controlling and correcting the causes of "process induced" overlay performance without requiring extra measurement time. Since "AWE" files include alignment information for different alignment marks, it is also possible to select and optimize the best alignment recipe for each alignment strategy. Several case studies provided in our paper will demonstrate how AWE file analysis can be used to assist engineer in interpreting pattern alignment data. Since implementing our alignment data monitoring method, we were able to achieve significant improvement of alignment and overlay performance without additional overlay measurement time. We also noticed that the rework rate coming from alignment went down and

  2. Performance Monitoring Techniques Supporting Cognitive Optical Networking

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Caballero Jambrina, Antonio; Borkowski, Robert; Zibar, Darko

    2013-01-01

    High degree of heterogeneity of future optical networks, such as services with different quality-of-transmission requirements, modulation formats and switching techniques, will pose a challenge for the control and optimization of different parameters. Incorporation of cognitive techniques can help...... to solve this issue by realizing a network that can observe, act, learn and optimize its performance, taking into account end-to-end goals. In this letter we present the approach of cognition applied to heterogeneous optical networks developed in the framework of the EU project CHRON: Cognitive...... Heterogeneous Reconfigurable Optical Network. We focus on the approaches developed in the project for optical performance monitoring, which enable the feedback from the physical layer to the cognitive decision system by providing accurate description of the performance of the established lightpaths....

  3. QoS Modeling for End-to-End Performance Evaluation over Networks with Wireless Access

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gómez Gerardo

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents an end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS model for assessing the performance of data services over networks with wireless access. The proposed model deals with performance degradation across protocol layers using a bottom-up strategy, starting with the physical layer and moving on up to the application layer. This approach makes it possible to analytically assess performance at different layers, thereby facilitating a possible end-to-end optimization process. As a representative case, a scenario where a set of mobile terminals connected to a streaming server through an IP access node has been studied. UDP, TCP, and the new TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC protocols were analyzed at the transport layer. The radio interface consisted of a variable-rate multiuser and multichannel subsystem, including retransmissions and adaptive modulation and coding. The proposed analytical QoS model was validated on a real-time emulator of an end-to-end network with wireless access and proved to be very useful for the purposes of service performance estimation and optimization.

  4. Increasing operations profitability using an end-to-end, wireless internet, gas monitoring system

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McDougall, M. [Northrock Resources Ltd., AB (Canada); Benterud, K. [zed.i solutions, inc., Calgary, AB (Canada)

    2004-10-01

    Implementation by Northrock Resources Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unocal Corporation, of a fully integrated end-to-end gas measurement and production analysis system, is discussed. The system, dubbed Smart-Alek(TM), utilizes public wireless communications and a web browser only delivery system to provide seamless well visibility to a desk-top computer. Smart-Alek(TM) is an example of a new type of end-to-end electronic gas flow measurement system, known as FINE(TM), which is an acronym for Field Intelligence Network and End-User Interface. The system delivers easy-to-use, complete, reliable and cost effective production information, far more effective than is possible to obtain with conventional SCADA technology. By installing the system, Northrock was able to increase gas volumes with more accurate electronic flow measurement in place of mechanical charts, with very low technical maintenance, and at a reduced operating cost. It is emphasized that deploying the technology alone will produce only partial benefits; to realize full benefits it is also essential to change grass roots operating practices, aiming at timely decision-making at the field level. 5 refs., 5 figs.

  5. Examining Big Brother's Purpose for Using Electronic Performance Monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bartels, Lynn K.; Nordstrom, Cynthia R.

    2012-01-01

    We examined whether the reason offered for electronic performance monitoring (EPM) influenced participants' performance, stress, motivation, and satisfaction. Participants performed a data-entry task in one of five experimental conditions. In one condition, participants were not electronically monitored. In the remaining conditions, participants…

  6. Monitoring endemic livestock diseases using laboratory diagnostic data: A simulation study to evaluate the performance of univariate process monitoring control algorithms.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lopes Antunes, Ana Carolina; Dórea, Fernanda; Halasa, Tariq; Toft, Nils

    2016-05-01

    Surveillance systems are critical for accurate, timely monitoring and effective disease control. In this study, we investigated the performance of univariate process monitoring control algorithms in detecting changes in seroprevalence for endemic diseases. We also assessed the effect of sample size (number of sentinel herds tested in the surveillance system) on the performance of the algorithms. Three univariate process monitoring control algorithms were compared: Shewart p Chart(1) (PSHEW), Cumulative Sum(2) (CUSUM) and Exponentially Weighted Moving Average(3) (EWMA). Increases in seroprevalence were simulated from 0.10 to 0.15 and 0.20 over 4, 8, 24, 52 and 104 weeks. Each epidemic scenario was run with 2000 iterations. The cumulative sensitivity(4) (CumSe) and timeliness were used to evaluate the algorithms' performance with a 1% false alarm rate. Using these performance evaluation criteria, it was possible to assess the accuracy and timeliness of the surveillance system working in real-time. The results showed that EWMA and PSHEW had higher CumSe (when compared with the CUSUM) from week 1 until the end of the period for all simulated scenarios. Changes in seroprevalence from 0.10 to 0.20 were more easily detected (higher CumSe) than changes from 0.10 to 0.15 for all three algorithms. Similar results were found with EWMA and PSHEW, based on the median time to detection. Changes in the seroprevalence were detected later with CUSUM, compared to EWMA and PSHEW for the different scenarios. Increasing the sample size 10 fold halved the time to detection (CumSe=1), whereas increasing the sample size 100 fold reduced the time to detection by a factor of 6. This study investigated the performance of three univariate process monitoring control algorithms in monitoring endemic diseases. It was shown that automated systems based on these detection methods identified changes in seroprevalence at different times. Increasing the number of tested herds would lead to faster

  7. A Workflow-based Intelligent Network Data Movement Advisor with End-to-end Performance Optimization

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Zhu, Michelle M. [Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale, IL (United States); Wu, Chase Q. [Univ. of Memphis, TN (United States)

    2013-11-07

    Next-generation eScience applications often generate large amounts of simulation, experimental, or observational data that must be shared and managed by collaborative organizations. Advanced networking technologies and services have been rapidly developed and deployed to facilitate such massive data transfer. However, these technologies and services have not been fully utilized mainly because their use typically requires significant domain knowledge and in many cases application users are even not aware of their existence. By leveraging the functionalities of an existing Network-Aware Data Movement Advisor (NADMA) utility, we propose a new Workflow-based Intelligent Network Data Movement Advisor (WINDMA) with end-to-end performance optimization for this DOE funded project. This WINDMA system integrates three major components: resource discovery, data movement, and status monitoring, and supports the sharing of common data movement workflows through account and database management. This system provides a web interface and interacts with existing data/space management and discovery services such as Storage Resource Management, transport methods such as GridFTP and GlobusOnline, and network resource provisioning brokers such as ION and OSCARS. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed transport-support workflow system in several use cases based on its implementation and deployment in DOE wide-area networks.

  8. 49 CFR 385.333 - What happens at the end of the 18-month safety monitoring period?

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-01

    ... SAFETY REGULATIONS SAFETY FITNESS PROCEDURES New Entrant Safety Assurance Program § 385.333 What happens at the end of the 18-month safety monitoring period? (a) If a safety audit has been performed within... the same basis as any other carrier. (d) If a safety audit or compliance review has not been performed...

  9. Detector and front-end electronics of a fissile mass flow monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Paulus, M.J.; Uckan, T.; Lenarduzzi, R.; Mullens, J.A.; Castleberry, K.N.; McMillan, D.E.; Mihalczo, J.T.

    1997-01-01

    A detector and front-end electronics unit with secure data transmission has been designed and implemented for a fissile mass flow monitoring system for fissile mass flow of gases and liquids in a pipe. The unit consists of 4 bismuth germanate (BGO) scintillation detectors, pulse-shaping and counting electronics, local temperature sensors, and on-board local area network nodes which locally acquire data and report to the master computer via a secure network link. The signal gain of the pulse-shaping circuitry and energy windows of the pulse-counting circuitry are periodicially self calibrated and self adjusted in situ using a characteristic line in the fissile material pulse height spectrum as a reference point to compensate for drift such as in the detector gain due to PM tube aging. The temperature- dependent signal amplitude variations due to the intrinsic temperature coefficients of the PM tube gain and BGO scintillation efficiency have been characterized and real-time gain corrections introduced. The detector and electronics design, measured intrinsic performance of the detectors and electronics, and the performance of the detector and electronics within the fissile mass flow monitoring system are described

  10. A monitor system for end cap shower counter of Beijing spectrometer

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Man; Xia Xiaomi; Lai Yuanfen; Cheng Baosen; Li Jin

    1993-01-01

    To keep a large-scale detector system running in a correct condition and to obtain some correct parameters, it is necessary to have a monitor system monitoring the detector system operation in real time. In the paper, the structure of End Cap Shower Counter monitor system of Beijing Spectrometer is described. Some properties of this monitor system and the real-time monitoring results during operation of Beijing Spectrometer are given

  11. Beam conditions monitors at CMS and LHC using diamond sensors

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hempel, Maria; Lohmann, Wolfgang [Desy-Zeuthen, Platanenallee 6, 15738 Zeuthen (Germany); Brandenburgische Technische Universitaet Cottbus, Konrad-Wachsmann-Allee 1, 03046 Cottbus (Germany); Castro-Carballo, Maria-Elena; Lange, Wolfgang; Novgorodova, Olga [Desy-Zeuthen, Platanenallee 6, 15738 Zeuthen (Germany); Walsh, Roberval [Desy-Hamburg, Notkestrasse 85, 22607 Hamburg (Germany)

    2012-07-01

    The Fast Beam Conditions Monitor (BCM1F) is a particle detector based on diamonds. Eight modules comprising a single crystal diamond, front-end electronics and an optical link are installed on both sides of the interaction point inside the tracker of the CMS detector. The back-end uses ADCs, TDCs and scalers to measure the amplitudes, arrival time and rates of beam-halo particles and collision products. These data are used to protect the inner tracker from adverse beam conditions, perform a fast monitoring of the luminosity and e.g. beam-gas interactions. Recently two additional BCM1F modules have been installed at other positions of the LHC to supplement the beam-loss monitors by a flux measurement with nanosecond time resolution. In the talk essential parameters of the system are presented and examples of beam conditions monitoring are reported.

  12. On-Line Monitoring of Instrument Channel Performance in Nuclear Power Plant Using PEANO

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fantoni, Paolo F.; Hoffmann, Mario; Shankar, Ramesh; Davis, Eddie L.

    2002-01-01

    On-Line monitoring evaluates instrument channel performance by assessing its consistency with other plant indications. Industry and EPRI experience at several plants has shown this overall approach to be very effective in identifying instrument channels that are exhibiting degrading or inconsistent performance characteristics. On-Line monitoring of instrument channels provides information about the condition of the monitored channels through accurate, more frequent monitoring of each channel's performance over time. This type of performance monitoring is a methodology that offers an alternate approach to traditional time-directed calibration. On-line monitoring of these channels can provide an assessment of instrument performance and provide a basis for determining when adjustments are necessary. Elimination or reduction of unnecessary field calibrations can reduce associated labor costs, reduce personnel radiation exposure and reduce the potential for miss-calibration. PEANO is a system for on-line calibration monitoring developed in the years 1995-2000 at the Institutt for energiteknikk (IFE), Norway, which makes use of Artificial Intelligence techniques for its purpose. The system has been tested successfully in Europe in off-line tests with EDF (France), Tecnatom (Spain) and ENEA (Italy). PEANO is currently installed and used for on-line monitoring at the HBWR reactor in Halden. This paper describes the results of performance tests on PEANO with real data from a US PWR plant, in the framework of a co-operation among IFE, EPRI and Edan Engineering, to evaluate the potentials of PEANO for future installations in US nuclear plants. (authors)

  13. A FRAMEWORK FOR PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND MONITORING OF PUBLIC HEALTH PROGRAM USING COMPOSITE PERFORMANCE INDEX

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Susanta Kumar Gauri

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available A public health program (PHP taken up by the government of a country refers to all organized measures to prevent disease and promote health among the population, by providing different planned cares/services to the people. Usually, the target population for different PHP are different. The basic requirement for success of a PHP is to ensure that all the planned cares/services are reached to each member of the target population. Therefore, the important performance measures for a PHP are the implementation status of all the planned cares/services under the PHP. However, management and monitoring of a PHP become quite difficult by interpreting separately the information contained in a large number of performance measures. Therefore, usually a metric, called composite performance index (CPI, is evaluated to understand the overall performance of a PHP. However, due a scaling operation involved in the CPI computation procedure, the CPI value does not reveal the true overall implementation status of a PHP and consequently, it is effective for management of a PHP. This paper presents a new approach for CPI computation, in which scaling/normalization of the performance variables is not required and therefore, it can be used for monitoring the true overall implementation status of a PHP in a region. A systematic approach for monitoring a PHP using the CPI values is proposed and applied for monitoring the maternal and child healthcare (MCH program. The results are found effective towards continuous improvement of implementation status.

  14. Electrification Futures Study: End-Use Electric Technology Cost and Performance Projections through 2050

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Vimmerstedt, Laura J. [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Jadun, Paige [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); McMillan, Colin A. [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Steinberg, Daniel C. [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Muratori, Matteo [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Mai, Trieu T. [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

    2018-01-02

    This report provides projected cost and performance assumptions for electric technologies considered in the Electrification Futures Study, a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the effects of widespread electrification of end-use service demands in all major economic sectors - transportation, residential and commercial buildings, and industry - for the contiguous United States through 2050. Using extensive literature searches and expert assessment, the authors identify slow, moderate, and rapid technology advancement sensitivities on technology cost and performance, and they offer a comparative analysis of levelized cost metrics as a reference indicator of total costs. The identification and characterization of these end-use service demand technologies is fundamental to the Electrification Futures Study. This report, the larger Electrification Futures Study, and the associated data and methodologies may be useful to planners and analysts in evaluating the potential role of electrification in an uncertain future. The report could be broadly applicable for other analysts and researchers who wish to assess electrification and electric technologies.

  15. Monitoring of performance management using Quality Assurance Indicators and ISO requirement

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dargahi H

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available Background: Quality assurance is a prevention-oriented system that can be used to improve the quality of care, increase productivity and monitor the performance management in clinical laboratories. ISO 9001: 2000 requirements are a collection of management and technical systems designed to implement quality assurance and monitor performance management in organizations. Methods: A checklist was prepared to monitor the preanalytical, analytical and postanalytical stages of laboratory performance management in 16 areas and all laboratory activities in 14 of the clinical laboratories of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS hospitals. Collected data were stored and statistically analyzed using SPSS software. Results: The best performance, in which 77.73% of quality assurance indicators were observed, was found in Sina Hospital. However, only 57.56% of these indicators were fulfilled at Farabi Hospital, with the lowest-level performance among the clinical laboratories of TUMS hospitals. The highest level of compliance with quality assurance indicators was in the hematology departments and for facility demands in management areas. Overall, quality assurance indicators were appropriately followed in only 7% of the clinical laboratories. Conclusion: The average quality assurance observation rate in the clinical laboratories studied was 67.22%, which is insufficient and must be remedied with stricter enforcement of the ISO 9001: 2000 regulations.

  16. Implementation of a novel postoperative monitoring system using automated Modified Early Warning Scores (MEWS) incorporating end-tidal capnography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blankush, Joseph M; Freeman, Robbie; McIlvaine, Joy; Tran, Trung; Nassani, Stephen; Leitman, I Michael

    2017-10-01

    Modified Early Warning Scores (MEWS) provide real-time vital sign (VS) trending and reduce ICU admissions in post-operative patients. These early warning calculations classically incorporate oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiratory rate, systolic blood pressure, and temperature but have not previously included end-tidal CO2 (EtCO 2 ), more recently identified as an independent predictor of critical illness. These systems may be subject to failure when physiologic data is incorrectly measured, leading to false alarms and increased workload. This study investigates whether the implementation of automated devices that utilize ongoing vital signs monitoring and MEWS calculations, inclusive of a score for end-tidal CO 2 (EtCO 2 ), can be feasibly implemented on the general care hospital floor and effectively identify derangements in a post-operative patient's condition while limiting the amount of false alarms that would serve to increase provider workload. From July to November 2014, post-operative patients meeting the inclusion criteria (BMI > 30 kg/m 2 , history of obstructive sleep apnea, or the use of patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) or epidural narcotics) were monitored using automated devices that record minute-by-minute VS included in classic MEWS calculations as well as EtCO 2 . Automated messages via pagers were sent to providers for instances when the device measured elevated MEWS, abnormal EtCO 2 , and oxygen desaturations below 85 %. Data, including alarm and message details from the first 133 patients, were recorded and analyzed. Overall, 3.3 alarms and pages sounded per hour of monitoring. Device-only alarms sounded 2.7 times per hour-21 % were technical alarms. The remaining device-only alarms for concerning VS sounded 2.0/h, 70 % for falsely recorded VS. Pages for abnormal EtCO 2 sounded 0.4/h (82 % false recordings) while pages for low blood oxygen saturation sounded 0.1/h (55 % false alarms). 143 times (0.1 pages/h) the devices calculated

  17. Invisible work of using and monitoring knowledge by parents (end-users) of children with chronic conditions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lagosky, Stephanie; Bartlett, Doreen; Shaw, Lynn

    2016-01-01

    Parents who care for young children with chronic conditions are knowledge users. Their efforts, time, and energy to source, consider and monitor information add to the 'invisible' work of parents in making decisions about care, school transitions, and interventions. Little is known or understood about the work of parents as knowledge users. To understand the knowledge use patterns and how these patterns may be monitored in parents caring for their young children with cerebral palsy (CP). An embedded case study methodology was used. In-depth qualitative interviews and visual mapping were employed to collect and analyze data based on the experiences of three mothers of young children with CP. Knowledge use in parents caring for their young children with CP is multi-factorial, complex and temporal. Findings resulted in a provisional model elaborating on the ways knowledge is used by parents and how it may be monitored. The visual mapping of pathways and actions of parents as end users makes the processes of knowledge use more visible and open to be valued as well as appreciated by others. The provisional model has implications for knowledge mobilization as a strategy in childhood rehabilitation and the facilitation of knowledge use in the lives of families with children with chronic health conditions.

  18. Multileaf collimator performance monitoring and improvement using semiautomated quality control testing and statistical process control

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Létourneau, Daniel; McNiven, Andrea; Keller, Harald; Wang, An; Amin, Md Nurul; Pearce, Jim; Norrlinger, Bernhard; Jaffray, David A.

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: High-quality radiation therapy using highly conformal dose distributions and image-guided techniques requires optimum machine delivery performance. In this work, a monitoring system for multileaf collimator (MLC) performance, integrating semiautomated MLC quality control (QC) tests and statistical process control tools, was developed. The MLC performance monitoring system was used for almost a year on two commercially available MLC models. Control charts were used to establish MLC performance and assess test frequency required to achieve a given level of performance. MLC-related interlocks and servicing events were recorded during the monitoring period and were investigated as indicators of MLC performance variations. Methods: The QC test developed as part of the MLC performance monitoring system uses 2D megavoltage images (acquired using an electronic portal imaging device) of 23 fields to determine the location of the leaves with respect to the radiation isocenter. The precision of the MLC performance monitoring QC test and the MLC itself was assessed by detecting the MLC leaf positions on 127 megavoltage images of a static field. After initial calibration, the MLC performance monitoring QC test was performed 3–4 times/week over a period of 10–11 months to monitor positional accuracy of individual leaves for two different MLC models. Analysis of test results was performed using individuals control charts per leaf with control limits computed based on the measurements as well as two sets of specifications of ±0.5 and ±1 mm. Out-of-specification and out-of-control leaves were automatically flagged by the monitoring system and reviewed monthly by physicists. MLC-related interlocks reported by the linear accelerator and servicing events were recorded to help identify potential causes of nonrandom MLC leaf positioning variations. Results: The precision of the MLC performance monitoring QC test and the MLC itself was within ±0.22 mm for most MLC leaves

  19. Multileaf collimator performance monitoring and improvement using semiautomated quality control testing and statistical process control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Létourneau, Daniel; Wang, An; Amin, Md Nurul; Pearce, Jim; McNiven, Andrea; Keller, Harald; Norrlinger, Bernhard; Jaffray, David A

    2014-12-01

    High-quality radiation therapy using highly conformal dose distributions and image-guided techniques requires optimum machine delivery performance. In this work, a monitoring system for multileaf collimator (MLC) performance, integrating semiautomated MLC quality control (QC) tests and statistical process control tools, was developed. The MLC performance monitoring system was used for almost a year on two commercially available MLC models. Control charts were used to establish MLC performance and assess test frequency required to achieve a given level of performance. MLC-related interlocks and servicing events were recorded during the monitoring period and were investigated as indicators of MLC performance variations. The QC test developed as part of the MLC performance monitoring system uses 2D megavoltage images (acquired using an electronic portal imaging device) of 23 fields to determine the location of the leaves with respect to the radiation isocenter. The precision of the MLC performance monitoring QC test and the MLC itself was assessed by detecting the MLC leaf positions on 127 megavoltage images of a static field. After initial calibration, the MLC performance monitoring QC test was performed 3-4 times/week over a period of 10-11 months to monitor positional accuracy of individual leaves for two different MLC models. Analysis of test results was performed using individuals control charts per leaf with control limits computed based on the measurements as well as two sets of specifications of ± 0.5 and ± 1 mm. Out-of-specification and out-of-control leaves were automatically flagged by the monitoring system and reviewed monthly by physicists. MLC-related interlocks reported by the linear accelerator and servicing events were recorded to help identify potential causes of nonrandom MLC leaf positioning variations. The precision of the MLC performance monitoring QC test and the MLC itself was within ± 0.22 mm for most MLC leaves and the majority of the

  20. Performance monitoring of safeguards equipment

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sirisena, K.; Peltoranta, M.; Goussarov, V.; Vodrazka, P.

    1999-01-01

    SGTCS is responsible for monitoring and reporting the performance of the SG equipment. Performance monitoring (PM) has been implemented in most important safeguards equipment operating unattended in nuclear facilities. Inspectors acquire equipment performance data in facilities. After inspection, the data package is submitted to SGTCS for processing and analysis. The performance data is used for identification of systems or components, which should be changed in the field and for identification of modules which, should be diagnosed at HQ in order to determine the cause of failure. Moreover, the performance data is used for preventive maintenance and spares distribution planning, and to provide statistics for official reports and management decision making. An important part of the performance monitoring is reporting. Equipment performance reports contain information about equipment inventory, utilization, failure types, failure distribution, and reliability. Trends in performance are given in graphical form in cases, where past data is available. Reliability estimates such as expected times between failures are provided. The automated reporting tools are obtainable through EMIS database application. (author)

  1. End-to-end System Performance Simulation: A Data-Centric Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guillaume, Arnaud; Laffitte de Petit, Jean-Luc; Auberger, Xavier

    2013-08-01

    In the early times of space industry, the feasibility of Earth observation missions was directly driven by what could be achieved by the satellite. It was clear to everyone that the ground segment would be able to deal with the small amount of data sent by the payload. Over the years, the amounts of data processed by the spacecrafts have been increasing drastically, leading to put more and more constraints on the ground segment performances - and in particular on timeliness. Nowadays, many space systems require high data throughputs and short response times, with information coming from multiple sources and involving complex algorithms. It has become necessary to perform thorough end-to-end analyses of the full system in order to optimise its cost and efficiency, but even sometimes to assess the feasibility of the mission. This paper presents a novel framework developed by Astrium Satellites in order to meet these needs of timeliness evaluation and optimisation. This framework, named ETOS (for “End-to-end Timeliness Optimisation of Space systems”), provides a modelling process with associated tools, models and GUIs. These are integrated thanks to a common data model and suitable adapters, with the aim of building suitable space systems simulators of the full end-to-end chain. A big challenge of such environment is to integrate heterogeneous tools (each one being well-adapted to part of the chain) into a relevant timeliness simulation.

  2. Performance and scalability of the back-end sub-system in the ATLAS DAQ/EF prototype

    CERN Document Server

    Alexandrov, I N; Badescu, E; Burckhart, Doris; Caprini, M; Cohen, L; Duval, P Y; Hart, R; Jones, R; Kazarov, A; Kolos, S; Kotov, V; Laugier, D; Mapelli, Livio P; Moneta, L; Qian, Z; Radu, A A; Ribeiro, C A; Roumiantsev, V; Ryabov, Yu; Schweiger, D; Soloviev, I V

    2000-01-01

    The DAQ group of the future ATLAS experiment has developed a prototype system based on the trigger/DAQ architecture described in the ATLAS Technical Proposal to support studies of the full system functionality, architecture as well as available hardware and software technologies. One sub-system of this prototype is the back- end which encompasses the software needed to configure, control and monitor the DAQ, but excludes the processing and transportation of physics data. The back-end consists of a number of components including run control, configuration databases and message reporting system. The software has been developed using standard, external software technologies such as OO databases and CORBA. It has been ported to several C++ compilers and operating systems including Solaris, Linux, WNT and LynxOS. This paper gives an overview of the back-end software, its performance, scalability and current status. (17 refs).

  3. A web accessible scientific workflow system for vadoze zone performance monitoring: design and implementation examples

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mattson, E.; Versteeg, R.; Ankeny, M.; Stormberg, G.

    2005-12-01

    Long term performance monitoring has been identified by DOE, DOD and EPA as one of the most challenging and costly elements of contaminated site remedial efforts. Such monitoring should provide timely and actionable information relevant to a multitude of stakeholder needs. This information should be obtained in a manner which is auditable, cost effective and transparent. Over the last several years INL staff has designed and implemented a web accessible scientific workflow system for environmental monitoring. This workflow environment integrates distributed, automated data acquisition from diverse sensors (geophysical, geochemical and hydrological) with server side data management and information visualization through flexible browser based data access tools. Component technologies include a rich browser-based client (using dynamic javascript and html/css) for data selection, a back-end server which uses PHP for data processing, user management, and result delivery, and third party applications which are invoked by the back-end using webservices. This system has been implemented and is operational for several sites, including the Ruby Gulch Waste Rock Repository (a capped mine waste rock dump on the Gilt Edge Mine Superfund Site), the INL Vadoze Zone Research Park and an alternative cover landfill. Implementations for other vadoze zone sites are currently in progress. These systems allow for autonomous performance monitoring through automated data analysis and report generation. This performance monitoring has allowed users to obtain insights into system dynamics, regulatory compliance and residence times of water. Our system uses modular components for data selection and graphing and WSDL compliant webservices for external functions such as statistical analyses and model invocations. Thus, implementing this system for novel sites and extending functionality (e.g. adding novel models) is relatively straightforward. As system access requires a standard webbrowser

  4. Quantitative performance monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Heller, A.S.

    1987-01-01

    In the recently published update of NUREG/CR 3883, it was shown that Japanese plants of size and design similar to those in the US have significantly fewer trips in a given year of operation. One way to reduce such imbalance is the efficient use of available plant data. Since plant data are recorded and monitored continuously for management feedback and timely resolution of problems, this data should be actively used to increase the efficiency of operations and, ultimately, for a reduction of plant trips in power plants. A great deal of information is lost, however, if the analytical tools available for the data evaluation are misapplied or not adopted at all. This paper deals with a program developed to use quantitative techniques to monitor personnel performance in an operating power plant. Visual comparisons of ongoing performance with predetermined quantitative performance goals are made. A continuous feedback is provided to management for early detection of adverse trends and timely resolution of problems. Ultimately, costs are reduced through effective resource management and timely decision making

  5. Performance Monitoring Applied to System Supervision

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bertille Somon

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Nowadays, automation is present in every aspect of our daily life and has some benefits. Nonetheless, empirical data suggest that traditional automation has many negative performance and safety consequences as it changed task performers into task supervisors. In this context, we propose to use recent insights into the anatomical and neurophysiological substrates of action monitoring in humans, to help further characterize performance monitoring during system supervision. Error monitoring is critical for humans to learn from the consequences of their actions. A wide variety of studies have shown that the error monitoring system is involved not only in our own errors, but also in the errors of others. We hypothesize that the neurobiological correlates of the self-performance monitoring activity can be applied to system supervision. At a larger scale, a better understanding of system supervision may allow its negative effects to be anticipated or even countered. This review is divided into three main parts. First, we assess the neurophysiological correlates of self-performance monitoring and their characteristics during error execution. Then, we extend these results to include performance monitoring and error observation of others or of systems. Finally, we provide further directions in the study of system supervision and assess the limits preventing us from studying a well-known phenomenon: the Out-Of-the-Loop (OOL performance problem.

  6. Evaluation of the performance of diagnosis monitors in use in Salvador city: pilot study

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Garcia, Igor; Geambastiani, Paulo; Ferreira, Mario; Macedo, Eric; Navarro, Marcus; Navarro, Valeria; Pereira, Lara; Jesus, Evandro de; Leite, Handerson Jorge Dourado

    2016-01-01

    Radiologically, the image quality is the accuracy of the representation of the patient's anatomy. Considering the importance of the performance of the monitors to the overall effectiveness of a practice of diagnostic imaging, the objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of diagnostic monitors in use, using the method described in the report 03 of the AAPA and Spanish protocol, using calibrated instrumentation traceable to NIST and to RBC. The results of the monitors evaluated to date show 100% compliance for geometric distortion tests and internal reflection and 0% compliance to the dependence of luminance test. (author)

  7. Monitoring Instrument Performance in Regional Broadband Seismic Network Using Ambient Seismic Noise

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ye, F.; Lyu, S.; Lin, J.

    2017-12-01

    In the past ten years, the number of seismic stations has increased significantly, and regional seismic networks with advanced technology have been gradually developed all over the world. The resulting broadband data help to improve the seismological research. It is important to monitor the performance of broadband instruments in a new network in a long period of time to ensure the accuracy of seismic records. Here, we propose a method that uses ambient noise data in the period range 5-25 s to monitor instrument performance and check data quality in situ. The method is based on an analysis of amplitude and phase index parameters calculated from pairwise cross-correlations of three stations, which provides multiple references for reliable error estimates. Index parameters calculated daily during a two-year observation period are evaluated to identify stations with instrument response errors in near real time. During data processing, initial instrument responses are used in place of available instrument responses to simulate instrument response errors, which are then used to verify our results. We also examine feasibility of the tailing noise using data from stations selected from USArray in different locations and analyze the possible instrumental errors resulting in time-shifts used to verify the method. Additionally, we show an application that effects of instrument response errors that experience pole-zeros variations on monitoring temporal variations in crustal properties appear statistically significant velocity perturbation larger than the standard deviation. The results indicate that monitoring seismic instrument performance helps eliminate data pollution before analysis begins.

  8. Terahertz performance of quasioptical front-ends with a hotelectron bolometer

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Semenov, A; Richter, H; Guenther, B; Huebers, H-W; Karamarkovic, J

    2006-01-01

    We present terahertz performance of quasioptical front-ends consisting of a hotelectron bolometer imbedded in a planar feed antenna and integrated with an immersion lens. The impedance and radiation pattern of the log-spiral and double-slot planar feeds are evaluated using the method of moments; the collimating action of the lens is modelled using the physical optics. The total efficiency of the front-ends is computed taking into account frequency dependent impedance of the bolometer. Measured performance of the front-ends qualifies the simulation technique as a reliable tool for the design of terahertz receivers

  9. TOWARD END-TO-END MODELING FOR NUCLEAR EXPLOSION MONITORING: SIMULATION OF UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS AND EARTHQUAKES USING HYDRODYNAMIC AND ANELASTIC SIMULATIONS, HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL EARTH MODELS

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Rodgers, A; Vorobiev, O; Petersson, A; Sjogreen, B

    2009-07-06

    This paper describes new research being performed to improve understanding of seismic waves generated by underground nuclear explosions (UNE) by using full waveform simulation, high-performance computing and three-dimensional (3D) earth models. The goal of this effort is to develop an end-to-end modeling capability to cover the range of wave propagation required for nuclear explosion monitoring (NEM) from the buried nuclear device to the seismic sensor. The goal of this work is to improve understanding of the physical basis and prediction capabilities of seismic observables for NEM including source and path-propagation effects. We are pursuing research along three main thrusts. Firstly, we are modeling the non-linear hydrodynamic response of geologic materials to underground explosions in order to better understand how source emplacement conditions impact the seismic waves that emerge from the source region and are ultimately observed hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. Empirical evidence shows that the amplitudes and frequency content of seismic waves at all distances are strongly impacted by the physical properties of the source region (e.g. density, strength, porosity). To model the near-source shock-wave motions of an UNE, we use GEODYN, an Eulerian Godunov (finite volume) code incorporating thermodynamically consistent non-linear constitutive relations, including cavity formation, yielding, porous compaction, tensile failure, bulking and damage. In order to propagate motions to seismic distances we are developing a one-way coupling method to pass motions to WPP (a Cartesian anelastic finite difference code). Preliminary investigations of UNE's in canonical materials (granite, tuff and alluvium) confirm that emplacement conditions have a strong effect on seismic amplitudes and the generation of shear waves. Specifically, we find that motions from an explosion in high-strength, low-porosity granite have high compressional wave amplitudes and weak

  10. On end-to-end performance of MIMO multiuser in cognitive radio networks

    KAUST Repository

    Yang, Yuli

    2011-12-01

    In this paper, a design for the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) multiuser transmission in the cognitive radio network is developed and its end-to-end performance is investigated under spectrum-sharing constraints. Firstly, the overall average packet error rate is analyzed by considering the channel state information feedback delay and the multiuser scheduling. Then, we provide corresponding numerical results to measure the performance evaluation for several separate scenarios, which presents a convenient tool for the cognitive radio network design with multiple secondary MIMO users. © 2011 IEEE.

  11. On end-to-end performance of MIMO multiuser in cognitive radio networks

    KAUST Repository

    Yang, Yuli; Aissa, Sonia

    2011-01-01

    In this paper, a design for the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) multiuser transmission in the cognitive radio network is developed and its end-to-end performance is investigated under spectrum-sharing constraints. Firstly, the overall average packet error rate is analyzed by considering the channel state information feedback delay and the multiuser scheduling. Then, we provide corresponding numerical results to measure the performance evaluation for several separate scenarios, which presents a convenient tool for the cognitive radio network design with multiple secondary MIMO users. © 2011 IEEE.

  12. Modular Software Performance Monitoring

    CERN Document Server

    Kruse, D F

    2011-01-01

    CPU clock frequency is not likely to be increased significantly in the coming years, and data analysis speed can be improved by using more processors or buying new machines, only if one is willing to change the paradigm to a parallel one. Therefore, performance monitoring procedures and tools are needed to help programmers to optimize existing software running on current and future hardware. Low level information from hardware performance counters is vital to spot specific performance problems slowing program execution. HEP software is often huge and complex, and existing tools are unable to give results with the required granularity. We will report on the approach we have chose to solve this problem that involves decomposing the application into parts and monitoring each of them separately. Both counting and sampling methods are used to allow an analysis with the required custom granularity: from global level, up to the function level. A set of tools (based on perfmon2 – a software interface to hardware co...

  13. Application of monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis in thermal performance analysis for nuclear power plants

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kim, Hyeong Min; Heo, Gyun Young [Kyung Hee University, Yongin (Korea, Republic of); Na, Man Gyun [Chosun University, Gwangju (Korea, Republic of)

    2014-12-15

    As condition-based maintenance (CBM) has risen as a new trend, there has been an active movement to apply information technology for effective implementation of CBM in power plants. This motivation is widespread in operations and maintenance, including monitoring, diagnosis, prognosis, and decision-making on asset management. Thermal efficiency analysis in nuclear power plants (NPPs) is a longstanding concern being updated with new methodologies in an advanced IT environment. It is also a prominent way to differentiate competitiveness in terms of operations and maintenance costs. Although thermal performance tests implemented using industrial codes and standards can provide officially trustworthy results, they are essentially resource-consuming and maybe even a hind-sighted technique rather than a foresighted one, considering their periodicity. Therefore, if more accurate performance monitoring can be achieved using advanced data analysis techniques, we can expect more optimized operations and maintenance. This paper proposes a framework and describes associated methodologies for in-situ thermal performance analysis, which differs from conventional performance monitoring. The methodologies are effective for monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis in pursuit of CBM. Our enabling techniques cover the intelligent removal of random and systematic errors, deviation detection between a best condition and a currently measured condition, degradation diagnosis using a structured knowledge base, and prognosis for decision-making about maintenance tasks. We also discuss how our new methods can be incorporated with existing performance tests. We provide guidance and directions for developers and end-users interested in in-situ thermal performance management, particularly in NPPs with large steam turbines.

  14. Application of monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis in thermal performance analysis for nuclear power plants

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kim, Hyeong Min; Heo, Gyun Young; Na, Man Gyun

    2014-01-01

    As condition-based maintenance (CBM) has risen as a new trend, there has been an active movement to apply information technology for effective implementation of CBM in power plants. This motivation is widespread in operations and maintenance, including monitoring, diagnosis, prognosis, and decision-making on asset management. Thermal efficiency analysis in nuclear power plants (NPPs) is a longstanding concern being updated with new methodologies in an advanced IT environment. It is also a prominent way to differentiate competitiveness in terms of operations and maintenance costs. Although thermal performance tests implemented using industrial codes and standards can provide officially trustworthy results, they are essentially resource-consuming and maybe even a hind-sighted technique rather than a foresighted one, considering their periodicity. Therefore, if more accurate performance monitoring can be achieved using advanced data analysis techniques, we can expect more optimized operations and maintenance. This paper proposes a framework and describes associated methodologies for in-situ thermal performance analysis, which differs from conventional performance monitoring. The methodologies are effective for monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis in pursuit of CBM. Our enabling techniques cover the intelligent removal of random and systematic errors, deviation detection between a best condition and a currently measured condition, degradation diagnosis using a structured knowledge base, and prognosis for decision-making about maintenance tasks. We also discuss how our new methods can be incorporated with existing performance tests. We provide guidance and directions for developers and end-users interested in in-situ thermal performance management, particularly in NPPs with large steam turbines.

  15. Performance of the upgraded NSLS beam position monitors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nawrocky, R.J.; Keane, J.

    1997-01-01

    The design and initial performance of the original NSLS beam position monitor were described by J. Bittner and R. Biscardi in 1989. The receiver, which processes signals from four button type pick-up electrodes by time-division multiplexing, operates at the third harmonic of the ring rf frequency (158.66 MHz). It has an output bandwidth of about 2 kHz and a dynamic signal range of approximately 36 dB. A total of 92 receivers have been installed in the NSLS X-ray and VUV storage rings for orbit monitoring and for real time feedback. As part of a continuous effort to improve the NSLS storage ring performance, the BPMs as well as other instrumentation systems have also been undergoing upgrades over the past two years to improve their performance. In the BPM, the front end has been modified to prevent saturation of the rf multiplexing switch, the detector operating point was changed to improve output signal linearity, the dynamic range was increased to over 60 dB, and the gain calibration was standardized to 0.5 volts/mm (i.e. 2 microm/mV). This paper describes the BPM modifications and presents some performance data and measurements on stored beam

  16. Harmonizing electricity markets with physics : real time performance monitoring using grid-3PTM

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Budhraja, V.S.

    2003-01-01

    The Electric Power Group, LLC provides management and strategic consulting services for the electric power industry, with special emphasis on industry restructuring, competitive electricity markets, grid operations and reliability, power technologies, venture investments and start-ups. The Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions involves national laboratories, universities, and industry partners in researching, developing, and commercializing electric reliability technology solutions to protect and enhance the reliability of the American electric power system under the emerging competitive electricity market structure. Physics differentiate electric markets from other markets: there is real-time balancing, no storage, interconnected network, and power flows governed by physics. Some issues affecting both grid reliability and market issues are difficult to separate, such as security and congestion management, voltage management, reserves, frequency volatility, and others. The author examined the following investment challenges facing the electricity market: grid solutions, market solutions, and technology solutions. The real time performance monitoring and prediction platform, grid-3P was described and applications discussed, such as ACE-frequency monitoring, performance monitoring for automatic generation control (AGC) and frequency response, voltage/VAR monitoring, stability monitoring using phasor technology, and market monitoring. figs

  17. Passive and Active Monitoring on a High Performance Research Network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Matthews, Warren

    2001-01-01

    The bold network challenges described in ''Internet End-to-end Performance Monitoring for the High Energy and Nuclear Physics Community'' presented at PAM 2000 have been tackled by the intrepid administrators and engineers providing the network services. After less than a year, the BaBar collaboration has collected almost 100 million particle collision events in a database approaching 165TB (Tera=10 12 ). Around 20TB has been exported via the Internet to the BaBar regional center at IN2P3 in Lyon, France, for processing and around 40 TB of simulated events have been imported to SLAC from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). An unforseen challenge has arisen due to recent events and highlighted security concerns at DoE funded labs. New rules and regulations suggest it is only a matter of time before many active performance measurements may not be possible between many sites. Yet, at the same time, the importance of understanding every aspect of the network and eradicating packet loss for high throughput data transfers has become apparent. Work at SLAC to employ passive monitoring using netflow and OC3MON is underway and techniques to supplement and possibly replace the active measurements are being considered. This paper will detail the special needs and traffic characterization of a remarkable research project, and how the networking hurdles have been resolved (or not) to achieve the required high data throughput. Results from active and passive measurements will be compared, and methods for achieving high throughput and the effect on the network will be assessed along with tools that directly measure throughput and applications used to actually transfer data

  18. Passive and Active Monitoring on a High Performance Research Network.

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Matthews, Warren

    2001-05-01

    The bold network challenges described in ''Internet End-to-end Performance Monitoring for the High Energy and Nuclear Physics Community'' presented at PAM 2000 have been tackled by the intrepid administrators and engineers providing the network services. After less than a year, the BaBar collaboration has collected almost 100 million particle collision events in a database approaching 165TB (Tera=10{sup 12}). Around 20TB has been exported via the Internet to the BaBar regional center at IN2P3 in Lyon, France, for processing and around 40 TB of simulated events have been imported to SLAC from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). An unforseen challenge has arisen due to recent events and highlighted security concerns at DoE funded labs. New rules and regulations suggest it is only a matter of time before many active performance measurements may not be possible between many sites. Yet, at the same time, the importance of understanding every aspect of the network and eradicating packet loss for high throughput data transfers has become apparent. Work at SLAC to employ passive monitoring using netflow and OC3MON is underway and techniques to supplement and possibly replace the active measurements are being considered. This paper will detail the special needs and traffic characterization of a remarkable research project, and how the networking hurdles have been resolved (or not!) to achieve the required high data throughput. Results from active and passive measurements will be compared, and methods for achieving high throughput and the effect on the network will be assessed along with tools that directly measure throughput and applications used to actually transfer data.

  19. Interoperable End-to-End Remote Patient Monitoring Platform Based on IEEE 11073 PHD and ZigBee Health Care Profile.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Clarke, Malcolm; de Folter, Joost; Verma, Vivek; Gokalp, Hulya

    2018-05-01

    This paper describes the implementation of an end-to-end remote monitoring platform based on the IEEE 11073 standards for personal health devices (PHD). It provides an overview of the concepts and approaches and describes how the standard has been optimized for small devices with limited resources of processor, memory, and power that use short-range wireless technology. It explains aspects of IEEE 11073, including the domain information model, state model, and nomenclature, and how these support its plug-and-play architecture. It shows how these aspects underpin a much larger ecosystem of interoperable devices and systems that include IHE PCD-01, HL7, and BlueTooth LE medical devices, and the relationship to the Continua Guidelines, advocating the adoption of data standards and nomenclature to support semantic interoperability between health and ambient assisted living in future platforms. The paper further describes the adaptions that have been made in order to implement the standard on the ZigBee Health Care Profile and the experiences of implementing an end-to-end platform that has been deployed to frail elderly patients with chronic disease(s) and patients with diabetes.

  20. Simultaneous minimizing monitor units and number of segments without leaf end abutment for segmental intensity modulated radiation therapy delivery

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Li Kaile; Dai Jianrong; Ma Lijun

    2004-01-01

    Leaf end abutment is seldom studied when delivering segmental intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) fields. We developed an efficient leaf sequencing method to eliminate leaf end abutment for segmental IMRT delivery. Our method uses simple matrix and sorting operations to obtain a solution that simultaneously minimizes total monitor units and number of segments without leaf end abutment between segments. We implemented and demonstrated our method for multiple clinical cases. We compared the results of our method with the results from exhaustive search method. We found that our solution without leaf end abutment produced equivalent results to the unconstrained solutions in terms of minimum total monitor units and minimum number of leaf segments. We conclude that the leaf end abutment fields can be avoided without affecting the efficiency of segmental IMRT delivery. The major strength of our method is its simplicity and high computing speed. This potentially provides a useful means for generating segmental IMRT fields that require high spatial resolution or complex intensity distributions

  1. Hybrid Modeling Improves Health and Performance Monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    2007-01-01

    Scientific Monitoring Inc. was awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project by NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center to create a new, simplified health-monitoring approach for flight vehicles and flight equipment. The project developed a hybrid physical model concept that provided a structured approach to simplifying complex design models for use in health monitoring, allowing the output or performance of the equipment to be compared to what the design models predicted, so that deterioration or impending failure could be detected before there would be an impact on the equipment's operational capability. Based on the original modeling technology, Scientific Monitoring released I-Trend, a commercial health- and performance-monitoring software product named for its intelligent trending, diagnostics, and prognostics capabilities, as part of the company's complete ICEMS (Intelligent Condition-based Equipment Management System) suite of monitoring and advanced alerting software. I-Trend uses the hybrid physical model to better characterize the nature of health or performance alarms that result in "no fault found" false alarms. Additionally, the use of physical principles helps I-Trend identify problems sooner. I-Trend technology is currently in use in several commercial aviation programs, and the U.S. Air Force recently tapped Scientific Monitoring to develop next-generation engine health-management software for monitoring its fleet of jet engines. Scientific Monitoring has continued the original NASA work, this time under a Phase III SBIR contract with a joint NASA-Pratt & Whitney aviation security program on propulsion-controlled aircraft under missile-damaged aircraft conditions.

  2. Methods for accurate cold-chain temperature monitoring using digital data-logger thermometers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chojnacky, M. J.; Miller, W. M.; Strouse, G. F.

    2013-09-01

    Complete and accurate records of vaccine temperature history are vital to preserving drug potency and patient safety. However, previously published vaccine storage and handling guidelines have failed to indicate a need for continuous temperature monitoring in vaccine storage refrigerators. We evaluated the performance of seven digital data logger models as candidates for continuous temperature monitoring of refrigerated vaccines, based on the following criteria: out-of-box performance and compliance with manufacturer accuracy specifications over the range of use; measurement stability over extended, continuous use; proper setup in a vaccine storage refrigerator so that measurements reflect liquid vaccine temperatures; and practical methods for end-user validation and establishing metrological traceability. Data loggers were tested using ice melting point checks and by comparison to calibrated thermocouples to characterize performance over 0 °C to 10 °C. We also monitored logger performance in a study designed to replicate the range of vaccine storage and environmental conditions encountered at provider offices. Based on the results of this study, the Centers for Disease Control released new guidelines on proper methods for storage, handling, and temperature monitoring of vaccines for participants in its federally-funded Vaccines for Children Program. Improved temperature monitoring practices will ultimately decrease waste from damaged vaccines, improve consumer confidence, and increase effective inoculation rates.

  3. Evaluation of a transportable capnometer for monitoring end-tidal carbon dioxide

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hildebrandt, T; Tobiasen, Malene Espelund; Olsen, K S

    2010-01-01

    We compared a small and transportable Capnometer (EMMA™) with a reference capnometer, the Siesta i TS Anaesthesia. During air-breathing through a facemask, both the EMMA (nine modules) and reference capnometer sampled expired gas simultaneously. A wide range of end-tidal carbon dioxide values were...... obtained during inhalation of carbon dioxide and voluntary hyperventilation. The median IQR [range] difference between all sets of carbon dioxide values (EMMA - reference) was -0.3 (-0.6 to 0.0 [-1.7 to 1.6] kPa; n = 297) using new batteries, which was statistically significant (p = 0.04) and located...... to two of the nine EMMAs tested. Using batteries with reduced voltage did not influence the measurements. The 95% CI of the medians of the differences were -0.4 to -0.2. We conclude that the EMMA can slightly under-read the end-tidal carbon dioxide but is generally comparable with a free-standing monitor...

  4. Performance Enhancements of UMTS networks using end-to-end QoS provisioning

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wang, Haibo; Prasad, Devendra; Teyeb, Oumer

    2005-01-01

    This paper investigates the end-to-end(E2E) quality of service(QoS) provisioning approaches for UMTS networks together with DiffServ IP network. The effort was put on QoS classes mapping from DiffServ to UMTS, Access Control(AC), buffering and scheduling optimization. The DiffServ Code Point (DSCP......) was utilized in the whole UMTS QoS provisioning to differentiate different type of traffics. The overall algorithm was optimized to guarantee the E2E QoS parameters of each service class, especially for realtime applications, as well as to improve the bandwidth utilization. Simulation shows that the enhanced...

  5. Construction of monitored drift tube chambers for ATLAS end-cap muon spectrometer at IHEP (Protvino)

    CERN Document Server

    Bensinger, J; Borisov, A; Fakhrutdinov, R M; Goryatchev, S; Goryachev, V N; Gushchin, V; Hashemi, K S; Kojine, A; Kononov, A I; Larionov, A; Paramoshkina, E; Pilaev, A; Skvorodnev, N; Tchougouev, A; Wellenstein, H

    2002-01-01

    Trapezoidal-shaped Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) chambers will be used in end-caps of ATLAS muon spectrometer. Design and construction technology of such chambers in IHEP (Protvino) is presented. X-ray tomography results confirm desirable 20 mum precision of wire location in the chamber.

  6. Reversible end-to-end assembly of gold nanorods using a disulfide-modified polypeptide

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Walker, David A; Gupta, Vinay K

    2008-01-01

    Directing the self-assembly of colloidal particles into nanostructures is of great interest in nanotechnology. Here, reversible end-to-end assembly of gold nanorods (GNR) is induced by pH-dependent changes in the secondary conformation of a disulfide-modified poly(L-glutamic acid) (SSPLGA). The disulfide anchoring group drives chemisorption of the polyacid onto the end of the gold nanorods in an ethanolic solution. A layer of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) is adsorbed on the positively charged, surfactant-stabilized GNR to screen the surfactant bilayer charge and provide stability for dispersion of the GNR in ethanol. For comparison, irreversible end-to-end assembly using a bidentate ligand, namely 1,6-hexanedithiol, is also performed. Characterization of the modified GNR and its end-to-end linking behavior using SSPLGA and hexanedithiol is performed using dynamic light scattering (DLS), UV-vis absorption spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Experimental results show that, in a colloidal solution of GNR-SSPLGA at a pH∼3.5, where the PLGA is in an α-helical conformation, the modified GNR self-assemble into one-dimensional nanostructures. The linking behavior can be reversed by increasing the pH (>8.5) to drive the conformation of the polypeptide to a random coil and this reversal with pH occurs rapidly within minutes. Cycling the pH multiple times between low and high pH values can be used to drive the formation of the nanostructures of the GNR and disperse them in solution.

  7. End-to-end integrated security and performance analysis on the DEGAS Choreographer platform

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Buchholtz, Mikael; Gilmore, Stephen; Haenel, Valentin

    2005-01-01

    We present a software tool platform which facilitates security and performance analysis of systems which starts and ends with UML model descriptions. A UML project is presented to the platform for analysis, formal content is extracted in the form of process calculi descriptions, analysed with the......We present a software tool platform which facilitates security and performance analysis of systems which starts and ends with UML model descriptions. A UML project is presented to the platform for analysis, formal content is extracted in the form of process calculi descriptions, analysed...

  8. Performance audit procedures for opacity monitors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Plaisance, S.J.; Peeler, J.W.

    1987-04-01

    This manual contains monitor-specific performance audit procedures and data forms for use in conducting audits of installed opacity continuous emission monitoring systems (CEMS). General auditing procedures and acceptance limits for various audit criteria are discussed. Practical considerations and common problems encountered in conducting audits are delineated, and recommendations are included to optimize the successful completion of performance audits. Performance audit procedures and field-data forms were developed for six common opacity CEMS: (1) Lear Siegler, Inc. Model RM-41; (2) Lear Siegler, Inc. Model RM-4; (3) Dynatron Model 1100; (4) Thermo Electron, Inc. Model 400; (5) Thermo Electron, Inc. Model 1000A; and (6) Enviroplan Model D-R280 AV. Generic audit procedures are included for use in evaluating opacity CEMS with multiple transmissometers and combiner devices. In addition, several approaches for evaluating the zero-alignment or clear-path zero response are described. The zero-alignment procedures are included since the factor is fundamental to the accuracy of opacity monitoring data, even though the zero-alignment checks cannot usually be conducted during a performance audit

  9. Radiation exposure monitoring and control in front-end fuel cycle facilities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Khan, A.H.

    2003-01-01

    The front end nuclear fuel cycle facilities presently operational in India are the mining and processing of beach mineral sands along the southern coast of Kerala, Tamilnadu and Orissa, mining and processing of uranium ore in Singhbhum-East in Jharkhand and refining and fuel fabrication at Hyderabad and Trombay. Dedicated Health Physics Units set up at each site regularly carry out in-plant and personnel monitoring to ensure safe working conditions and evaluate radiation exposure of workers and advise appropriate control measures. External gamma radiation, radon, thoron, their progeny and airborne long-lived activity due to radioactive dust are monitored. Personal dosimeters are also issued to workers. The total radiation exposure of workers from external and internal sources is evaluated from the plant and personal monitoring data. Provision of adequate ventilation, control of dust and spillage of active solutions, prompt decontamination, use of personal protective appliances and worker education are the key factors in keeping the doses to the workers well within the regulatory limits. It has been observed that the total radiation dose to workers has been well below 20 mSv.y - 1 at all stages of operations. The monitoring methodologies and summary of radiation exposure data for different facilities during the last few years are presented in the paper. (author)

  10. WiMAX network performance monitoring & optimization

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zhang, Qi; Dam, H

    2008-01-01

    frequency reuse, capacity planning, proper network dimensioning, multi-class data services and so on. Furthermore, as a small operator we also want to reduce the demand for sophisticated technicians and man labour hours. To meet these critical demands, we design a generic integrated network performance......In this paper we present our WiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) network performance monitoring and optimization solution. As a new and small WiMAX network operator, there are many demanding issues that we have to deal with, such as limited available frequency resource, tight...... this integrated network performance monitoring and optimization system in our WiMAX networks. This integrated monitoring and optimization system has such good flexibility and scalability that individual function component can be used by other operators with special needs and more advanced function components can...

  11. Assessing the monitoring performance using a synthetic microseismic catalogue for hydraulic fracturing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ángel López Comino, José; Kriegerowski, Marius; Cesca, Simone; Dahm, Torsten; Mirek, Janusz; Lasocki, Stanislaw

    2016-04-01

    Hydraulic fracturing is considered among the human operations which could induce or trigger seismicity or microseismic activity. The influence of hydraulic fracturing operations is typically expected in terms of weak magnitude events. However, the sensitivity of the rock mass to trigger seismicity varies significantly for different sites and cannot be easily predicted prior to operations. In order to assess the sensitivity of microseismity to hydraulic fracturing operations, we perform a seismic monitoring at a shale gas exploration/exploitation site in the central-western part of the Peribaltic synclise at Pomerania (Poland). The monitoring will be continued before, during and after the termination of hydraulic fracturing operations. The fracking operations are planned in April 2016 at a depth 4000 m. A specific network setup has been installed since summer 2015, including a distributed network of broadband stations and three small-scale arrays. The network covers a region of 60 km2. The aperture of small scale arrays is between 450 and 950 m. So far no fracturing operations have been performed, but seismic data can already be used to assess the seismic noise and background microseismicity, and to investigate and assess the detection performance of our monitoring setup. Here we adopt a recently developed tool to generate a synthetic catalogue and waveform dataset, which realistically account for the expected microseismicity. Synthetic waveforms are generated for a local crustal model, considering a realistic distribution of hypocenters, magnitudes, moment tensors, and source durations. Noise free synthetic seismograms are superposed to real noise traces, to reproduce true monitoring conditions at the different station locations. We estimate the detection probability for different magnitudes, source-receiver distances, and noise conditions. This information is used to estimate the magnitude of completeness at the depth of the hydraulic fracturing horizontal wells

  12. 5 CFR 430.306 - Monitoring performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... 5 Administrative Personnel 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Monitoring performance. 430.306 Section 430.306 Administrative Personnel OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT Managing Senior Executive Performance § 430.306 Monitoring performance. (a) Supervisors must...

  13. Analysis of a DSM program using an end use model; End use model wo mochiita DSM program no bunseki

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Asano, H.; Takahashi, M.; Okada, K. [Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, Tokyo (Japan)

    1997-01-30

    An end use model used in the United States who is advanced in demand-side management (DSM) was used to discuss possibilities of designing and evaluating Japan`s future DSM measures. The end use model assumes energy demand based on such factors as device characteristics, meteorological data, energy prices, user characteristics, market characteristics and DSM measures. The model calculates energy demand amount by end uses basically by multiplying assumptions on device unit requirement, device retention rate, and number of users. A representative tool as an end use model that handles load shapes is the hourly electric load model (HELM). It assumes an annual load curve and predicts a maximum system load. The present discussions have performed estimation on demand for consumer use air conditioners in a day in which a maximum summer load occurs in a reference year, estimation on load in a maximum load day in an estimated year, and estimation on weather sensitivity of loads. 5 refs., 5 figs.

  14. Plant performance monitoring program at Krsko NPP

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bach, B.; Kavsek, D.

    2004-01-01

    A high level of nuclear safety and plant reliability results from the complex interaction of a good design, operational safety and human performance. This is the reason for establishing a set of operational plant safety performance indicators, to enable monitoring of both plant performance and progress. Performance indicators are also used for setting challenging targets and goals for improvement, to gain additional perspective on performance relative to other plants and to provide an indication of a potential need to adjust priorities and resources to achieve improved overall plant performance. A specific indicator trend over a certain period can provide an early warning to plant management to evaluate the causes behind the observed changes. In addition to monitoring the changes and trends, it is also necessary to compare the indicators with identified targets and goals to evaluate performance strengths and weaknesses. Plant Performance Monitoring Program at Krsko NPP defines and ensures consistent collection, processing, analysis and use of predefined relevant plant operational data, providing a quantitative indication of nuclear power plant performance. When the program was developed, the conceptual framework described in IAEA TECDOC-1141 Operational Safety Performance Indicators for Nuclear Power Plants was used as its basis in order to secure that a reasonable set of quantitative indications of operational safety performance would be established. Safe, conservative, cautious and reliable operation of the Krsko NPP is a common goal for all plant personnel. It is provided by continuous assurance of both health and safety of the public and employees according to the plant policy stated in program MD-1 Notranje usmeritve in cilji NEK, which is the top plant program. Establishing a program of monitoring and assessing operational plant safety performance indicators represents effective safety culture of plant personnel.(author)

  15. Heat exchanger performance monitoring guidelines

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Stambaugh, N.; Closser, W. Jr.; Mollerus, F.J.

    1991-12-01

    Fouling can occur in many heat exchanger applications in a way that impedes heat transfer and fluid flow and reduces the heat transfer or performance capability of the heat exchanger. Fouling may be significant for heat exchanger surfaces and flow paths in contact with plant service water. This report presents guidelines for performance monitoring of heat exchangers subject to fouling. Guidelines include selection of heat exchangers to monitor based on system function, safety function and system configuration. Five monitoring methods are discussed: the heat transfer, temperature monitoring, temperature effectiveness, delta P and periodic maintenance methods. Guidelines are included for selecting the appropriate monitoring methods and for implementing the selected methods. The report also includes a bibliography, example calculations, and technical notes applicable to the heat transfer method

  16. Neuropharmacology of performance monitoring.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jocham, Gerhard; Ullsperger, Markus

    2009-01-01

    Adaptive, goal-directed behavior requires that organisms evaluate their actions in terms of their outcomes. Neuroimaging studies show that unfavorable outcomes or situations with high level of conflict engage the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC). Recording of event-related potentials revealed that these situations are accompanied by a negative deflection, the so-called error-related negativity (ERN), which appears after an erroneous response or after negative feedback. Both activation of the pMFC and the ERN are thought to represent a signal that indicates the need for behavioral adjustment, and to recruit other brain regions that implement these adjustments. While many fMRI and EEG studies have shed light on the anatomical structures and the cognitive processes involved in performance monitoring, only very recently have researchers begun to investigate the underlying neurochemical mechanisms. Drawing on the putative involvement of dopamine (DA) neurons in coding a reward prediction error, an influential theory has ascribed a pivotal role to DA in performance monitoring. However, although important, DA is certainly not the only neuromodulator involved. Recent studies point to a role for serotonin, norepinephrine and GABA, but also for adenosine in performance monitoring. Here, we review the evidence for neurotransmitter effects on this function in humans. In this light, we critically discuss currently debated models of performance monitoring and potential alternatives.

  17. Structural Performance Evaluation of Tsing MA Bridge Deck Using Long-Term Monitoring Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ni, Y. Q.; Xia, H. W.; Ko, J. M.

    The Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong is suspension bridge with a main span of 1377 m carrying both highway and railway traffic. After completing its construction in 1997, the bridge was instrumented by the Hong Kong SAR Government Highways Department with a long-term structural health monitoring system comprising about 300 sensors permanently installed on the bridge. As part of this monitoring system, a total of 110 strain gauges have been installed to measure strain at the deck cross-sections and bearings. In this study, a method for real-time structural performance evaluation of the stiffening deck system making use of long-term strain measurement data is proposed and verified using the strain monitoring data from a typical deck cross-section of the Tsing Ma Bridge.

  18. Condenser performance monitoring and cleaning

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Walden, J.V.

    1998-01-01

    The main condenser at Ginna Station was retubed from admiralty brass to 316 stainless steel. A condenser performance monitoring spreadsheet was developed using EPRI guidelines after fouling was discovered. PEPSE computer models were used to determine the power loss and confirm the spreadsheet results. Cleaning of the condenser was performed using plastic scrubbers. Condenser performance improved dramatically following the cleaning. PEPSE, condenser spreadsheet performance, and actual observed plant data correlated well together. The fouling mechanism was determined to be a common lake bacteria and fungus growth which was combined with silt. Chlorination of the circulating water system at the allowable limits is keeping the biofouling under control

  19. Monitoring Method of Cutting Force by Using Additional Spindle Sensors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarhan, Ahmed Aly Diaa; Matsubara, Atsushi; Sugihara, Motoyuki; Saraie, Hidenori; Ibaraki, Soichi; Kakino, Yoshiaki

    This paper describes a monitoring method of cutting forces for end milling process by using displacement sensors. Four eddy-current displacement sensors are installed on the spindle housing of a machining center so that they can detect the radial motion of the rotating spindle. Thermocouples are also attached to the spindle structure in order to examine the thermal effect in the displacement sensing. The change in the spindle stiffness due to the spindle temperature and the speed is investigated as well. Finally, the estimation performance of cutting forces using the spindle displacement sensors is experimentally investigated by machining tests on carbon steel in end milling operations under different cutting conditions. It is found that the monitoring errors are attributable to the thermal displacement of the spindle, the time lag of the sensing system, and the modeling error of the spindle stiffness. It is also shown that the root mean square errors between estimated and measured amplitudes of cutting forces are reduced to be less than 20N with proper selection of the linear stiffness.

  20. A front-end ASIC for ionising radiation monitoring with femto-amp capabilities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Voulgari, E.; Noy, M.; Anghinolfi, F.; Perrin, D.; Krummenacher, F.; Kayal, M.

    2016-01-01

    An ultra-low leakage current Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) called Utopia (Ultralow Picoammeter) has been designed and fabricated in AMS 0.35 μm CMOS, in order to be used as the front-end for ionising radiation monitoring at CERN. It is based on the topology of a Current to Frequency Converter (CFC) through charge balancing and demonstrates a wide dynamic range of 8.5 decades without range changing. Due to a design aimed at minimising input leakage currents, input currents as low as 01 fA can be measured

  1. Performance Monitoring of Residential Hot Water Distribution Systems

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Liao, Anna; Lanzisera, Steven; Lutz, Jim; Fitting, Christian; Kloss, Margarita; Stiles, Christopher

    2014-08-11

    Current water distribution systems are designed such that users need to run the water for some time to achieve the desired temperature, wasting energy and water in the process. We developed a wireless sensor network for large-scale, long time-series monitoring of residential water end use. Our system consists of flow meters connected to wireless motes transmitting data to a central manager mote, which in turn posts data to our server via the internet. This project also demonstrates a reliable and flexible data collection system that could be configured for various other forms of end use metering in buildings. The purpose of this study was to determine water and energy use and waste in hot water distribution systems in California residences. We installed meters at every end use point and the water heater in 20 homes and collected 1s flow and temperature data over an 8 month period. For a typical shower and dishwasher events, approximately half the energy is wasted. This relatively low efficiency highlights the importance of further examining the energy and water waste in hot water distribution systems.

  2. Runtime Performance Monitoring Tool for RTEMS System Software

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cho, B.; Kim, S.; Park, H.; Kim, H.; Choi, J.; Chae, D.; Lee, J.

    2007-08-01

    RTEMS is a commercial-grade real-time operating system that supports multi-processor computers. However, there are not many development tools for RTEMS. In this paper, we report new RTEMS-based runtime performance monitoring tool. We have implemented a light weight runtime monitoring task with an extension to the RTEMS APIs. Using our tool, software developers can verify various performance- related parameters during runtime. Our tool can be used during software development phase and in-orbit operation as well. Our implemented target agent is light weight and has small overhead using SpaceWire interface. Efforts to reduce overhead and to add other monitoring parameters are currently under research.

  3. Study on the forest vegetation restoration monitoring using HJ-1A hyperspectral data

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chuan, Zhang; Fawang, Ye; Hongcheng, Liu; Haixia, He

    2014-01-01

    In this paper, Xunke County was studied using HJ-1A hyperspectral data for monitoring vegetation restoration after forest fires. The pre-processing procedure including data format conversion, image mosaicing and atmospheric correction. Support vector machine classification was used to perform surface feature identification based on the extracted spectral end-members. On that basis, the image area was divided into seven categories and statistical analysis of classification types was performed. The results showed that HJ-1A hyperspectral data had great potential in fine classification of surface features and the accuracy of classification was 91.8%. The mild and severe fire-affected area extraction provided useful reference for disaster recovery monitoring. Furthermore, the distinction between coniferous forest and broadleaved forest can offer useful information for forest fire prevention and early warning to some extent

  4. Performance Evaluation of Open-Ended ELSS Mutual Fund ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This study examined the performance of the open-ended equity linked saving mutual fund schemes (ELSS) in India during the financial distress in 2008-2009. In this study, the month end net asset values of selected equity linked saving mutual fund schemes were considered and the data was obtained from the website of ...

  5. End-to-end tests using alanine dosimetry in scanned proton beams

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carlino, A.; Gouldstone, C.; Kragl, G.; Traneus, E.; Marrale, M.; Vatnitsky, S.; Stock, M.; Palmans, H.

    2018-03-01

    This paper describes end-to-end test procedures as the last fundamental step of medical commissioning before starting clinical operation of the MedAustron synchrotron-based pencil beam scanning (PBS) therapy facility with protons. One in-house homogeneous phantom and two anthropomorphic heterogeneous (head and pelvis) phantoms were used for end-to-end tests at MedAustron. The phantoms were equipped with alanine detectors, radiochromic films and ionization chambers. The correction for the ‘quenching’ effect of alanine pellets was implemented in the Monte Carlo platform of the evaluation version of RayStation TPS. During the end-to-end tests, the phantoms were transferred through the workflow like real patients to simulate the entire clinical workflow: immobilization, imaging, treatment planning and dose delivery. Different clinical scenarios of increasing complexity were simulated: delivery of a single beam, two oblique beams without and with range shifter. In addition to the dose comparison in the plastic phantoms the dose obtained from alanine pellet readings was compared with the dose determined with the Farmer ionization chamber in water. A consistent systematic deviation of about 2% was found between alanine dosimetry and the ionization chamber dosimetry in water and plastic materials. Acceptable agreement of planned and delivered doses was observed together with consistent and reproducible results of the end-to-end testing performed with different dosimetric techniques (alanine detectors, ionization chambers and EBT3 radiochromic films). The results confirmed the adequate implementation and integration of the new PBS technology at MedAustron. This work demonstrates that alanine pellets are suitable detectors for end-to-end tests in proton beam therapy and the developed procedures with customized anthropomorphic phantoms can be used to support implementation of PBS technology in clinical practice.

  6. Performance monitoring in lung cancer patients pre- and post-chemotherapy using fine-grained electrophysiological measures

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Simó

    Full Text Available No previous event-related potentials (ERPs study has explored the error-related negativity (ERN - an ERP component indexing performance monitoring - associated to cancer and chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment in a lung cancer population. The aim of this study was to examine differences in performance monitoring in a small-cell lung cancer group (SCLC, C+ 1-month following chemotherapy and two control groups: a non-small cell lung cancer patient group (NSCLC, C− prior to chemotherapy and a healthy control group (HC.Seventeen SCLC (C+ underwent a neuropsychological assessment and an ERP study using a flanker and a stop-signal paradigm. This group was compared to fifteen age-, gender- and education-matched NSCLC (C− and eighteen HC.Between 20 and 30% of patients in both lung cancer groups (C+ and C− met criteria for cognitive impairment. Concerning ERPs, lung cancer patients showed lower overall hit rate and a severe ERN amplitude reduction compared to HC.Lung cancer patients exhibited an abnormal pattern of performance monitoring thus suggesting that chemotherapy and especially cancer itself, may contribute to cognitive deterioration. ERN appeared as an objective laboratory tool sensitive to cognitive dysfunction in cancer population. Keywords: Event-related potentials-ERP, Error-related negativity (ERN, Performance monitoring, Lung cancer, Cognitive impairment, Chemobrain

  7. Monitoring of Computing Resource Use of Active Software Releases in ATLAS

    CERN Document Server

    Limosani, Antonio; The ATLAS collaboration

    2016-01-01

    The LHC is the world's most powerful particle accelerator, colliding protons at centre of mass energy of 13 TeV. As the energy and frequency of collisions has grown in the search for new physics, so too has demand for computing resources needed for event reconstruction. We will report on the evolution of resource usage in terms of CPU and RAM in key ATLAS offline reconstruction workflows at the Tier0 at CERN and on the WLCG. Monitoring of workflows is achieved using the ATLAS PerfMon package, which is the standard ATLAS performance monitoring system running inside Athena jobs. Systematic daily monitoring has recently been expanded to include all workflows beginning at Monte Carlo generation through to end user physics analysis, beyond that of event reconstruction. Moreover, the move to a multiprocessor mode in production jobs has facilitated the use of tools, such as "MemoryMonitor", to measure the memory shared across processors in jobs. Resource consumption is broken down into software domains and displayed...

  8. The use of energy management and control systems to monitor the energy performance of commercial buildings

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Heinemeier, Kristin Elizabeth [Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Architecture

    1994-12-01

    Monitored data play a very important part in the implementation and evaluation of energy conservation technologies and programs. However, these data can be expensive to collect, so there is a need for lower-cost alternatives. In many situations, using the computerized Energy Management and Control Systems (EMCSs)--already installed in many buildings--to collect these commercial building performance data has advantages over more conventional methods. This method provides data without installing incremental hardware, and the large amounts of available operational data can be a very rich resource for understanding building performance. This dissertation addresses several of these issues. One specific objective is to describe a monitoring-project planning process that includes definition of objectives, constraints, resources and approaches for the monitoring. The choice of tools is an important part of this process. The dissertation goes on to demonstrate, through eight case studies, that EMCS monitoring is possible, and to identify and categorize the problems and issues that can be encountered. These issues lead to the creation, use, and testing of a set of methods for evaluation of EMCS monitoring, in the form of guidelines. Finally, EMCS monitoring is demonstrated and compared with conventional monitoring more methodically in a detailed case study.

  9. Using Self-Monitoring of Performance with Self-Graphing to Increase Academic Productivity in Math

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wells, Jenny C.; Sheehey, Patricia H.; Sheehey, Michael

    2017-01-01

    Self-regulation skills have been found to be an important predictor of achievement in mathematics. Teaching a student to regulate his or her behavior during independent math work sessions using self-monitoring of performance with self-graphing focuses him or her on academic performance and results in increases in productivity and math proficiency.…

  10. Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of enhanced performance monitoring in meditators

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Andreu, C.I.; Moënne-Loccoz, C.; López, V.; Slagter, H.A.; Franken, I.H.A.; Cosmelli, D.

    2017-01-01

    Performance monitoring—the ability to monitor ongoing performance to detect and correct errors—is a core component of cognitive control. Impairments in performance monitoring have been associated with several psychiatric disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and substance use

  11. The Contact State Monitoring for Seal End Faces Based on Acoustic Emission Detection

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaohui Li

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Monitoring the contact state of seal end faces would help the early warning of the seal failure. In the acoustic emission (AE detection for mechanical seal, the main difficulty is to reduce the background noise and to classify the dispersed features. To solve these problems and achieve higher detection rates, a new approach based on genetic particle filter with autoregression (AR-GPF and hypersphere support vector machine (HSSVM is presented. First, AR model is used to build the dynamic state space (DSS of the AE signal, and GPF is used for signal filtering. Then, multiple features are extracted, and a classification model based on HSSVM is constructed for state recognition. In this approach, AR-GPF is an excellent time-domain method for noise reduction, and HSSVM has advantage on those dispersed features. Finally experimental data shows that the proposed method can effectively detect the contact state of the seal end faces and has higher accuracy rates than some other existing methods.

  12. Performance Monitoring of Chilled-Water Distribution Systems Using HVAC-Cx.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ferretti, Natascha Milesi; Galler, Michael A; Bushby, Steven T

    2017-01-01

    In this research we develop, test, and demonstrate the newest extension of the software HVAC-Cx (NIST and CSTB 2014), an automated commissioning tool for detecting common mechanical faults and control errors in chilled-water distribution systems (loops). The commissioning process can improve occupant comfort, ensure the persistence of correct system operation, and reduce energy consumption. Automated tools support the process by decreasing the time and the skill level required to carry out necessary quality assurance measures, and as a result they enable more thorough testing of building heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. This paper describes the algorithm, developed by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to analyze chilled-water loops and presents the results of a passive monitoring investigation using field data obtained from BACnet ® (ASHRAE 2016) controllers and presents field validation of the findings. The tool was successful in detecting faults in system operation in its first field implementation supporting the investigation phase through performance monitoring. Its findings led to a full energy retrocommissioning of the field site.

  13. End-to-end performance of cooperative relaying in spectrum-sharing systems with quality of service requirements

    KAUST Repository

    Asghari, Vahid Reza

    2011-07-01

    We propose adopting a cooperative relaying technique in spectrum-sharing cognitive radio (CR) systems to more effectively and efficiently utilize available transmission resources, such as power, rate, and bandwidth, while adhering to the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the licensed (primary) users of the shared spectrum band. In particular, we first consider that the cognitive (secondary) user\\'s communication is assisted by an intermediate relay that implements the decode-and-forward (DF) technique onto the secondary user\\'s relayed signal to help with communication between the corresponding source and the destination nodes. In this context, we obtain first-order statistics pertaining to the first- and second-hop transmission channels, and then, we investigate the end-to-end performance of the proposed spectrum-sharing cooperative relaying system under resource constraints defined to assure that the primary QoS is unaffected. Specifically, we investigate the overall average bit error rate (BER), ergodic capacity, and outage probability of the secondary\\'s communication subject to appropriate constraints on the interference power at the primary receivers. We then consider a general scenario where a cluster of relays is available between the secondary source and destination nodes. In this case, making use of the partial relay selection method, we generalize our results for the single-relay scheme and obtain the end-to-end performance of the cooperative spectrum-sharing system with a cluster of L available relays. Finally, we examine our theoretical results through simulations and comparisons, illustrating the overall performance of the proposed spectrum-sharing cooperative system and quantify its advantages for different operating scenarios and conditions. © 2011 IEEE.

  14. Near-infrared spectroscopic monitoring of a series of industrial batch processes using a bilinear grey model

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Sprang, Eric N. M.; Ramaker, Henk-Jan; Westerhuis, Johan A.; Smilde, Age K.; Gurden, Stephen P.; Wienke, Dietrich

    2003-01-01

    A good process understanding is the foundation for process optimization, process monitoring, end-point detection, and estimation of the end-product quality. Performing good process measurements and the construction of process models will contribute to a better process understanding. To improve the

  15. A new technique for end-to-end ureterostomy in the rat, using an indwelling reabsorbable stent.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carmignani, G; Farina, F P; De Stefani, S; Maffezzini, M

    1983-01-01

    The restoration of the continuity of the urinary tract represents one of the major problems in rat renal transplantation. End-to-end ureterostomy is the most physiologically effective technique; however, it involves noteworthy technical difficulties because of the extremely thin caliber of the ureter in the rat and the high incidence of postoperative hydronephrosis. We describe a new technique for end-to-end ureterostomy in the rat, where the use of an absorbable ureteral stent is recommended. A 5-0 plain catgut thread is used as a stent. The anastomosis is performed under an operating microscope at X 25-40 magnification with interrupted sutures of 11-0 Vicryl. The use of the indwelling stent facilitates the performance of the anastomosis and yields optimal results. The macroscopical, radiological, and histological controls in a group of rats operated on with this technique showed a very high percentage of success with no complications, a result undoubtedly superior to that obtained with conventional methods.

  16. Performance Health Monitoring of Large-Scale Systems

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Rajamony, Ram [IBM Research, Austin, TX (United States)

    2014-11-20

    This report details the progress made on the ASCR funded project Performance Health Monitoring for Large Scale Systems. A large-­scale application may not achieve its full performance potential due to degraded performance of even a single subsystem. Detecting performance faults, isolating them, and taking remedial action is critical for the scale of systems on the horizon. PHM aims to develop techniques and tools that can be used to identify and mitigate such performance problems. We accomplish this through two main aspects. The PHM framework encompasses diagnostics, system monitoring, fault isolation, and performance evaluation capabilities that indicates when a performance fault has been detected, either due to an anomaly present in the system itself or due to contention for shared resources between concurrently executing jobs. Software components called the PHM Control system then build upon the capabilities provided by the PHM framework to mitigate degradation caused by performance problems.

  17. Computer-aided performance monitoring program at Diablo Canyon

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nelson, T.; Glynn, R. III; Kessler, T.C.

    1992-01-01

    This paper describes the thermal performance monitoring program at Pacific Gas ampersand Electric Company's (PG ampersand E's) Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. The plant performance monitoring program at Diablo Canyon uses the THERMAC performance monitoring and analysis computer software provided by Expert-EASE Systems. THERMAC is used to collect performance data from the plant process computers, condition that data to adjust for measurement errors and missing data points, evaluate cycle and component-level performance, archive the data for trend analysis and generate performance reports. The current status of the program is that, after a fair amount of open-quotes tuningclose quotes of the basic open-quotes thermal kitclose quotes models provided with the initial THERMAC installation, we have successfully baselined both units to cycle isolation test data from previous reload cycles. Over the course of the past few months, we have accumulated enough data to generate meaningful performance trends and, as a result, have been able to use THERMAC to track a condenser fouling problem that was costing enough megawatts to attract corporate-level attention. Trends from THERMAC clearly related the megawatt loss to a steadily degrading condenser cleanliness factor and verified the subsequent gain in megawatts after the condenser was cleaned. In the future, we expect to rebaseline THERMAC to a beginning of cycle (BOC) data set and to use the program to help track feedwater nozzle fouling

  18. Shared performance monitor in a multiprocessor system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiu, George; Gara, Alan G.; Salapura, Valentina

    2012-07-24

    A performance monitoring unit (PMU) and method for monitoring performance of events occurring in a multiprocessor system. The multiprocessor system comprises a plurality of processor devices units, each processor device for generating signals representing occurrences of events in the processor device, and, a single shared counter resource for performance monitoring. The performance monitor unit is shared by all processor cores in the multiprocessor system. The PMU comprises: a plurality of performance counters each for counting signals representing occurrences of events from one or more the plurality of processor units in the multiprocessor system; and, a plurality of input devices for receiving the event signals from one or more processor devices of the plurality of processor units, the plurality of input devices programmable to select event signals for receipt by one or more of the plurality of performance counters for counting, wherein the PMU is shared between multiple processing units, or within a group of processors in the multiprocessing system. The PMU is further programmed to monitor event signals issued from non-processor devices.

  19. Real-time performance monitoring and management system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Budhraja, Vikram S [Los Angeles, CA; Dyer, James D [La Mirada, CA; Martinez Morales, Carlos A [Upland, CA

    2007-06-19

    A real-time performance monitoring system for monitoring an electric power grid. The electric power grid has a plurality of grid portions, each grid portion corresponding to one of a plurality of control areas. The real-time performance monitoring system includes a monitor computer for monitoring at least one of reliability metrics, generation metrics, transmission metrics, suppliers metrics, grid infrastructure security metrics, and markets metrics for the electric power grid. The data for metrics being monitored by the monitor computer are stored in a data base, and a visualization of the metrics is displayed on at least one display computer having a monitor. The at least one display computer in one said control area enables an operator to monitor the grid portion corresponding to a different said control area.

  20. Volume-monitored chest CT: a simplified method for obtaining motion-free images near full inspiratory and end expiratory lung volumes

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Mueller, Kathryn S. [The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH (United States); Long, Frederick R. [Nationwide Children' s Hospital, The Children' s Radiological Institute, Columbus, OH (United States); Flucke, Robert L. [Nationwide Children' s Hospital, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Columbus, OH (United States); Castile, Robert G. [The Research Institute at Nationwide Children' s Hospital, Center for Perinatal Research, Columbus, OH (United States)

    2010-10-15

    Lung inflation and respiratory motion during chest CT affect diagnostic accuracy and reproducibility. To describe a simple volume-monitored (VM) method for performing reproducible, motion-free full inspiratory and end expiratory chest CT examinations in children. Fifty-two children with cystic fibrosis (mean age 8.8 {+-} 2.2 years) underwent pulmonary function tests and inspiratory and expiratory VM-CT scans (1.25-mm slices, 80-120 kVp, 16-40 mAs) according to an IRB-approved protocol. The VM-CT technique utilizes instruction from a respiratory therapist, a portable spirometer and real-time documentation of lung volume on a computer. CT image quality was evaluated for achievement of targeted lung-volume levels and for respiratory motion. Children achieved 95% of vital capacity during full inspiratory imaging. For end expiratory scans, 92% were at or below the child's end expiratory level. Two expiratory exams were judged to be at suboptimal volumes. Two inspiratory (4%) and three expiratory (6%) exams showed respiratory motion. Overall, 94% of scans were performed at optimal volumes without respiratory motion. The VM-CT technique is a simple, feasible method in children as young as 4 years to achieve reproducible high-quality full inspiratory and end expiratory lung CT images. (orig.)

  1. Monitoring of computing resource use of active software releases at ATLAS

    Science.gov (United States)

    Limosani, Antonio; ATLAS Collaboration

    2017-10-01

    The LHC is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, colliding protons at centre of mass energy of 13 TeV. As the energy and frequency of collisions has grown in the search for new physics, so too has demand for computing resources needed for event reconstruction. We will report on the evolution of resource usage in terms of CPU and RAM in key ATLAS offline reconstruction workflows at the TierO at CERN and on the WLCG. Monitoring of workflows is achieved using the ATLAS PerfMon package, which is the standard ATLAS performance monitoring system running inside Athena jobs. Systematic daily monitoring has recently been expanded to include all workflows beginning at Monte Carlo generation through to end-user physics analysis, beyond that of event reconstruction. Moreover, the move to a multiprocessor mode in production jobs has facilitated the use of tools, such as “MemoryMonitor”, to measure the memory shared across processors in jobs. Resource consumption is broken down into software domains and displayed in plots generated using Python visualization libraries and collected into pre-formatted auto-generated Web pages, which allow the ATLAS developer community to track the performance of their algorithms. This information is however preferentially filtered to domain leaders and developers through the use of JIRA and via reports given at ATLAS software meetings. Finally, we take a glimpse of the future by reporting on the expected CPU and RAM usage in benchmark workflows associated with the High Luminosity LHC and anticipate the ways performance monitoring will evolve to understand and benchmark future workflows.

  2. Digital Image Correlation for Performance Monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Palaviccini, Miguel; Turner, Dan; Herzberg, Michael

    2016-01-01

    Evaluating the health of a mechanism requires more than just a binary evaluation of whether an operation was completed. It requires analyzing more comprehensive, full-field data. Health monitoring is a process of non-destructively identifying characteristics that indicate the fitness of an engineered component. In order to monitor unit health in a production setting, an automated test system must be created to capture the motion of mechanism parts in a real-time and non-intrusive manner. One way to accomplish this is by using high-speed video and Digital Image Correlation (DIC). In this approach, individual frames of the video are analyzed to track the motion of mechanism components. The derived performance metrics allow for state-of-health monitoring and improved fidelity of mechanism modeling. The results are in-situ state-of-health identification and performance prediction. This paper introduces basic concepts of this test method, and discusses two main themes: the use of laser marking to add fiducial patterns to mechanism components, and new software developed to track objects with complex shapes, even as they move behind obstructions. Finally, the implementation of these tests into an automated tester is discussed.

  3. Application of end-tidal carbon dioxide monitoring via distal gas samples in ventilated neonates.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jin, Ziying; Yang, Maoying; Lin, Ru; Huang, Wenfang; Wang, Jiangmei; Hu, Zhiyong; Shu, Qiang

    2017-08-01

    Previous research has suggested correlations between the end-tidal partial pressure of carbon dioxide (P ET CO 2 ) and the partial pressure of arterial carbon dioxide (PaCO 2 ) in mechanically ventilated patients, but both the relationship between P ET CO 2 and PaCO 2 and whether P ET CO 2 accurately reflects PaCO 2 in neonates and infants are still controversial. This study evaluated remote sampling of P ET CO 2 via an epidural catheter within an endotracheal tube to determine the procedure's clinical safety and efficacy in the perioperative management of neonates. Abdominal surgery was performed under general anesthesia in 86 full-term newborns (age 1-30 days, weight 2.55-4.0 kg, American Society of Anesthesiologists class I or II). The infants were divided into 2 groups (n = 43 each), and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) gas samples were collected either from the conventional position (the proximal end) or a modified position (the distal end) of the epidural catheter. The P ET CO 2 measured with the new method was significantly higher than that measured with the traditional method, and the difference between P ET CO 2 and PaCO 2 was also reduced. The accuracy of P ET CO 2 measured increased from 78.7% to 91.5% when the modified sampling method was used. The moderate correlation between P ET CO 2 and PaCO 2 by traditional measurement was 0.596, which significantly increased to 0.960 in the modified sampling group. Thus, the P ET CO 2 value was closer to that of PaCO 2 . P ET CO 2 detected via modified carbon dioxide monitoring had a better accuracy and correlation with PaCO 2 in neonates. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  4. Performance Monitoring and Evaluation in Botswana’s Public Service: Achievements and Challenges

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dorothy Mpabanga

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available The paper aims to explore the implementation of performance monitoring and evaluation tools used in Botswana’s public service. The paper also identifies achievements and challenges of implementing performance monitoring and evaluation system and suggests ways for improvement. This paper uses secondary data sources. The paper reveals lack of performance monitoring and evaluation skills, poor supervision, poor conditions of service and a poor work ethic as some of the factors contributing to ineffective use of performance monitoring and evaluation tools in the service. Leadership commitment and support, benchmarking reforms, training and education, developed administrative and governance structures as well as well-defined public policy and program formulation and implementation processes are some of the success factors to enhanced performance management and evaluation systems in Botswana. The paper argues for adoption of a developmental-led model in order to enhance existing performance monitoring and evaluation system that would improve implementation of government policies and programs. Botswana has been striving to excel in service delivery through performance monitoring and evaluation oriented reforms.

  5. A 32-channel front-end ASIC for GEM detectors used in beam monitoring applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ciciriello, F.; Altieri, P. R.; Corsi, F.; De Robertis, G.; Felici, G.; Loddo, F.; Lorusso, L.; Marzocca, C.; Matarrese, G.; Ranieri, A.; Stamerra, A.

    2017-11-01

    A multichannel, mixed-signal, front-end ASIC for GEM detectors, intended for beam monitoring in hadron therapy applications, has been designed and prototyped in a standard 0.35 μm CMOS technology. The analog channels are based on the classic CSA + shaper processing chain, followed by a peak detector which can work as an analog memory, to simplifiy the analog-to-digital conversion of the peak voltage of the output pulse, proportional to the energy of the detected event. The available hardware resources include an 8-bit A/D converter and a standard-cell digital part, which manages the read-out procedure, in sparse or serial mode. The ASIC is self-triggered and transfers energy and address data to the external DAQ via a fast 100 MHz LVDS link. Preliminary characterization results show that the non-linearity error is limited to 5% for a maximum input charge of about 70 fC, the measured ENC is about 1400e- and the time jitter of the trigger signal generated in response to an injected charge of 60 fC is close to 200 ps.

  6. Monitoring the performance of Aux. Feedwater Pump using Smart Sensing Model

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    No, Young Gyu; Seong, Poong Hyun [Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

    2015-10-15

    Many artificial intelligence (AI) techniques equipped with learning systems have recently been proposed to monitor sensors and components in NPPs. Therefore, the objective of this study is the development of an integrity evaluation method for safety critical components such as Aux. feedwater pump, high pressure safety injection (HPSI) pump, etc. using smart sensing models based on AI techniques. In this work, the smart sensing model is developed at first to predict the performance of Aux. feedwater pump by estimating flowrate using group method of data handing (GMDH) method. If the performance prediction is achieved by this feasibility study, the smart sensing model will be applied to development of the integrity evaluation method for safety critical components. Also, the proposed algorithm for the performance prediction is verified by comparison with the simulation data of the MARS code for station blackout (SBO) events. In this study, the smart sensing model for the prediction performance of Aux. feedwater pump has been developed. In order to develop the smart sensing model, the GMDH algorithm is employed. The GMDH algorithm is the way to find a function that can well express a dependent variable from independent variables. This method uses a data structure similar to that of multiple regression models. The proposed GMDH model can accurately predict the performance of Aux.

  7. Monitoring the performance of Aux. Feedwater Pump using Smart Sensing Model

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    No, Young Gyu; Seong, Poong Hyun

    2015-01-01

    Many artificial intelligence (AI) techniques equipped with learning systems have recently been proposed to monitor sensors and components in NPPs. Therefore, the objective of this study is the development of an integrity evaluation method for safety critical components such as Aux. feedwater pump, high pressure safety injection (HPSI) pump, etc. using smart sensing models based on AI techniques. In this work, the smart sensing model is developed at first to predict the performance of Aux. feedwater pump by estimating flowrate using group method of data handing (GMDH) method. If the performance prediction is achieved by this feasibility study, the smart sensing model will be applied to development of the integrity evaluation method for safety critical components. Also, the proposed algorithm for the performance prediction is verified by comparison with the simulation data of the MARS code for station blackout (SBO) events. In this study, the smart sensing model for the prediction performance of Aux. feedwater pump has been developed. In order to develop the smart sensing model, the GMDH algorithm is employed. The GMDH algorithm is the way to find a function that can well express a dependent variable from independent variables. This method uses a data structure similar to that of multiple regression models. The proposed GMDH model can accurately predict the performance of Aux

  8. Research highlights from a large scale residential monitoring study in a hot climate

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Parker, Danny S. [Florida Solar Energy Center, Cocoa, FL (United States)

    2003-10-01

    A utility load research project has monitored a large number of residences in Central Florida, collecting detailed end-use data. The monitoring was performed to better estimate the impact of a load control program, as well as obtain improved appliance energy load profiles. The monitoring measured total as well as a number of electrical end-uses on a 15 min basis. The measured end-uses included space cooling, heating, water heating, range and cooking, clothes drying, and swimming pools electricity use and demand. The project identified a number of influences on electrical demand that are not commonly described. (Author)

  9. Monitoring Pharmacy Student Adherence to World Health Organization Hand Hygiene Indications Using Radio Frequency Identification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Decker, Andrew S; Cipriano, Gabriela C; Tsouri, Gill; Lavigne, Jill E

    2016-04-25

    Objective. To assess and improve student adherence to hand hygiene indications using radio frequency identification (RFID) enabled hand hygiene stations and performance report cards. Design. Students volunteered to wear RFID-enabled hospital employee nametags to monitor their adherence to hand-hygiene indications. After training in World Health Organization (WHO) hand hygiene methods and indications, student were instructed to treat the classroom as a patient care area. Report cards illustrating individual performance were distributed via e-mail to students at the middle and end of each 5-day observation period. Students were eligible for individual and team prizes consisting of Starbucks gift cards in $5 increments. Assessment. A hand hygiene station with an RFID reader and dispensing sensor recorded the nametag nearest to the station at the time of use. Mean frequency of use per student was 5.41 (range: 2-10). Distance between the student's seat and the dispenser was the only variable significantly associated with adherence. Student satisfaction with the system was assessed by a self-administered survey at the end of the study. Most students reported that the system increased their motivation to perform hand hygiene as indicated. Conclusion. The RFID-enabled hand hygiene system and benchmarking reports with performance incentives was feasible, reliable, and affordable. Future studies should record video to monitor adherence to the WHO 8-step technique.

  10. Who can monitor the court interpreter's performance?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Martinsen, Bodil

    2009-01-01

    and the conflict about her competence was negotiated. Because of this unusual constellation, combined with a multi-method approach, this single case study can shed some light on the question of the participants' ability to monitor the interpreter's performance. Legal professional users of interpreters tend......  Who can monitor the court interpreter's performance? Results of a case study This paper presents the results of a case study of an unusual interpreting event in a Danish courtroom setting. During the trial, the interpreter's non-normative performance was explicitly criticised by the audience...... are far less transparent for the legal participants than they normally assume. This problem, in turn, stresses the importance of a) the interpreter's competence and self-awareness and b) the use of check interpreters.  ...

  11. Generation of data base for on-line fatigue life monitoring of Indian nuclear power plant components: Part I - Generation of Green's functions for end fitting

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mukhopadhyay, N.K.; Dutta, B.K.; Kushwaha, H.S.

    1994-01-01

    Green's function technique is the heart of the on- line fatigue monitoring methodology. The plant transients are converted to stress and temperature response using this technique. To implement this methodology in a nuclear power plant, Green's functions are to be generated in advance. For structures of complex geometries, Green's functions are to be stored in a data base to convert on-line, the plant data to temperature/stress response, using a personal computer. End fitting, end shield, pressurizer, steam generator tube sheet are few such components of PHWR where fatigue monitoring is needed. In the present paper, Green's functions are generated for end fitting of a 235 MWe Indian PHWR using finite element method. End fitting has been analysed using both 3-D and 2-D (axisymmetric) finite element models. Temperature and stress Green's functions are generated at few critical locations using the code ABAQUS. (author). 10 refs., 11 figs

  12. FMIT test-end instrumentation conceptual design

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fuller, J.L.

    1984-08-01

    FMIT test-end measurement techniques and instrumentation concepts for deuteron beam control, test-end device protection, test cell radiation field characterization, lithium jet performance monitoring, and in-situ off-line target testing and examination are described. The test-end refers to the beam line-target-test assembly interface area inside the test cell, but TEI includes measurements inside and outside the cell. The measurement requirements are briefly reviewed and referenced. The sometimes severe environmental limitations are discussed. Where feasible, multifunctional systems have been configured. Special facility features have been minimized

  13. Monitoring SLAC High Performance UNIX Computing Systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lettsome, Annette K.

    2005-01-01

    Knowledge of the effectiveness and efficiency of computers is important when working with high performance systems. The monitoring of such systems is advantageous in order to foresee possible misfortunes or system failures. Ganglia is a software system designed for high performance computing systems to retrieve specific monitoring information. An alternative storage facility for Ganglia's collected data is needed since its default storage system, the round-robin database (RRD), struggles with data integrity. The creation of a script-driven MySQL database solves this dilemma. This paper describes the process took in the creation and implementation of the MySQL database for use by Ganglia. Comparisons between data storage by both databases are made using gnuplot and Ganglia's real-time graphical user interface

  14. Performance monitoring and analysis of task-based OpenMP.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yi Ding

    Full Text Available OpenMP, a typical shared memory programming paradigm, has been extensively applied in high performance computing community due to the popularity of multicore architectures in recent years. The most significant feature of the OpenMP 3.0 specification is the introduction of the task constructs to express parallelism at a much finer level of detail. This feature, however, has posed new challenges for performance monitoring and analysis. In particular, task creation is separated from its execution, causing the traditional monitoring methods to be ineffective. This paper presents a mechanism to monitor task-based OpenMP programs with interposition and proposes two demonstration graphs for performance analysis as well. The results of two experiments are discussed to evaluate the overhead of monitoring mechanism and to verify the effects of demonstration graphs using the BOTS benchmarks.

  15. Testing of large prestressing tendon end anchorage regions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Johnson, T.E.

    1976-01-01

    Tests were performed on concrete end anchorage regions for prestressing tendons with ultimate strengths of approximately 8,900 kN. One test structure simulated a full scale concrete containment buttress and the other two test specimens were concrete blocks. The behavior of the test structure and specimens, when subjected to loading, was monitored by strain gages and dial gages. The testing illustrated that all of the amounts of reinforcing tested should be acceptable for the end anchor zones of large tendons presently used in prestressed concrete containment structures. (author)

  16. The Advanced Monitoring Systems Initiative--Performance Monitoring for DOE Environmental Remediation and Contaminant Containment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Haas, W. J.; Venedam, R. J.; Lohrstorfer, C. F.; Weeks, S. J.

    2005-05-01

    The Advanced Monitoring System Initiative (AMSI) is a new approach to accelerate the development and application of advanced sensors and monitoring systems in support of Department of Energy needs in monitoring the performance of environmental remediation and contaminant containment activities. The Nevada Site Office of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Bechtel Nevada manage AMSI, with funding provided by the DOE Office of Environmental Management (DOE EM). AMSI has easy access to unique facilities and capabilities available at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), including the Hazardous Materials (HazMat) Spill Center, a one-of-a-kind facility built and permitted for releases of hazardous materials for training purposes, field-test detection, plume dispersion experimentation, and equipment and materials testing under controlled conditions. AMSI also has easy access to the facilities and considerable capabilities of the DOE and NNSA National Laboratories, the Special Technologies Laboratory, Remote Sensing Laboratory, Desert Research Institute, and Nevada Universities. AMSI provides rapid prototyping, systems integration, and field-testing, including assistance during initial site deployment. The emphasis is on application. Important features of the AMSI approach are: (1) customer investment, involvement and commitment to use - including definition of needs, desired mode of operation, and performance requirements; and (2) employment of a complete systems engineering approach, which allows the developer to focus maximum attention on the essential new sensing element or elements while AMSI assumes principal responsibility for infrastructure support elements such as power, packaging, and general data acquisition, control, communication, visualization and analysis software for support of decisions. This presentation describes: (1) the needs for sensors and performance monitoring for environmental systems as seen by the DOE Long Term Stewardship Science and

  17. Performance monitoring of GRID superscalar with OCM-G/G-PM: Integration issues

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Badia, R.M.; Sirvent, R.; Bubak, M.; Funika, W.; Machner, P.; Gorlatch, S.; Bubak, M.; Priol, T.

    2008-01-01

    In this paper the use of a Grid-enabled system for performance monitoring of GRID superscalar-compliant applications is addressed. Performance monitoring is built on top of the OCM-G monitoring system developed in the EU IST CrossGrid project. A graphical user tool G-PM is used to interpret

  18. Performance test of personal RF monitor for area monitoring at magnetic confinement fusion facility

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tanaka, M.; Uda, T.; Wang, J.; Fujiwara, O.

    2012-01-01

    For safety management at a magnetic confinement fusion-test facility, protection from not only ionising radiation, but also non-ionising radiation such as the leakage of static magnetic and electromagnetic fields is an important issue. Accordingly, the use of a commercially available personal RF monitor for multipoint area monitoring is proposed. In this study, the performance of both fast- and slow-type personal RF monitors was investigated by using a transverse electromagnetic cell system. The range of target frequencies was between 10 and 300 MHz, corresponding to the ion cyclotron range of frequency in a fusion device. The personal RF monitor was found to have good linearity, frequency dependence and isotropic response. However, the time constant for the electric field sensor of the slow-type monitor was much longer than that for the fast-type monitor. Considering the time-varying field at the facility, it is found that the fast-type monitor is suitable for multipoint monitoring at magnetic confinement fusion test facilities. (authors)

  19. Performance Test of the Next Generation X-Ray Beam Position Monitor System for The APS Upgrade

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Yang, B.; Lee, S.; Westferro, F.; Jaski, Y.; Lenkszus, F.; Sereno, N.; Ramanathan, M.

    2017-03-25

    The Advanced Photon Source is developing its next major upgrade (APS-U) based on the multi-bend achromat lattice. Improved beam stability is critical for the upgrade and will require keeping short-time beam angle change below 0.25 µrad and long-term angle drift below 0.6 µrad. A reliable white x-ray beam diagnostic system in the front end will be a key part of the planned beam stabilization system. This system includes an x-ray beam position monitor (XBPM) based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) from two specially designed GlidCop A-15 absorbers, a second XBPM using XRF photons from the Exit Mask, and two white beam intensity monitors using XRF from the photon shutter and Compton-scattered photons from the front end beryllium window or a retractable diamond film in windowless front ends. We present orbit stability data for the first XBPM used in the feedback control during user operations, as well as test data from the second XBPM and the intensity monitors. They demonstrate that the XBPM system meets APS-U beam stability requirements.

  20. Practical End-to-End Performance Testing Tool for High Speed 3G-Based Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shinbo, Hiroyuki; Tagami, Atsushi; Ano, Shigehiro; Hasegawa, Toru; Suzuki, Kenji

    High speed IP communication is a killer application for 3rd generation (3G) mobile systems. Thus 3G network operators should perform extensive tests to check whether expected end-to-end performances are provided to customers under various environments. An important objective of such tests is to check whether network nodes fulfill requirements to durations of processing packets because a long duration of such processing causes performance degradation. This requires testers (persons who do tests) to precisely know how long a packet is hold by various network nodes. Without any tool's help, this task is time-consuming and error prone. Thus we propose a multi-point packet header analysis tool which extracts and records packet headers with synchronized timestamps at multiple observation points. Such recorded packet headers enable testers to calculate such holding durations. The notable feature of this tool is that it is implemented on off-the shelf hardware platforms, i.e., lap-top personal computers. The key challenges of the implementation are precise clock synchronization without any special hardware and a sophisticated header extraction algorithm without any drop.

  1. System and Method for Monitoring Piezoelectric Material Performance

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moses, Robert W. (Inventor); Fox, Christopher L. (Inventor); Fox, Melanie L. (Inventor); Chattin, Richard L. (Inventor); Shams, Qamar A. (Inventor); Fox, Robert L. (Inventor)

    2007-01-01

    A system and method are provided for monitoring performance capacity of a piezoelectric material that may form part of an actuator or sensor device. A switch is used to selectively electrically couple an inductor to the piezoelectric material to form an inductor-capacitor circuit. Resonance is induced in the inductor-capacitor circuit when the switch is operated to create the circuit. The resonance of the inductor-capacitor circuit is monitored with the frequency of the resonance being indicative of performance capacity of the device's piezoelectric material.

  2. Screening California Current fishery management scenarios using the Atlantis end-to-end ecosystem model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kaplan, Isaac C.; Horne, Peter J.; Levin, Phillip S.

    2012-09-01

    End-to-end marine ecosystem models link climate and oceanography to the food web and human activities. These models can be used as forecasting tools, to strategically evaluate management options and to support ecosystem-based management. Here we report the results of such forecasts in the California Current, using an Atlantis end-to-end model. We worked collaboratively with fishery managers at NOAA’s regional offices and staff at the National Marine Sanctuaries (NMS) to explore the impact of fishery policies on management objectives at different spatial scales, from single Marine Sanctuaries to the entire Northern California Current. In addition to examining Status Quo management, we explored the consequences of several gear switching and spatial management scenarios. Of the scenarios that involved large scale management changes, no single scenario maximized all performance metrics. Any policy choice would involve trade-offs between stakeholder groups and policy goals. For example, a coast-wide 25% gear shift from trawl to pot or longline appeared to be one possible compromise between an increase in spatial management (which sacrificed revenue) and scenarios such as the one consolidating bottom impacts to deeper areas (which did not perform substantially differently from Status Quo). Judged on a coast-wide scale, most of the scenarios that involved minor or local management changes (e.g. within Monterey Bay NMS only) yielded results similar to Status Quo. When impacts did occur in these cases, they often involved local interactions that were difficult to predict a priori based solely on fishing patterns. However, judged on the local scale, deviation from Status Quo did emerge, particularly for metrics related to stationary species or variables (i.e. habitat and local metrics of landed value or bycatch). We also found that isolated management actions within Monterey Bay NMS would cause local fishers to pay a cost for conservation, in terms of reductions in landed

  3. In-flight spectral performance monitoring of the Airborne Prism Experiment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    D'Odorico, Petra; Alberti, Edoardo; Schaepman, Michael E

    2010-06-01

    Spectral performance of an airborne dispersive pushbroom imaging spectrometer cannot be assumed to be stable over a whole flight season given the environmental stresses present during flight. Spectral performance monitoring during flight is commonly accomplished by looking at selected absorption features present in the Sun, atmosphere, or ground, and their stability. The assessment of instrument performance in two different environments, e.g., laboratory and airborne, using precisely the same calibration reference, has not been possible so far. The Airborne Prism Experiment (APEX), an airborne dispersive pushbroom imaging spectrometer, uses an onboard in-flight characterization (IFC) facility, which makes it possible to monitor the sensor's performance in terms of spectral, radiometric, and geometric stability in flight and in the laboratory. We discuss in detail a new method for the monitoring of spectral instrument performance. The method relies on the monitoring of spectral shifts by comparing instrument-induced movements of absorption features on ground and in flight. Absorption lines originate from spectral filters, which intercept the full field of view (FOV) illuminated using an internal light source. A feature-fitting algorithm is used for the shift estimation based on Pearson's correlation coefficient. Environmental parameter monitoring, coregistered on board with the image and calibration data, revealed that differential pressure and temperature in the baffle compartment are the main driving parameters explaining the trend in spectral performance deviations in the time and the space (across-track) domains, respectively. The results presented in this paper show that the system in its current setup needs further improvements to reach a stable performance. Findings provided useful guidelines for the instrument revision currently under way. The main aim of the revision is the stabilization of the instrument for a range of temperature and pressure conditions

  4. Monitoring the CMS strip tracker readout system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mersi, S; Bainbridge, R; Cripps, N; Fulcher, J; Wingham, M; Baulieu, G; Bel, S; Delaere, C; Drouhin, F; Mirabito, L; Cole, J; Giassi, A; Gross, L; Hahn, K; Nikolic, M; Tkaczyk, S

    2008-01-01

    The CMS Silicon Strip Tracker at the LHC comprises a sensitive area of approximately 200 m 2 and 10 million readout channels. Its data acquisition system is based around a custom analogue front-end chip. Both the control and the readout of the front-end electronics are performed by off-detector VME boards in the counting room, which digitise the raw event data and perform zero-suppression and formatting. The data acquisition system uses the CMS online software framework to configure, control and monitor the hardware components and steer the data acquisition. The first data analysis is performed online within the official CMS reconstruction framework, which provides many services, such as distributed analysis, access to geometry and conditions data, and a Data Quality Monitoring tool based on the online physics reconstruction. The data acquisition monitoring of the Strip Tracker uses both the data acquisition and the reconstruction software frameworks in order to provide real-time feedback to shifters on the operational state of the detector, archiving for later analysis and possibly trigger automatic recovery actions in case of errors. Here we review the proposed architecture of the monitoring system and we describe its software components, which are already in place, the various monitoring streams available, and our experiences of operating and monitoring a large-scale system

  5. Commercial equipment loads: End-Use Load and Consumer Assessment Program (ELCAP)

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Pratt, R.G.; Williamson, M.A.; Richman, E.E.; Miller, N.E.

    1990-07-01

    The Office of Energy Resources of the Bonneville Power Administration is generally responsible for the agency's power and conservation resource planning. As associated responsibility which supports a variety of office functions is the analysis of historical trends in and determinants of energy consumption. The Office of Energy Resources' End-Use Research Section operates a comprehensive data collection program to provide pertinent information to support demand-side planning, load forecasting, and demand-side program development and delivery. Part of this on-going program is known as the End-Use Load and Consumer Assessment Program (ELCAP), an effort designed to collect electricity usage data through direct monitoring of end-use loads in buildings. This program is conducted for Bonneville by the Pacific Northwest Laboratory. This report provides detailed information on electricity consumption of miscellaneous equipment from the commercial portion of ELCAP. Miscellaneous equipment includes all commercial end-uses except heating, ventilating, air conditioning, and central lighting systems. Some examples of end-uses covered in this report are office equipment, computers, task lighting, refrigeration, and food preparation. Electricity consumption estimates, in kilowatt-hours per square food per year, are provided for each end-use by building type. The following types of buildings are covered: office, retail, restaurant, grocery, warehouse, school, university, and hotel/motel. 6 refs., 35 figs., 12 tabs.

  6. Energy, cost, and emission end-use profiles of homes: An Ontario (Canada) case study

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Aydinalp Koksal, Merih; Rowlands, Ian H.; Parker, Paul

    2015-01-01

    Highlights: • Hourly electricity consumption data of seven end-uses from 25 homes are analyzed. • Hourly load, cost, and emission profiles of end-uses are developed and categorized. • Side-by-side analysis of energy, cost, and environmental effects is conducted. • Behaviour and outdoor temperature based end-uses are determined. • Share of each end-use in the total daily load, cost, and emission is determined. - Abstract: Providing information on the temporal distributions of residential electricity end-uses plays a major role in determining the potential savings in residential electricity demand, cost, and associated emissions. While the majority of the studies on disaggregated residential electricity end-use data provided hourly usage profiles of major appliances, only a few of them presented analysis on the effect of hourly electricity consumption of some specific end-uses on household costs and emissions. This study presents side-by-side analysis of energy, cost, and environment effects of hourly electricity consumption of the main electricity end-uses in a sample of homes in the Canadian province of Ontario. The data used in this study are drawn from a larger multi-stakeholder project in which electricity consumption of major end-uses at 25 homes in Milton, Ontario, was monitored in five-minute intervals for six-month to two-year periods. In addition to determining the hourly price of electricity during the monitoring period, the hourly carbon intensity is determined using fuel type hourly generation and the life cycle greenhouse gas intensities specifically determined for Ontario’s electricity fuel mix. The hourly load, cost, and emissions profiles are developed for the central air conditioner, furnace, clothes dryer, clothes washer, dishwasher, refrigerator, and stove and then grouped into eight day type categories. The side-by-side analysis of categorized load, cost, and emission profiles of the seven electricity end-uses provided information on

  7. Performance analysis of the TNO TLD individual monitoring service

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dijk, J.W.E. van; Julius, H.W.

    1990-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to analyse the performance and to establish the lowest detectable occupational dose (LDOD) of the TNO TL dosemeter, in use for large scale routine individual monitoring since 1983. The TNO individual monitoring service uses three TLD reader systems and over 45000 TL dosemeters, designed to measure H s (0.07) and H p (10). Each reader system is normalised daily and each individual dosemeter is calibrated every ten readout cycles. The performance of the service is monitored by a double blind experimental set-up. A series of 10 routine dosemeters is issued every fortnight, mailed, exposed by staff not involved in the monitoring service, sent back and evaluated. The conclusion of this study is that the lowest detectable occupational dose is less than 0.04 mSv and that the integrated dose at the level of the annual dose limit is measured within 2%. (author)

  8. The impact of natural gas/hydrogen mixtures on the performance of end-use equipment : Interchangeability analysis for domestic appliances

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Vries, Harmen; Mokhov, Anatoli V.; Levinsky, Howard B.

    2017-01-01

    The addition of hydrogen derived from renewable power to the natural gas network is being promoted as a viable means of storing excess wind and solar energy. However, the changes in combustion properties of the natural gas upon hydrogen addition can impact the performance of the end-use equipment

  9. Portable air quality sensor unit for participatory monitoring: an end-to-end VESNA-AQ based prototype

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vucnik, Matevz; Robinson, Johanna; Smolnikar, Miha; Kocman, David; Horvat, Milena; Mohorcic, Mihael

    2015-04-01

    and location. The end user can monitor the measured parameters through a smartphone application. The smartphone app implements a custom developed LCSP (Lightweight Client Server Protocol) protocol which is used to send requests to the VESNA-AQ unit and to exchange information. When the data is obtained from the VESNA-AQ unit, the mobile application visualizes the data. It also has an option to forward the data to the remote server in a custom JSON structure over a HTTP POST request. The server stores the data in the database and in parallel translates the data to WFS and forwards it to the main CITI-SENSE platform over WFS-T in a common XML format over HTTP POST request. From there data can be accessed through the Internet and visualised in different forms and web applications developed by the CITI-SENSE project. In the course of the project, the collected data will be made publicly available enabling the citizens to participate in environmental governance. Acknowledgements: CITI-SENSE is a Collaborative Project partly funded by the EU FP7-ENV-2012 under grant agreement no 308524 (www.citi-sense.eu).

  10. Monitoring of computing resource use of active software releases at ATLAS

    CERN Document Server

    AUTHOR|(INSPIRE)INSPIRE-00219183; The ATLAS collaboration

    2017-01-01

    The LHC is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, colliding protons at centre of mass energy of 13 TeV. As the energy and frequency of collisions has grown in the search for new physics, so too has demand for computing resources needed for event reconstruction. We will report on the evolution of resource usage in terms of CPU and RAM in key ATLAS offline reconstruction workflows at the TierO at CERN and on the WLCG. Monitoring of workflows is achieved using the ATLAS PerfMon package, which is the standard ATLAS performance monitoring system running inside Athena jobs. Systematic daily monitoring has recently been expanded to include all workflows beginning at Monte Carlo generation through to end-user physics analysis, beyond that of event reconstruction. Moreover, the move to a multiprocessor mode in production jobs has facilitated the use of tools, such as “MemoryMonitor”, to measure the memory shared across processors in jobs. Resource consumption is broken down into software domains and dis...

  11. Passive performance monitoring and traffic characteristics on the SLAC internet border

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Logg, C.; Cottrell, L.

    2001-01-01

    Understanding how the Internet is used by HEP is critical to optimizing the performance of the inter-lab computing environment. Typically use requirements have been defined by discussions between collaborators. However, later analysis of the actual traffic has show this is often misunderstood and actual use is significantly different to that predicted. Passive monitoring of the real traffic provides insight into the true communications requirements and the performance of a large number of inter-communicating nodes. It may be useful in identifying performance problems that are due to factors other than Internet congestion, especially when compared to other methods such as active monitoring where traffic is generated specifically to measure its performance. Controlled active monitoring between dedicated servers often gives an indication of what can be achieved on a network. Passive monitoring of the real traffic gives a picture of the true performance. The authors will discuss the method and results of collecting and analyzing flows of data obtained from the SLAC Internet border. The insights this has brought to understanding the network will be reviewed and the benefit it can bring to engineering networks will be discussed

  12. Structural health monitoring tools for late and end of life management of offshore wind turbines

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    McGugan, Malcolm; McKirdy, Scott

    2016-01-01

    The late and end of life stages in an offshore wind turbines (OWT) life cycle have unique features that must be considered. The initial focus on risks associated with start-up issues due to design, manufacturing or process elements gives way to a stable period of operation and maintenance...... margins and the predominance of low redundancy structures, accurate structural health monitoring can play a strong role in safe management and enable increased operating time at end of life and decommissioning. Late life operations of offshore wind farms can pose significant challenges, balancing...

  13. Effect of Low Pressure End Conditions on Steam Power Plant Performance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ali Syed Haider

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Most of the electricity produced throughout the world today is from steam power plants and improving the performance of power plants is crucial to minimize the greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption. Energy efficiency of a thermal power plant strongly depends on its boiler-condenser operating conditions. The low pressure end conditions of a condenser have influence on the power output, steam consumption and efficiency of a plant. Hence, the objective this paper is to study the effect of the low pressure end conditions on a steam power plant performance. For the study each component was modelled thermodynamically. Simulation was done and the results showed that performance of the condenser is highly a function of its pressure which in turn depends on the flow rate and temperature of the cooling water. Furthermore, when the condenser pressure increases both net power output and plant efficiency decrease whereas the steam consumption increases. The results can be used to run a steam power cycle at optimum conditions.

  14. 5 CFR 430.207 - Monitoring performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... 5 Administrative Personnel 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Monitoring performance. 430.207 Section 430.207 Administrative Personnel OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT Performance Appraisal for General Schedule, Prevailing Rate, and Certain Other Employees § 430.207...

  15. Electoronic Performance Monitoring in Call Centers: An Ethical Decision Model

    OpenAIRE

    Perkins, David

    2013-01-01

    Ever since it emerged on a widespread basis in the 1990s, electronic performance monitoring of employees has received significant scrutiny in the literature. Call centers have been the focus of many of these studies. This particular study addresses the issue of electronic performance monitoring in call centers from an ethical perspective. The following ethical dilemma is offered: "Is it ethical for a call center manager to evaluate the performance of a call center employee using electronic pe...

  16. 200-BP-1 Prototype Hanford Barrier -- 15 Years of Performance Monitoring

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ward, Anderson L.; Draper, Kathryn E.; Link, Steven O.; Clayton, Ray E.

    2011-09-30

    Monitoring is an essential component of engineered barrier system design and operation. A composite capacitive cover, including a capillary break and an evapotranspiration (ET) barrier at the Hanford Site, is generating data that can be used to help resolve these issues. The prototype Hanford barrier was constructed over the 216-B-57 Crib in 1994 to evaluate surface-barrier constructability, construction costs, and physical and hydrologic performance at the field scale. The barrier has been routinely monitored between November 1994 and September 1998 as part of a Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) treatability test of barrier performance for the 200 BP 1 Operable Unit. Since FY 1998, monitoring has focused on a more limited set of key water balance, stability, and biotic parameters. In FY 2009, data collection was focused on: (1) water-balance monitoring, consisting of precipitation, runoff, soil moisture storage, and drainage measurements with evapotranspiration calculated by difference; (2) stability monitoring, consisting of asphalt-layer-settlement, basalt-side-slope-stability, and surface-elevation measurements; (3) vegetation dynamics; and (4) animal use. September 2009 marked 15 years since the start of monitoring and the collection of performance data. This report describes the results of monitoring activities during the period October 1, 2008, through September 30, 2009, and summarizes the 15 years of performance data collected from September 1994 through September 2009.

  17. Costing Household Surveys for Monitoring Progress Toward Ending Extreme Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity

    OpenAIRE

    Kilic, Talip; Serajuddin, Umar; Uematsu, Hiroki; Yoshida, Nobuo

    2017-01-01

    On October 15, 2015, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim announced the World Bank Group’s commitment to support the 78 poorest countries to implement a multi-topic household survey every three years between 2016 and 2030, for monitoring progress toward ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. This paper estimates the resource requirements to achieve the objectives of impl...

  18. Monitoring performance using synthetic data for induced microseismicity by hydrofracking at the Wysin site (Poland)

    Science.gov (United States)

    López-Comino, J. A.; Cesca, S.; Kriegerowski, M.; Heimann, S.; Dahm, T.; Mirek, J.; Lasocki, S.

    2017-07-01

    Ideally, the performance of a dedicated seismic monitoring installation should be assessed prior to the observation of target seismicity. This work is focused on a hydrofracking experiment monitored at Wysin, NE Poland. A microseismic synthetic catalogue is generated to assess the monitoring performance during the pre-operational phase, where seismic information only concerns the noise conditions and the potential background seismicity. Full waveform, accounting for the expected spatial, magnitude and focal mechanism distributions and a realistic local crustal model, are combined with real noise recording to produce either event based or continuous synthetic waveforms. The network detection performance is assessed in terms of the magnitude of completeness (Mc) through two different techniques. First, we use an amplitude threshold, taking into the ratio among the maximal amplitude of synthetic waveforms and station-dependent noise levels, for different values of signal-to-noise ratio. The detection probability at each station is estimated for the whole data set and extrapolated to a broader range of magnitude and distances. We estimate an Mc of about 0.55, when considering the distributed network, and can further decrease Mc to 0.45 using arrays techniques. The second approach, taking advantage on an automatic, coherence-based detection algorithm, can lower Mc to ∼ 0.1, at the cost of an increase of false detections. Mc experiences significant changes during day hours, in consequence of strongly varying noise conditions. Moreover, due to the radiation patterns and network geometry, double-couple like sources are better detected than tensile cracks, which may be induced during fracking.

  19. Radioactivity monitor for high-performance liquid chromatography

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Reeve, D.R.; Crozier, A.

    1977-01-01

    The coupling of a homogeneous radioactivity monitor to a liquid chromatograph involves compromises between the sensitivity of the monitor and the resolution and speed of analysis of the chromatograph. The theoretical relationships between these parameters are considered and expressions derived which make it possible to calculate suitable monitor operating conditions for most types of high-performance liquid chromatography

  20. Web monitoring of industrial signals using embedded systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cesar Augusto Romero-Molano

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper presents the design of software and hardware for a system of web monitoring of industrial signals. This prototype provides a web interface which can observe in real time the status of four industrial-type signal on-off. MSP432 microcontroller is used for sampling and transmitting monitored signals to a Raspberry PI which receives by a UART link the MSP432 monitored data and presents them immediately in the front-end web application. The prototype design was verified with a pneumatic application that consists of four single-acting cylinders and it was observed an efficient synchronization between the occurrence of the triggering event or change in status of any of the monitored cylinder and web publishing.

  1. Monitoring the performance of off-site processors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Miller, C.C.

    1995-01-01

    Commercial nuclear power plants have been able to utilize the latest technologies and achieve large volume reduction by obtaining off-site waste processor services. Although the use of such services reduce the burden of waste processing it also reduces the utility's control over the process. Monitoring the performance of off-site processors is important so that the utility is cognizant of the waste disposition for required regulatory reporting. In addition to obtaining data for Reg Guide 1.21 reporting, Performance monitoring is important to determine which vendor and which services to utilize. Off-site processor services were initially offered for the decontamination of metallic waste. Since that time the list of services has expanded to include supercompaction, survey for release, incineration and metal melting. The number of vendors offering off-site services has increased and the services they offer vary. processing rates vary between vendors and have different charge bases. Determining which vendor to use for what service can be complicated and confusing

  2. GPS Civil Monitoring Performance Specification

    Science.gov (United States)

    2009-02-10

    This Civil Monitoring Performance Specification (CMPS) is published and maintained at : the direction of the Program Manager for Civil Applications, Global Positioning Systems : Wing (GPSW). The purpose of this document is to provide a comprehensive ...

  3. Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing 2015 end of year summary : tissue oxygenation and microcirculation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Scheeren, T W L

    Last year we started this series of end of year summaries of papers published in the 2014 issues of the Journal Of Clinical Monitoring And Computing with a review on near infrared spectroscopy (Scheeren et al. in J Clin Monit Comput 29(2):217-220, 2015). This year we will broaden the scope and

  4. Advanced Modular Software Performance Monitoring

    CERN Multimedia

    CERN. Geneva

    2012-01-01

    The LHCb software is based on the Gaudi framework, on top of which are built several large and complex software applications. The LHCb experiment is now in the active phase of collecting and analyzing data and significant performance problems arise in the Gaudi based software beginning from High Level Trigger (HLT) programs and ending with data analysis frameworks (DaVinci). It’s not easy to find hot spots in the code - only special tools can help to understand where CPU or memory usage is not reasonable. There exist many performance analyzing tools, but the main problem is that they show reports in terms of class and function names and such information usually is not very useful - the majority of algorithm developers use the Gaudi framework abstractions and usually do not know about functions which lie at the lower level. We will show a new approach which adds to performance reports a higher abstraction level based on knowledge of framework architecture and run-time object properties. A set of profiling to...

  5. Internet Performance to Africa

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Cottrell, L

    2003-10-01

    We report the first results ever for real-time Internet performance to Africa using the PingER methodology. Multiple monitoring hosts were used to enable comparisons with performance from different parts of the world. From these preliminary measurements, we have found that Internet packet losses to some African sites in recent months range from very poor to bad (> 12%), some getting better, others are holding steady or getting worse. This, together with the average monthly Round Trip Times, imply end-to-end maximum TCP throughputs that are order of magnitudes different between countries in the region. Africa is shown to be far from the Internet performance in industrialized nations due to the poor infrastructure in place today. These monitoring efforts can provide valuable information to analyze the relative rates of future improvement and today they help us to quantify the digital divide and can provide quantitative information to policy makers.

  6. Evaluation of Root-End Resections Performed by Er, Cr: YSGG Laser with and without Placement of a Root-End Filling Material

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    John Sullivan

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available Microleakage following root-end resections has a direct influence on the outcome of surgical endodontic procedures. This study compared the microleakage after root-end resections performed by the Er, Cr: YSGG laser or carbide burs with or without the placement of MTA, and evaluated the presence of microcracks and gaps at the interface of GP/MTA and the canal walls. Ninety single-rooted teeth were instrumented, obturated with GP and AH-Plus sealer, and divided into 3 experimental groups: (I root-end resections were performed with the laser and G6 tips (parameters: 4.5 w, 30 pps, 20% water and 50% air; (II Lindeman burs were used, without the placement of MTA; (III the burs were used followed by root-end fillings with MTA, and one control (IV of five unobturated roots resected with the burs. The samples were prepared for microleakage (=20 and SEM (=10 analysis. They were immersed in 1% methylene blue, decalcified, cleared, and evaluated for dye penetration (mm2 with the ImageJ software. Epoxy-resin replicas of the root-ends were analyzed by SEM for gaps (m2 and microcracks. Microleakage results were 0.518±1.059, 0.172±0.223, and 0.158±0.253, for the laser (I, no root-end filling (II, and MTA (III samples, respectively, (ANOVA =.02. The laser (7831.7±2329.2 and no root-end filling (7137.3±1400.7 samples presented gaps. Whereas, none was found in the MTA (ANOVA =.002. Microcracks were not observed. The MTA group demonstrated statistically less leakage and better adaptation to the canal walls when compared to the other groups. There was no correlation between the size of the gaps and the degree of microleakage.

  7. Monitoring Forsmark. Meteorological monitoring at Forsmark, January-December 2010

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Andersson, Cari; Jones, Joergen (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), Norrkoeping (Sweden))

    2011-01-15

    In the Forsmark area, SKB's meteorological monitoring started in 2003 at the sites Storskaeret and Hoegmasten. However, since July 1, 2007 measurements are only performed at Hoegmasten. Measured and calculated parameters at Hoegmasten are precipitation and corrected precipitation, air temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, air humidity, global radiation and potential evapotranspiration. The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, SMHI, has been responsible for planning and design, as well as for the operation of the stations used for meteorological monitoring. In general, the quality of the meteorological measurements during the period concerned, starting January 1, 2010, and ending December 31, 2010, has shown to be good

  8. Standard guide to In-Plant performance evaluation of Hand-Held SNM monitors

    CERN Document Server

    American Society for Testing and Materials. Philadelphia

    1999-01-01

    1.1 This guide is one of a series on the application and evaluation of special nuclear material (SNM) monitors. Other guides in the series are listed in Section 2, and the relationship of in-plant performance evaluation to other procedures described in the series is illustrated in Fig. 1. Hand-held SNM monitors are described in of Guide C1112, and performance criteria illustrating their capabilities can be found in Appendix X1. 1.2 The purpose of this guide to in-plant performance evaluation is to provide a comparatively rapid procedure to verify that a hand-held SNM monitor performs as expected for detecting SNM or alternative test sources or to disclose the need for repair. The procedure can be used as a routine operational evaluation or it can be used to verify performance after a monitor is calibrated. 1.3 In-plant performance evaluations are more comprehensive than daily functional tests. They take place less often, at intervals ranging from weekly to once every three months, and derive their result fr...

  9. Changes in the Skin Conductance Monitor as an End Point for Sympathetic Nerve Blocks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gungor, Semih; Rana, Bhumika; Fields, Kara; Bae, James J; Mount, Lauren; Buschiazzo, Valeria; Storm, Hanne

    2017-11-01

    There is a lack of objective methods for determining the achievement of sympathetic block. This study validates the skin conductance monitor (SCM) as an end point indicator of successful sympathetic blockade as compared with traditional monitors. This interventional study included 13 patients undergoing 25 lumbar sympathetic blocks to compare time to indication of successful blockade between the SCM indices and traditional measures, clinically visible hyperemia, clinically visible engorgement of veins, subjective skin temperature difference, unilateral thermometry monitoring, bilateral comparative thermometry monitoring, and change in waveform amplitude in pulse oximetry plethysmography, within a 30-minute observation period. Differences in the SCM indices were studied pre- and postblock to validate the SCM. SCM showed substantially greater odds of indicating achievement of sympathetic block in the next moment (i.e., hazard rate) compared with all traditional measures (clinically visible hyperemia, clinically visible engorgement of veins, subjective temperature difference, unilateral thermometry monitoring, bilateral comparative thermometry monitoring, and change in waveform amplitude in pulse oximetry plethysmography; P ≤ 0.011). SCM indicated successful block for all (100%) procedures, while the traditional measures failed to indicate successful blocks in 16-84% of procedures. The SCM indices were significantly higher in preblock compared with postblock measurements (P SCM is a more reliable and rapid response indicator of a successful sympathetic blockade when compared with traditional monitors. © 2017 American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

  10. Using Six Sigma to improve once daily gentamicin dosing and therapeutic drug monitoring performance.

    LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

    Egan, Sean

    2012-08-07

    BACKGROUND: Safe, effective therapy with the antimicrobial gentamicin requires good practice in dose selection and monitoring of serum levels. Suboptimal therapy occurs with breakdown in the process of drug dosing, serum blood sampling, laboratory processing and level interpretation. Unintentional underdosing may result. This improvement effort aimed to optimise this process in an academic teaching hospital using Six Sigma process improvement methodology. METHODS: A multidisciplinary project team was formed. Process measures considered critical to quality were defined, and baseline practice was examined through process mapping and audit. Root cause analysis informed improvement measures. These included a new dosing and monitoring schedule, and standardised assay sampling and drug administration timing which maximised local capabilities. Three iterations of the improvement cycle were conducted over a 24-month period. RESULTS: The attainment of serum level sampling in the required time window improved by 85% (p≤0.0001). A 66% improvement in accuracy of dosing was observed (p≤0.0001). Unnecessary dose omission while awaiting level results and inadvertent disruption to therapy due to dosing and monitoring process breakdown were eliminated. Average daily dose administered increased from 3.39 mg\\/kg to 4.78 mg\\/kg\\/day. CONCLUSIONS: Using Six Sigma methodology enhanced gentamicin usage process performance. Local process related factors may adversely affect adherence to practice guidelines for gentamicin, a drug which is complex to use. It is vital to adapt dosing guidance and monitoring requirements so that they are capable of being implemented in the clinical environment as a matter of routine. Improvement may be achieved through a structured localised approach with multidisciplinary stakeholder involvement.

  11. Development of an air-operated actuator performance monitoring system for regulatory usage

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sung, K. Y.; Kwon, S. J.

    2004-01-01

    The performance monitoring system of air-operated actuators for regulatory usage has been being developed. Essential elements and operating parameters affecting the actuator performance have been investigated to provide basic information for system development. The monitoring system including an air-operated actuator testing facility and analysis softwares for monitoring and evaluation are also introduced in this paper. As a result of simulated tests, it was known that the system could be a useful tool for the effective monitoring of actuator performance change and fault conditions. This system would be applied to regulatory inspection for utility's data validation and to the training of regulatory staff in future after some modification and expansion

  12. Performance monitoring in the medial frontal cortex and related neural networks: From monitoring self actions to understanding others' actions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ninomiya, Taihei; Noritake, Atsushi; Ullsperger, Markus; Isoda, Masaki

    2018-04-27

    Action is a key channel for interacting with the outer world. As such, the ability to monitor actions and their consequences - regardless as to whether they are self-generated or other-generated - is of crucial importance for adaptive behavior. The medial frontal cortex (MFC) has long been studied as a critical node for performance monitoring in nonsocial contexts. Accumulating evidence suggests that the MFC is involved in a wide range of functions necessary for one's own performance monitoring, including error detection, and monitoring and resolving response conflicts. Recent studies, however, have also pointed to the importance of the MFC in performance monitoring under social conditions, ranging from monitoring and understanding others' actions to reading others' mental states, such as their beliefs and intentions (i.e., mentalizing). Here we review the functional roles of the MFC and related neural networks in performance monitoring in both nonsocial and social contexts, with an emphasis on the emerging field of a social systems neuroscience approach using macaque monkeys as a model system. Future work should determine the way in which the MFC exerts its monitoring function via interactions with other brain regions, such as the superior temporal sulcus in the mentalizing system and the ventral premotor cortex in the mirror system. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  13. Monitoring of offshore wind farm using reliable communication

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sharma, K.G.; Gajranib, K.; Bhargavac, A. [Rajasthan Technical Univ.. Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Kota (India)

    2012-07-01

    Due to rapid exhaustion of fossil fuels, new renewable technologies for electricity generation are insisted upon to meet the continuous growing demand of energy all across the globe. Wind energy as a green energy is a favorable option, among other available renewable sources. The offshore wind farm capacity is growing rapidly, but it's uncertain and intermittent nature offers great challenges to power system engineers. The cost of repair and down time, results into extensive damage and reduced profitability. This necessitates the requirement of fast and reliable communication network for the monitoring and controlling of the wind farm. In this paper, we have proposed the communication network for medium offshore wind farm (160MW). The wind farm consists of four clusters; each cluster comprises of 10 Wind Turbines (WTs), each of capacity 4MW. A WT can be represented by nine logical nodes according to IEC-61400-25 standard. The functions of logical nodes are modeled in terms of analogue /status/control information. The wind farm has been modeled in OPNET modeler and the performance of the communication network is evaluated in terms of End to End delay and packet drop, using Synchronous Optical NETwork (SONET) standard. (Author)

  14. Monitoring of offshore wind farm using reliable communication

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sharma, K G; Gajranib, K; Bhargavac, A [Rajasthan Technical Univ. Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Kota (India)

    2012-07-01

    Due to rapid exhaustion of fossil fuels, new renewable technologies for electricity generation are insisted upon to meet the continuous growing demand of energy all across the globe. Wind energy as a green energy is a favorable option, among other available renewable sources. The offshore wind farm capacity is growing rapidly, but it's uncertain and intermittent nature offers great challenges to power system engineers. The cost of repair and down time, results into extensive damage and reduced profitability. This necessitates the requirement of fast and reliable communication network for the monitoring and controlling of the wind farm. In this paper, we have proposed the communication network for medium offshore wind farm (160MW). The wind farm consists of four clusters; each cluster comprises of 10 Wind Turbines (WTs), each of capacity 4MW. A WT can be represented by nine logical nodes according to IEC-61400-25 standard. The functions of logical nodes are modeled in terms of analogue /status/control information. The wind farm has been modeled in OPNET modeler and the performance of the communication network is evaluated in terms of End to End delay and packet drop, using Synchronous Optical NETwork (SONET) standard. (Author)

  15. Impact of ANSI 2009 criteria for performance testing in TLD personnel monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    MeenaI, P.; Rakesh, R.B.; Srivastava, Kshama; KoIambe, D.H.; Sapra, B.K.

    2014-01-01

    External Quality Assurance in TLD Personnel Monitoring Service was initiated in 1985, for periodic performance evaluation of various TLD Laboratories through postal exercise. Presently, all the 16 laboratories involved in Personnel Monitoring Service are covered under QA exercise. Since beginning, American National Standards Institute (ANSI) criteria have been adopted for performance testing in QA exercise. Presently, ANSI 2001 performance criteria along with ISO trumpet curve analysis method are being used for performance evaluation. In 2009, ANSI modified the performance evaluation criteria and this study evaluates its impact and feasibility of implementation of ANSI 2009 criteria in the quality assurance program for personnel monitoring. The performance of some laboratories evaluated using both ANSI 2001 and ANSI 2009 criteria have been discussed. The study shows that the ANSI 2009 criteria is more stringent and encourages even distribution of bias and standard deviation. This can be implemented with suitable modifications for performance evaluation

  16. Expert monitoring and verbal feedback as sources of performance pressure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buchanan, John J; Park, Inchon; Chen, Jing; Mehta, Ranjana K; McCulloch, Austin; Rhee, Joohyun; Wright, David L

    2018-05-01

    The influence of monitoring-pressure and verbal feedback on the performance of the intrinsically stable bimanual coordination patterns of in-phase and anti-phase was examined. The two bimanual patterns were produced under three conditions: 1) no-monitoring, 2) monitoring-pressure (viewed by experts), and 3) monitoring-pressure (viewed by experts) combined with verbal feedback emphasizing poor performance. The bimanual patterns were produced at self-paced movement frequencies. Anti-phase coordination was always less stable than in-phase coordination across all three conditions. When performed under conditions 2 and 3, both bimanual patterns were performed with less variability in relative phase across a wide range of self-paced movement frequencies compared to the no-monitoring condition. Thus, monitoring-pressure resulted in performance stabilization rather than degradation and the presence of verbal feedback had no impact on the influence of monitoring pressure. The current findings are inconsistent with the predictions of explicit monitoring theory; however, the findings are consistent with studies that have revealed increased stability for the system's intrinsic dynamics as a result of attentional focus and intentional control. The results are discussed within the contexts of the dynamic pattern theory of coordination, explicit monitoring theory, and action-focused theories as explanations for choking under pressure. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  17. Preliminary Analysis of Remote Monitoring and Robotic Concepts for Performance Confirmation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    McAffee, D.A.

    1997-01-01

    As defined in 10 CFR Part 60.2, Performance Confirmation is the ''program of tests, experiments and analyses which is conducted to evaluate the accuracy and adequacy of the information used to determine with reasonable assurance that the performance objectives for the period after permanent closure will be met''. The overall Performance Confirmation program begins during site characterization and continues up to repository closure. The main purpose of this document is to develop, explore and analyze initial concepts for using remotely operated and robotic systems in gathering repository performance information during Performance Confirmation. This analysis focuses primarily on possible Performance Confirmation related applications within the emplacement drifts after waste packages have been emplaced (post-emplacement) and before permanent closure of the repository (preclosure). This will be a period of time lasting approximately 100 years and basically coincides with the Caretaker phase of the project. This analysis also examines, to a lesser extent, some applications related to Caretaker operations. A previous report examined remote handling and robotic technologies that could be employed during the waste package emplacement phase of the project (Reference 5.1). This analysis is being prepared to provide an early investigation of possible design concepts and technical challenges associated with developing remote systems for monitoring and inspecting activities during Performance Confirmation. The writing of this analysis preceded formal development of Performance Confirmation functional requirements and program plans and therefore examines, in part, the fundamental Performance Confirmation monitoring needs and operating conditions. The scope and primary objectives of this analysis are to: (1) Describe the operating environment and conditions expected in the emplacement drifts during the preclosure period. (Presented in Section 7.2). (2) Identify and discuss the

  18. Performance assessment of air quality monitoring networks using principal component analysis and cluster analysis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lu, Wei-Zhen; He, Hong-Di; Dong, Li-yun

    2011-01-01

    This study aims to evaluate the performance of two statistical methods, principal component analysis and cluster analysis, for the management of air quality monitoring network of Hong Kong and the reduction of associated expenses. The specific objectives include: (i) to identify city areas with similar air pollution behavior; and (ii) to locate emission sources. The statistical methods were applied to the mass concentrations of sulphur dioxide (SO 2 ), respirable suspended particulates (RSP) and nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), collected in monitoring network of Hong Kong from January 2001 to December 2007. The results demonstrate that, for each pollutant, the monitoring stations are grouped into different classes based on their air pollution behaviors. The monitoring stations located in nearby area are characterized by the same specific air pollution characteristics and suggested with an effective management of air quality monitoring system. The redundant equipments should be transferred to other monitoring stations for allowing further enlargement of the monitored area. Additionally, the existence of different air pollution behaviors in the monitoring network is explained by the variability of wind directions across the region. The results imply that the air quality problem in Hong Kong is not only a local problem mainly from street-level pollutions, but also a region problem from the Pearl River Delta region. (author)

  19. Systems engineering approach towards performance monitoring of emergency diesel generator

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nurhayati Ramli; Lee, Y.K.

    2013-01-01

    Full-text: Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems. In this study, systems engineering approach towards the performance monitoring of Emergency Diesel Generator (EDG) is presented. Performance monitoring is part and parcel of predictive maintenance where the systems and components conditions can be detected before they result into failures. In an effort to identify the proposal for addressing performance monitoring, the EDG boundary has been defined. Based on the Probabilistic Safety Analysis (PSA) results and industry operating experiences, the most critical component is identified. This paper proposed a systems engineering concept development framework towards EDG performance monitoring. The expected output of this study is that the EDG reliability can be improved by the performance monitoring alternatives through the systems engineering concept development effort. (author)

  20. Smart x-ray beam position monitor system using artificial intelligence methods for the advanced photon source insertion-device beamlines

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shu, D.; Ding, H.; Barraza, J.; Kuzay, T.M.; Haeffner, D.; Ramanathan, M.

    1997-09-01

    At the Advanced Photon Source (APS), each insertion device (ID) beamline front-end has two XBPMs to monitor the X-ray beam position for both that vertical and horizontal directions. Performance challenges for a conventional photoemission type X-ray beam position monitor (XBPM) during operations are contamination of the signal from the neighboring bending magnet sources and the sensitivity of the XBPM to the insertion device (ID) gap variations. Problems are exacerbated because users change the ID gap during their operations, and hence the percentage level of the contamination in the front end XBPM signals varies. A smart XBPM system with a high speed digital signal processor has been built at the Advanced Photon Source for the ID beamline front ends. The new version of the software, which uses an artificial intelligence method, provides a self learning and self-calibration capability to the smart XBPM system. The structure of and recent test results with the system are presented in this paper

  1. PERFORM: a system for monitoring, assessment and management of patients with Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tzallas, Alexandros T; Tsipouras, Markos G; Rigas, Georgios; Tsalikakis, Dimitrios G; Karvounis, Evaggelos C; Chondrogiorgi, Maria; Psomadellis, Fotis; Cancela, Jorge; Pastorino, Matteo; Waldmeyer, María Teresa Arredondo; Konitsiotis, Spiros; Fotiadis, Dimitrios I

    2014-11-11

    In this paper, we describe the PERFORM system for the continuous remote monitoring and management of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. The PERFORM system is an intelligent closed-loop system that seamlessly integrates a wide range of wearable sensors constantly monitoring several motor signals of the PD patients. Data acquired are pre-processed by advanced knowledge processing methods, integrated by fusion algorithms to allow health professionals to remotely monitor the overall status of the patients, adjust medication schedules and personalize treatment. The information collected by the sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes) is processed by several classifiers. As a result, it is possible to evaluate and quantify the PD motor symptoms related to end of dose deterioration (tremor, bradykinesia, freezing of gait (FoG)) as well as those related to over-dose concentration (Levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID)). Based on this information, together with information derived from tests performed with a virtual reality glove and information about the medication and food intake, a patient specific profile can be built. In addition, the patient specific profile with his evaluation during the last week and last month, is compared to understand whether his status is stable, improving or worsening. Based on that, the system analyses whether a medication change is needed--always under medical supervision--and in this case, information about the medication change proposal is sent to the patient. The performance of the system has been evaluated in real life conditions, the accuracy and acceptability of the system by the PD patients and healthcare professionals has been tested, and a comparison with the standard routine clinical evaluation done by the PD patients' physician has been carried out. The PERFORM system is used by the PD patients and in a simple and safe non-invasive way for long-term record of their motor status, thus offering to the clinician a precise, long-term and

  2. On-line plant-wide monitoring using neural networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Turkcan, E.; Ciftcioglu, O.; Eryurek, E.; Upadhyaya, B.R.

    1992-06-01

    The on-line signal analysis system designed for a multi-level mode operation using neural networks is described. The system is capable of monitoring the plant states by tracking different number of signals up to 32 simultaneously. The data used for this study were acquired from the Borssele Nuclear Power Plant (PWR type), and using the on-line monitoring system. An on-line plant-wide monitoring study using a multilayer neural network model is discussed in this paper. The back-propagation neural network algorithm is used for training the network. The technique assumes that each physical state of the power plant can be represented by a unique pattern of instrument readings which can be related to the condition of the plant. When disturbance occurs, the sensor readings undergo a transient, and form a different set of patterns which represent the new operational status. Diagnosing these patterns can be helpful in identifying this new state of the power plant. To this end, plant-wide monitoring with neutral networks is one of the new techniques in real-time applications. (author). 9 refs.; 5 figs

  3. Size and importance of small electrical end uses in households

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Broderick, J R; Zogg, R A; Alberino, D L

    1998-07-01

    Miscellaneous end uses (an energy-consumption category in the residential sector) has recently emerged with more importance than ever before. Miscellaneous end uses are a collection of numerous end uses (often unrelated in technology or market characteristics) that individually are small consumers but when grouped together can become notable in size. The Annual Energy Outlook 1998, published by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), suggests that about 32% of residential electricity use in 1996 is attributable to miscellaneous end uses (21% from the Other Uses category and 11% from other miscellaneous categories). The EIA predicts this consumption will grow to about 47% of residential electricity use by 2010. Other studies have shown substantial consumption in this category, and forecast substantial future growth as well. However, it is not clear that the current accounting structure of the miscellaneous category is the most appropriate one, nor that the forecast growth in consumption will materialize. A bottom-up study on a collection of miscellaneous electric end uses was performed to better understand this complex, ill-defined category. Initial results show that many end uses can be categorized more appropriately, such as furnace fans, which belong in Space Heating. A recommended categorization reduces the Other Uses category from 21% to 12% of electric consumption estimated in 1996. Thus, the consumption from miscellaneous end uses is not nearly as large as thought. Furthermore, the growth rate associated with small end uses is projected to be lower relative to projections from other sources.

  4. Monitoring the Performance of the Pedestrian Transfer Function of Train Stations Using Automatic Fare Collection Data

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Van den Heuvel, J.P.A.; Hoogenraad, J.H.

    2014-01-01

    Over the last years all train stations in The Netherlands have been equipped with automatic fare collection gates and/or validators. All public transport passengers use a smart card to pay their fare. In this paper we present a monitor for the performance of the pedestrian function of train stations

  5. Multidimensional Monitoring of Recovery Status and Implications for Performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heidari, Jahan; Beckmann, Jürgen; Bertollo, Maurizio; Brink, Michel; Kallus, Wolfgang; Robazza, Claudio; Kellmann, Michael

    2018-03-15

    Monitoring of recovery in the context of athletic performance has gained significant importance during recent years. As a systematic process of data collection and evaluation, the monitoring of recovery can be implemented for various purposes. It may aid to prevent negative outcomes of training or competition, such as underrecovery, overtraining, or injuries. Further, it aims at establishing routines and strategies necessary to guarantee athletes' readiness for performance by restoring their depleted resources. Comprehensive monitoring of recovery ideally encompasses a multidimensional approach, thereby considering biological, psychological, and social monitoring methods. From a biological perspective, physiological (e.g., cardiac parameters), biochemical (e.g., creatine kinase), hormonal (e.g., salivary cortisol) and immunological (e.g., immunoglobulin A) markers can be taken into account to operationalize training loads and recovery needs. Psychological approaches suggest the application of validated and reliable psychometric questionnaires (e.g., Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes) to measure a subjective perception of recovery as well as the subjective degree of training- or competition-induced fatigue. Social aspects also play a role in performance monitoring and may hence provide essential performance-related information. The implementation of a monitoring routine within athletic environments represents a continuous process which functions as an effective addition to training and depends on a range of conditions (e.g., organizational regulations, commitment of athletes). Current research in the field of monitoring aims at establishing individualized monitoring regimes that are referring to intraindividual reference values with the help of innovative technological devices.

  6. Weather radar performance monitoring using a metallic-grid ground-scatterer

    Science.gov (United States)

    Falconi, Marta Tecla; Montopoli, Mario; Marzano, Frank Silvio; Baldini, Luca

    2017-10-01

    The use of ground return signals is investigated for checks on the calibration of power measurements of a polarimetric C-band radar. To this aim, a peculiar permanent single scatterer (PSS) consisting of a big metallic roof with a periodic mesh grid structure and having a hemisphere-like shape is considered. The latter is positioned in the near-field region of the weather radar and its use, as a reference calibrator, shows fairly good results in terms of reflectivity and differential reflectivity monitoring. In addition, the use of PSS indirectly allows to check for the radar antenna de-pointing which is another issue usually underestimated when dealing with weather radars. Because of the periodic structure of the considered PSS, simulations of its electromagnetic behavior were relatively easy to perform. To this goal, we used an electromagnetic Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) with an ad-hoc numerical implementation of a full-wave solution to model our PSS in terms of reflectivity and differential reflectivity factor. Comparison of model results and experimental measurements are then shown in this work. Our preliminary investigation can pave the way for future studies aiming at characterizing ground-clutter returns in a more accurate way for radar calibration purposes.

  7. Automated testing of arrhythmia monitors using annotated databases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Elghazzawi, Z; Murray, W; Porter, M; Ezekiel, E; Goodall, M; Staats, S; Geheb, F

    1992-01-01

    Arrhythmia-algorithm performance is typically tested using the AHA and MIT/BIH databases. The tools for this test are simulation software programs. While these simulations provide rapid results, they neglect hardware and software effects in the monitor. To provide a more accurate measure of performance in the actual monitor, a system has been developed for automated arrhythmia testing. The testing system incorporates an IBM-compatible personal computer, a digital-to-analog converter, an RS232 board, a patient-simulator interface to the monitor, and a multi-tasking software package for data conversion and communication with the monitor. This system "plays" patient data files into the monitor and saves beat classifications in detection files. Tests were performed using the MIT/BIH and AHA databases. Statistics were generated by comparing the detection files with the annotation files. These statistics were marginally different from those that resulted from the simulation. Differences were then examined. As expected, the differences were related to monitor hardware effects.

  8. Concepts and Strategies for Transparency Monitoring of Nuclear Materials at the Back End of the Fuel/Weapons Cycle

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    COSTIN, LAURENCE; DAVIES, PETER; PREGENZER, ARIAN L.

    1999-01-01

    Representatives of the Department of Energy, the national laboratories, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), and others gathered to initiate the development of broad-based concepts and strategies for transparency monitoring of nuclear materials at the back end of the fuel/weapons cycle, including both geologic disposal and monitored retrievable storage. The workshop focused on two key questions: ''Why should we monitor?'' and ''What should we monitor?'' These questions were addressed by identifying the range of potential stakeholders, concerns that stakeholders may have, and the information needed to address those concerns. The group constructed a strategic framework for repository transparency implementation, organized around the issues of safety (both operational and environmental), diversion (assuring legitimate use and security), and viability (both political and economic). Potential concerns of the international community were recognized as the possibility of material diversion, the multinational impacts of potential radionuclide releases, and public and political perceptions of unsafe repositories. The workshop participants also identified potential roles that the WIPP may play as a monitoring technology development and demonstration test-bed facility. Concepts for WIPP'S potential test-bed role include serving as (1) an international monitoring technology and development testing facility, (2) an international demonstration facility, and (3) an education and technology exchange center on repository transparency technologies

  9. Near-infrared spectroscopic monitoring of a series of industrial batch processes using a bilinear grey model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Sprang, Eric N M; Ramaker, Henk-Jan; Westerhuis, Johan A; Smilde, Age K; Gurden, Stephen P; Wienke, Dietrich

    2003-08-01

    A good process understanding is the foundation for process optimization, process monitoring, end-point detection, and estimation of the end-product quality. Performing good process measurements and the construction of process models will contribute to a better process understanding. To improve the process knowledge it is common to build process models. These models are often based on first principles such as kinetic rates or mass balances. These types of models are also known as hard or white models. White models are characterized by being generally applicable but often having only a reasonable fit to real process data. Other commonly used types of models are empirical or black-box models such as regression and neural nets. Black-box models are characterized by having a good data fit but they lack a chemically meaningful model interpretation. Alternative models are grey models, which are combinations of white models and black models. The aim of a grey model is to combine the advantages of both black-box models and white models. In a qualitative case study of monitoring industrial batches using near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, it is shown that grey models are a good tool for detecting batch-to-batch variations and an excellent tool for process diagnosis compared to common spectroscopic monitoring tools.

  10. Performance monitoring in obsessive-compulsive undergraduates: Effects of task difficulty.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Riesel, Anja; Richter, Anika; Kaufmann, Christian; Kathmann, Norbert; Endrass, Tanja

    2015-08-01

    Both obsessive-compulsive disorder and subclinical obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms seem to be associated with hyperactive error-related brain activity. The current study examined performance monitoring in subjects with subclinical OC symptoms using a new task with different levels of difficulty. Nineteen subjects with high and 18 subjects with low OC characteristics performed a random dot cinematogram (RDC) task with three levels of difficulty. The high and low OC groups did not differ in error-related negativity (ERN), correct-related negativity (CRN) and performance irrespective of task difficulty. The amplitude of the ERN decreased with increasing difficulty whereas the magnitude of CRN did not vary. ERN and CRN approached in size and topography with increasing difficulty, which suggests that errors and correct responses are processed more similarly. These results add to a growing number of studies that fail to replicate hyperactive performance monitoring in individuals with OC symptoms in task with higher difficulty or requiring learning. Together with these findings our results suggest that the relationship between OC symptoms and performance monitoring may be sensitive to type of task and task characteristics and cannot be observed in a RDC that differs from typically used tasks in difficulty and the amount of response-conflict. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. UCIMS: Advances in geotechnical construction and performance monitoring

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Raphael Siebenmann

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available The Crossrail project currently under construction in Central London has been described as “The Big Dig on Steroids”, obviously referencing the Central Artery/Tunnel project in Boston completed in 2007. To address the multiple demands for timely construction performance monitoring, Crossrail envisioned the underground construction information management system (UCIMS to monitor construction progress and structural health along the entire route, with a network of geotechnical instruments (i.e. slope inclinometers, extensometers, piezometers, etc. and tunnel boring machine (TBM position information. The UCIMS is a geospatially referenced relational database that was developed using an open source geographic information system (GIS that allowed all stakeholders near immediate feedback of construction performance. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief history of geotechnical and structural monitoring software, to describe the structure and operation of the UCIMS, and to demonstrate how the functionality afforded by this system provided the requisite feedback to the stakeholders. Examples will be given regarding how the data management and visualization concepts incorporated into the UCIMS advanced the geotechnical construction industry.

  12. Trace Analysis in End-Exhaled Air Using Direct Solvent Extraction in Gas Sampling Tubes: Tetrachloroethene in Workers as an Example

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chris-Elmo Ziener

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Simple and cost-effective analytical methods are required to overcome the barriers preventing the use of exhaled air in routine occupational biological monitoring. Against this background, a new method is proposed that simplifies the automation and calibration of the analytical measurements. End-exhaled air is sampled using valveless gas sampling tubes made of glass. Gaseous analytes are transferred to a liquid phase using a microscale solvent extraction performed directly inside the gas sampling tubes. The liquid extracts are analysed using a gas chromatograph equipped, as usual, with a liquid autosampler, and liquid standards are used for calibration. For demonstration purposes, the method’s concept was applied to the determination of tetrachloroethene in end-exhaled air, which is a biomarker for occupational tetrachloroethene exposure. The method’s performance was investigated in the concentration range 2 to 20 μg tetrachloroethene/L, which corresponds to today’s exposure levels. The calibration curve was linear, and the intra-assay repeatability and recovery rate were sufficient. Analysis of real samples from dry-cleaning workers occupationally exposed to tetrachloroethene and from nonexposed subjects demonstrated the method’s utility. In the case of tetrachloroethene, the method can be deployed quickly, requires no previous experiences in gas analysis, provides sufficient analytical reliability, and addresses typical end-exhaled air concentrations from exposed workers.

  13. A monitoring tool for performance improvement in plastic surgery at the individual level.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maruthappu, Mahiben; Duclos, Antoine; Orgill, Dennis; Carty, Matthew J

    2013-05-01

    The assessment of performance in surgery is expanding significantly. Application of relevant frameworks to plastic surgery, however, has been limited. In this article, the authors present two robust graphic tools commonly used in other industries that may serve to monitor individual surgeon operative time while factoring in patient- and surgeon-specific elements. The authors reviewed performance data from all bilateral reduction mammaplasties performed at their institution by eight surgeons between 1995 and 2010. Operative time was used as a proxy for performance. Cumulative sum charts and exponentially weighted moving average charts were generated using a train-test analytic approach, and used to monitor surgical performance. Charts mapped crude, patient case-mix-adjusted, and case-mix and surgical-experience-adjusted performance. Operative time was found to decline from 182 minutes to 118 minutes with surgical experience (p factors is essential for correct interpretation of performance in plastic surgery at the individual surgeon level. Cumulative sum and exponentially weighted moving average charts represent accurate methods of monitoring operative time to control and potentially improve surgeon performance over the course of a career.

  14. Strategies of performance self-monitoring in automotive production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Faye, Hélène; Falzon, Pierre

    2009-09-01

    Production in the automotive industry, based on assembly line work, is now characterized by lean manufacturing and customization. This results in greater flexibility and increased quality demands, including worker performance self-monitoring. The objectives of this study are to refine the concept of performance self-monitoring and to characterize the strategies developed by operators to achieve it. Data were collected based on the method of individual auto-confrontation, consisting of two steps: eleven assembly-line operators of a French automotive company were individually observed and video-taped while they were working; an interview then allowed each operator to discuss his/her activity based on the video-tape. This study expands the concept of performance self-monitoring by highlighting three types of strategies directly oriented toward quality: prevention, feedback control and control action strategies.

  15. Near-infrared spectroscopic monitoring of a series of industrial batch processes using a bilinear grey model

    OpenAIRE

    Van Sprang, ENM; Ramaker, HJ; Westerhuis, JA; Smilde, AK; Gurden, SP; Wienke, D

    2003-01-01

    A good process understanding is the foundation for process optimization, process monitoring, end-point detection, and estimation of the end-product quality. Performing good process measurements and the construction of process models will contribute to a better process understanding. To improve the process knowledge it is common to build process models. These models are often based on first principles such as kinetic rates or mass balances. These types of models are also known as hard or white...

  16. Front-End Electronics for Verification Measurements: Performance Evaluation and Viability of Advanced Tamper Indicating Measures

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Smith, E.; Conrad, R.; Morris, S.; Ramuhalli, P.; Sheen, D.; Schanfein, M.; Ianakiev, K.; Browne, M.; Svoboda, J.

    2015-01-01

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to expand its use of unattended, remotely monitored measurement systems. An increasing number of systems and an expanding family of instruments create challenges in terms of deployment efficiency and the implementation of data authentication measures. A collaboration between Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is working to advance the IAEA's capabilities in these areas. The first objective of the project is to perform a comprehensive evaluation of a prototype front-end electronics package, as specified by the IAEA and procured from a commercial vendor. This evaluation begins with an assessment against the IAEA's original technical specifications and expands to consider the strengths and limitations over a broad range of important parameters that include: sensor types, cable types, and the spectrum of industrial electromagnetic noise that can degrade signals from remotely located detectors. A second objective of the collaboration is to explore advanced tamper-indicating (TI) measures that could help to address some of the long-standing data authentication challenges with IAEA's unattended systems. The collaboration has defined high-priority tampering scenarios to consider (e.g., replacement of sensor, intrusion into cable), and drafted preliminary requirements for advanced TI measures. The collaborators are performing independent TI investigations of different candidate approaches: active time-domain reflectometry (PNNL), passive noise analysis (INL), and pulse-by-pulse analysis and correction (LANL). The initial investigations focus on scenarios where new TI measures are retrofitted into existing IAEA UMS deployments; subsequent work will consider the integration of advanced TI methods into new IAEA UMS deployments where the detector is separated from the front-end electronics. In this paper, project progress

  17. Monitoring User-System Performance in Interactive Retrieval Tasks

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Boldareva, L.; de Vries, A.P.; Hiemstra, Djoerd

    Monitoring user-system performance in interactive search is a challenging task. Traditional measures of retrieval evaluation, based on recall and precision, are not of any use in real time, for they require a priori knowledge of relevant documents. This paper shows how a Shannon entropy-based

  18. 14 CFR 152.319 - Monitoring and reporting of program performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... performance. 152.319 Section 152.319 Aeronautics and Space FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (CONTINUED) AIRPORTS AIRPORT AID PROGRAM Accounting and Reporting Requirements § 152.319 Monitoring and reporting of program performance. (a) The sponsor or planning agency shall monitor performance...

  19. Pollution Monitoring System Using Gas Sensor based on Wireless Sensor Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Udin Harun Al Rasyid

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Carbon monoxide (CO and carbon dioxide (CO2 gases are classified as colorless and odorless gas so we need special tools to monitor their concentration in the air. Concentration of air pollution of CO and CO2 that are high in the air will give serious effects for health status. CO is a poisonous gas that damages the circulation of oxygen in the blood when inhaled, while CO2 is one of the gases that causes global warming. In this paper, we developed an integrated pollution monitoring (IPOM system to monitor the concentration of air pollution. This research implemented three sensor nodes (end-device which each node contains CO and CO2 sensors on the gas sensors board to perform sensing from the environment. Furthermore, the data taken from the environment by the sensor will be sent to the meshlium gateway using IEEE 802.15.4 Zigbee communications and processed by the gateway in order to be sent to the computer server. The data is stored in meshlium gateway using MySQL database as a backup, and it will be synchronized to the MySQL database in the computer server. We provide services for public to access the information in database server through a desktop and website application.

  20. One stage functional end-to-end stapled intestinal anastomosis and resection performed by nonexpert surgeons for the treatment of small intestinal obstruction in 30 dogs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jardel, Nicolas; Hidalgo, Antoine; Leperlier, Dimitri; Manassero, Mathieu; Gomes, Aymeric; Bedu, Anne Sophie; Moissonnier, Pierre; Fayolle, Pascal; Begon, Dominique; Riquois, Elisabeth; Viateau, Véronique

    2011-02-01

    To describe stapled 1-stage functional end-to-end intestinal anastomosis for treatment of small intestinal obstruction in dogs and evaluate outcome when the technique is performed by nonexpert surgeons after limited training in the technique. Case series. Dogs (n=30) with intestinal lesions requiring an enterectomy. Stapled 1-stage functional end-to-end anastomosis and resection using a GIA-60 and a TA-55 stapling devices were performed under supervision of senior residents and faculty surgeons by junior surgeons previously trained in the technique on pigs. Procedure duration and technical problems were recorded. Short-term results were collected during hospitalization and at suture removal. Long-term outcome was established by clinical and ultrasonographic examinations at least 2 months after surgery and from written questionnaires, completed by owners. Mean±SD procedure duration was 15±12 minutes. Postoperative recovery was uneventful in 25 dogs. One dog had anastomotic leakage, 1 had a localized abscess at the transverse staple line, and 3 dogs developed an incisional abdominal wall abscess. No long-term complications occurred (follow-up, 2-32 months). Stapled 1-stage functional end-to-end anastomosis and resection is a fast and safe procedure in the hand of nonexpert but trained surgeons. © Copyright 2011 by The American College of Veterinary Surgeons.

  1. Connecting the Dots for English Language Learners: How Odds-Beating Elementary School Educators Monitor and Use Student Performance Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilcox, Kristen Campbell; Gregory, Karen; Yu, Lisa

    2017-01-01

    This article reports on findings from a multiple case study investigating the nature of educators' approaches toward monitoring English language learners' (ELLs) performance and using data to improve instruction and apply appropriate interventions. Six New York elementary schools where ELLs' performance was better than predicted (i.e.…

  2. Do conventional monitoring practices indicate in situ air sparging performance?

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Johnson, P.C.

    1995-01-01

    Short-term pilot tests play a key role in the selection and design of in situ air sparging systems. Most pilot tests are less than 24 h in duration and consist of monitoring changes in dissolved oxygen, water levels in wells, soil gas pressures, and soil gas contaminant concentrations while air is injected into the aquifer. These parameters are assumed to be indicators of air sparging feasibility and performance, and are also used in the design of full-scale systems. In this work the authors assess the validity of this critical assumption. Data are presented from a study site where a typical pilot-scale short-term test was conducted, followed by continued operation of a full-scale system for 110 days. Conventional sampling practices were augmented with more discrete and detailed assessment methods. In addition, a tracer gas was used to better understand air distributions, vapor flow paths, and vapor recovery efficiency. The data illustrate that conclusions regarding the performance and applicability of air sparging at the study site vary significantly depending on the monitoring approach used. There was no clear correlation between short-term pilot-test data and extended system performance when using data collected only from conventional groundwater monitoring wells. Attention is focused on petroleum hydrocarbons

  3. Environmental performance, profitability, asset utilization, debt monitoring and firm value

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bukit, R. Br; Haryanto, B.; Ginting, P.

    2018-02-01

    The growing issue on firm value shows that firm value is not only determined by the firm ability to increase financial profit, but also by the company's concern in maintaining the environmental condition. The industrial development produces waste that pollutes the environment that has potential to serious impact on the next life. In addition to provide financial benefits, companies are increasingly facing pressure to be socially responsible for the survival of the company. However, past findings demonstrate that the effect of environmental performance, profitability, and asset utilization to the firm’s value are still unclear. This study aims to test whether environmental performance, firm profitability and asset utilization can effectively enhance firm value in two different conditions: intensive debt monitoring and less intensive debt monitoring. Sample of companies is taken from the list of Indonesia Stock Exchange during the period of 2013 to 2015. Using multiple regression analysis, discloses that: in intensive monitoring, managers tend to have high firm value when company has high environmental performance and or high profitability and high asset utilization. Monitoring system needs to be intensified especially for companies with the above characteristics.

  4. Measurements of the performance of a beam condition monitor prototype in a 5 GeV electron beam

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hempel, M., E-mail: maria.hempel@desy.de [Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Cottbus 03013 (Germany); DESY, Zeuthen 15738 (Germany); Afanaciev, K. [NCPHEP, Minsk 220040 (Belarus); Burtowy, P.; Dabrowski, A. [CERN, Geneva 1211 (Switzerland); Henschel, H. [DESY, Zeuthen 15738 (Germany); Idzik, M. [AGH University of Science and Technology, Cracow 30-059 (Poland); Karacheban, O. [Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Cottbus 03013 (Germany); Lange, W.; Leonard, J. [DESY, Zeuthen 15738 (Germany); Levy, I. [Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801 (Israel); Lohmann, W. [Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Cottbus 03013 (Germany); DESY, Zeuthen 15738 (Germany); Pollak, B. [Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 (United States); Przyborowski, D. [AGH University of Science and Technology, Cracow 30-059 (Poland); Ryjov, V. [CERN, Geneva 1211 (Switzerland); Schuwalow, S. [DESY, Zeuthen 15738 (Germany); Stickland, D. [Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (United States); Walsh, R. [DESY, Zeuthen 15738 (Germany); Zagozdzinska, A. [CERN, Geneva 1211 (Switzerland)

    2016-08-01

    The Fast Beam Conditions Monitor, BCM1F, in the Compact Muon Solenoid, CMS, experiment was operated since 2008 and delivered invaluable information on the machine induced background in the inner part of the CMS detector supporting a safe operation of the inner tracker and high quality data. Due to the shortening of the time between two bunch crossings from 50 ns to 25 ns and higher expected luminosity at the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, in 2015, BCM1F needed an upgrade to higher bandwidth. In addition, BCM1F is used as an on-line luminometer operated independently of CMS. To match these requirements, the number of single crystal diamond sensors was enhanced from 8 to 24. Each sensor is subdivided into two pads, leading to 48 readout channels. Dedicated fast front-end ASICs were developed in 130 nm technology, and the back-end electronics is completely upgraded. An assembled prototype BCM1F detector comprising sensors, a fast front-end ASIC and optical analog readout was studied in a 5 GeV electron beam at the DESY-II accelerator. Results on the performance are given.

  5. PERFORM: A System for Monitoring, Assessment and Management of Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alexandros T. Tzallas

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we describe the PERFORM system for the continuous remote monitoring and management of Parkinson’s disease (PD patients. The PERFORM system is an intelligent closed-loop system that seamlessly integrates a wide range of wearable sensors constantly monitoring several motor signals of the PD patients. Data acquired are pre-processed by advanced knowledge processing methods, integrated by fusion algorithms to allow health professionals to remotely monitor the overall status of the patients, adjust medication schedules and personalize treatment. The information collected by the sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes is processed by several classifiers. As a result, it is possible to evaluate and quantify the PD motor symptoms related to end of dose deterioration (tremor, bradykinesia, freezing of gait (FoG as well as those related to over-dose concentration (Levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID. Based on this information, together with information derived from tests performed with a virtual reality glove and information about the medication and food intake, a patient specific profile can be built. In addition, the patient specific profile with his evaluation during the last week and last month, is compared to understand whether his status is stable, improving or worsening. Based on that, the system analyses whether a medication change is needed—always under medical supervision—and in this case, information about the medication change proposal is sent to the patient. The performance of the system has been evaluated in real life conditions, the accuracy and acceptability of the system by the PD patients and healthcare professionals has been tested, and a comparison with the standard routine clinical evaluation done by the PD patients’ physician has been carried out. The PERFORM system is used by the PD patients and in a simple and safe non-invasive way for long-term record of their motor status, thus offering to the clinician a

  6. Perfmon2: a leap forward in performance monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jarp, S; Jurga, R; Nowak, A

    2008-01-01

    This paper describes the software component, perfmon2, that is about to be added to the Linux kernel as the standard interface to the Performance Monitoring Unit (PMU) on common processors, including x86 (AMD and Intel), Sun SPARC, MIPS, IBM Power and Intel Itanium. It also describes a set of tools for doing performance monitoring in practice and details how the CERN openlab team has participated in the testing and development of these tools

  7. Perfmon2: a leap forward in performance monitoring

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Jarp, S; Jurga, R; Nowak, A [CERN, Geneva (Switzerland)], E-mail: Sverre.Jarp@cern.ch

    2008-07-15

    This paper describes the software component, perfmon2, that is about to be added to the Linux kernel as the standard interface to the Performance Monitoring Unit (PMU) on common processors, including x86 (AMD and Intel), Sun SPARC, MIPS, IBM Power and Intel Itanium. It also describes a set of tools for doing performance monitoring in practice and details how the CERN openlab team has participated in the testing and development of these tools.

  8. Perfmon2 a leap forward in performance monitoring

    CERN Document Server

    Jarp, S; Nowak, A

    2008-01-01

    This paper describes the software component, perfmon2, that is about to be added to the Linux kernel as the standard interface to the Performance Monitoring Unit (PMU) on common processors, including x86 (AMD and Intel), Sun SPARC, MIPS, IBM Power and Intel Itanium. It also describes a set of tools for doing performance monitoring in practice and details how the CERN openlab team has participated in the testing and development of these tools.

  9. Perfmon2: a leap forward in performance monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jarp, S.; Jurga, R.; Nowak, A.

    2008-07-01

    This paper describes the software component, perfmon2, that is about to be added to the Linux kernel as the standard interface to the Performance Monitoring Unit (PMU) on common processors, including x86 (AMD and Intel), Sun SPARC, MIPS, IBM Power and Intel Itanium. It also describes a set of tools for doing performance monitoring in practice and details how the CERN openlab team has participated in the testing and development of these tools.

  10. Design and expected performance of the new SLS beam size monitor

    CERN Document Server

    Milas, N.; Saa Hernandez, A.; Schlott, V.; Streun, A.; Andersson, A.; Breunlin, J.

    2012-01-01

    The vertical emittance minimization campaign at SLS, realized in the context of the TIARA WP6, has already achieved the world's smallest vertical beam size of 3.6 μm, corresponding to a vertical emittance of 0.9 pm, in a synchrotron light source. The minimum value reached for the vertical emittance is only about five times larger than the quantum limit of 0.2 pm. However, the resolution limit of the present SLS emittance monitor has also been reached during this campaign, thus, to further continue the emittance minimization program the construction of an improved second monitor is necessary. In this paper we present the design and studies on the performance of this new monitor based on the image formation method using vertically polarized synchrotron radiation in the visible and UV spectral ranges. This new monitor includes an additional feature, providing the possibility of performing full interferometric measurement by the use of a set of vertical obstacles that can be driven on the light path. Simulations...

  11. Real-time monitoring through the use of technology to enhance performances throughout HIV cascades.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Avery, Matthew; Mills, Stephen J; Stephan, Eric

    2017-09-01

    Controlling the HIV epidemic requires strong linkages across a 'cascade' of prevention, testing, and treatment services. Information and communications technology (ICT) offers the potential to monitor and improve the performance of this HIV cascade in real time. We assessed recent (media to expand reach and improve programmatic targeting; technology in healthcare settings to strengthen coordination, guide clinical decision-making and improve clinical interactions; and telephone-based follow-up to improve treatment retention and adherence. With exceptions, publications have tended to be descriptive rather than evaluative, and the evidence-base for the effectiveness of ICT-driven interventions remains mixed. There is widespread recognition of the potential for ICT to improve HIV cascade performance, but with significant challenges. Successful implementation of real-time cascade monitoring will depend upon stakeholder engagement, compatibility with existing workflows, appropriate resource allocation, and managing expectations.

  12. Monitoring performance for hydraulic fracturing using synthetic microseismic catalogue at the Wysin site (Poland)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ángel López Comino, José; Cesca, Simone; Kriegerowski, Marius; Heimann, Sebastian; Dahm, Torsten; Mirek, Janusz; Lasocky, Stanislaw

    2017-04-01

    Previous analysis to assess the monitoring performance of a dedicated seismic network are always useful to determine its capability of detecting, locating and characterizing target seismicity. This work focuses on a hydrofracking experiment in Poland, which is monitored in the framework of the SHEER (SHale gas Exploration and Exploitation induced Risks) EU project. The seismic installation is located near Wysin (Poland), in the central-western part of the Peribaltic synclise at Pomerania. The network setup includes a distributed network of six broadband stations, three shallow borehole stations and three small-scale arrays. We assess the monitoring performance prior operations, using synthetic seismograms. Realistic full waveform are generated and combined with real noise before fracking operations, to produce either event based or continuous synthetic waveforms. Background seismicity is modelled by double couple (DC) focal mechanisms. Non-DC sources resemble induced tensile fractures opening in the direction of the minimal compressive stress and closing in the same direction after the injection. Microseismic sources are combined with a realistic crustal model, distribution of hypocenters, magnitudes and source durations. The network detection performance is then assessed in terms of Magnitude of Completeness (Mc) through two different techniques: i) using an amplitude threshold approach, taking into account a station dependent noise level and different values of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and ii) through the application of an automatic detection algorithm to the continuous synthetic dataset. In the first case, we compare the maximal amplitude of noise free synthetic waveforms with the different noise levels. Imposing the simultaneous detection at e.g. 4 stations for a robust detection, the Mc is assessed and can be adjusted by empirical relationships for different SNR values. We find that different source mechanisms have different detection threshold. The

  13. Performance of an rf beam monitor on the NBS-Los Alamos racetrack microtron

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Young, L.M.; Cutler, R.I.

    1985-01-01

    A prototype rf beam-position, current, and phase monitor has been used on the 100-keV injector beamline of the racetrack microtron (RTM) where performance was measured with the chopped and bunched beam. This monitor works with both a pulsed beam and a cw beam. The pulsed beam consists of beam pulses with a FWHM of 40 ns. The rf beam monitor was tested with beam currents from approx. 50 to 600 μA. The rf beam monitor will be described and its performance will be reported. 6 refs., 5 figs

  14. End-Use Efficiency to Lower Carbon Emissions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Marnay, Chris; Osborn, Julie; Webber, Carrie

    2001-01-01

    Compelling evidence demonstrating the warming trend in global temperatures and the mechanism behind it, namely the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG), has spurred an international effort to reduce emissions of these gases. Despite improving efficiency of the U.S. economy in terms of energy cost per dollar of GDP since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, energy consumption and carbon emissions are continuing to rise as the economy expands. This growing gap further emphasizes the importance of improving energy use efficiency as a component in the U.S. climate change mitigation program. The end-use efficiency research activities at Berkeley Lab incorporate residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors. This paper focuses on two successful U.S. programs that address end-use efficiency in residential and commercial demand: energy efficient performance standards established by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) ENERGY STAR(registered trademark) program

  15. Tractor performance monitor based on a single-chip microcomputer

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bedri, A.R.; Marley, S.J.; Buchelle, W.F.; Smay, T.A.

    1981-01-01

    A tractor performance monitor based on a single-chip microcomputer was developed to measure ground speed, slip, fuel consumption (rate and total), total area, theoretical time, and total time. Transducers used are presented in detail. 5 refs.

  16. Students' Midprogram Content Area Performance as a Predictor of End-of-Program NCLEX Readiness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brussow, Jennifer A; Dunham, Michelle

    2017-12-22

    Many programs have implemented end-of-program predictive testing to identify students at risk of NCLEX-RN failure. Unfortunately, for many students, end-of-program testing comes too late. Regression and relative importance analysis were used to explore relationships between 9 content area assessments and an end-of-program assessment shown to be predictive of NCLEX-RN success. Results indicate that scores on assessments for content areas such as medical surgical nursing and care of children are predictive of end-of-program test scores, suggesting that instructors should provide remediation at the first sign of lagging performance.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in anyway or used commercially without permission from the journal.

  17. SLC energy spectrum monitor using synchrotron radiation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Seeman, J.; Brunk, W.; Early, R.; Ross, M.; Tillmann, E.; Walz, D.

    1986-01-01

    The SLAC linac is being upgraded for the use in the SLAC Linear Collider (SLC). The improved linac must accelerate electron and positron bunches from 1.2 GeV to 50 GeV while producing output energy spectra of about 0.2%. The energy spectra must be maintained during operation to provide for good beam transmission and to minimize chromatic effects in the SLC ARCs and Final Focus. The energy spectra of these beams are determined by the bunch length and intensity, the RF phase and waveform and the intra-bunch longitudinal wakefields. A non-destructive energy spectrum monitor has been designed using a vertical wiggler magnet located downstream of the horizontal beam splitter at the end of the SLC linac. It produces synchrotron radiation which is viewed in an off-axis x-ray position sensitive detector. The expected resolution is 0.08 %. The design considerations of this monitor are presented. A pair of these monitors is under construction with an installation data set for late summer 1986

  18. SLC energy spectrum monitor using synchrotron radiation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Seeman, J.; Brunk, W.; Early, R.; Ross, M.; Tillmann, E.; Walz, D.

    1986-04-01

    The SLAC Linac is being upgraded for the use in the SLAC Linear Collider (SLC). The improved Linac must accelerate electron and positron bunches from 1.2 GeV to 50 GeV while producing output energy spectra of about 0.2%. The energy spectra must be maintained during operation to provide for good beam transmission and to minimize chromatic effects in the SLC ARCs and Final Focus. the energy spectra of these beams are determined by the bunch length and intensity, the RF phase and waveform and the intra-bunch longitudinal wakefields. A non-destructive energy spectrum monitor has been designed using a vertical wiggler magnet located downstream of the horizontal beam splitter at the end of the SLC Linac. It produces synchrotron radiation which is viewed in an off-axis x-ray position sensitive detector. The expected resolution is 0.08%. The design considerations of this monitor are presented in this paper. A pair of these monitors is under construction with an installation date set for late summer 1986. 5 refs., 6 figs

  19. Extending role by Japanese pharmacists after training for performing vital signs monitoring

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hasegawa F

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available Background: In Japan, the circumstances in which pharmacists work are changing. Pharmacists are expected to assess conditions of patients subject to medication to ensure proper use of pharmaceutical products. To ensure fulfilment of these roles, there have already been pharmacists’ efforts in performing vital signs monitoring. Objective: To clarify the necessity and related issues, by investigating the state of vital sign monitoring in clinical field by pharmacists who have been trained in vital sign monitoring. Method: A web survey was conducted from 4th October to 3rd December 2012, subjecting 1,026 pharmacists who completed the vital signs training hosted by The Japanese Association of Home Care Pharmacies (JAHCP. Survey items were 1 basic information of a respondent, 2 situation of homecare conducted by pharmacists, 3 seminar attendance status, and 4 vital signs monitoring status after the seminar. Results: The number of valid respondents was 430 and the response rate was 41.9%. As a result of the present research, it was revealed that 168 pharmacists (41.4%, had the opportunity to perform vital signs monitoring. By conducting vital sign monitoring, effects such as 1 improved motivation of pharmacists and better communication with patients, 2 proper use of medication, and 3 cost reduction were confirmed. Conclusion: Judging from the results of the survey, pharmacists can improve medication therapy for patients by attaining vital sign skills and conduct vital sign monitoring. Pharmacists who perform vital sign monitoring should share cases where they experienced positive patient outcomes.

  20. Optimizing End-to-End Big Data Transfers over Terabits Network Infrastructure

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kim, Youngjae; Vallee, Geoffroy R.; Lee, Sangkeun; Shipman, Galen M.

    2016-01-01

    While future terabit networks hold the promise of significantly improving big-data motion among geographically distributed data centers, significant challenges must be overcome even on today's 100 gigabit networks to realize end-to-end performance. Multiple bottlenecks exist along the end-to-end path from source to sink, for instance, the data storage infrastructure at both the source and sink and its interplay with the wide-area network are increasingly the bottleneck to achieving high performance. In this study, we identify the issues that lead to congestion on the path of an end-to-end data transfer in the terabit network environment, and we present a new bulk data movement framework for terabit networks, called LADS. LADS exploits the underlying storage layout at each endpoint to maximize throughput without negatively impacting the performance of shared storage resources for other users. LADS also uses the Common Communication Interface (CCI) in lieu of the sockets interface to benefit from hardware-level zero-copy, and operating system bypass capabilities when available. It can further improve data transfer performance under congestion on the end systems using buffering at the source using flash storage. With our evaluations, we show that LADS can avoid congested storage elements within the shared storage resource, improving input/output bandwidth, and data transfer rates across the high speed networks. We also investigate the performance degradation problems of LADS due to I/O contention on the parallel file system (PFS), when multiple LADS tools share the PFS. We design and evaluate a meta-scheduler to coordinate multiple I/O streams while sharing the PFS, to minimize the I/O contention on the PFS. Finally, with our evaluations, we observe that LADS with meta-scheduling can further improve the performance by up to 14 percent relative to LADS without meta-scheduling.

  1. Development and implementation of a PV performance monitoring system based on inverter measurements

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Spataru, Sergiu; Gavriluta, Anamaria Florina; Maaløe, Lars

    2016-01-01

    Performance monitoring and fault detection systems have become necessary for decreasing operation and maintenance cost in large photovoltaic (PV) plants, as well for maximizing plan yield and lifetime. We expect a similar development for residential and commercial PV system applications, where...... the inverter’s own monitoring and communication capabilities. We also aim to lower the implementation cost, by using a simple, but accurate performance monitoring approach, and show the practical issues that can arise when implementing such a system....

  2. Fast beam condition monitor for CMS. Performance and upgrade

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Leonard, Jessica L.; Bell, Alan; Burtowy, Piotr

    2014-05-01

    The CMS beam and radiation monitoring subsystem BCM1F (Fast Beam Condition Monitor) consists of 8 individual diamond sensors situated around the beam pipe within the pixel detector volume, for the purpose of fast bunch-by-bunch monitoring of beam background and collision products. In addition, effort is ongoing to use BCM1F as an online luminosity monitor. BCM1F will be running whenever there is beam in LHC, and its data acquisition is independent from the data acquisition of the CMS detector, hence it delivers luminosity even when CMS is not taking data. A report is given on the performance of BCM1F during LHC run I, including results of the van der Meer scan and on-line luminosity monitoring done in 2012. In order to match the requirements due to higher luminosity and 25 ns bunch spacing, several changes to the system must be implemented during the upcoming shutdown, including upgraded electronics and precise gain monitoring. First results from Run II preparation are shown.

  3. Fast Beam Condition Monitor for CMS: performance and upgrade

    CERN Document Server

    INSPIRE-00009152; Bell, Alan; Burtowy, Piotr; Dabrowski, Anne; Hempel, Maria; Henschel, Hans; Lange, Wolfgang; Lohmann, Wolfgang; Odell, Nathaniel; Penno, Marek; Pollack, Brian; Przyborowski, Dominik; Ryjov, Vladimir; Stickland, David; Walsh, Roberval; Warzycha, Weronika; Zagozdzinska, Agnieszka

    2014-11-21

    The CMS beam and radiation monitoring subsystem BCM1F (Fast Beam Condition Monitor) consists of 8 individual diamond sensors situated around the beam pipe within the pixel detector volume, for the purpose of fast bunch-by-bunch monitoring of beam background and collision products. In addition, effort is ongoing to use BCM1F as an online luminosity monitor. BCM1F will be running whenever there is beam in LHC, and its data acquisition is independent from the data acquisition of the CMS detector, hence it delivers luminosity even when CMS is not taking data. A report is given on the performance of BCM1F during LHC run I, including results of the van der Meer scan and on-line luminosity monitoring done in 2012. In order to match the requirements due to higher luminosity and 25 ns bunch spacing, several changes to the system must be implemented during the upcoming shutdown, including upgraded electronics and precise gain monitoring. First results from Run II preparation are shown.

  4. A report on upgraded seismic monitoring stations in Myanmar: Station performance and site response

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thiam, Hrin Nei; Min Htwe, Yin Myo; Kyaw, Tun Lin; Tun, Pa Pa; Min, Zaw; Htwe, Sun Hninn; Aung, Tin Myo; Lin, Kyaw Kyaw; Aung, Myat Min; De Cristofaro, Jason; Franke, Mathias; Radman, Stefan; Lepiten, Elouie; Wolin, Emily; Hough, Susan E.

    2017-01-01

    Myanmar is in a tectonically complex region between the eastern edge of the Himalayan collision zone and the northern end of the Sunda megathrust. Until recently, earthquake monitoring and research efforts have been hampered by a lack of modern instrumentation and communication infrastructure. In January 2016, a major upgrade of the Myanmar National Seismic Network (MNSN; network code MM) was undertaken to improve earthquake monitoring capability. We installed five permanent broadband and strong‐motion seismic stations and real‐time data telemetry using newly improved cellular networks. Data are telemetered to the MNSN hub in Nay Pyi Taw and archived at the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Data Management Center. We analyzed station noise characteristics and site response using noise and events recorded over the first six months of station operation. Background noise characteristics vary across the array, but indicate that the new stations are performing well. MM stations recorded more than 20 earthquakes of M≥4.5 within Myanmar and its immediate surroundings, including an M 6.8 earthquake located northwest of Mandalay on 13 April 2016 and the Mw 6.8 Chauk event on 24 August 2016. We use this new dataset to calculate horizontal‐to‐vertical spectral ratios, which provide a preliminary characterization of site response of the upgraded MM stations.

  5. Acceptance Test Plan for Fourth-Generation Corrosion Monitoring Cabinet

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    NORMAN, E.C.

    2000-01-01

    This Acceptance Test Plan (ATP) will document the satisfactory operation of the third-generation corrosion monitoring cabinet (Hiline Engineering Part No.0004-CHM-072-C01). This ATP will be performed by the manufacturer of the cabinet prior to delivery to the site. The objective of this procedure is to demonstrate and document the acceptance of the corrosion monitoring cabinet. The test will consist of a continuity test of the cabinet wiring from the end of cable to be connected to corrosion probe, through the appropriate intrinsic safety barriers and out to the 15 pin D-shell connectors to be connected to the corrosion monitoring instrument. Additional testing will be performed using a constant current and voltage source provided by the corrosion monitoring hardware manufacturer to verify proper operation of corrosion monitoring instrumentation

  6. A machine learning calibration model using random forests to improve sensor performance for lower-cost air quality monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zimmerman, Naomi; Presto, Albert A.; Kumar, Sriniwasa P. N.; Gu, Jason; Hauryliuk, Aliaksei; Robinson, Ellis S.; Robinson, Allen L.; Subramanian, R.

    2018-01-01

    Low-cost sensing strategies hold the promise of denser air quality monitoring networks, which could significantly improve our understanding of personal air pollution exposure. Additionally, low-cost air quality sensors could be deployed to areas where limited monitoring exists. However, low-cost sensors are frequently sensitive to environmental conditions and pollutant cross-sensitivities, which have historically been poorly addressed by laboratory calibrations, limiting their utility for monitoring. In this study, we investigated different calibration models for the Real-time Affordable Multi-Pollutant (RAMP) sensor package, which measures CO, NO2, O3, and CO2. We explored three methods: (1) laboratory univariate linear regression, (2) empirical multiple linear regression, and (3) machine-learning-based calibration models using random forests (RF). Calibration models were developed for 16-19 RAMP monitors (varied by pollutant) using training and testing windows spanning August 2016 through February 2017 in Pittsburgh, PA, US. The random forest models matched (CO) or significantly outperformed (NO2, CO2, O3) the other calibration models, and their accuracy and precision were robust over time for testing windows of up to 16 weeks. Following calibration, average mean absolute error on the testing data set from the random forest models was 38 ppb for CO (14 % relative error), 10 ppm for CO2 (2 % relative error), 3.5 ppb for NO2 (29 % relative error), and 3.4 ppb for O3 (15 % relative error), and Pearson r versus the reference monitors exceeded 0.8 for most units. Model performance is explored in detail, including a quantification of model variable importance, accuracy across different concentration ranges, and performance in a range of monitoring contexts including the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and the US EPA Air Sensors Guidebook recommendations of minimum data quality for personal exposure measurement. A key strength of the RF approach is that

  7. Monitoring of performance and training in rowing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mäestu, Jarek; Jürimäe, Jaak; Jürimäe, Toivo

    2005-01-01

    Rowing is a strength-endurance type of sport and competition performance depends on factors such as aerobic and anaerobic power, physical power, rowing technique and tactics. Therefore, a rower has to develop several capacities in order to be successful and a valid testing battery of a rower has to include parameters that are highly related to rowing performance. Endurance training is the mainstay in rowing. For the 2000 m race, power training at high velocities should be preferred to resistance training at low velocities in order to train more specifically during the off-season. The specific training of the international rower has to be approximately 70% of the whole training time. Several studies have reported different biochemical parameters for monitoring the training of rowers. There is some evidence that plasma leptin is more sensitive to training volume changes than specific stress hormones (e.g. cortisol, testosterone, growth hormone). In rowing, the stress hormone reactions to training volume and/or intensity changes are controversial. The Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes measures both stress and recovery, and may therefore be more effective than the previously used Borg ratio scale or the Profile of Mood States, which both focus mainly on the stress component. In the future, probably the most effective way to evaluate the training of rowers is to monitor both stress and recovery components at the same time, using both psychometric data together with the biochemical and performance parameters.

  8. Fast Flux Test Facility performance monitoring management information

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Newland, D.J.

    1987-11-01

    The purpose of this report is to provide performance data on key performance indicators selected from the FFTF Early Warning System performance indicators. This report contains the results for key performance indicators divided into two categories of ''overall'' and ''other''. The ''overall'' performance indicators, when considered in the aggregate, provide one means of monitoring overall plant performance

  9. An automated meta-monitoring mobile application and front-end interface for the ATLAS computing model

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kawamura, Gen; Quadt, Arnulf [II. Physikalisches Institut, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen (Germany)

    2016-07-01

    Efficient administration of computing centres requires advanced tools for the monitoring and front-end interface of the infrastructure. Providing the large-scale distributed systems as a global grid infrastructure, like the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) and ATLAS computing, is offering many existing web pages and information sources indicating the status of the services, systems and user jobs at grid sites. A meta-monitoring mobile application which automatically collects the information could give every administrator a sophisticated and flexible interface of the infrastructure. We describe such a solution; the MadFace mobile application developed at Goettingen. It is a HappyFace compatible mobile application which has a user-friendly interface. It also becomes very feasible to automatically investigate the status and problem from different sources and provides access of the administration roles for non-experts.

  10. New Persistent Back-End for the ATLAS Online Information Service

    CERN Document Server

    Soloviev, I; The ATLAS collaboration

    2014-01-01

    The Trigger and Data Acquisition (TDAQ) and detector systems of the ATLAS experiment deploy more than 3000 computers, running more than 15000 concurrent processes, to perform the selection, recording and monitoring of the proton collisions data in ATLAS. Most of these processes produce and share operational monitoring data used for inter-process communication and analysis of the systems. Few of these data are archived by dedicated applications into conditions and histogram databases. The rest of the data remained transient and lost at the end of a data taking session. To save these data for later, offline analysis of the quality of data taking and to help investigating the behavior of the system by experts, the first prototype of a new Persistent Back-End for the Atlas Information System of TDAQ (P-BEAST) was developed and deployed in the second half of 2012. The modern, distributed, and Java-based Cassandra database has been used as the storage technology and the CERN EOS for long-term storage. This paper pr...

  11. End-To-END Performance of the future MOMA intrument aboard the EXOMARS MISSION

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buch, A.; Pinnick, V. T.; Szopa, C.; Grand, N.; Danell, R.; van Amerom, F. H. W.; Freissinet, C.; Glavin, D. P.; Stalport, F.; Arevalo, R. D., Jr.; Coll, P. J.; Steininger, H.; Raulin, F.; Goesmann, F.; Mahaffy, P. R.; Brinckerhoff, W. B.

    2016-12-01

    After the SAM experiment aboard the curiosity rover, the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) experiment aboard the future ExoMars mission will be the continuation of the search for the organic composition of the Mars surface with the advantage that the sample will be extracted as deep as 2 meters below the martian surface to minimize effects of radiation and oxidation on organic materials. To analyse the wide range of organic composition (volatile and non volatils compounds) of the martian soil MOMA is composed with an UV laser desorption / ionization (LDI) and a pyrolysis gas chromatography ion trap mass spectrometry (pyr-GC-ITMS). In order to analyse refractory organic compounds and chirality samples which undergo GC-ITMS analysis may be submitted to a derivatization process, consisting of the reaction of the sample components with specific reactants (MTBSTFA [1], DMF-DMA [2] or TMAH [3]). To optimize and test the performance of the GC-ITMS instrument we have performed several coupling tests campaigns between the GC, providing by the French team (LISA, LATMOS, CentraleSupelec), and the MS, providing by the US team (NASA, GSFC). Last campaign has been done with the ITU models wich is similar to the flight model and wich include the oven and the taping station providing by the German team (MPS). The results obtained demonstrate the current status of the end-to-end performance of the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry mode of operation. References:[1] Buch, A. et al. (2009) J chrom. A, 43, 143-151. [2] Freissinet et al. (2011) J Chrom A, 1306, 59-71. [3] Geffroy-Rodier, C. et al. (2009) JAAP, 85, 454-459. Acknowledgements: Funding provided by the Mars Exploration Program (point of contact, George Tahu, NASA/HQ). MOMA is a collaboration between NASA and ESA (PI Goesmann, MPS). MOMA-GC team acknowledges support from the French Space Agency (CNES), French National Programme of Planetology (PNP), National French Council (CNRS), Pierre Simon Laplace Institute.

  12. Intercomparison of performance characteristics of OSLDs and TLDs used for individual monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Meye, Phillipe Ondo

    2016-07-01

    This research work performed an intercomparison on some important performance characteristics of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and thermoluminescence (TL) dosimetry systems used by dosimetry services in Gabon and Ghana, respectively. The study verified the status of the selected performance indicators and propose ways to improve the performances of individual monitoring services of Ghana and Gabon if found necessary. The performance indicators assessed included the zero - dose, the minimum detectability and some important reader performance characteristics. These tests were performed using statistical and experimental methods. The overall uncertainty in measurement of the dosimetry systems of Ghana and Gabon for Hp(10) was determined using the IEC technical report TR 62461, and comparisons were carried out with IAEA 99, PTB 99, IEC 1066 and IEC1283 series performance standards. The IEC 62387 standard was used to assess the linearity dependence of the response and the coefficient of variation of the two dosimetry systems. For the Harshaw TLD 6600 system of the dosimetry service of Ghana, the Reference light QC test meets the requirement given in the user manual. For the OSL system microStar of the dosimetry system of Gabon, the three QC tests, DRK count, CAL count and LED count, meet the user manual requirements. However all these tests failed the statistical test that is part of counting statistics. This led to the conclusion that there may be some abnormalities in the counting system, and that the statistical abnormalities suspected have apparently no impact on the results of the reading. It was also concluded that since the DRK count and the CAL count failed the Chi - squared test by very small margin, a Gaussian distribution could still be considered as an approximation of the experimental data distributions of these two QC measurements. The zero dose for the Harshaw 6600 and the microStar system were found to be 0.026 mSv and 0.08 mSv respectively

  13. Reproducibility of The Abdominal and Chest Wall Position by Voluntary Breath-Hold Technique Using a Laser-Based Monitoring and Visual Feedback System

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nakamura, Katsumasa; Shioyama, Yoshiyuki; Nomoto, Satoru; Ohga, Saiji; Toba, Takashi; Yoshitake, Tadamasa; Anai, Shigeo; Terashima, Hiromi; Honda, Hiroshi

    2007-01-01

    Purpose: The voluntary breath-hold (BH) technique is a simple method to control the respiration-related motion of a tumor during irradiation. However, the abdominal and chest wall position may not be accurately reproduced using the BH technique. The purpose of this study was to examine whether visual feedback can reduce the fluctuation in wall motion during BH using a new respiratory monitoring device. Methods and Materials: We developed a laser-based BH monitoring and visual feedback system. For this study, five healthy volunteers were enrolled. The volunteers, practicing abdominal breathing, performed shallow end-expiration BH (SEBH), shallow end-inspiration BH (SIBH), and deep end-inspiration BH (DIBH) with or without visual feedback. The abdominal and chest wall positions were measured at 80-ms intervals during BHs. Results: The fluctuation in the chest wall position was smaller than that of the abdominal wall position. The reproducibility of the wall position was improved by visual feedback. With a monitoring device, visual feedback reduced the mean deviation of the abdominal wall from 2.1 ± 1.3 mm to 1.5 ± 0.5 mm, 2.5 ± 1.9 mm to 1.1 ± 0.4 mm, and 6.6 ± 2.4 mm to 2.6 ± 1.4 mm in SEBH, SIBH, and DIBH, respectively. Conclusions: Volunteers can perform the BH maneuver in a highly reproducible fashion when informed about the position of the wall, although in the case of DIBH, the deviation in the wall position remained substantial

  14. Experimental Adaptive Digital Performance Monitoring for Optical DP-QPSK Coherent Receiver

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Borkowski, Robert; Zhang, Xu; Zibar, Darko

    2011-01-01

    We report on a successful experimental demonstration of a digital optical performance monitoring (OPM) yielding satisfactory estimation accuracy along with adaptive impairment equalization. No observable penalty is measured when equalizer is driven by monitoring module.......We report on a successful experimental demonstration of a digital optical performance monitoring (OPM) yielding satisfactory estimation accuracy along with adaptive impairment equalization. No observable penalty is measured when equalizer is driven by monitoring module....

  15. The use of accelerometers in the pavement performance monitoring and analysis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ryynaenen, T; Belt, J; Pellinen, T

    2010-01-01

    This study investigated the use of sensor technology to enhance the management of highway infrastructure. With the help of monitoring data, it is possible to assess the current analytical pavement analysis method, which is based on multi-layered elastic analysis, and, thus enhance the pavement design practices in use. Pavement response was measured using different sensors, installed at various depths. Most promising sensors for the continuous monitoring purposes were the accelerometers. The drawback of these sensors is that the measured quantity is acceleration, which must be converted to the deflection via mathematical integration. In this paper some issues related to the manipulation of accelerometer data is presented and discussed, in addition of the discussion of the calculated and measured pavement response.

  16. Development of high-performance monitoring system under severe accident condition

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Takeuchi, Tomoaki; Tsuchiya, Kunihiro; Ishihara, Masahiro; Komanome, H.; Miura, K.

    2017-01-01

    A research and development of a monitoring system for NPPs situations even during severe accidents have been performed. The R and D consists of the three objectives. The major findings are briefly summarized in the followings: 1) Radiation-resistant monitoring camera. The image sensor with the photogate and three transistors was found to be advantageous in terms of dark current and sensitivity. In addition, radiation-resistant optical parts and signal circuits were successfully fabricated. The results suggested that the monitoring camera system with 10 6 Gy in radiation resistance was possible. 2) Radiation-resistant in-water wireless transmission system. A two-dimensional LED matrix with 10 6 Gy in radiation resistance and a camera were used as the transmission devices. The results of the in-water transmission tests suggested that stable wireless transmission between 5 m distance was possible even with bubble, turbidity, or obstacles. 3) Heat-resistant signal cable. In order to develop a cable that can transmit the data inside reactor pressure vessels, heat-proof tests were performed for candidate metallic sheath materials of mineral insulation (MI) cables. The results indicated MI cables which can be used at 1000degC in air were possible. These results indicate the feasibility of the monitoring system even during severe accidents. (author)

  17. Challenges in Getting Building Performance Monitoring Tools for Everyday Use: User Experiences with A New Tool

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Heikki Ihasalo

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available There is a need for building performance monitoring because it is common that buildings do not perform as intended. A number of advanced tools for the purpose have been developed within the last tens of years. However, these tools have not been widely adopted in real use. A new tool presented here utilizes building automation data and transforms the data into a set of performance metrics, and is capable of visualizing building performance from energy, indoor conditions, and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning system perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to study the users’ perceptions of the use of tool. The research method was semi-structured interviews. Although the users were satisfied with the solution in general, it was not taken into operative use. The main challenges with the use of the solution were related to accessibility, trust, and management practices. The interviewees were struggling to manage with numerous information systems and therefore had problems in finding the solution and authenticating to it. All the interviewees did not fully trust the solution, since they did not entirely understand what the performance metrics meant or because the solution had limitations in assessing building performance. Management practices are needed to support the performance measurement philosophy.

  18. Optical Performance Monitoring and Signal Optimization in Optical Networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Petersen, Martin Nordal

    2006-01-01

    The thesis studies performance monitoring for the next generation optical networks. The focus is on all-optical networks with bit-rates of 10 Gb/s or above. Next generation all-optical networks offer large challenges as the optical transmitted distance increases and the occurrence of electrical-optical......-electrical regeneration points decreases. This thesis evaluates the impact of signal degrading effects that are becoming of increasing concern in all-optical high-speed networks due to all-optical switching and higher bit-rates. Especially group-velocity-dispersion (GVD) and a number of nonlinear effects will require...... enhanced attention to avoid signal degradations. The requirements for optical performance monitoring features are discussed, and the thesis evaluates the advantages and necessity of increasing the level of performance monitoring parameters in the physical layer. In particular, methods for optical...

  19. Feedwater heater performance evaluation using the heat exchanger workstation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ranganathan, K.M.; Singh, G.P.; Tsou, J.L.

    1995-01-01

    A Heat Exchanger Workstation (HEW) has been developed to monitor the condition of heat exchanging equipment power plants. HEW enables engineers to analyze thermal performance and failure events for power plant feedwater heaters. The software provides tools for heat balance calculation and performance analysis. It also contains an expert system that enables performance enhancement. The Operation and Maintenance (O ampersand M) reference module on CD-ROM for HEW will be available by the end of 1995. Future developments of HEW would result in Condenser Expert System (CONES) and Balance of Plant Expert System (BOPES). HEW consists of five tightly integrated applications: A Database system for heat exchanger data storage, a Diagrammer system for creating plant heat exchanger schematics and data display, a Performance Analyst system for analyzing and predicting heat exchanger performance, a Performance Advisor expert system for expertise on improving heat exchanger performance and a Water Calculator system for computing properties of steam and water. In this paper an analysis of a feedwater heater which has been off-line is used to demonstrate how HEW can analyze the performance of the feedwater heater train and provide an economic justification for either replacing or repairing the feedwater heater

  20. Advanced Performance Modeling with Combined Passive and Active Monitoring

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Dovrolis, Constantine [Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States); Sim, Alex [Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

    2015-04-15

    To improve the efficiency of resource utilization and scheduling of scientific data transfers on high-speed networks, the "Advanced Performance Modeling with combined passive and active monitoring" (APM) project investigates and models a general-purpose, reusable and expandable network performance estimation framework. The predictive estimation model and the framework will be helpful in optimizing the performance and utilization of networks as well as sharing resources with predictable performance for scientific collaborations, especially in data intensive applications. Our prediction model utilizes historical network performance information from various network activity logs as well as live streaming measurements from network peering devices. Historical network performance information is used without putting extra load on the resources by active measurement collection. Performance measurements collected by active probing is used judiciously for improving the accuracy of predictions.

  1. RPC performance vs. front-end electronics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cardarelli, R.; Aielli, G.; Camarri, P.; Di Ciaccio, A.; Di Stante, L.; Liberti, B.; Pastori, E.; Santonico, R.; Zerbini, A.

    2012-01-01

    Moving the amplification from the gas to the front-end electronics was a milestone in the development of Resistive Plate Chambers. Here we discuss the historical evolution of RPCs and we show the results obtained with newly developed front-end electronics with threshold in the fC range.

  2. Reconstruction of lower end of radius using vascularized upper end of fibula

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Koul Ashok

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: Giant cell tumor is a fairly common locally invasive tumor in young adults. The lower end of the radius is the second commonest site for this tumor. The most common treatment for this tumor is curettage with or without bone grafting but it carries a significant rate of recurrence. Excision is the treatment of choice, especially for cases in which the cortex has been breached. After excision of the distal end of the radius, different procedures have been described to reconstruct the defect of distal radius. These include partial arthrodesis and hemiarthroplasty using the upper end of the fibula. The upper end of the fibula has a morphological resemblance to the lower end of the radius and has been used to replace the latter. Traditionally it was used as a ′free′ (non-vascularized graft. More recently the upper end of the fibula has been transferred as a vascularized transfer for the same purpose. Though vascularized transfer should be expected to be more physiological, its superiority over the technically simpler non-vascularized transfer has not been conclusively proven. Materials and Methods: Two patients are presented who had giant cell tumor of distal radius. They underwent wide local excision and reconstruction with free vascularized upper end of the fibula. Result: Follow-up period was two and a half years and 12 months respectively. Both patients have returned to routine work. One patient has excellent functional result and the other has a good result. Conclusion: Vascularized upper end of fibula transfer is a reliable method of reconstruction for loss of the distal end of the radius that restores local anatomy and physiology.

  3. Performance Monitoring Of A Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) Lathe Using Pattern Recognition Techniques

    Science.gov (United States)

    Daneshmend, L. K.; Pak, H. A.

    1984-02-01

    On-line monitoring of the cutting process in CNC lathe is desirable to ensure unattended fault-free operation in an automated environment. The state of the cutting tool is one of the most important parameters which characterises the cutting process. Direct monitoring of the cutting tool or workpiece is not feasible during machining. However several variables related to the state of the tool can be measured on-line. A novel monitoring technique is presented which uses cutting torque as the variable for on-line monitoring. A classifier is designed on the basis of the empirical relationship between cutting torque and flank wear. The empirical model required by the on-line classifier is established during an automated training cycle using machine vision for off-line direct inspection of the tool.

  4. A Mountain-Scale Monitoring Network for Yucca Mountain Performance Confirmation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Freifeld, Barry; Tsang, Yvonne

    2006-01-01

    Confirmation of the performance of Yucca Mountain is required by 10 CFR Part 63.131 to indicate, where practicable, that the natural system acts as a barrier, as intended. Hence, performance confirmation monitoring and testing would provide data for continued assessment during the pre-closure period. In general, to carry out testing at a relevant scale is always important, and in the case of performance confirmation, it is particularly important to be able to test at the scale of the repository. We view the large perturbation caused by construction of the repository at Yucca Mountain as a unique opportunity to study the large-scale behavior of the natural barrier system. Repository construction would necessarily introduce traced fluids and result in the creation of leachates. A program to monitor traced fluids and construction leachates permits evaluation of transport through the unsaturated zone and potentially downgradient through the saturated zone. A robust sampling and monitoring network for continuous measurement of important parameters, and for periodic collection of agrochemical samples, is proposed to observe thermo-hydrogeochemical changes near the repository horizon and down to the water table. The sampling and monitoring network can be used to provide data to (1) assess subsurface conditions encountered and changes in those conditions during construction and waste emplacement operations; and (2) for modeling to determine that the natural system is functioning as intended

  5. Standard guide for in-plant performance evaluation of automatic pedestrian SNM monitors

    CERN Document Server

    American Society for Testing and Materials. Philadelphia

    1997-01-01

    1.1 This guide is affiliated with Guide C1112 on special nuclear material (SNM) monitors, Guide C1169 on laboratory performance evaluation, and Guide C1189 on calibrating pedestrian SNM monitors. This guide to in-plant performance evaluation is a comparatively rapid way to verify whether a pedestrian SNM monitor performs as expected for detecting SNM or SNM-like test sources. 1.1.1 In-plant performance evaluation should not be confused with the simple daily functional test recommended in Guide C1112. In-plant performance evaluation takes place less often than daily tests, usually at intervals ranging from weekly to once every three months. In-plant evaluations are also more extensive than daily tests and may examine both a monitor's nuisance alarm record and its detection sensitivity for a particular SNM or alternative test source. 1.1.2 In-plant performance evaluation also should not be confused with laboratory performance evaluation. In-plant evaluation is comparatively rapid, takes place in the monitor...

  6. New portable monitor enhances the ability to evaluate heat exchanger performance

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    O'Toole, W.; Lacy, J.R.; Karlovich, D.N.

    1992-01-01

    Corrosion and fouling problems in nuclear power plant service water systems have led to industry-wide concern. These problems can affect the ability of these important heat exchangers to remove design heat loads. In addition, a limited amount of permanently installed on-line instrumentation is available to monitor key heat transfer parameters. A new, computerized monitoring system has been developed that acquires and manipulates process data. This enables power plant personnel to evaluate the on-line performance of important cooling system heat exchangers. The equipment provides the capability to continuously monitor, graph, and record cooling and process heat transfer parameters. The computer hardware is in a portable cabinet on wheels, which can be easily rolled from exchanger to exchanger for monitoring. This new monitoring system is being used at Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc.'s Indian Point 2 Nuclear Station. They are currently expanding their performance testing on service water system heat exchangers and other auxiliary components to include those units that have limited on-line instrumentation. The ability to use clamp on flow and temperature sensing devices is necessary for trending exchanger performance. With on-line testing capabilities it is possible to: evaluate the cleanliness of plant heat transfer surfaces; make judgments about biofouling or antiscalant programs; and determine when equipment needs to be shut down for inspection or cleaning This paper describes this state-of-the-art equipment in detail and its application at the Indian Point 2 Nuclear Station. 9 refs., 8 figs., 1 tab

  7. Acceptance Test Report for Fourth-Generation Hanford Corrosion Monitoring Cabinet

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    NORMAN, E.C.

    2000-01-01

    This Acceptance Test Plan (ATP) will document the satisfactory operation of the third-generation corrosion monitoring cabinet (Hiline Engineering Part No.0004-CHM-072-C01). This ATP will be performed by the manufacturer of the cabinet prior to delivery to the site. The objective of this procedure is to demonstrate and document the acceptance of the corrosion monitoring cabinet. The test will consist of a continuity test of the cabinet wiring from the end of cable to be connected to corrosion probe, through the appropriate intrinsic safety barriers and out to the 15 pin D-shell connectors to be connected to the corrosion monitoring instrument. Additional testing will be performed using a constant current and voltage source provided by the corrosion monitoring hardware manufacturer to verify proper operation of corrosion monitoring instrumentation

  8. OISI dynamic end-to-end modeling tool

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kersten, Michael; Weidler, Alexander; Wilhelm, Rainer; Johann, Ulrich A.; Szerdahelyi, Laszlo

    2000-07-01

    The OISI Dynamic end-to-end modeling tool is tailored to end-to-end modeling and dynamic simulation of Earth- and space-based actively controlled optical instruments such as e.g. optical stellar interferometers. `End-to-end modeling' is meant to denote the feature that the overall model comprises besides optical sub-models also structural, sensor, actuator, controller and disturbance sub-models influencing the optical transmission, so that the system- level instrument performance due to disturbances and active optics can be simulated. This tool has been developed to support performance analysis and prediction as well as control loop design and fine-tuning for OISI, Germany's preparatory program for optical/infrared spaceborne interferometry initiated in 1994 by Dornier Satellitensysteme GmbH in Friedrichshafen.

  9. Smart Metering and Water End-Use Data: Conservation Benefits and Privacy Risks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Damien P. Giurco

    2010-08-01

    Full Text Available Smart metering technology for residential buildings is being trialed and rolled out by water utilities to assist with improved urban water management in a future affected by climate change. The technology can provide near real-time monitoring of where water is used in the home, disaggregated by end-use (shower, toilet, clothes washing, garden irrigation, etc.. This paper explores questions regarding the degree of information detail required to assist utilities in targeting demand management programs and informing customers of their usage patterns, whilst ensuring privacy concerns of residents are upheld.

  10. Testing Application (End-to-End Performance of Networks With EFT Traffic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vlatko Lipovac

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper studies how end-to-end application peiformance(of Electronic Financial Transaction traffic, in particulardepends on the actual protocol stacks, operating systemsand network transmission rates. With this respect, the respectivesimulation tests of peiformance of TCP and UDP protocolsrunning on various operating systems, ranging from Windows,Sun Solmis, to Linux have been implemented, and thedifferences in peiformance addressed focusing on throughputand response time.

  11. System of end-to-end symmetric database encryption

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galushka, V. V.; Aydinyan, A. R.; Tsvetkova, O. L.; Fathi, V. A.; Fathi, D. V.

    2018-05-01

    The article is devoted to the actual problem of protecting databases from information leakage, which is performed while bypassing access control mechanisms. To solve this problem, it is proposed to use end-to-end data encryption, implemented at the end nodes of an interaction of the information system components using one of the symmetric cryptographic algorithms. For this purpose, a key management method designed for use in a multi-user system based on the distributed key representation model, part of which is stored in the database, and the other part is obtained by converting the user's password, has been developed and described. In this case, the key is calculated immediately before the cryptographic transformations and is not stored in the memory after the completion of these transformations. Algorithms for registering and authorizing a user, as well as changing his password, have been described, and the methods for calculating parts of a key when performing these operations have been provided.

  12. The Impact of the Perceived Purpose of Electronic Performance Monitoring on an Array of Attitudinal Variables

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wells, Deborah L.; Moorman, Robert H.; Werner, Jon M.

    2007-01-01

    As a form of performance monitoring, electronic performance monitoring (EPM) offers the opportunity for unobtrusive and continuous performance data gathering. These strengths can also make EPM stressful and threatening. Many features of performance evaluation systems, including the organizational purposes for which they are used, can affect…

  13. Virtual platforms use: a useful monitoring tool

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jerónimo Torres-Porras

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available The European Higher Education Area is motivating a substantial change in university education and is promoting the use of new Technologies of Information and Communication. The educational virtual platform Moodle is one of the most widely used worldwide and also facilitates the creation of online learning sites and provides data of monitoring platform by users. This study focuses on the extent of use of Moodle by university students, following the same groups in their first and last academic year, finding a significant relation with the marks obtained in the subjects analyzed. This relationship shows that students with lower marks have used less Moodle platform, which has been maintained until the end of the Degree. Therefore, it is suggested that records in virtual platforms could be used as an index of interest in the subjects and it is recommended that they be analyzed during the first academic year in order to detect the least motivated groups and thus be able to act.

  14. SampleCNN: End-to-End Deep Convolutional Neural Networks Using Very Small Filters for Music Classification

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jongpil Lee

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN have been applied to diverse machine learning tasks for different modalities of raw data in an end-to-end fashion. In the audio domain, a raw waveform-based approach has been explored to directly learn hierarchical characteristics of audio. However, the majority of previous studies have limited their model capacity by taking a frame-level structure similar to short-time Fourier transforms. We previously proposed a CNN architecture which learns representations using sample-level filters beyond typical frame-level input representations. The architecture showed comparable performance to the spectrogram-based CNN model in music auto-tagging. In this paper, we extend the previous work in three ways. First, considering the sample-level model requires much longer training time, we progressively downsample the input signals and examine how it affects the performance. Second, we extend the model using multi-level and multi-scale feature aggregation technique and subsequently conduct transfer learning for several music classification tasks. Finally, we visualize filters learned by the sample-level CNN in each layer to identify hierarchically learned features and show that they are sensitive to log-scaled frequency.

  15. Integrating policy-based management and SLA performance monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Tzong-Jye; Lin, Chin-Yi; Chang, Shu-Hsin; Yen, Meng-Tzu

    2001-10-01

    Policy-based management system provides the configuration capability for the system administrators to focus on the requirements of customers. The service level agreement performance monitoring mechanism helps system administrators to verify the correctness of policies. However, it is difficult for a device to process the policies directly because the policies are the management concept. This paper proposes a mechanism to decompose a policy into rules that can be efficiently processed by a device. Thus, the device may process the rule and collect the performance statistics information efficiently; and the policy-based management system may collect these performance statistics information and report the service-level agreement performance monitoring information to the system administrator. The proposed policy-based management system achieves both the policy configuration and service-level agreement performance monitoring requirements. A policy consists of a condition part and an action part. The condition part is a Boolean expression of a source host IP group, a destination host IP group, etc. The action part is the parameters of services. We say that an address group is compact if it only consists of a range of IP address that can be denoted by a pair of IP address and corresponding IP mask. If the condition part of a policy only consists of the compact address group, we say that the policy is a rule. Since a device can efficiently process a compact address and a system administrator prefers to define a range of IP address, the policy-based management system has to translate policy into rules and supplements the gaps between policy and rules. The proposed policy-based management system builds the relationships between VPN and policies, policy and rules. Since the system administrator wants to monitor the system performance information of VPNs and policies, the proposed policy-based management system downloads the relationships among VPNs, policies and rules to the

  16. Electronic Performance Monitoring: An Organizational Justice and Concertive Control Perspective.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alder, G. Stoney; Tompkins, Phillip K.

    1997-01-01

    Applies theories of organizational justice/concertive control to account for contradictions inherent in electronic monitoring of workers by organizations. Argues that results are usually positive when workers are involved in the design and implementation of monitoring systems, and monitoring is restricted to performance-related activities with…

  17. Performance Evaluation of wastewater treatment plant of Noosh Azar company by online monitoring station

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    leila haddadi

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Background& Objective: One of the reuses of wastewater in industries is irrigation of green space. Therefore, with proper treatment and reduction of environmental pollution of wastewater and in compliance with environmental standards, it can be used for irrigation purposes. The present study was aimed to evaluate the performance of Noosh Azar Wastewater Treatment Plant by the online monitoring station in 2016.   Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed at Noosh Azar Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP in Tehran. The effluent outlet parameters include COD, BOD, TSS, TOC, Turbidity, pH and temperature which were measured 12 times/day by the online monitoring station of the refinery according to the standard methods (the Examinations of Water and Wastewater, and reported at the end of each month. Data were entered into SPSS software and analyzed using statistical indices including mean and standard deviation. Results: The average total of BOD/COD ratio in the wastewater was 0.8. The results of the study showed that the average concentration of COD, BOD and TSS of the wastewater was 1624.91 ±134.85, 1310±75.38 and 283.58± 39.76 mg/L, respectively. The average of total outlet parameters of turbidity, COD, BOD, TSS and TOC were 12.78±2.21, 83.73±12.90, 41.26±6.65, 6.70±2.14, 46.03±7.08 mg/L, and pH=7.80±0.35. The total average of removal efficiencies of COD, BOD and TSS were 93.92±3.62, 96.57±1.002 and 97.57±0.936, respectively. Conclusion: Regarding the proper performance of the activated sludge system of Noosh Azar Company, the effluent  parameters such as COD, BOD, TSS, TOC, turbidity and pH, were in accordance with the standard of the Iranian Environmental Protection Agency for irrigation use. However in order to ensure the quality of the wastewater for reuse, the microbial parameters should also be considered.

  18. Link Performance Analysis and monitoring - A unified approach to divergent requirements

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thom, G. A.

    Link Performance Analysis and real-time monitoring are generally covered by a wide range of equipment. Bit Error Rate testers provide digital link performance measurements but are not useful during real-time data flows. Real-time performance monitors utilize the fixed overhead content but vary widely from format to format. Link quality information is also present from signal reconstruction equipment in the form of receiver AGC, bit synchronizer AGC, and bit synchronizer soft decision level outputs, but no general approach to utilizing this information exists. This paper presents an approach to link tests, real-time data quality monitoring, and results presentation that utilizes a set of general purpose modules in a flexible architectural environment. The system operates over a wide range of bit rates (up to 150 Mbs) and employs several measurement techniques, including P/N code errors or fixed PCM format errors, derived real-time BER from frame sync errors, and Data Quality Analysis derived by counting significant sync status changes. The architecture performs with a minimum of elements in place to permit a phased update of the user's unit in accordance with his needs.

  19. Development of structural health monitoring techniques using dynamics testing

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    James, G.H. III [Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States). Experimental Structural Dynamics Dept.

    1996-03-01

    Today`s society depends upon many structures (such as aircraft, bridges, wind turbines, offshore platforms, buildings, and nuclear weapons) which are nearing the end of their design lifetime. Since these structures cannot be economically replaced, techniques for structural health monitoring must be developed and implemented. Modal and structural dynamics measurements hold promise for the global non-destructive inspection of a variety of structures since surface measurements of a vibrating structure can provide information about the health of the internal members without costly (or impossible) dismantling of the structure. In order to develop structural health monitoring for application to operational structures, developments in four areas have been undertaken within this project: operational evaluation, diagnostic measurements, information condensation, and damage identification. The developments in each of these four aspects of structural health monitoring have been exercised on a broad range of experimental data. This experimental data has been extracted from structures from several application areas which include aging aircraft, wind energy, aging bridges, offshore structures, structural supports, and mechanical parts. As a result of these advances, Sandia National Laboratories is in a position to perform further advanced development, operational implementation, and technical consulting for a broad class of the nation`s aging infrastructure problems.

  20. The effects of monitoring environment on problem-solving performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laird, Brian K; Bailey, Charles D; Hester, Kim

    2018-01-01

    While effective and efficient solving of everyday problems is important in business domains, little is known about the effects of workplace monitoring on problem-solving performance. In a laboratory experiment, we explored the monitoring environment's effects on an individual's propensity to (1) establish pattern solutions to problems, (2) recognize when pattern solutions are no longer efficient, and (3) solve complex problems. Under three work monitoring regimes-no monitoring, human monitoring, and electronic monitoring-114 participants solved puzzles for monetary rewards. Based on research related to worker autonomy and theory of social facilitation, we hypothesized that monitored (versus non-monitored) participants would (1) have more difficulty finding a pattern solution, (2) more often fail to recognize when the pattern solution is no longer efficient, and (3) solve fewer complex problems. Our results support the first two hypotheses, but in complex problem solving, an interaction was found between self-assessed ability and the monitoring environment.

  1. A wide dynamic range BF3 neutron monitor with front-end electronics based on a logarithmic amplifier

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ferrarini, M.; Varoli, V.; Favalli, A.; Caresana, M.; Pedersen, B.

    2010-01-01

    This paper describes a wide dynamic range neutron monitor based on a BF 3 neutron detector. The detector is used in current mode, and front-end electronics based on a logarithmic amplifier are used in order to have a measurement capability ranging over many orders of magnitude. The system has been calibrated at the Polytechnic of Milan, CESNEF, with an AmBe neutron source, and has been tested in a pulsed field at the PUNITA facility at JRC, Ispra. The detector has achieved a dynamic range of over 6 orders of magnitude, being able to measure single neutron pulses and showing saturation-free response for a reaction rate up to 10 6 s -1 . It has also proved effective in measuring the PUNITA facility pulse integral fluence.

  2. Potential use of produced oil sample analysis to monitor SAGD performance

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Li, Z. [Society of Petroleum Engineers, Canadian Section, Calgary, AB (Canada)]|[Nexen Petroleum International, Calgary, AB (Canada); Wollen, C. [Society of Petroleum Engineers, Canadian Section, Calgary, AB (Canada)]|[OPTI-Nexen Inc., Calgary, AB (Canada); Yang, P.; Fustic, M. [Nexen Petroleum International, Calgary, AB (Canada)

    2008-10-15

    Oil viscosity and compositional gradients can affect the performance of steam injection recovery processes. In this study, reservoir simulations were conducted to investigate the effects of viscosity variation with depth on steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) processes and produced oil characteristics. The 2-D reservoir model consisted of a reservoir with a 40 m clean sand matrix, overtopped with interbedded shales and sand. The oil phase was comprised of 2 pseudo-components representing top and bottom bitumens. Viscosities and concentrations of the pseudo-components were calculated using linear mixing rules. Four different viscosity distribution scenarios were examined. Conceptual 3-D models were then constructed to examine the characteristics of produced oil samples in scenarios with shale barriers extending down the well directions and blocking parts of the reservoir. Results from the simulations showed that produced oil characteristics are related to the in situ profiles of reservoir flow barriers. Produced oil characteristics can be used in conjunction with oil rates, surface heave and other data to predict steam chamber development and detect the presence of baffles and barriers. The relationship between the SAGD steam chamber and variations in produced fluid characteristics were accurately characterized by the simulations. It was concluded that the approach can be used to monitor SAGD steam chamber growth. 10 refs., 1 tab., 19 figs.

  3. Evaluation of the RSG-GAS Alpha-Beta Aerosol Contaminant Monitor Performance Under Reactor Operation Condition

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hartoyo, Unggul; Setiawanto, Anto; Sumarno, Yulius

    2000-01-01

    Analysis to evaluate the RSG-GAS alpha-beta aerosol contaminant monitor performance was done. The high potential radiation working area such as in RSG-GAS is important to monitored for personal safety. Further it is necessary to assure that the system monitor is reliable enough under normal conditions as well as emergency condition. The method uses in this analysis are monitoring and comparing with the standard source. The standard course indicator and panel in main control room indicate that the result is 1 x 110 exp 9 Ci/m exp 3. Based on data monitor observation, the RSG-GAS alpha-beta aerosol contaminant monitor system under reactor operation condition has a good enough performance

  4. HwPMI: An Extensible Performance Monitoring Infrastructure for Improving Hardware Design and Productivity on FPGAs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrew G. Schmidt

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Designing hardware cores for FPGAs can quickly become a complicated task, difficult even for experienced engineers. With the addition of more sophisticated development tools and maturing high-level language-to-gates techniques, designs can be rapidly assembled; however, when the design is evaluated on the FPGA, the performance may not be what was expected. Therefore, an engineer may need to augment the design to include performance monitors to better understand the bottlenecks in the system or to aid in the debugging of the design. Unfortunately, identifying what to monitor and adding the infrastructure to retrieve the monitored data can be a challenging and time-consuming task. Our work alleviates this effort. We present the Hardware Performance Monitoring Infrastructure (HwPMI, which includes a collection of software tools and hardware cores that can be used to profile the current design, recommend and insert performance monitors directly into the HDL or netlist, and retrieve the monitored data with minimal invasiveness to the design. Three applications are used to demonstrate and evaluate HwPMI’s capabilities. The results are highly encouraging as the infrastructure adds numerous capabilities while requiring minimal effort by the designer and low resource overhead to the existing design.

  5. MRI simulation: end-to-end testing for prostate radiation therapy using geometric pelvic MRI phantoms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sun, Jidi; Menk, Fred; Lambert, Jonathan; Martin, Jarad; Denham, James W; Greer, Peter B; Dowling, Jason; Rivest-Henault, David; Pichler, Peter; Parker, Joel; Arm, Jameen; Best, Leah

    2015-01-01

    To clinically implement MRI simulation or MRI-alone treatment planning requires comprehensive end-to-end testing to ensure an accurate process. The purpose of this study was to design and build a geometric phantom simulating a human male pelvis that is suitable for both CT and MRI scanning and use it to test geometric and dosimetric aspects of MRI simulation including treatment planning and digitally reconstructed radiograph (DRR) generation.A liquid filled pelvic shaped phantom with simulated pelvic organs was scanned in a 3T MRI simulator with dedicated radiotherapy couch-top, laser bridge and pelvic coil mounts. A second phantom with the same external shape but with an internal distortion grid was used to quantify the distortion of the MR image. Both phantoms were also CT scanned as the gold-standard for both geometry and dosimetry. Deformable image registration was used to quantify the MR distortion. Dose comparison was made using a seven-field IMRT plan developed on the CT scan with the fluences copied to the MR image and recalculated using bulk electron densities.Without correction the maximum distortion of the MR compared with the CT scan was 7.5 mm across the pelvis, while this was reduced to 2.6 and 1.7 mm by the vendor’s 2D and 3D correction algorithms, respectively. Within the locations of the internal organs of interest, the distortion was <1.5 and <1 mm with 2D and 3D correction algorithms, respectively. The dose at the prostate isocentre calculated on CT and MRI images differed by 0.01% (1.1 cGy). Positioning shifts were within 1 mm when setup was performed using MRI generated DRRs compared to setup using CT DRRs.The MRI pelvic phantom allows end-to-end testing of the MRI simulation workflow with comparison to the gold-standard CT based process. MRI simulation was found to be geometrically accurate with organ dimensions, dose distributions and DRR based setup within acceptable limits compared to CT. (paper)

  6. 10 CFR 600.341 - Monitoring and reporting program and financial performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... 10 Energy 4 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Monitoring and reporting program and financial performance. 600.341 Section 600.341 Energy DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (CONTINUED) ASSISTANCE REGULATIONS FINANCIAL... Organizations Post-Award Requirements § 600.341 Monitoring and reporting program and financial performance. (a...

  7. Monitoring driver fatigue using a single-channel electroencephalographic device: A validation study by gaze-based, driving performance, and subjective data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morales, José M; Díaz-Piedra, Carolina; Rieiro, Héctor; Roca-González, Joaquín; Romero, Samuel; Catena, Andrés; Fuentes, Luis J; Di Stasi, Leandro L

    2017-12-01

    Driver fatigue can impair performance as much as alcohol does. It is the most important road safety concern, causing thousands of accidents and fatalities every year. Thanks to technological developments, wearable, single-channel EEG devices are now getting considerable attention as fatigue monitors, as they could help drivers to assess their own levels of fatigue and, therefore, prevent the deterioration of performance. However, the few studies that have used single-channel EEG devices to investigate the physiological effects of driver fatigue have had inconsistent results, and the question of whether we can monitor driver fatigue reliably with these EEG devices remains open. Here, we assessed the validity of a single-channel EEG device (TGAM-based chip) to monitor changes in mental state (from alertness to fatigue). Fifteen drivers performed a 2-h simulated driving task while we recorded, simultaneously, their prefrontal brain activity and saccadic velocity. We used saccadic velocity as the reference index of fatigue. We also collected subjective ratings of alertness and fatigue, as well as driving performance. We found that the power spectra of the delta EEG band showed an inverted U-shaped quadratic trend (EEG power spectra increased for the first hour and half, and decreased during the last thirty minutes), while the power spectra of the beta band linearly increased as the driving session progressed. Coherently, saccadic velocity linearly decreased and speeding time increased, suggesting a clear effect of fatigue. Subjective data corroborated these conclusions. Overall, our results suggest that the TGAM-based chip EEG device is able to detect changes in mental state while performing a complex and dynamic everyday task as driving. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Electrical performance of ATLAS-SCT KB end-cap modules

    CERN Document Server

    D'Onofrio, M; Donegà, M; Ferrère, D; Mangin-Brinet, M; Mikulec, B; Weber, M; Ikegami, Y; Kohriki, T; Kondo, T; Terada, S; Unno, Y; Pernegger, H; Roe, S; Wallny, R; Moorhead, G F; Taylor, G; García, J E; Gonzáles, S; Vos, M A; Toczek, B

    2003-01-01

    The Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) is one of the ATLAS Inner Detector elements which aims to track charged particles in the ATLAS experiment. It consists of four cylindrical layers (barrels) of silicon strip detectors, with nine disks in each of the forward and backward directions. Carbon fibre structures will support a total of 4088 modules, which are the basic functional sub-unit of the SCT. Each module consists of single sided silicon micro-strip detectors glued back to back with a 40 mrad stereo-angle, and attached to a hybrid. The scope of this document is to present the electrical performances of prototype end-cap modules proposed for the ATLAS-SCT, as an alternative to the baseline. The layout of these modules is based on the implementation of the barrel module hybrid in the end-cap geometry. A complete set of electrical measurements is summarized in this paper, including irradiated module tests and beam tests.

  9. Utilizing Domain Knowledge in End-to-End Audio Processing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tax, Tycho; Antich, Jose Luis Diez; Purwins, Hendrik

    2017-01-01

    to learn the commonly-used log-scaled mel-spectrogram transformation. Secondly, we demonstrate that upon initializing the first layers of an end-to-end CNN classifier with the learned transformation, convergence and performance on the ESC-50 environmental sound classification dataset are similar to a CNN......-based model trained on the highly pre-processed log-scaled mel-spectrogram features....

  10. Experience of using MOSFET detectors for dose verification measurements in an end-to-end 192Ir brachytherapy quality assurance system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Persson, Maria; Nilsson, Josef; Carlsson Tedgren, Åsa

    Establishment of an end-to-end system for the brachytherapy (BT) dosimetric chain could be valuable in clinical quality assurance. Here, the development of such a system using MOSFET (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) detectors and experience gained during 2 years of use are reported with focus on the performance of the MOSFET detectors. A bolus phantom was constructed with two implants, mimicking prostate and head & neck treatments, using steel needles and plastic catheters to guide the 192 Ir source and house the MOSFET detectors. The phantom was taken through the BT treatment chain from image acquisition to dose evaluation. During the 2-year evaluation-period, delivered doses were verified a total of 56 times using MOSFET detectors which had been calibrated in an external 60 Co beam. An initial experimental investigation on beam quality differences between 192 Ir and 60 Co is reported. The standard deviation in repeated MOSFET measurements was below 3% in the six measurement points with dose levels above 2 Gy. MOSFET measurements overestimated treatment planning system doses by 2-7%. Distance-dependent experimental beam quality correction factors derived in a phantom of similar size as that used for end-to-end tests applied on a time-resolved measurement improved the agreement. MOSFET detectors provide values stable over time and function well for use as detectors for end-to-end quality assurance purposes in 192 Ir BT. Beam quality correction factors should address not only distance from source but also phantom dimensions. Copyright © 2017 American Brachytherapy Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. Preclosure monitoring and performance confirmation at Yucca Mountain: Applicability of geophysical, geohydrological, and geochemical methods

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tsang, C.F.

    1989-06-01

    The present paper presents considerations on studies that would be required for preclosure monitoring and performance confirmation of a nuclear waste geologic repository in an unsaturated zone. The critical parameters that should be monitored are reviewed and two scales of measurement relevant to monitoring activities, room scale and repository scale, are taken as a framework for investigation. A number of monitoring methods based on geophysics, geohydrology, and geochemistry are briefly summarized for their potential usefulness for preclosure monitoring and performance confirmation of the geologic repository. Particular emphasis is given to measurement of the spatial distribution of parameters in contrast to single-point measurements of quantities. 12 refs., 1 fig., 1 tab

  12. Development of a Real-Time Thermal Performance Diagnostic Monitoring system Using Self-Organizing Neural Network for Kori-2 Nuclear Power Unit

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kang, Hyun Gook; Seong, Poong Hyun

    1996-01-01

    In this work, a PC-based thermal performance monitoring system is developed for the nuclear power plants. the system performs real-time thermal performance monitoring and diagnosis during plant operation. Specifically, a prototype for the Kori-2 nuclear power unit is developed and examined is very difficult because the system structure is highly complex and the components are very much inter-related. In this study, some major diagnostic performance parameters are selected in order to represent the thermal cycle effectively and to reduce the computing time. The Fuzzy ARTMAP, a self-organizing neural network, is used to recognize the characteristic pattern change of the performance parameters in abnormal situation. By examination, the algorithm is shown to be ale to detect abnormality and to identify the fault component or the change of system operation condition successfully. For the convenience of operators, a graphical user interface is also constructed in this work. 5 figs., 3 tabs., 11 refs. (Author)

  13. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Minimum Operations Performance Standards End-to-End Verification and Validation (E2-V2) Simulation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ghatas, Rania W.; Jack, Devin P.; Tsakpinis, Dimitrios; Vincent, Michael J.; Sturdy, James L.; Munoz, Cesar A.; Hoffler, Keith D.; Dutle, Aaron M.; Myer, Robert R.; Dehaven, Anna M.; hide

    2017-01-01

    As Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) make their way to mainstream aviation operations within the National Airspace System (NAS), research efforts are underway to develop a safe and effective environment for their integration into the NAS. Detect and Avoid (DAA) systems are required to account for the lack of "eyes in the sky" due to having no human on-board the aircraft. The current NAS relies on pilot's vigilance and judgement to remain Well Clear (CFR 14 91.113) of other aircraft. RTCA SC-228 has defined DAA Well Clear (DAAWC) to provide a quantified Well Clear volume to allow systems to be designed and measured against. Extended research efforts have been conducted to understand and quantify system requirements needed to support a UAS pilot's ability to remain well clear of other aircraft. The efforts have included developing and testing sensor, algorithm, alerting, and display requirements. More recently, sensor uncertainty and uncertainty mitigation strategies have been evaluated. This paper discusses results and lessons learned from an End-to-End Verification and Validation (E2-V2) simulation study of a DAA system representative of RTCA SC-228's proposed Phase I DAA Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS). NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) was called upon to develop a system that evaluates a specific set of encounters, in a variety of geometries, with end-to-end DAA functionality including the use of sensor and tracker models, a sensor uncertainty mitigation model, DAA algorithmic guidance in both vertical and horizontal maneuvering, and a pilot model which maneuvers the ownship aircraft to remain well clear from intruder aircraft, having received collective input from the previous modules of the system. LaRC developed a functioning batch simulation and added a sensor/tracker model from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) William J. Hughes Technical Center, an in-house developed sensor uncertainty mitigation strategy, and implemented a pilot

  14. The performance of the CDF luminosity monitor

    CERN Document Server

    Acosta, D; Konigsberg, J; Korytov, A; Mitselmakher, G; Necula, V; Nomerotski, A; Pronko, A; Sukhanov, A; Safonov, A; Tsybychev, D; Wang, S M; Wong, M

    2002-01-01

    We describe the initial performance of the detector used for the luminosity measurement in the CDF experiment in Run II at the Tevatron. The detector consists of low-mass gaseous Cherenkov counters with high light yield (approx 100 photoelectrons) and monitors the process of inelastic pp-bar scattering. It allows for several methods of precise luminosity measurements at peak instantaneous luminosities of 2x10 sup 3 sup 2 cm sup - sup 2 s sup - sup 1 , corresponding to an average of six pp-bar interactions per bunch crossing.

  15. SIP end to end performance metrics

    OpenAIRE

    Vozňák, Miroslav; Rozhon, Jan

    2012-01-01

    The paper deals with a SIP performance testing methodology. The main contribution to the field of performance testing of SIP infrastructure consists in the possibility to perform the standardized stress tests with the developed SIP TesterApp without a deeper knowledge in the area of SIP communication. The developed tool exploits several of open-source applications such as jQuery, Python, JSON and the cornerstone SIP generator SIPp, the result is highly modifiable and the ...

  16. SCALEA-G: A Unified Monitoring and Performance Analysis System for the Grid

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hong-Linh Truong

    2004-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper describes SCALEA-G, a unified monitoring and performance analysis system for the Grid. SCALEA-G is implemented as a set of grid services based on the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA. SCALEA-G provides an infrastructure for conducting online monitoring and performance analysis of a variety of Grid services including computational and network resources, and Grid applications. Both push and pull models are supported, providing flexible and scalable monitoring and performance analysis. Source code and dynamic instrumentation are implemented to perform profiling and monitoring of Grid applications. A novel instrumentation request language for dynamic instrumentation and a standardized intermediate representation for binary code have been developed to facilitate the interaction between client and instrumentation services.

  17. Using reefcheck monitoring database to develop the coral reef index of biological integrity

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nguyen, Hai Yen T.; Pedersen, Ole; Ikejima, Kou

    2009-01-01

    The coral reef indices of biological integrity was constituted based on the reef check monitoring data. Seventy six minimally disturbed sites and 72 maximallv disturbed sites in shallow water and 39 minimally disturbed sites and 37 maximally disturbed sites in deep water were classified based...... on the high-end and low-end percentages and ratios of hard coral, dead coral and fieshy algae. A total of 52 candidate metrics was identified and compiled, Eight and four metrics were finally selected to constitute the shallow and deep water coral reef indices respectively. The rating curve was applied.......05) and coral damaged by other factors -0.283 (pcoral reef indices were sensitive responses to stressors and can be capable to use as the coral reef biological monitoring tool....

  18. Oxide thickness measurement for monitoring fuel performance at high burnup

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jaeger, M.A.; Van Swam, L.F.P.; Brueck-Neufeld, K.

    1991-01-01

    For on-site monitoring of the fuel performance at high burnup, Advanced Nuclear Fuels uses the linear scan eddy current method to determine the oxide thickness of irradiated Zircaloy fuel cans. Direct digital data acquisition methods are employed to collect the data on magnetic storage media. This field-proven methodology allows oxide thickness measurements and rapid interpretation of the data during the reactor outages and makes it possible to immediately reinsert the assemblies for the next operating cycle. The accuracy of the poolside measurements and data acquisition/interpretation techniques have been verified through hot cell metallographic measurements of rods previously measured in the fuel pool. The accumulated data provide a valuable database against which oxide growth models have been benchmarked and allow for effective monitoring of fuel performance. (orig.) [de

  19. Performance Monitoring in Children Following Traumatic Brain Injury Compared to Typically Developing Children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Amy A. Wilkinson PhD

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Children with traumatic brain injury are reported to have deficits in performance monitoring, but the mechanisms underlying these deficits are not well understood. Four performance monitoring hypotheses were explored by comparing how 28 children with traumatic brain injury and 28 typically developing controls (matched by age and sex performed on the stop-signal task. Control children slowed significantly more following incorrect than correct stop-signal trials, fitting the error monitoring hypothesis. In contrast, the traumatic brain injury group showed no performance monitoring difference with trial types, but significant group differences did not emerge, suggesting that children with traumatic brain injury may not perform the same way as controls.

  20. Monitoring the performance of an alternative cover using caisson lysimeters

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Waugh, W.J.; Smith, G.M.; Mushovic, P.S.

    2004-02-29

    The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) office in Grand Junction, Colorado, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 8, collaborated on a series of field lysimeter studies to design and monitor the performance of an alternative cover for a uranium mill tailings disposal cell at the Monticello, Utah, Superfund Site. Because groundwater recharge is naturally limited at Monticello in areas with thick loess soils, DOE and EPA chose to design a cover for Monticello using local soils and a native plant community to mimic this natural soilwater balance. Two large drainage lysimeters fabricated of corrugated steel culvert lined with high-density polyethylene were installed to evaluate the hydrological and ecological performance of an alternative cover design constructed in 2000 on the disposal cell. Unlike conventional, lowpermeability designs, this cover relies on (1) the water storage capacity of a 163-cm soil “sponge” layer overlying a sand-and-gravel capillary barrier to retain precipitation while plants are dormant and (2) native vegetation to remove precipitation during the growing season. The sponge layer consists of a clay loam subsoil compacted to 1.65 g/cm2 in one lysimeter and a loam topsoil compacted to 1.45 g/cm2 in the other lysimeter, representing the range of as-built conditions constructed in the nearby disposal cell cover. About 0.1 mm of drainage occurred in both lysimeters during an average precipitation year and before they were planted, an amount well below the EPA target of <3.0 mm/yr. However, the cover with less compacted loam topsoil sponge had a 40% greater water storage capacity than the cover with overly compacted clay loam subsoil sponge. The difference is attributable in part to higher green leaf area and water extraction by plants in the loam topsoil. The lesson learned is that seemingly subtle differences in soil types, sources, and compaction can result in salient differences in performance. Diverse, seeded communities of

  1. SU-F-P-39: End-To-End Validation of a 6 MV High Dose Rate Photon Beam, Configured for Eclipse AAA Algorithm Using Golden Beam Data, for SBRT Treatments Using RapidArc

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ferreyra, M; Salinas Aranda, F; Dodat, D; Sansogne, R; Arbiser, S [Vidt Centro Medico, Ciudad Autonoma De Buenos Aires, Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aire (Argentina)

    2016-06-15

    Purpose: To use end-to-end testing to validate a 6 MV high dose rate photon beam, configured for Eclipse AAA algorithm using Golden Beam Data (GBD), for SBRT treatments using RapidArc. Methods: Beam data was configured for Varian Eclipse AAA algorithm using the GBD provided by the vendor. Transverse and diagonals dose profiles, PDDs and output factors down to a field size of 2×2 cm2 were measured on a Varian Trilogy Linac and compared with GBD library using 2% 2mm 1D gamma analysis. The MLC transmission factor and dosimetric leaf gap were determined to characterize the MLC in Eclipse. Mechanical and dosimetric tests were performed combining different gantry rotation speeds, dose rates and leaf speeds to evaluate the delivery system performance according to VMAT accuracy requirements. An end-to-end test was implemented planning several SBRT RapidArc treatments on a CIRS 002LFC IMRT Thorax Phantom. The CT scanner calibration curve was acquired and loaded in Eclipse. PTW 31013 ionization chamber was used with Keithley 35617EBS electrometer for absolute point dose measurements in water and lung equivalent inserts. TPS calculated planar dose distributions were compared to those measured using EPID and MapCheck, as an independent verification method. Results were evaluated with gamma criteria of 2% dose difference and 2mm DTA for 95% of points. Results: GBD set vs. measured data passed 2% 2mm 1D gamma analysis even for small fields. Machine performance tests show results are independent of machine delivery configuration, as expected. Absolute point dosimetry comparison resulted within 4% for the worst case scenario in lung. Over 97% of the points evaluated in dose distributions passed gamma index analysis. Conclusion: Eclipse AAA algorithm configuration of the 6 MV high dose rate photon beam using GBD proved efficient. End-to-end test dose calculation results indicate it can be used clinically for SBRT using RapidArc.

  2. Statistical analysis of RHIC beam position monitors performance

    Science.gov (United States)

    Calaga, R.; Tomás, R.

    2004-04-01

    A detailed statistical analysis of beam position monitors (BPM) performance at RHIC is a critical factor in improving regular operations and future runs. Robust identification of malfunctioning BPMs plays an important role in any orbit or turn-by-turn analysis. Singular value decomposition and Fourier transform methods, which have evolved as powerful numerical techniques in signal processing, will aid in such identification from BPM data. This is the first attempt at RHIC to use a large set of data to statistically enhance the capability of these two techniques and determine BPM performance. A comparison from run 2003 data shows striking agreement between the two methods and hence can be used to improve BPM functioning at RHIC and possibly other accelerators.

  3. Statistical analysis of RHIC beam position monitors performance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    R. Calaga

    2004-04-01

    Full Text Available A detailed statistical analysis of beam position monitors (BPM performance at RHIC is a critical factor in improving regular operations and future runs. Robust identification of malfunctioning BPMs plays an important role in any orbit or turn-by-turn analysis. Singular value decomposition and Fourier transform methods, which have evolved as powerful numerical techniques in signal processing, will aid in such identification from BPM data. This is the first attempt at RHIC to use a large set of data to statistically enhance the capability of these two techniques and determine BPM performance. A comparison from run 2003 data shows striking agreement between the two methods and hence can be used to improve BPM functioning at RHIC and possibly other accelerators.

  4. Quality Assurance in Individual Monitoring: 10 Years of Performance Monitoring of the TLD Based TNO Individual Monitoring Service (invited paper)

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Dijk, J.W.E. van

    1998-07-01

    The QA subscription forms the nucleus of the Quality Assurance (QA) programme of the TLD-based Individual Monitoring Service of TNO-CSD. This QA subscription is the subscription of a dummy customer to the service. As this customer is treated exactly like a normal customer, all aspects of the service are monitored by the QA subscription. An overview is given of 10 years of monitoring the performance of the service. Various improvements over the past decade have resulted in a standard deviation in a low dose measurement of 0.01 mSv and a relative standard deviation at higher doses of 5%. These figures represent the performance under routine circumstances and thus include variations due to variations in the natural background from place to place and, for example, due to transport. (author)

  5. Quality Assurance in Individual Monitoring: 10 Years of Performance Monitoring of the TLD Based TNO Individual Monitoring Service (invited paper)

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dijk, J.W.E. van

    1998-01-01

    The QA subscription forms the nucleus of the Quality Assurance (QA) programme of the TLD-based Individual Monitoring Service of TNO-CSD. This QA subscription is the subscription of a dummy customer to the service. As this customer is treated exactly like a normal customer, all aspects of the service are monitored by the QA subscription. An overview is given of 10 years of monitoring the performance of the service. Various improvements over the past decade have resulted in a standard deviation in a low dose measurement of 0.01 mSv and a relative standard deviation at higher doses of 5%. These figures represent the performance under routine circumstances and thus include variations due to variations in the natural background from place to place and, for example, due to transport. (author)

  6. Monitoring the Long-Term Performance of Engineered Containment Systems: Role of Ecological Processes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Traynham, B.; Clarke, J.H.; Burger, J.; Waugh, J.

    2009-01-01

    Engineered covers have been widely used to minimize water infiltration into landfills used by U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the disposal of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste. The degradation of engineered covers over time is a complex process that is influenced by site specific characteristics, the structure and dynamics of the indigenous plant community, and the interplay of physical and biological factors at contaminated sites. It is necessary to develop a rigorous method to evaluate long-term performance of covers and other engineered barriers with quantification of risk and uncertainty. Because many of the contaminants of concern are long-lived, this methodology must consider changes in the environmental setting (e.g., precipitation, temperature) and cover components for long time periods (>100 years). Current monitoring approaches focus solely on hydrologic properties of the cover system. Additionally, cover design guidelines, such as those from RCRA, are not performance based and do not consider long-term site-specific influences such as climate, vegetation, and soils. Fundamental ecological processes such as succession are not even factored into current models, yet they directly affect the integrity of landfill covers through biointrusion, erosion, and water balance. Therefore, it is useful to identify ecological parameters and processes most important to performance for prioritization of site characterization and long-term monitoring activities. This investigation into the role of ecological monitoring of isolation containment systems utilizes the software platform GoldSim to identify important parameters and processes for performance verification and monitoring. (authors)

  7. Visual metaphors on anaesthesia monitors do not improve anaesthetists' performance in the operating theatre

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Amsterdam, K.; Cnossen, F.; Ballast, A.; Struys, M. M. R. F.

    Background. Previous research using a metaphorical anaesthesia monitor, where dimensions of rectangles proportionally represent 30 patient variable values, showed improved performance in diagnosing adverse events compared with the standard monitor. Steady-state values were represented by a frame

  8. AN INTERNET RACK MONITOR-CONTROLLER FOR APS LINAC RF ELECTRONICS UPGRADE

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ma, Hengjie; Smith, Terry; Nassiri, Alireza; Sun, Yine; Doolittle, Lawrence; Ratti, Alex

    2016-06-01

    To support the research and development in APS LINAC area, the existing LINAC rf control performance needs to be much improved, and thus an upgrade of the legacy LINAC rf electronics becomes necessary. The proposed upgrade plan centers on the concept of using a modern, network-attached, rackmount digital electronics platform –Internet Rack Monitor-Controller (or IRMC) to achieve the goal of modernizing the rf electronics at a lower cost. The system model of the envisioned IRMC is basically a 3-tier stack with a high-performance DSP in the mid-layer to perform the core tasks of real-time rf data processing and controls. The Digital Front-End (DFE) attachment layer at bottom bridges the applicationspecific rf front-ends to the DSP. A network communication gateway, together with an embedded event receiver (EVR) in the top layer merges the Internet Rack MonitorController node into the networks of the accelerator controls infrastructure. Although the concept is very much in trend with today’s Internet-of-Things (IoT), this implementation has actually been used in the accelerators for over two decades.

  9. Performance monitoring of electric shovels digging oil sands

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Patnayak, S. [Alberta Univ., Edmonton, AB (Canada). Natural Resources Engineering Facility; Tannant, D.D. [Alberta Univ., Edmonton, AB (Canada). School of Mining and Petroleum Engineering; Parsons, I. [Syncrude Canada Ltd., Edmonton, AB (Canada). Edmonton Research Centre; Del Valle, V. [Syncrude Canada Ltd., Fort McMurray, AB (Canada)

    2005-07-01

    Some of the largest available mining equipment is used for oil sand mining operations. However, the performance of electric cable shovels varies with the diggability characteristics of the ground. In particular, oil sands diggability with cable shovels depends on structural geology, the depositional environment and geotechnical parameters. This paper described some of the key shovel performance indicators such as dig cycle time, digging energy and digging power. In winter, frost penetration can also affect oil sands diggability. The challenge of hard digging in oil sands is often addressed by blasting or ripping, which increases the cost of production and impedes productivity. The shovel performance is also influenced by other parameters such as operator skills, bucket and tooth design and shovel dipper trajectory. This paper demonstrated that hoist and crowd motor voltages and currents are useful in identifying the beginning and end of dig cycles. Performance indicators such as dig cycle time, hoist motor energy and power, and crowd motor energy and power were considered to assess material diggability. It was suggested that hoist power represents the ground diggability better than other performance indicators. 5 refs., 1 tab., 10 figs.

  10. Fodder Biomass Monitoring in Sahelian Rangelands Using Phenological Metrics from FAPAR Time Series

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Diouf, Abdoul Aziz; Brandt, Martin Stefan; Verger, Aleixandre

    2015-01-01

    Timely monitoring of plant biomass is critical for the management of forage resources in Sahelian rangelands. The estimation of annual biomass production in the Sahel is based on a simple relationship between satellite annual Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and in situ biomass data....... This study proposes a new methodology using multi-linear models between phenological metrics from the SPOT-VEGETATION time series of Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) and in situ biomass. A model with three variables—large seasonal integral (LINTG), length of growing season......, and end of season decreasing rate—performed best (MAE = 605 kg·DM/ha; R2 = 0.68) across Sahelian ecosystems in Senegal (data for the period 1999–2013). A model with annual maximum (PEAK) and start date of season showed similar performances (MAE = 625 kg·DM/ha; R2 = 0.64), allowing a timely estimation...

  11. Can stereotype threat affect motor performance in the absence of explicit monitoring processes? Evidence using a strength task.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chalabaev, Aïna; Brisswalter, Jeanick; Radel, Rémi; Coombes, Stephen A; Easthope, Christopher; Clément-Guillotin, Corentin

    2013-04-01

    Previous evidence shows that stereotype threat impairs complex motor skills through increased conscious monitoring of task performance. Given that one-step motor skills may not be susceptible to these processes, we examined whether performance on a simple strength task may be reduced under stereotype threat. Forty females and males performed maximum voluntary contractions under stereotypical or nullified-stereotype conditions. Results showed that the velocity of force production within the first milliseconds of the contraction decreased in females when the negative stereotype was induced, whereas maximal force did not change. In males, the stereotype induction only increased maximal force. These findings suggest that stereotype threat may impair motor skills in the absence of explicit monitoring processes, by influencing the planning stage of force production.

  12. Monitoring and Evaluating Government Performance in Botswana

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    E. K. Botlhale

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available In an era characterised by fiscal stress in the post-global recession era, clichés such as ‘bang for the buck’ are commonplace. Governments are under increasing pressure to spend limited public resources in efficient and  effective ways. Efficient and  effective governments are a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for economic development. Hence, governments have adopted performance-improving interventions such as New Public Management. Botswana jumped into the bandwagon of public sector reforms in the 1990s through interventions such as Performance-based Management Systems. The focus was almost entirely on performance enhancement to the neglect of performance measurement through a result-based Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E framework. However, in 2009, the government decided to mainstream M&E into the development planning regime. Since the M&E tool is still in draft form, Botswana is very favourably circumstanced to learn from others. Meanwhile essentials to do are: attitudinal change, shared vision on M&E, stakeholder management and demand and use of M&E information by policy-makers such as Members of Parliament.

  13. Front-end DAQ strategy and implementation for the KLOE-2 experiment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Branchini, P.; Budano, A.; Balla, A.; Beretta, M.; Ciambrone, P.; De Lucia, E.; D'Uffizi, A.; Marciniewski, P.

    2013-04-01

    A new front-end data acquisition (DAQ) system has been conceived for the data collection of the new detectors which will be installed by the KLOE2 collaboration. This system consists of a general purpose FPGA based DAQ module and a VME board hosting up to 16 optical links. The DAQ module has been built around a Virtex-4 FPGA and it is able to acquire up to 1024 different channels distributed over 16 front-end slave cards. Each module is a general interface board (GIB) which performs also first level data concentration tasks. The GIB has an optical interface, a RS-232, an USB and a Gigabit Ethernet Interface. The optical interface will be used for DAQ purposes while the Gigabit Ethernet interface for monitoring tasks and debug. Two new detectors exploit this strategy to collect data. Optical links are used to deliver data to the VME board which performs data concentration tasks. The return optical link from the board to the GIB is used to initialize the front-end cards. The VME interface of the module implements the VME 2eSST protocol in order to sustain a peak data rate of up to 320 MB/s. At the moment the system is working at the Frascati National Laboratory (LNF).

  14. Front-end DAQ strategy and implementation for the KLOE-2 experiment

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Branchini, P; Budano, A; Balla, A; Beretta, M; Ciambrone, P; Lucia, E De; D'Uffizi, A; Marciniewski, P

    2013-01-01

    A new front-end data acquisition (DAQ) system has been conceived for the data collection of the new detectors which will be installed by the KLOE2 collaboration. This system consists of a general purpose FPGA based DAQ module and a VME board hosting up to 16 optical links. The DAQ module has been built around a Virtex-4 FPGA and it is able to acquire up to 1024 different channels distributed over 16 front-end slave cards. Each module is a general interface board (GIB) which performs also first level data concentration tasks. The GIB has an optical interface, a RS-232, an USB and a Gigabit Ethernet Interface. The optical interface will be used for DAQ purposes while the Gigabit Ethernet interface for monitoring tasks and debug. Two new detectors exploit this strategy to collect data. Optical links are used to deliver data to the VME board which performs data concentration tasks. The return optical link from the board to the GIB is used to initialize the front-end cards. The VME interface of the module implements the VME 2eSST protocol in order to sustain a peak data rate of up to 320 MB/s. At the moment the system is working at the Frascati National Laboratory (LNF).

  15. Simulated laparoscopy using a head-mounted display vs traditional video monitor: an assessment of performance and muscle fatigue.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maithel, S K; Villegas, L; Stylopoulos, N; Dawson, S; Jones, D B

    2005-03-01

    The direction of visual gaze may be an important ergonomic factor that affects operative performance. We designed a study to determine whether a head-mounted display (HMD) worn by the surgeon would improve task performance and/or reduce muscle fatigue during a laparoscopic task when compared to the use of a traditional video monitor display (VMD). Surgical residents (n = 30) were enrolled in the study. A junior group, consisting of 15 postgraduate year (PGY) = 1 subjects with no previous laparoscopic experience, and a senior group, consisting of 15 PGY 4 and PGY 5 subjects with experience, completed a laparoscopic task that was repeated four times using the Computer Enhanced Laparoscopic Training System (CELTS). Groups alternated between using the HMD with the task placed in a downward frontal position and the VMD with the task at a 30 degrees lateral angle. The CELTS module assessed task completion time, depth perception, path length of instruments, response orientation, motion smoothness; the system then generated an overall score. Electromyography (EMG) was used to record sternocleidomastoid muscle activity. Display preference was surveyed. The senior residents performed better than the junior residents overall on all parameters (p < 0.05) except for motion smoothness, where there was no difference. In both groups, the HMD significantly improved motion smoothness when compared to the VMD (p < 0.05). All other parameters were equal. There was less muscle fatigue when using the VMD (p < 0.05). We found that 66% of the junior residents but only 20% of the senior residents preferred the HMD. The CELTS module demonstrated evidence of construct validity by differentiating the performances of junior and senior residents. By aligning the surgeon's visual gaze with the instruments, HMD improved smoothness of motion. Experienced residents preferred the traditional monitor display. Although the VMD produced less muscle fatigue, inexperienced residents preferred the HMD

  16. Performance of zeolite scavenge column in Xe monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Qian; Wang Hongxia; Li Wei; Bian Zhishang

    2010-01-01

    In order to improve the performance of zeolite scavenge column, its ability of removal of humidity and carbon dioxide was studied by both static and dynamic approaches. The experimental results show that various factors, including the column length and diameter, the mass of zeolite, the content of water in air, the temperature rise during adsorption, and the activation effectiveness all effect the performance of zeolite column in scavenging humanity and carbon dioxide. Based on these results and previous experience, an optimized design of the zeolite column is made for use in xenon monitoring system. (authors)

  17. TU-CD-304-09: Feasibility Study for Thermoplastic Mask Set Up Monitoring Using Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) Sensor

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kim, T; Cho, M; Kang, S; Kim, D; Kim, K; Shin, D; Suh, T; Kim, S

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: To improve the setup accuracy of thermoplastic mask, we developed a new monitoring method based on force sensing technology and evaluated its feasibility. Methods: The thermoplastic mask setup monitoring system consists of a force sensing resistor sensor unit, a signal transport device, a control PC and an in-house software. The system is designed to monitor pressure variation between the mask and patient in real time. It also provides a warning to the user when there is a possibility of movement. A preliminary study was performed to evaluate the reliability of the sensor unit and developed monitoring system with a head phantom. Then, a simulation study with volunteers was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of the monitoring system. Note that the sensor unit can have multiple end-sensors and every end-sensor was confirmed to be within 2% reliability in pressure reading through a screening test. Results: To evaluate the reproducibility of the proposed monitoring system in practice, we simulated a mask setup with the head phantom. FRS sensors were attached on the face of the head phantom and pressure was monitored. For 3 repeated mask setups on the phantom, the variation of the pressure was less than 3% (only 1% larger than 2% potential uncertainty confirmed in the screening test). In the volunteer study, we intended to verify that the system could detect patient movements within the mask. Thus, volunteers were asked to turn their head or lift their chin. The system was able to detect movements effectively, confirming the clinical feasibility of the monitoring system developed. Conclusion: Through the proposed setup monitoring method, it is possible to monitor patient motion inside a mask in real time, which has never been possible with most commonly used systems using non-radiographic technology such as infrared camera system and surface imaging system. This work was supported by the Radiation Technology R&D program (No. 2013M2A2A7043498) and the Mid

  18. TU-CD-304-09: Feasibility Study for Thermoplastic Mask Set Up Monitoring Using Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) Sensor

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kim, T; Cho, M; Kang, S; Kim, D; Kim, K; Shin, D; Suh, T [The Catholic University of Korea College of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Kim, S [Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA (United States)

    2015-06-15

    Purpose: To improve the setup accuracy of thermoplastic mask, we developed a new monitoring method based on force sensing technology and evaluated its feasibility. Methods: The thermoplastic mask setup monitoring system consists of a force sensing resistor sensor unit, a signal transport device, a control PC and an in-house software. The system is designed to monitor pressure variation between the mask and patient in real time. It also provides a warning to the user when there is a possibility of movement. A preliminary study was performed to evaluate the reliability of the sensor unit and developed monitoring system with a head phantom. Then, a simulation study with volunteers was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of the monitoring system. Note that the sensor unit can have multiple end-sensors and every end-sensor was confirmed to be within 2% reliability in pressure reading through a screening test. Results: To evaluate the reproducibility of the proposed monitoring system in practice, we simulated a mask setup with the head phantom. FRS sensors were attached on the face of the head phantom and pressure was monitored. For 3 repeated mask setups on the phantom, the variation of the pressure was less than 3% (only 1% larger than 2% potential uncertainty confirmed in the screening test). In the volunteer study, we intended to verify that the system could detect patient movements within the mask. Thus, volunteers were asked to turn their head or lift their chin. The system was able to detect movements effectively, confirming the clinical feasibility of the monitoring system developed. Conclusion: Through the proposed setup monitoring method, it is possible to monitor patient motion inside a mask in real time, which has never been possible with most commonly used systems using non-radiographic technology such as infrared camera system and surface imaging system. This work was supported by the Radiation Technology R&D program (No. 2013M2A2A7043498) and the Mid

  19. Increasing gas producer profitability with virtual well visibility via an end-to-end, wireless Internet gas monitoring system

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McDougall, M.; Coleman, K.; Beck, R.; Lyon, R.; Potts, R. [Northrock Resources Ltd., Calgary, AB (Canada); Benterud, K. [Zed.i solutions, Calgary, AB (Canada)

    2003-07-01

    Most gas producing companies still use 100-year old technology to measure gas volumes because of the prohibitive costs of implementing corporate wide electronic information systems to replace circular mechanical chart technology. This paper describes how Northrock Resources Ltd. increased profitability using Smart-Alek{sup TM} while avoiding high implementation costs. Smart-Alek is a new type of fully integrated end-to-end electronic gas flow measurement (GFM) system based on Field Intelligence Network and End User Interference (FINE). Smart-Alek can analyze gas production through public wireless communications and a web-browser delivery system. The system has enabled Northrock to increase gas volumes with more accurate measurement and reduced downtime. In addition, operating costs were also decreased because the frequency of well visits was reduced and the administrative procedures of data collection was more efficient. The real-time well visibility of the tool has proven to be very effective in optimizing business profitability. 9 refs., 1 tab., 9 figs.

  20. Increasing gas producer profitability with virtual well visibility via an end-to-end wireless Internet gas monitoring system

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McDougall, M. [Northrock Resources Ltd., Calgary, AB (Canada); Benterud, K. [Zed.i solutions, Calgary, AB (Canada)

    2003-07-01

    This PowerPoint presentation describes how Northrock Resources Ltd. increased profitability using Smart-Alek{sup TM} while avoiding high implementation costs. Smart-Alek is a new type of fully integrated end-to-end electronic gas flow measurement (GFM) system based on Field Intelligence Network and End User Interference (FINE). Smart-Alek can analyze gas production through public wireless communications and a web-browser delivery system. The system has enabled Northrock to increase gas volumes with more accurate measurement and reduced downtime. In addition, operating costs have decreased because the frequency of well visits has been reduced and the administrative procedures of data collection is more efficient. The real-time well visibility of the tool has proven to be very effective in optimizing business profitability. 7 figs.

  1. Monitoring Volcanoes by Use of Air-Dropped Sensor Packages

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kedar, Sharon; Rivellini, Tommaso; Webb, Frank; Blaes, Brent; Bracho, Caroline; Lockhart, Andrew; McGee, Ken

    2003-01-01

    Sensor packages that would be dropped from airplanes have been proposed for pre-eruption monitoring of physical conditions on the flanks of awakening volcanoes. The purpose of such monitoring is to gather data that could contribute to understanding and prediction of the evolution of volcanic systems. Each sensor package, denoted a volcano monitoring system (VMS), would include a housing with a parachute attached at its upper end and a crushable foam impact absorber at its lower end (see figure). The housing would contain survivable low-power instrumentation that would include a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, an inclinometer, a seismometer, a barometer, a thermometer, and CO2 and SO2 analyzers. The housing would also contain battery power, control, data-logging, and telecommunication subsystems. The proposal for the development of the VMS calls for the use of commercially available sensor, power, and telecommunication equipment, so that efforts could be focused on integrating all of the equipment into a system that could survive impact and operate thereafter for 30 days, transmitting data on the pre-eruptive state of a target volcano to a monitoring center. In a typical scenario, VMSs would be dropped at strategically chosen locations on the flanks of a volcano once the volcano had been identified as posing a hazard from any of a variety of observations that could include eyewitness reports, scientific observations from positions on the ground, synthetic-aperture-radar scans from aircraft, and/or remote sensing from aboard spacecraft. Once dropped, the VMSs would be operated as a network of in situ sensors that would transmit data to a local monitoring center. This network would provide observations as part of an integrated volcano-hazard assessment strategy that would involve both remote sensing and timely observations from the in situ sensors. A similar strategy that involves the use of portable sensors (but not dropping of sensors from aircraft) is

  2. T-wave end detection using neural networks and Support Vector Machines.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suárez-León, Alexander Alexeis; Varon, Carolina; Willems, Rik; Van Huffel, Sabine; Vázquez-Seisdedos, Carlos Román

    2018-05-01

    In this paper we propose a new approach for detecting the end of the T-wave in the electrocardiogram (ECG) using Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines. Both, Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) neural networks and Fixed-Size Least-Squares Support Vector Machines (FS-LSSVM) were used as regression algorithms to determine the end of the T-wave. Different strategies for selecting the training set such as random selection, k-means, robust clustering and maximum quadratic (Rényi) entropy were evaluated. Individual parameters were tuned for each method during training and the results are given for the evaluation set. A comparison between MLP and FS-LSSVM approaches was performed. Finally, a fair comparison of the FS-LSSVM method with other state-of-the-art algorithms for detecting the end of the T-wave was included. The experimental results show that FS-LSSVM approaches are more suitable as regression algorithms than MLP neural networks. Despite the small training sets used, the FS-LSSVM methods outperformed the state-of-the-art techniques. FS-LSSVM can be successfully used as a T-wave end detection algorithm in ECG even with small training set sizes. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Training leads to increased auditory brain-computer interface performance of end-users with motor impairments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Halder, S; Käthner, I; Kübler, A

    2016-02-01

    Auditory brain-computer interfaces are an assistive technology that can restore communication for motor impaired end-users. Such non-visual brain-computer interface paradigms are of particular importance for end-users that may lose or have lost gaze control. We attempted to show that motor impaired end-users can learn to control an auditory speller on the basis of event-related potentials. Five end-users with motor impairments, two of whom with additional visual impairments, participated in five sessions. We applied a newly developed auditory brain-computer interface paradigm with natural sounds and directional cues. Three of five end-users learned to select symbols using this method. Averaged over all five end-users the information transfer rate increased by more than 1800% from the first session (0.17 bits/min) to the last session (3.08 bits/min). The two best end-users achieved information transfer rates of 5.78 bits/min and accuracies of 92%. Our results show that an auditory BCI with a combination of natural sounds and directional cues, can be controlled by end-users with motor impairment. Training improves the performance of end-users to the level of healthy controls. To our knowledge, this is the first time end-users with motor impairments controlled an auditory brain-computer interface speller with such high accuracy and information transfer rates. Further, our results demonstrate that operating a BCI with event-related potentials benefits from training and specifically end-users may require more than one session to develop their full potential. Copyright © 2015 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  4. Web Monitoring of EOS Front-End Ground Operations, Science Downlinks and Level 0 Processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cordier, Guy R.; Wilkinson, Chris; McLemore, Bruce

    2008-01-01

    This paper addresses the efforts undertaken and the technology deployed to aggregate and distribute the metadata characterizing the real-time operations associated with NASA Earth Observing Systems (EOS) high-rate front-end systems and the science data collected at multiple ground stations and forwarded to the Goddard Space Flight Center for level 0 processing. Station operators, mission project management personnel, spacecraft flight operations personnel and data end-users for various EOS missions can retrieve the information at any time from any location having access to the internet. The users are distributed and the EOS systems are distributed but the centralized metadata accessed via an external web server provide an effective global and detailed view of the enterprise-wide events as they are happening. The data-driven architecture and the implementation of applied middleware technology, open source database, open source monitoring tools, and external web server converge nicely to fulfill the various needs of the enterprise. The timeliness and content of the information provided are key to making timely and correct decisions which reduce project risk and enhance overall customer satisfaction. The authors discuss security measures employed to limit access of data to authorized users only.

  5. Using business intelligence to monitor clinical quality metrics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Resetar, Ervina; Noirot, Laura A; Reichley, Richard M; Storey, Patricia; Skiles, Ann M; Traynor, Patrick; Dunagan, W Claiborne; Bailey, Thomas C

    2007-10-11

    BJC HealthCare (BJC) uses a number of industry standard indicators to monitor the quality of services provided by each of its hospitals. By establishing an enterprise data warehouse as a central repository of clinical quality information, BJC is able to monitor clinical quality performance in a timely manner and improve clinical outcomes.

  6. A Meta-Analysis of Self-Monitoring on Reading Performance of K-12 Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guzman, Guadalupe; Goldberg, Taryn S.; Swanson, H. Lee

    2018-01-01

    The published single-case design (SCD) research (N = 19 articles) on self-monitoring and reading performance was synthesized. The following inclusion criteria were used: (a) the study must have been peer-reviewed, (b) implemented an intervention targeting student self-monitoring of reading skills, (c) included data on at least 1 reading outcome,…

  7. Evaluation of stormwater micropollutant source control and end-of-pipe control strategies using an uncertainty-calibrated integrated dynamic simulation model

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vezzaro, Luca; Sharma, Anitha Kumari; Ledin, Anna

    2015-01-01

    (copper, zinc) and organic compounds (fluoranthene). MP fluxes were estimated by using an integrated dynamic model, in combination with stormwater quality measurements. MP sources were identified by using GIS land usage data, runoff quality was simulated by using a conceptual accumulation/washoff model......The estimation of micropollutant (MP) fluxes in stormwater systems is a fundamental prerequisite when preparing strategies to reduce stormwater MP discharges to natural waters. Dynamic integrated models can be important tools in this step, as they can be used to integrate the limited data provided...... by monitoring campaigns and to evaluate the performance of different strategies based on model simulation results. This study presents an example where six different control strategies, including both source-control and end-of-pipe treatment, were compared. The comparison focused on fluxes of heavy metals...

  8. Monitoring tool usage in surgery videos using boosted convolutional and recurrent neural networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Al Hajj, Hassan; Lamard, Mathieu; Conze, Pierre-Henri; Cochener, Béatrice; Quellec, Gwenolé

    2018-05-09

    This paper investigates the automatic monitoring of tool usage during a surgery, with potential applications in report generation, surgical training and real-time decision support. Two surgeries are considered: cataract surgery, the most common surgical procedure, and cholecystectomy, one of the most common digestive surgeries. Tool usage is monitored in videos recorded either through a microscope (cataract surgery) or an endoscope (cholecystectomy). Following state-of-the-art video analysis solutions, each frame of the video is analyzed by convolutional neural networks (CNNs) whose outputs are fed to recurrent neural networks (RNNs) in order to take temporal relationships between events into account. Novelty lies in the way those CNNs and RNNs are trained. Computational complexity prevents the end-to-end training of "CNN+RNN" systems. Therefore, CNNs are usually trained first, independently from the RNNs. This approach is clearly suboptimal for surgical tool analysis: many tools are very similar to one another, but they can generally be differentiated based on past events. CNNs should be trained to extract the most useful visual features in combination with the temporal context. A novel boosting strategy is proposed to achieve this goal: the CNN and RNN parts of the system are simultaneously enriched by progressively adding weak classifiers (either CNNs or RNNs) trained to improve the overall classification accuracy. Experiments were performed in a dataset of 50 cataract surgery videos, where the usage of 21 surgical tools was manually annotated, and a dataset of 80 cholecystectomy videos, where the usage of 7 tools was manually annotated. Very good classification performance are achieved in both datasets: tool usage could be labeled with an average area under the ROC curve of A z =0.9961 and A z =0.9939, respectively, in offline mode (using past, present and future information), and A z =0.9957 and A z =0.9936, respectively, in online mode (using past and present

  9. Altitude control performance improvement via preview controller for unmanned airplane for radiation monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sato, Masayuki; Muraoka, Koji; Hozumi, Koki; Sanada, Yukihisa; Yamada, Tsutomu; Torii, Tatsuo

    2017-01-01

    This paper is concerned with the design problem of preview altitude controller for Unmanned Airplane for Radiation Monitoring System (UARMS) to improve its control performance. UARMS has been developed for radiation monitoring around Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant which spread radiation contaminant due to the huge tsunamis caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake. The monitoring area contains flat as well as mountain areas. The basic flight controller has been confirmed to have satisfactory performance with respect to altitude holding; however, the control performance for variable altitude commands is not sufficient for practical use in mountain areas. We therefore design preview altitude controller with only proportional gains by considering the practicality and the strong requirement of safety for UARMS. Control performance of the designed preview controller was evaluated by flight tests conducted around Fukushima Sky Park. (author)

  10. Landfill cover performance monitoring using time domain reflectometry

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Neher, E.R.; Cotten, G.B.; McElroy, D.

    1998-01-01

    Time domain reflectometry (TDR) systems were installed to monitor soil moisture in two newly constructed landfill covers at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Each TDR system includes four vertical arrays with each array consisting of four TDR probes located at depths of 15, 30, 45, and 60 cm. The deepest probes at 60 cm were installed beneath a compacted soil layer to analyze infiltration through the compacted layer. Based on the TDR data, infiltration through the two covers between March and October, 1997 ranged from less than measurable to 1.5 cm. However, due to a prohibition on penetrating the buried waste and resulting limits on probe placement depths, deeper percolation was not evaluated. Some of the advantages found in the application of TDR for infiltration monitoring at this site are the relative low cost and rugged nature of the equipment. Also, of particular importance, the ability to collect frequent moisture measurements allows the capture and evaluation of soil moisture changes resulting from episodic precipitation events. Disadvantages include the inability to install the probes into the waste, difficulties in interpretation of infiltration during freeze/thaw periods, and some excessive noise in the data

  11. Ubiquitous Monitoring Solution for Wireless Sensor Networks with Push Notifications and End-to-End Connectivity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luis M. L. Oliveira

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs belongs to a new trend in technology in which tiny and resource constrained devices are wirelessly interconnected and are able to interact with the surrounding environment by collecting data such as temperature and humidity. Recently, due to the huge growth in the use of mobile devices with Internet connection, smartphones are becoming the center of future ubiquitous wireless networks. Interconnecting WSNs with smartphones and the Internet is a big challenge and new architectures are required due to the heterogeneity of these devices. Taking into account that people are using smartphones with Internet connection, there is a good opportunity to propose a new architecture for wireless sensors monitoring using push notifications and smartphones. Then, this paper proposes a ubiquitous approach for WSN monitoring based on a REST Web Service, a relational database, and an Android mobile application. Real-time data sensed by WSNs are sent directly to a smartphone or stored in a database and requested by the mobile application using a well-defined RESTful interface. A push notification system was created in order to alert mobile users when a sensor parameter overcomes a given threshold. The proposed architecture and mobile application were evaluated and validated using a laboratory WSN testbed and are ready for use.

  12. Efficient network monitoring for large data acquisition systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Savu, D.O.; Martin, B.; Al-Shabibi, A.; Sjoen, R.; Batraneanu, S.M.; Stancu, S.N.

    2012-01-01

    Though constantly evolving and improving, the available network monitoring solutions have limitations when applied to the infrastructure of a high speed realtime data acquisition (DAQ) system. DAQ networks are particular computer networks where experts have to pay attention to both individual subsections as well as system wide traffic flows while monitoring the network. The ATLAS Network at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has more than 200 switches interconnecting 3500 hosts and totaling 8500 high speed links. The use of heterogeneous tools for monitoring various infrastructure parameters, in order to assure optimal DAQ system performance, proved to be a tedious and time consuming task for experts. To alleviate this problem we used our networking and DAQ expertise to build a flexible and scalable monitoring system providing an intuitive user interface with the same look and feel irrespective of the data provider that is used. Our system uses custom developed components for critical performance monitoring and seamlessly integrates complementary data from auxiliary tools, such as NAGIOS, information services or custom databases. A number of techniques (e.g. normalization, aggregation and data caching) were used in order to improve the user interface response time. The end result is a unified monitoring interface, for fast and uniform access to system statistics, which significantly reduced the time spent by experts for ad-hoc and post-mortem analysis. (authors)

  13. Sealing ability of MTA, CPM, and MBPc as root-end filling materials: a bacterial leakage study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Medeiros, Paulo Leal; Bernardineli, Norberti; Cavenago, Bruno Cavalini; Torres, Sérgio Aparecido; Duarte, Marco Antonio Hungaro; Bramante, Clovis Monteiro; Marciano, Marina Angélica

    2016-04-01

    Objectives To evaluate the sealing ability of three root-end filling materials (white MTA, CPM, and MBPc) using an Enterococcus faecalis leakage model. Material and Methods Seventy single-root extracted human teeth were instrumented and root-ends were resected to prepare 3 mm depth cavities. Root-end preparations were filled with white MTA, CPM, and MBPc cements. Enterococcus faecalis was coronally introduced and the apical portion was immersed in BHI culture medium with phenol red indicator. The bacterial leakage was monitored every 24 h for 4 weeks. The statistical analysis was performed using the Wilcoxon-Gehan test (pCPM and the other groups. Conclusions The epoxy resin-based cement MBPc had lower bacterial leakage compared with the calcium silicate-based cements MTA and CPM.

  14. MDT-ASD, CMOS front-end for ATLAS MDT

    CERN Document Server

    Posch, C; Oliver, J

    2007-01-01

    This document serves as the main reference and user`s manual for the read-out chip of the Monitored Drift Tubes in the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer. The eight-channel front-end ASIC is referred to as MDT-ASD. The document contains the requirements and complete specifications, a detailed description of the design with characteristics of all sub-circuits and building blocks, a comprehensive section on functionality and performance test results, and a complete bibliography.

  15. Indicators to monitor NPP safety performance. Working material

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1997-01-01

    Numerical indicators to monitor safety status and overall safety performance of nuclear power plants (NPPs) are used by operators and some regulators worldwide. During the last few years, the IAEA, through Technical Committee Meetings and Consultants' Meetings has worked on this area. This report presents a framework for nuclear power plant safety performance indicators that was developed during two consultant meetings held at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna in December 1995 and November 1996. Annex 2 on risk based indicators was prepared during a consultants' meeting held in Vienna in July 1996. An additional outcome from these activities, was the recommendation that the IAEA conduce pilot exercises at several nuclear power plants that might be interested to participate, in order to test the validity of the concept and its usefulness. 6 figs

  16. An Integrated Architecture for On-Board Aircraft Engine Performance Trend Monitoring and Gas Path Fault Diagnostics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Simon, Donald L.

    2010-01-01

    Aircraft engine performance trend monitoring and gas path fault diagnostics are closely related technologies that assist operators in managing the health of their gas turbine engine assets. Trend monitoring is the process of monitoring the gradual performance change that an aircraft engine will naturally incur over time due to turbomachinery deterioration, while gas path diagnostics is the process of detecting and isolating the occurrence of any faults impacting engine flow-path performance. Today, performance trend monitoring and gas path fault diagnostic functions are performed by a combination of on-board and off-board strategies. On-board engine control computers contain logic that monitors for anomalous engine operation in real-time. Off-board ground stations are used to conduct fleet-wide engine trend monitoring and fault diagnostics based on data collected from each engine each flight. Continuing advances in avionics are enabling the migration of portions of the ground-based functionality on-board, giving rise to more sophisticated on-board engine health management capabilities. This paper reviews the conventional engine performance trend monitoring and gas path fault diagnostic architecture commonly applied today, and presents a proposed enhanced on-board architecture for future applications. The enhanced architecture gains real-time access to an expanded quantity of engine parameters, and provides advanced on-board model-based estimation capabilities. The benefits of the enhanced architecture include the real-time continuous monitoring of engine health, the early diagnosis of fault conditions, and the estimation of unmeasured engine performance parameters. A future vision to advance the enhanced architecture is also presented and discussed

  17. Measurements and analysis of end-to-end Internet dynamics

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Paxson, Vern [Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Computer Science Division

    1997-04-01

    Accurately characterizing end-to-end Internet dynamics - the performance that a user actually obtains from the lengthy series of network links that comprise a path through the Internet - is exceptionally difficult, due to the network`s immense heterogeneity. At the heart of this work is a `measurement framework` in which a number of sites around the Internet host a specialized measurement service. By coordinating `probes` between pairs of these sites one can measure end-to-end behavior along O(N2) paths for a framework consisting of N sites. Consequently, one obtains a superlinear scaling that allows measuring a rich cross-section of Internet behavior without requiring huge numbers of observation points. 37 sites participated in this study, allowing the author to measure more than 1,000 distinct Internet paths. The first part of this work looks at the behavior of end-to-end routing: the series of routers over which a connection`s packets travel. Based on 40,000 measurements made using this framework, the author analyzes: routing `pathologies` such as loops, outages, and flutter; the stability of routes over time; and the symmetry of routing along the two directions of an end-to-end path. The author finds that pathologies increased significantly over the course of 1995 and that Internet paths are heavily dominated by a single route. The second part of this work studies end-to-end Internet packet dynamics. The author analyzes 20,000 TCP transfers of 100 Kbyte each to investigate the performance of both the TCP endpoints and the Internet paths. The measurements used for this part of the study are much richer than those for the first part, but require a great degree of attention to issues of calibration, which are addressed by applying self-consistency checks to the measurements whenever possible. The author finds that packet filters are capable of a wide range of measurement errors, some of which, if undetected, can significantly taint subsequent analysis.

  18. Monitoring Pre-Stressed Composites Using Optical Fibre Sensors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krishnamurthy, Sriram; Badcock, Rodney A; Machavaram, Venkata R; Fernando, Gerard F

    2016-05-28

    Residual stresses in fibre reinforced composites can give rise to a number of undesired effects such as loss of dimensional stability and premature fracture. Hence, there is significant merit in developing processing techniques to mitigate the development of residual stresses. However, tracking and quantifying the development of these fabrication-induced stresses in real-time using conventional non-destructive techniques is not straightforward. This article reports on the design and evaluation of a technique for manufacturing pre-stressed composite panels from unidirectional E-glass/epoxy prepregs. Here, the magnitude of the applied pre-stress was monitored using an integrated load-cell. The pre-stressing rig was based on a flat-bed design which enabled autoclave-based processing. A method was developed to end-tab the laminated prepregs prior to pre-stressing. The development of process-induced residual strain was monitored in-situ using embedded optical fibre sensors. Surface-mounted electrical resistance strain gauges were used to measure the strain when the composite was unloaded from the pre-stressing rig at room temperature. Four pre-stress levels were applied prior to processing the laminated preforms in an autoclave. The results showed that the application of a pre-stress of 108 MPa to a unidirectional [0]16 E-glass/913 epoxy preform, reduced the residual strain in the composite from -600 µε (conventional processing without pre-stress) to approximately zero. A good correlation was observed between the data obtained from the surface-mounted electrical resistance strain gauge and the embedded optical fibre sensors. In addition to "neutralising" the residual stresses, superior axial orientation of the reinforcement can be obtained from pre-stressed composites. A subsequent publication will highlight the consequences of pres-stressing on fibre alignment, the tensile, flexural, compressive and fatigue performance of unidirectional E-glass composites.

  19. Monitoring Pre-Stressed Composites Using Optical Fibre Sensors

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sriram Krishnamurthy

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available Residual stresses in fibre reinforced composites can give rise to a number of undesired effects such as loss of dimensional stability and premature fracture. Hence, there is significant merit in developing processing techniques to mitigate the development of residual stresses. However, tracking and quantifying the development of these fabrication-induced stresses in real-time using conventional non-destructive techniques is not straightforward. This article reports on the design and evaluation of a technique for manufacturing pre-stressed composite panels from unidirectional E-glass/epoxy prepregs. Here, the magnitude of the applied pre-stress was monitored using an integrated load-cell. The pre-stressing rig was based on a flat-bed design which enabled autoclave-based processing. A method was developed to end-tab the laminated prepregs prior to pre-stressing. The development of process-induced residual strain was monitored in-situ using embedded optical fibre sensors. Surface-mounted electrical resistance strain gauges were used to measure the strain when the composite was unloaded from the pre-stressing rig at room temperature. Four pre-stress levels were applied prior to processing the laminated preforms in an autoclave. The results showed that the application of a pre-stress of 108 MPa to a unidirectional [0]16 E-glass/913 epoxy preform, reduced the residual strain in the composite from −600 µε (conventional processing without pre-stress to approximately zero. A good correlation was observed between the data obtained from the surface-mounted electrical resistance strain gauge and the embedded optical fibre sensors. In addition to “neutralising” the residual stresses, superior axial orientation of the reinforcement can be obtained from pre-stressed composites. A subsequent publication will highlight the consequences of pres-stressing on fibre alignment, the tensile, flexural, compressive and fatigue performance of unidirectional E

  20. Monitoring Pre-Stressed Composites Using Optical Fibre Sensors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krishnamurthy, Sriram; Badcock, Rodney A.; Machavaram, Venkata R.; Fernando, Gerard F.

    2016-01-01

    Residual stresses in fibre reinforced composites can give rise to a number of undesired effects such as loss of dimensional stability and premature fracture. Hence, there is significant merit in developing processing techniques to mitigate the development of residual stresses. However, tracking and quantifying the development of these fabrication-induced stresses in real-time using conventional non-destructive techniques is not straightforward. This article reports on the design and evaluation of a technique for manufacturing pre-stressed composite panels from unidirectional E-glass/epoxy prepregs. Here, the magnitude of the applied pre-stress was monitored using an integrated load-cell. The pre-stressing rig was based on a flat-bed design which enabled autoclave-based processing. A method was developed to end-tab the laminated prepregs prior to pre-stressing. The development of process-induced residual strain was monitored in-situ using embedded optical fibre sensors. Surface-mounted electrical resistance strain gauges were used to measure the strain when the composite was unloaded from the pre-stressing rig at room temperature. Four pre-stress levels were applied prior to processing the laminated preforms in an autoclave. The results showed that the application of a pre-stress of 108 MPa to a unidirectional [0]16 E-glass/913 epoxy preform, reduced the residual strain in the composite from −600 µε (conventional processing without pre-stress) to approximately zero. A good correlation was observed between the data obtained from the surface-mounted electrical resistance strain gauge and the embedded optical fibre sensors. In addition to “neutralising” the residual stresses, superior axial orientation of the reinforcement can be obtained from pre-stressed composites. A subsequent publication will highlight the consequences of pres-stressing on fibre alignment, the tensile, flexural, compressive and fatigue performance of unidirectional E-glass composites. PMID

  1. 10^{7}-A load-current B-dot monitor: Simulations, design, and performance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    D. V. Rose

    2010-04-01

    Full Text Available A B-dot monitor that measures the current 6 cm from the axis of dynamic loads fielded on 10^{7}-A multiterawatt pulsed-power accelerators has been developed. The monitor improves upon the multimegampere load-current gauge described in Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams 11, 100401 (2008PRABFM1098-440210.1103/PhysRevSTAB.11.100401. The design of the improved monitor was developed using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations that model vacuum electron flow in the transmission line near the monitor. The simulations include important geometric features of the B-dot probe and model the deposition of electron energy within the probe. The simulations show that the improved design reduces by as much as a factor of 5 the electron energy deposition to the interior of the monitor. Data taken on accelerator shots demonstrate that the improved monitor works as well as the original monitor on shots with low-impedance loads, and delivers superior performance on higher-impedance-load shots.

  2. CLASSIFICATION OF THE MGR PERFORMANCE CONFIRMATION DATA ACQUISITION/MONITORING SYSTEM

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    J.A. Ziegler

    1999-01-01

    The purpose of this analysis is to document the Quality Assurance (QA) classification of the Monitored Geologic Repository (MGR) performance confirmation data acquisition/monitoring system structures, systems and components (SSCs) performed by the MGR Safety Assurance Department. This analysis also provides the basis for revision of YMP/90-55Q, Q-List (YMF 1998). The Q-List identifies those MGR SSCs subject to the requirements of DOE/RW-0333PY ''Quality Assurance Requirements and Description'' (QARD) (DOE 1998)

  3. End-to-End Airplane Detection Using Transfer Learning in Remote Sensing Images

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhong Chen

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Airplane detection in remote sensing images remains a challenging problem due to the complexity of backgrounds. In recent years, with the development of deep learning, object detection has also obtained great breakthroughs. For object detection tasks in natural images, such as the PASCAL (Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning VOC (Visual Object Classes Challenge, the major trend of current development is to use a large amount of labeled classification data to pre-train the deep neural network as a base network, and then use a small amount of annotated detection data to fine-tune the network for detection. In this paper, we use object detection technology based on deep learning for airplane detection in remote sensing images. In addition to using some characteristics of remote sensing images, some new data augmentation techniques have been proposed. We also use transfer learning and adopt a single deep convolutional neural network and limited training samples to implement end-to-end trainable airplane detection. Classification and positioning are no longer divided into multistage tasks; end-to-end detection attempts to combine them for optimization, which ensures an optimal solution for the final stage. In our experiment, we use remote sensing images of airports collected from Google Earth. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is highly accurate and meaningful for remote sensing object detection.

  4. A brief clinical case of monitoring of oxygenator performance and patient-machine interdependency during prolonged veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Belliato, Mirko; Degani, Antonella; Buffa, Antonino; Sciutti, Fabio; Pagani, Michele; Pellegrini, Carlo; Iotti, Giorgio Antonio

    2017-10-01

    Monitoring veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (vvECMO) during 76 days of continuous support in a 42-years old patient with end-stage pulmonary disease, listed for double-lung transplantation. Applying a new monitor (Landing ® , Eurosets, Medolla, Italy) and describing how measured and calculated parameters can be used to understand the variable interdependency between artificial membrane lung (ML) and patient native lung (NL). During vvECMO, in order to understand how the respiratory function is shared between ML and NL, ideally we should obtain data about oxygen transfer and CO 2 removal, both by ML and NL. Measurements for NL can be made on the mechanical ventilator. Measurements for ML are typically made from gas analysis on blood samples drawn from the ECMO system before and after the oxygenator, and therefore are non-continuous. Differently, the Landing monitor provides a continuous measurement of the oxygen transfer from the ML, combined with hemoglobin level, saturation of drained blood and saturation of reinfused blood. Moreover, the Landing monitor provides hemodynamics data about circulation through the ECMO system, with blood flow, pre-oxygenator pressure and post-oxygenator pressure. Of note, measurements include the drain negative pressure, whose monitoring may be particularly useful to prevent hemolysis. Real-time monitoring of vvECMO provides data helpful to understand the complex picture of a patient with severely damaged lungs on one side and an artificial lung on the other side. Data from vvECMO monitoring may help to adapt the settings of both mechanical ventilator and vvECMO. Data about oxygen transfer by the oxygenator are important to evaluate the performance of the device and may help to avoid unnecessary replacements, thus reducing risks and costs.

  5. The effect of monitor raster latency on VEPs, ERPs and Brain-Computer Interface performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nagel, Sebastian; Dreher, Werner; Rosenstiel, Wolfgang; Spüler, Martin

    2018-02-01

    Visual neuroscience experiments and Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) control often require strict timings in a millisecond scale. As most experiments are performed using a personal computer (PC), the latencies that are introduced by the setup should be taken into account and be corrected. As a standard computer monitor uses a rastering to update each line of the image sequentially, this causes a monitor raster latency which depends on the position, on the monitor and the refresh rate. We technically measured the raster latencies of different monitors and present the effects on visual evoked potentials (VEPs) and event-related potentials (ERPs). Additionally we present a method for correcting the monitor raster latency and analyzed the performance difference of a code-modulated VEP BCI speller by correcting the latency. There are currently no other methods validating the effects of monitor raster latency on VEPs and ERPs. The timings of VEPs and ERPs are directly affected by the raster latency. Furthermore, correcting the raster latency resulted in a significant reduction of the target prediction error from 7.98% to 4.61% and also in a more reliable classification of targets by significantly increasing the distance between the most probable and the second most probable target by 18.23%. The monitor raster latency affects the timings of VEPs and ERPs, and correcting resulted in a significant error reduction of 42.23%. It is recommend to correct the raster latency for an increased BCI performance and methodical correctness. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  6. On line performance monitoring for predictive maintenance [Paper No.: VIA - 2

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gupta, R.K.; Chandra, Rajesh

    1981-01-01

    There will always be progressive deterioration in the performance of dynamic equipment due to normal inevitable wear, malfunctions, failures and other reasons. In most cases it is possible to monitor some parameters of a system which would get progressively affected with the deterioration in the health of the system. By on-line monitoring of such predetermined parameters, compared with preset base data generated for a healthy system earlier, would prove very helpful in avoiding breakdowns and in proper planning of preventive and predictive maintenance. With increasing use of on-line computerised controls the generation of design base data and also the in-built self checking feature of monitoring the equipment health can be achieved by incorporating suitable software. This type of system will be helpful in: (a) predicting the life of component, (b) prewarning the operator about impending malfunctions, (c) establishing a maintenance schedule and spare inventory, and (d) analysing the failures. This type of centralised predictive maintenance is increasingly becoming important where: (a) the number of equipments are large, (b) the operation of equipment is critical from safety criteria, and (c) the minimum safety margin in the performance of the component is to be maintained. Keeping this in mind, the Fuel Handling System of Narora Atomic Power Project and the future power plants having computerised controls will have facility for on-line performance monitoring for predictive maintenance. The paper also describes methodology of the technique in detail, with a few representative cases. (author)

  7. Increasing the Performance and Reliability of Power Boiler by Monitoring Thermal and Strength Parameters

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sobota Tomasz

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper presents a method for determination of thermo-flow parameters for steam boilers. This method allows to perform the calculations of the boiler furnace chamber and heat flow rates absorbed by superheater stages. These parameters are important for monitoring the performance of the power unit. Knowledge of these parameters allows determining the degree of the furnace chamber slagging. The calculation can be performed in online mode and use to monitoring of steam boiler. The presented method allows to the operation of steam boiler with high efficiency.

  8. Photon beam position monitor

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuzay, Tuncer M.; Shu, Deming

    1995-01-01

    A photon beam position monitor for use in the front end of a beamline of a high heat flux and high energy photon source such as a synchrotron radiation storage ring detects and measures the position and, when a pair of such monitors are used in tandem, the slope of a photon beam emanating from an insertion device such as a wiggler or an undulator inserted in the straight sections of the ring. The photon beam position monitor includes a plurality of spaced blades for precisely locating the photon beam, with each blade comprised of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond with an outer metal coating of a photon sensitive metal such as tungsten, molybdenum, etc., which combination emits electrons when a high energy photon beam is incident upon the blade. Two such monitors are contemplated for use in the front end of the beamline, with the two monitors having vertically and horizontally offset detector blades to avoid blade "shadowing". Provision is made for aligning the detector blades with the photon beam and limiting detector blade temperature during operation.

  9. Performance Assessment Monitoring Plan for the Hanford Site Low-Level Burial Grounds

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2006-01-01

    The U.S. Department of Energy Order 435.1, Radioactive Waste Management, requires a disposal authorization statement authorizing operation (or continued operation) for low-level waste disposal facilities. In fulfillment of these requirements, a disposal authorization statement was issued on October 25, 1999, authorizing the Hanford Site to transfer, receive, possess, and dispose of low-level radioactive waste at the 200 East Area burial grounds and the 200 West Area burial grounds. One of the conditions is that monitoring plans for the 200 East Area and 200 West Area low-level burial grounds be written and approved by the Richland Operations Office. As a result of a record of decision for the Hanford Site Solid Waste Program and acceptance of the Hanford Site Solid Waste Environmental Impact Statement, the use of the low-level burial ground (LLBG) as a disposal facility for low-level and mixed low-level wastes has been restricted to lined trenches and the Navy reactor-compartment trench only. Hence, as of July 2004, only the two lined trenches in burial ground 218-W-5 (trenches 31 and 34, see Appendix A) and the Navy reactor-compartment trench in burial ground 218 E 12B (trench 94) are allowed to receive waste. When the two lined trenches are filled, the LLBG will cease to operate except for reactor compartment disposal at trench 94. Remaining operational lifetime of the LLBG is dependent on waste volume disposal rates. Existing programs for air sampling and analyses and subsidence monitoring are currently adequate for performance assessment at the LLBG. The waste disposal authorization for the Hanford Site is based (in part) on the post-closure performance assessments for the LLBG. In order to maintain a useful link between operational monitoring (e.g., Resource Conservation and Recovery Act [RCRA], Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, and State Waste Discharge Permits), constituents, monitoring frequencies, and boundaries require

  10. New analysis and performance of a wall-current monitor

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Suwada, T.; Urano, T.; Kobayashi, H. [National Lab. for High Energy Physics, Tsukuba, Ibaraki (Japan); Tamiya, K.; Asami, A. [Naruto University of Education, Takashima, Naruto-cho, Naruto-shi 772 (Japan)

    1997-09-01

    A new wall-current monitor has been developed in order to reinforce the beam-monitoring system in the PF 2.5-GeV linac for the KEK B-Factory. A prototype monitor was tested for its performance and characteristics. The experimental results in terms of both bench tests and beam tests by single-bunch electron beams were analyzed on the basis of equivalent-circuit models. The frequency response of the monitor agreed well with a lumped equivalent-circuit model for both time- and frequency-domain measurements. The position dependence and its frequency characteristics of the monitor also agreed well with a distributed equivalent-circuit model for both time- and frequency-domain measurements. The rise time of the monitor was about 3 ns, which indicated a poor response for short-pulse beams (<1) ns. The reason could be attributed to the stray inductance of the ceramic solid resistor and not very good frequency response of the ferrite core. (orig.).

  11. New analysis and performance of a wall-current monitor

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Suwada, T.; Urano, T.; Kobayashi, H.; Tamiya, K.; Asami, A.

    1997-01-01

    A new wall-current monitor has been developed in order to reinforce the beam-monitoring system in the PF 2.5-GeV linac for the KEK B-Factory. A prototype monitor was tested for its performance and characteristics. The experimental results in terms of both bench tests and beam tests by single-bunch electron beams were analyzed on the basis of equivalent-circuit models. The frequency response of the monitor agreed well with a lumped equivalent-circuit model for both time- and frequency-domain measurements. The position dependence and its frequency characteristics of the monitor also agreed well with a distributed equivalent-circuit model for both time- and frequency-domain measurements. The rise time of the monitor was about 3 ns, which indicated a poor response for short-pulse beams (<1) ns. The reason could be attributed to the stray inductance of the ceramic solid resistor and not very good frequency response of the ferrite core. (orig.)

  12. Evaluation of performance of electronic dosimeters for individual monitoring: tests in laboratory

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Garzon, W.J.; Khoury, H.J.; Barros, V.S.M. de; Medeiros, R.B.

    2015-01-01

    Electronic dosimeters based on direct ion storage technology are being widely used in many countries for individual monitoring in many applications of ionizing radiation. However, their use as routine dosimeter has been established in a few countries due to lack of accreditation or intercomparison programs. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of two direct íon storage dosimeters model available in the international market: the Miriom-Instadose-1 and RADOS DIS-1 to be eventually accepted for individual monitoring in Brazil. (author)

  13. Usage of NASA's Near Real-Time Solar and Meteorological Data for Monitoring Building Energy Systems Using RETScreen International's Performance Analysis Module

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stackhouse, Paul W., Jr.; Charles, Robert W.; Chandler, William S.; Hoell, James M.; Westberg, David; Zhang, Taiping; Ziegler, Urban; Leng, Gregory J.; Meloche, Nathalie; Bourque, Kevin

    2012-01-01

    This paper describes building energy system production and usage monitoring using examples from the new RETScreen Performance Analysis Module, called RETScreen Plus. The module uses daily meteorological (i.e., temperature, humidity, wind and solar, etc.) over a period of time to derive a building system function that is used to monitor building performance. The new module can also be used to target building systems with enhanced technologies. If daily ambient meteorological and solar information are not available, these are obtained over the internet from NASA's near-term data products that provide global meteorological and solar information within 3-6 days of real-time. The accuracy of the NASA data are shown to be excellent for this purpose enabling RETScreen Plus to easily detect changes in the system function and efficiency. This is shown by several examples, one of which is a new building at the NASA Langley Research Center that uses solar panels to provide electrical energy for building energy and excess energy for other uses. The system shows steady performance within the uncertainties of the input data. The other example involves assessing the reduction in energy usage by an apartment building in Sweden before and after an energy efficiency upgrade. In this case, savings up to 16% are shown.

  14. System performance of a three-phase PV-grid-connected system installed in Thailand. Data monitored analysis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Boonmee, Chaiyant; Watjanatepin, Napat; Plangklang, Boonyang

    2009-01-01

    PV-grid-connected systems are worldwide installed because it allows consumer to reduce energy consumption from the electricity grid and to feed the surplus energy back into the grid. The system needs no battery so therefore the system price is very cheap comparing to other PV systems. PV-grid-connected systems are used in buildings that already hooked up to the electrical grid. Finding efficiency of the PV-grid-connected system can be done by using a standard instrument which needs to disconnect the PV arrays from the grid before measurement. The measurement is also difficult and we lose energy during the measurement. This paper will present the system performance of a PV-grid-connected system installed in Thailand by using a monitoring system. The monitored data are installed by acquisition software into a computer. Analysis of monitored data will be done to find out the system performance without disconnecting the PV arrays from the system. The monitored data include solar radiation, PV voltage, PV current, and PV power which has been recorded from a 5 kWp system installed of amorphous silicon PV at Rajamangala University of Technology Suvarnabhumi, Nonthaburi, Thailand. The system performance of the system by using the data monitored is compared to the standard instrument measurement. The paper will give all details about system components, monitoring system, and monitored data. The result of data analysis will be fully given. (author)

  15. Performance monitoring pavements with thermal segregation in Texas.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-04-01

    This project conducted work to investigate the performance of asphalt surface mixtures that exhibited : thermal segregation during construction. From 2004 to 2009, a total of 14 construction projects were : identified for monitoring. Five of these pr...

  16. An end-to-end assessment of range uncertainty in proton therapy using animal tissues

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, Yuanshui; Kang, Yixiu; Zeidan, Omar; Schreuder, Niek

    2016-11-01

    Accurate assessment of range uncertainty is critical in proton therapy. However, there is a lack of data and consensus on how to evaluate the appropriate amount of uncertainty. The purpose of this study is to quantify the range uncertainty in various treatment conditions in proton therapy, using transmission measurements through various animal tissues. Animal tissues, including a pig head, beef steak, and lamb leg, were used in this study. For each tissue, an end-to-end test closely imitating patient treatments was performed. This included CT scan simulation, treatment planning, image-guided alignment, and beam delivery. Radio-chromic films were placed at various depths in the distal dose falloff region to measure depth dose. Comparisons between measured and calculated doses were used to evaluate range differences. The dose difference at the distal falloff between measurement and calculation depends on tissue type and treatment conditions. The estimated range difference was up to 5, 6 and 4 mm for the pig head, beef steak, and lamb leg irradiation, respectively. Our study shows that the TPS was able to calculate proton range within about 1.5% plus 1.5 mm. Accurate assessment of range uncertainty in treatment planning would allow better optimization of proton beam treatment, thus fully achieving proton beams’ superior dose advantage over conventional photon-based radiation therapy.

  17. Swimming Pool Hygiene: Self-Monitoring, Task Clarification, and Performance Feedback Increase Lifeguard Cleaning Behaviors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rose, Henry M. S.; Ludwig, Timothy D.

    2009-01-01

    The effects of task clarification, self-monitoring, and performance feedback on cleaning behaviors of 9 lifeguards in 3 performance areas (vacuuming, lobby tidying, and pool deck maintenance) were investigated using an ABA reversal design at a county swim complex. A specific task in each performance area was used as a behavioral control. Following…

  18. Monitoring the Microgravity Environment Quality On-board the International Space Station Using Soft Computing Techniques. Part 2; Preliminary System Performance Results

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jules, Kenol; Lin, Paul P.; Weiss, Daniel S.

    2002-01-01

    This paper presents the preliminary performance results of the artificial intelligence monitoring system in full operational mode using near real time acceleration data downlinked from the International Space Station. Preliminary microgravity environment characterization analysis result for the International Space Station (Increment-2), using the monitoring system is presented. Also, comparison between the system predicted performance based on ground test data for the US laboratory "Destiny" module and actual on-orbit performance, using measured acceleration data from the U.S. laboratory module of the International Space Station is presented. Finally, preliminary on-orbit disturbance magnitude levels are presented for the Experiment of Physics of Colloids in Space, which are compared with on ground test data. The ground test data for the Experiment of Physics of Colloids in Space were acquired from the Microgravity Emission Laboratory, located at the NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio. The artificial intelligence was developed by the NASA Glenn Principal Investigator Microgravity Services Project to help the principal investigator teams identify the primary vibratory disturbance sources that are active, at any moment of time, on-board the International Space Station, which might impact the microgravity environment their experiments are exposed to. From the Principal Investigator Microgravity Services' web site, the principal investigator teams can monitor via a dynamic graphical display, implemented in Java, in near real time, which event(s) is/are on, such as crew activities, pumps, fans, centrifuges, compressor, crew exercise, structural modes, etc., and decide whether or not to run their experiments, whenever that is an option, based on the acceleration magnitude and frequency sensitivity associated with that experiment. This monitoring system detects primarily the vibratory disturbance sources. The system has built-in capability to detect both known

  19. The development of on-line thermal performance monitors in Nuclear Electric Company's stations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Conner, A.S.

    1992-01-01

    The paper examines the economic benefits of using on-line monitoring techniques in assisting Station Staff with the task of optimising the efficient use of reactor fuel. The role of thermal performance monitoring for detecting changes in plant condition is also examined and the way in which the data can be used by engineers to assist with the preparation of operating and maintenance programmes. To enable genuine gradual changes in plant performance to be detected when operating against a background of changing plant signal accuracy conditions, plant transducers have to be calibrated on a regular basis. This can be both costly and labour intensive. To reduce this requirement for regular calibrations, an automatic software signal verification program has been developed for use in on-line monitoring schemes. It forms part of the total unit performance calculation package and uses a whole plant model to verify plant signals. All plant signals used to calculate unit heat rate are verified typically every 15 minutes with signals going outside predetermined limits being automatically reported to the user. The program is interactive allowing the user to interrogate the condition of the signal, with respect to both its error magnitude and rate of drift outside signal limits. The program runs in real time mode on a Workstation connected directly to the plant

  20. Front-end Electronics for Unattended Measurement (FEUM). Results of Prototype Evaluation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Conrad, Ryan C. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Keller, Daniel T. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Morris, Scott J. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Smith, Leon E. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

    2015-07-01

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) deploys unattended monitoring systems to provide continuous monitoring of nuclear material within safeguarded facilities around the world. As the number of unattended monitoring instruments increases, the IAEA is challenged to become more efficient in the implementation of those systems. In 2010, the IAEA initiated the Front-End Electronics for Unattended Measurement (FEUM) project with the goals of greater flexibility in the interfaces to various sensors and data acquisition systems, and improved capabilities for remotely located sensors (e.g., where sensor and front-end electronics might be separated by tens of meters). In consultation with the IAEA, a technical evaluation of a candidate FEUM device produced by a commercial vendor has been performed. This evaluation assessed the device against the IAEA’s original technical specifications and a broad range of important parameters that include sensor types, cable lengths and types, industrial electromagnetic noise that can degrade signals from remotely located detectors, and high radiation fields. Testing data, interpretation, findings and recommendations are provided.

  1. Accuracy and Reliability in the Prediction of End-of-Life Performance of Solar Generators

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rapp, Etienne

    2008-09-01

    The end-of-life power analysis of solar arrays is calculated using a combination of arithmetic and root square sums of loss factors. These loss factors are sometimes linked to degradations, sometimes linked to uncertainties. The uncertainties of the degradations are taken into account considering contractual "worst cases". This paper will put the first stones for a move "metrological" evaluation of the probable performance associated with a standard uncertainty. The turn from silicon to triple junction solar cells induces some changes in the degradation parameters of solar arrays: * The triple junction cells are more sensitive to UV darkening than silicon ones. * The cell voltage is higher and the current is lower. Then the cell strings are shorter, and there are more strings in parallel. This induces some changes in the reliability analyses and risk management. * The failure modes and failure rates of these cells have to be compared and discussed. We try to define improved rules to design solar arrays for end of life performance, for a better knowledge of the margins and a better reliability.

  2. Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing 2015 end of year summary : cardiovascular and hemodynamic monitoring

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bendjelid, Karim; Rex, Steffen; Scheeren, Thomas; Saugel, Bernd

    Hemodynamic monitoring is essential in critically ill patients. In this regard, the Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing (JCMC) has become an ideal platform for publishing cardiovascular and hemodynamic monitoring-related research, as reflected by an increasing number of articles related to

  3. 12 CFR 621.10 - Monitoring of performance categories and other property owned.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-01-01

    ... 12 Banks and Banking 6 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Monitoring of performance categories and other property owned. 621.10 Section 621.10 Banks and Banking FARM CREDIT ADMINISTRATION FARM CREDIT SYSTEM ACCOUNTING AND REPORTING REQUIREMENTS Loan Performance and Valuation Assessment § 621.10 Monitoring of...

  4. Performance Test of Core Protection and Monitoring Algorithm with DLL for SMART Simulator Implementation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Koo, Bonseung; Hwang, Daehyun; Kim, Keungkoo

    2014-01-01

    A multi-purpose best-estimate simulator for SMART is being established, which is intended to be used as a tool to evaluate the impacts of design changes on the safety performance, and to improve and/or optimize the operating procedure of SMART. In keeping with these intentions, a real-time model of the digital core protection and monitoring systems was developed and the real-time performance of the models was verified for various simulation scenarios. In this paper, a performance test of the core protection and monitoring algorithm with a DLL file for the SMART simulator implementation was performed. A DLL file of the simulator application code was made and several real-time evaluation tests were conducted for the steady-state and transient conditions with simulated system variables. A performance test of the core protection and monitoring algorithms for the SMART simulator was performed. A DLL file of the simulator version code was made and several real-time evaluation tests were conducted for various scenarios with a DLL file and simulated system variables. The results of all test cases showed good agreement with the reference results and some features caused by algorithm change were properly reflected to the DLL results. Therefore, it was concluded that the SCOPS S SIM and SCOMS S SIM algorithms and calculational capabilities are appropriate for the core protection and monitoring program in the SMART simulator

  5. Fast Flux Test Facility performance monitoring management information: [Final report

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Newland, D.J.

    1987-09-01

    The purpose of this report is to provide management with performance data on key performance indicators for the month of July, 1987. This report contains the results for key performance indicators divided into two categories of ''overall'' and ''other''. The ''overall'' performance indicators, when considered in the aggregate, provide one means of monitoring overall plant performance

  6. A wide dynamic range BF{sub 3} neutron monitor with front-end electronics based on a logarithmic amplifier

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ferrarini, M., E-mail: michele.ferrarini@polimi.i [Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento Energia, via G. Ponzio 34/3, I-20133 Milano (Italy); Fondazione CNAO, via Caminadella 16, 20123 Milano (Italy); Varoli, V. [Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento Energia, via G. Ponzio 34/3, I-20133 Milano (Italy); Favalli, A. [European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for the Protection and Security of Citizen, TP 800, Via E. Fermi, 21027 Ispra (Vatican City State, Holy See) (Italy); Caresana, M. [Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento Energia, via G. Ponzio 34/3, I-20133 Milano (Italy); Pedersen, B. [European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for the Protection and Security of Citizen, TP 800, Via E. Fermi, 21027 Ispra (Italy)

    2010-02-01

    This paper describes a wide dynamic range neutron monitor based on a BF{sub 3} neutron detector. The detector is used in current mode, and front-end electronics based on a logarithmic amplifier are used in order to have a measurement capability ranging over many orders of magnitude. The system has been calibrated at the Polytechnic of Milan, CESNEF, with an AmBe neutron source, and has been tested in a pulsed field at the PUNITA facility at JRC, Ispra. The detector has achieved a dynamic range of over 6 orders of magnitude, being able to measure single neutron pulses and showing saturation-free response for a reaction rate up to 10{sup 6} s{sup -1}. It has also proved effective in measuring the PUNITA facility pulse integral fluence.

  7. low-Cost, High-Performance Alternatives for Target Temperature Monitoring Using the Near-Infrared Spectrum

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Virgo, Mathew [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Quigley, Kevin J. [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Chemerisov, Sergey [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Vandegrift, George F. [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

    2017-02-01

    A process is being developed for commercial production of the medical isotope Mo-99 through a photo-nuclear reaction on a Mo-100 target using a highpower electron accelerator. This process requires temperature monitoring of the window through which a high-current electron beam is transmitted to the target. For this purpose, we evaluated two near infrared technologies: the OMEGA Engineering iR2 pyrometer and the Ocean Optics Maya2000 spectrometer with infrared-enhanced charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor. Measuring in the near infrared spectrum, in contrast to the long-wavelength infrared spectrum, offers a few immediate advantages: (1) ordinary glass or quartz optical elements can be used; (2) alignment can be performed without heating the target; and (3) emissivity corrections to temperature are typically less than 10%. If spatial resolution is not required, the infrared pyrometer is attractive because of its accuracy, low cost, and simplicity. If spatial resolution is required, we make recommendations for near-infrared imaging based on our data augmented by calculations

  8. Matchmaking: the influence of monitoring environments on the effectiveness of performance pay systems

    OpenAIRE

    Richard Belfield; David Marsden

    2002-01-01

    This study uses cross-section and panel data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey to explore contextual influences on the relationship between performance-related pay (PRP) and organizational performance. While it finds strong evidence that the use of PRP can enhance performance outcomes, it also determines that this relationship is qualified by the structure of workplace monitoring environments. In addition, it presents evidence that managers learn about optimum combinations of ...

  9. Wearable dry sensors with bluetooth connection for use in remote patient monitoring systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gargiulo, Gaetano; Bifulco, Paolo; Cesarelli, Mario; Jin, Craig; McEwan, Alistair; van Schaik, Andre

    2010-01-01

    Cost reduction has become the primary theme of healthcare reforms globally. More providers are moving towards remote patient monitoring, which reduces the length of hospital stays and frees up their physicians and nurses for acute cases and helps them to tackle staff shortages. Physiological sensors are commonly used in many human specialties e.g. electrocardiogram (ECG) electrodes, for monitoring heart signals, and electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes, for sensing the electrical activity of the brain, are the most well-known applications. Consequently there is a substantial unmet need for physiological sensors that can be simply and easily applied by the patient or primary carer, are comfortable to wear, can accurately sense parameters over long periods of time and can be connected to data recording systems using Bluetooth technology. We have developed a small, battery powered, user customizable portable monitor. This prototype is capable of recording three-axial body acceleration, skin temperature, and has up to four bio analogical front ends. Moreover, it is also able of continuous wireless transmission to any Bluetooth device including a PDA or a cellular phone. The bio-front end can use long-lasting dry electrodes or novel textile electrodes that can be embedded in clothes. The device can be powered by a standard mobile phone which has a Ni-MH 3.6 V battery, to sustain more than seven days continuous functioning when using the Bluetooth Sniff mode to reduce TX power. In this paper, we present some of the evaluation experiments of our wearable personal monitor device with a focus on ECG applications.

  10. Performance Measurement of Location Enabled e-Government Processes: A Use Case on Traffic Safety Monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vandenbroucke, D.; Vancauwenberghe, G.

    2016-12-01

    The European Union Location Framework (EULF), as part of the Interoperable Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) Programme of the EU (EC DG DIGIT), aims to enhance the interactions between governments, businesses and citizens by embedding location information into e-Government processes. The challenge remains to find scientific sound and at the same time practicable approaches to estimate or measure the impact of location enablement of e-Government processes on the performance of the processes. A method has been defined to estimate process performance in terms of variables describing the efficiency, effectiveness, as well as the quality of the output of the work processes. A series of use cases have been identified, corresponding to existing e-Government work processes in which location information could bring added value. In a first step, the processes are described by means of BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) to better understand the process steps, the actors involved, the spatial data flows, as well as the required input and the generated output. In a second step the processes are assessed in terms of the (sub-optimal) use of location information and the potential enhancement of the process by better integrating location information and services. The process performance is measured ex ante (before using location enabled e-Government services) and ex-post (after the integration of such services) in order to estimate and measure the impact of location information. The paper describes the method for performance measurement and highlights how the method is applied to one use case, i.e. the process of traffic safety monitoring. The use case is analysed and assessed in terms of location enablement and its potential impact on process performance. The results of applying the methodology on the use case revealed that performance is highly impacted by factors such as the way location information is collected, managed and shared throughout the

  11. Asylum nursing in the UK at the end of the Victorian era: Hill End Asylum.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brimblecombe, N

    2005-02-01

    This paper explores aspects of asylum care at the beginning of the 20th century. Archival materials from Hill End, the Hertford County Asylum, provide a single historical case study. The study focuses on the methods and standards by which asylum nursing was monitored and also examines aspects of the origins and work life of the nursing staff. Standards of care were monitored by a number of official bodies visiting the asylum, whilst the medical superintendent's role focused on the supervision and disciplinary control of nursing staff. Evaluation reports at the time were largely favourable in relation to the care given in Hill End Asylum. However, the reports were based on the relatively limited expectations of the time: primarily relating to the cleanliness, quietness and lack of overt complaints regarding care from patients. Further measures reported related to: death rates, wet beds, numbers of staff dismissed, together with the use of mechanical restraints and seclusion. Nursing staff in the asylum were not normally recruited locally and frequently stayed for only short periods of time. Training provided was very limited at Hill End although a national nurse training scheme was well established by this time. The nursing issues important within the asylum were common to all asylums at the time, and some are still significant today. This paper provides an insight into the historical development of the mental health nursing profession in the UK and its relationship with the medical profession. It also provides evidence that current attempts to monitor the quality of care through clinical governance processes are far from new.

  12. Partial QoS-Aware Opportunistic Relay Selection Over Two-Hop Channels: End-to-End Performance Under Spectrum-Sharing Requirements

    KAUST Repository

    Yuli Yang,

    2014-10-01

    In this paper, we propose a partial quality-of-service (QoS)-oriented relay selection scheme with a decode-and-forward (DF) relaying protocol, to reduce the feedback amount required for relay selection. In the proposed scheme, the activated relay is the one with the maximum signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) in the second hop among those whose packet loss rates (PLRs) in the first hop achieve a predetermined QoS level. For the purpose of evaluating the performance of the proposed scheme, we exploit it with transmission constraints imposed on the transmit power budget and interference to other users. By analyzing the statistics of received SNRs in the first and second hops, we obtain the end-to-end PLR of this scheme in closed form under the considered scenario. Moreover, to compare the proposed scheme with popular relay selection schemes, we also derive the closed-form PLR expressions for partial relay selection (PRS) and opportunistic relay selection (ORS) criteria in the same scenario under study. Illustrative numerical results demonstrate the accuracy of our derivations and substantiate that the proposed relay selection scheme is a promising alternative with respect to the tradeoff between performance and complexity.

  13. Mobile Monitoring and Reasoning Methods to Prevent Cardiovascular Diseases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Diego López-de-Ipiña

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available With the recent technological advances, it is possible to monitor vital signs using Bluetooth-enabled biometric mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets or electric wristbands. In this manuscript, we present a system to estimate the risk of cardiovascular diseases in Ambient Assisted Living environments. Cardiovascular disease risk is obtained from the monitoring of the blood pressure by means of mobile devices in combination with other clinical factors, and applying reasoning techniques based on the Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation Project charts. We have developed an end-to-end software application for patients and physicians and a rule-based reasoning engine. We have also proposed a conceptual module to integrate recommendations to patients in their daily activities based on information proactively inferred through reasoning techniques and context-awareness. To evaluate the platform, we carried out usability experiments and performance benchmarks.

  14. Monitoring Performance of a combined water recycling system

    OpenAIRE

    Castleton, H.F.; Hathway, E.A.; Murphy, E.; Beck, S.B.M.

    2014-01-01

    Global water demand is expected to outstrip supply dramatically by 2030, making water recycling an important tool for future water security. A large combined grey water and rainwater recycling system has been monitored in response to an identified knowledge gap of the in-use performance of such systems. The water saving efficiency of the system was calculated at −8ṡ5% in 2011 and –10% in 2012 compared to the predicted 36%. This was due to a lower quantity of grey water and rainwater being col...

  15. Internet Performance and Reliability Measurements

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cottrell, Les

    2003-01-01

    Collaborative HEP research is dependent on good Internet connectivity. Although most local- and wide-area networks are carefully watched, there is little monitoring of connections that cross many networks. This paper describes work in progress at several sites to monitor Internet end-to-end performance between hundreds of HEP sites worldwide. At each collection site, ICMP ping packets are automatically sent periodically to sites of interest. The data is recorded and made available to analysis nodes, which collect the data from multiple collection sites and provide analysis and graphing. Future work includes improving the efficiency and accuracy of ping data collection

  16. Functional properties of Mozzarella cheese for its end use application.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ah, Jana; Tagalpallewar, Govind P

    2017-11-01

    Cheese is an extremely versatile food product that has a wide range of flavor, textures and end uses. The vast majority of cheese is eaten not by itself, but as part of another food. As an ingredient in foods, cheese is required to exhibit functional characteristics in the raw as well as cooked forms. Melting, stretching, free-oil formation, elasticity and browning are the functional properties considered to be significant for Mozzarella cheese. When a cheese is destined for its end use, some of its unique characteristics play a significant role in the products acceptability. For instance pH of cheese determines the cheese structure which in turn decides the cheese shredability and meltability properties. The residual galactose content in cheese mass determines the propensity of cheese to brown during baking. Development of 'tailor-made cheese' involves focusing on manipulation of such unique traits of cheese in order to obtain the desired characteristics for its end use application suiting the varied consumer's whims and wishes. This comprehensive review paper will provide an insight to the cheese maker regarding the factors determining the functional properties of cheese and also for the pizza manufacturers to decide which age of cheese to be used which will perform well in baking applications.

  17. Thermoluminescence dosimetry environmental monitoring system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bortoluzzi, S.

    1989-01-01

    In this report, characteristics and performances of an environmental monitoring system with thermoluminescence dosimetry are presented. Most of the work deals with the main physical parameters necessary for measurements of ambiental dose. At the end of this report some of level doses in the environment around the site of the ENEA Center of Energy Research Salluggia (Italy) are illustrated

  18. Automatic detection of end-diastole and end-systole from echocardiography images using manifold learning

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gifani, Parisa; Behnam, Hamid; Shalbaf, Ahmad; Sani, Zahra Alizadeh

    2010-01-01

    The automatic detection of end-diastole and end-systole frames of echocardiography images is the first step for calculation of the ejection fraction, stroke volume and some other features related to heart motion abnormalities. In this paper, the manifold learning algorithm is applied on 2D echocardiography images to find out the relationship between the frames of one cycle of heart motion. By this approach the nonlinear embedded information in sequential images is represented in a two-dimensional manifold by the LLE algorithm and each image is depicted by a point on reconstructed manifold. There are three dense regions on the manifold which correspond to the three phases of cardiac cycle ('isovolumetric contraction', 'isovolumetric relaxation', 'reduced filling'), wherein there is no prominent change in ventricular volume. By the fact that the end-systolic and end-diastolic frames are in isovolumic phases of the cardiac cycle, the dense regions can be used to find these frames. By calculating the distance between consecutive points in the manifold, the isovolumic frames are mapped on the three minimums of the distance diagrams which were used to select the corresponding images. The minimum correlation between these images leads to detection of end-systole and end-diastole frames. The results on six healthy volunteers have been validated by an experienced echo cardiologist and depict the usefulness of the presented method

  19. On the reliable use of satellite-derived surface water products for global flood monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirpa, F. A.; Revilla-Romero, B.; Thielen, J.; Salamon, P.; Brakenridge, R.; Pappenberger, F.; de Groeve, T.

    2015-12-01

    Early flood warning and real-time monitoring systems play a key role in flood risk reduction and disaster response management. To this end, real-time flood forecasting and satellite-based detection systems have been developed at global scale. However, due to the limited availability of up-to-date ground observations, the reliability of these systems for real-time applications have not been assessed in large parts of the globe. In this study, we performed comparative evaluations of the commonly used satellite-based global flood detections and operational flood forecasting system using 10 major flood cases reported over three years (2012-2014). Specially, we assessed the flood detection capabilities of the near real-time global flood maps from the Global Flood Detection System (GFDS), and from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the operational forecasts from the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) for the major flood events recorded in global flood databases. We present the evaluation results of the global flood detection and forecasting systems in terms of correctly indicating the reported flood events and highlight the exiting limitations of each system. Finally, we propose possible ways forward to improve the reliability of large scale flood monitoring tools.

  20. A new method for wafer quality monitoring using semiconductor process big data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sohn, Younghoon; Lee, Hyun; Yang, Yusin; Jun, Chungsam

    2017-03-01

    In this paper we proposed a new semiconductor quality monitoring methodology - Process Sensor Log Analysis (PSLA) - using process sensor data for the detection of wafer defectivity and quality monitoring. We developed exclusive key parameter selection algorithm and user friendly system which is able to handle large amount of big data very effectively. Several production wafers were selected and analyzed based on the risk analysis of process driven defects, for example alignment quality of process layers. Thickness of spin-coated material can be measured using PSLA without conventional metrology process. In addition, chip yield impact was verified by matching key parameter changes with electrical die sort (EDS) fail maps at the end of the production step. From this work, we were able to determine that process robustness and product yields could be improved by monitoring the key factors in the process big data.

  1. DNA Breaks and End Resection Measured Genome-wide by End Sequencing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Canela, Andres; Sridharan, Sriram; Sciascia, Nicholas; Tubbs, Anthony; Meltzer, Paul; Sleckman, Barry P; Nussenzweig, André

    2016-09-01

    DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) arise during physiological transcription, DNA replication, and antigen receptor diversification. Mistargeting or misprocessing of DSBs can result in pathological structural variation and mutation. Here we describe a sensitive method (END-seq) to monitor DNA end resection and DSBs genome-wide at base-pair resolution in vivo. We utilized END-seq to determine the frequency and spectrum of restriction-enzyme-, zinc-finger-nuclease-, and RAG-induced DSBs. Beyond sequence preference, chromatin features dictate the repertoire of these genome-modifying enzymes. END-seq can detect at least one DSB per cell among 10,000 cells not harboring DSBs, and we estimate that up to one out of 60 cells contains off-target RAG cleavage. In addition to site-specific cleavage, we detect DSBs distributed over extended regions during immunoglobulin class-switch recombination. Thus, END-seq provides a snapshot of DNA ends genome-wide, which can be utilized for understanding genome-editing specificities and the influence of chromatin on DSB pathway choice. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  2. The DIALOG Chip in the Front-End Electronics of the LHCb Muon Detector

    CERN Document Server

    Cadeddu, S; Lai, A

    2004-01-01

    We present a custom integrated circuit, named DIALOG, which is a fundamental building block in the front-end architecture of the LHCb Muon detector. DIALOG is realized in IBM 0.25 um technology, using radiation hardening layout techniques. DIALOG integrates important tools for detector time alignment procedures and time alignment monitoring on the front- end system. In particular, it integrates 16 programmable delays, which can be regulated in steps of 1 ns. Many other features, necessary for the Muon trigger operation and for a safe front-end monitoring are integrated: DIALOG generates the information used by the trigger as a combination of its 16 inputs from the Amplifier-Shaper-Discriminator (ASD) chips, it generates the thresholds of the ASD, it monitors the rate of all its input channels. We describe the circuit architecture, its internal blocks and its main modes of operation.

  3. Comparison of Direct Side-to-End and End-to-End Hypoglossal-Facial Anastomosis for Facial Nerve Repair.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Samii, Madjid; Alimohamadi, Maysam; Khouzani, Reza Karimi; Rashid, Masoud Rafizadeh; Gerganov, Venelin

    2015-08-01

    The hypoglossal facial anastomosis (HFA) is the gold standard for facial reanimation in patients with severe facial nerve palsy. The major drawbacks of the classic HFA technique are lingual morbidities due to hypoglossal nerve transection. The side-to-end HFA is a modification of the classic technique with fewer tongue-related morbidities. In this study we compared the outcome of the classic end-to-end and the direct side-to-end HFA surgeries performed at our center in regards to the facial reanimation success rate and tongue-related morbidities. Twenty-six successive cases of HFA were enrolled. In 9 of them end-to-end anastomoses were performed, and 17 had direct side-to-end anastomoses. The House-Brackmann (HB) and Pitty and Tator (PT) scales were used to document surgical outcome. The hemiglossal atrophy, swallowing, and hypoglossal nerve function were assessed at follow-up. The original pathology was vestibular schwannoma in 15, meningioma in 4, brain stem glioma in 4, and other pathologies in 3. The mean interval between facial palsy and HFA was 18 months (range: 0-60). The median follow-up period was 20 months. The PT grade at follow-up was worse in patients with a longer interval from facial palsy and HFA (P value: 0.041). The lesion type was the only other factor that affected PT grade (the best results in vestibular schwannoma and the worst in the other pathologies group, P value: 0.038). The recovery period for facial tonicity was longer in patients with radiation therapy before HFA (13.5 vs. 8.5 months) and those with a longer than 2-year interval from facial palsy to HFA (13.5 vs. 8.5 months). Although no significant difference between the side-to-end and the end-to-end groups was seen in terms of facial nerve functional recovery, patients from the side-to-end group had a significantly lower rate of lingual morbidities (tongue hemiatrophy: 100% vs. 5.8%, swallowing difficulty: 55% vs. 11.7%, speech disorder 33% vs. 0%). With the side-to-end HFA

  4. Use of ArcGIS in Environmental Monitoring at Idaho National Laboratory

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Oertel, Giles

    2007-01-01

    The Idaho National Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy site located in southeastern Idaho. The INL is required to perform environmental monitoring of anthropogenically introduced contaminants. One primary contaminant of interest is radioactive Cs-137 which is resident in INL soils due to past operational activities and atmospheric weapons testing. Collection of field data is performed using vehicle mounted and portable radiation detector units. All data is combined in ArcGIS and displayed over georeferenced satellite images and digital elevation models. The use of the ArcGIS geostatistical analysis package enhances the ability to look for areas of higher Cs-137 concentration. Combining current monitoring results with meteorological wind pattern maps allows for siting of new and improved monitoring locations. Use of the ArcGIS package provides an integrated analysis and mapping protocol for use in radioactive contaminant monitoring

  5. A systematic review of the cost of data collection for performance monitoring in hospitals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jones, Cheryl; Gannon, Brenda; Wakai, Abel; O'Sullivan, Ronan

    2015-04-01

    Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to identify where organisational performance is meeting desired standards and where performance requires improvement. Valid and reliable KPIs depend on the availability of high-quality data, specifically the relevant minimum data set ((MDS) the core data identified as the minimum required to measure performance for a KPI) elements. However, the feasibility of collecting the relevant MDS elements is always a limitation of performance monitoring using KPIs. Preferably, data should be integrated into service delivery, and, where additional data are required that are not currently collected as part of routine service delivery, there should be an economic evaluation to determine the cost of data collection. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesise the evidence base concerning the costs of data collection in hospitals for performance monitoring using KPI, and to identify hospital data collection systems that have proven to be cost minimising. We searched MEDLINE (1946 to May week 4 2014), Embase (1974 to May week 2 2014), and CINAHL (1937 to date). The database searches were supplemented by searching for grey literature through the OpenGrey database. Data was extracted, tabulated, and summarised as part of a narrative synthesis. The searches yielded a total of 1,135 publications. After assessing each identified study against specific inclusion exclusion criteria only eight studies were deemed as relevant for this review. The studies attempt to evaluate different types of data collection interventions including the installation of information communication technology (ICT), improvements to current ICT systems, and how different analysis techniques may be used to monitor performance. The evaluation methods used to measure the costs and benefits of data collection interventions are inconsistent across the identified literature. Overall, the results weakly indicate that collection of hospital data and improvements in data

  6. Ozone Measurements Monitoring Using Data-Based Approach

    KAUST Repository

    Harrou, Fouzi; Kadri, Farid; Khadraoui, Sofiane; Sun, Ying

    2016-01-01

    The complexity of ozone (O3) formation mechanisms in the troposphere make the fast and accurate modeling of ozone very challenging. In the absence of a process model, principal component analysis (PCA) has been extensively used as a data-based monitoring technique for highly correlated process variables; however conventional PCA-based detection indices often fail to detect small or moderate anomalies. In this work, we propose an innovative method for detecting small anomalies in highly correlated multivariate data. The developed method combine the multivariate exponentially weighted moving average (MEWMA) monitoring scheme with PCA modelling in order to enhance anomaly detection performance. Such a choice is mainly motivated by the greater ability of the MEWMA monitoring scheme to detect small changes in the process mean. The proposed PCA-based MEWMA monitoring scheme is successfully applied to ozone measurements data collected from Upper Normandy region, France, via the network of air quality monitoring stations. The detection results of the proposed method are compared to that declared by Air Normand air monitoring association.

  7. Ozone Measurements Monitoring Using Data-Based Approach

    KAUST Repository

    Harrou, Fouzi

    2016-02-01

    The complexity of ozone (O3) formation mechanisms in the troposphere make the fast and accurate modeling of ozone very challenging. In the absence of a process model, principal component analysis (PCA) has been extensively used as a data-based monitoring technique for highly correlated process variables; however conventional PCA-based detection indices often fail to detect small or moderate anomalies. In this work, we propose an innovative method for detecting small anomalies in highly correlated multivariate data. The developed method combine the multivariate exponentially weighted moving average (MEWMA) monitoring scheme with PCA modelling in order to enhance anomaly detection performance. Such a choice is mainly motivated by the greater ability of the MEWMA monitoring scheme to detect small changes in the process mean. The proposed PCA-based MEWMA monitoring scheme is successfully applied to ozone measurements data collected from Upper Normandy region, France, via the network of air quality monitoring stations. The detection results of the proposed method are compared to that declared by Air Normand air monitoring association.

  8. The acute effects of MDMA and ethanol administration on electrophysiological correlates of performance monitoring in healthy volunteers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spronk, D B; Dumont, G J H; Verkes, R J; De Bruijn, E R A

    2014-07-01

    Knowing how commonly used drugs affect performance monitoring is of great importance, because drug use is often associated with compromised behavioral control. Two of the most commonly used recreational drugs in the western world, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or "ecstasy") and ethanol (alcohol), are also often used in combination. The error-related negativity (ERN), correct-related negativity (CRN), and N2 are electrophysiological indices of performance monitoring. The present study aimed to investigate how ethanol, MDMA, and their co-administration affect performance monitoring as indexed by the electrophysiological correlates. Behavioral and EEG data were obtained from 14 healthy volunteers during execution of a speeded choice-reaction-time task after administration of ethanol, MDMA, and combined ethanol and MDMA, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized crossover design. Ethanol significantly reduced ERN amplitudes, while administration of MDMA did not affect the ERN. Co-administration of MDMA and ethanol did not further impair nor ameliorate the effect of ethanol alone. No drug effects on CRN nor N2 were observed. A decreased ERN following ethanol administration is in line with previous work and offers further support for the impairing effects of alcohol intoxication on performance monitoring. This impairment may underlie maladaptive behavior in people who are under influence. Moreover, these data demonstrate for the first time that MDMA does not affect performance monitoring nor does it interact with ethanol in this process. These findings corroborate the notion that MDMA leaves central executive functions relatively unaffected.

  9. NordicWalking Performance Analysis with an Integrated Monitoring System

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francesco Mocera

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available There is a growing interest in Nordic walking both from the fitness and medical point of views due to its possible therapeutic applications. The proper execution of the technique is an essential requirement to maximize the benefits of this practice. This is the reason why a monitoring system for outdoor Nordic walking activity was developed. Using data obtained from synchronized sensors, it is possible to have a complete overview of the users’ movements. The system described in this paper is able to measure: the pole angle during the pushing phase, the arms cycle frequency and synchronization and the pushing force applied to the ground. Furthermore, data from a GPS module give an image of the environment where the activity session takes place, in terms of the distance, slope, as well as the ground typology. A heart rate sensor is used to monitor the effort of the user through his/her Beats Per Minute (BPM. In this work, the developed monitoring system is presented, explaining how to use the gathered data to obtain the main feedback parameters for Nordic walking performance analysis. The comparison between left and right arm measurements allowed validating the system as a tool for technique evaluation. Finally, a procedure to estimate the peak pushing force from acceleration measurements is proposed.

  10. Electrification Futures Study: End-Use Electric Technology Cost and Performance Projections through 2050

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Jadun, Paige [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); McMillan, Colin [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Steinberg, Daniel [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Muratori, Matteo [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Vimmerstedt, Laura [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Mai, Trieu [National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

    2017-12-01

    This report is the first in a series of Electrification Futures Study (EFS) publications. The EFS is a multiyear research project to explore widespread electrification in the future energy system of the United States. More specifically, the EFS is designed to examine electric technology advancement and adoption for end uses in all major economic sectors as well as electricity consumption growth and load profiles, future power system infrastructure development and operations, and the economic and environmental implications of widespread electrification. Because of the expansive scope and the multiyear duration of the study, research findings and supporting data will be published as a series of reports, with each report released on its own timeframe.

  11. Performance of Front-End Readout System for PHENIX RICH

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Oyama, K.; Hamagaki, H.; Nishimura, S.; Shigaki, K.; Hayano, R.S.; Hibino, M.; Kametani, S.; Kikuchi, J.; Matsumoto, T.; Sakaguchi, T.; Ebisu, K.; Hara, H.; Tanaka, Y.; Ushiroda, T.; Moscone, C.G.; Wintenberg, A.L.; Young, G.R.

    1999-01-01

    A front-end electronics system has been developed for the Ring Imaging Cerenkov (RICH) detector of the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). A high speed custom back-plane with source synchronous bus architecture, a full custom analog ASIC, and board modules with FPGA's and CPLD's were developed for high performance real time data acquisition. The transfer rate of the back-lane has reached 640 MB/s with 128 bits data bus. Total transaction time is estimated to be less than 30 micros per event. The design specifications and test results of the system are presented in this paper

  12. Rectovaginal fistula following colectomy with an end-to-end anastomosis stapler for a colorectal adenocarcinoma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klein, A; Scotti, S; Hidalgo, A; Viateau, V; Fayolle, P; Moissonnier, P

    2006-12-01

    An 11-year-old, female neutered Labrador retriever was presented with a micro-invasive differentiated papillar adenocarcinoma at the colorectal junction. A colorectal end-to-end anastomosis stapler device was used to perform resection and anastomosis using a transanal technique. A rectovaginal fistula was diagnosed two days later. An exploratory laparotomy was conducted and the fistula was identified and closed. Early dehiscence of the colon was also suspected and another colorectal anastomosis was performed using a manual technique. Comparison to a conventional manual technique of intestinal surgery showed that the use of an automatic staple device was quicker and easier. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of a rectovaginal fistula occurring after end-to-end anastomosis stapler colorectal resection-anastomosis in the dog. To minimise the risk of this potential complication associated with the limited surgical visibility, adequate tissue retraction and inspection of the anastomosis site are essential.

  13. Monitoring radiation use in cardiac fluoroscopy imaging procedures

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Stevens, Nathaniel T.; Steiner, Stefan H.; Smith, Ian R.; MacKay, R. Jock

    2011-01-01

    Purpose: Timely identification of systematic changes in radiation delivery of an imaging system can lead to a reduction in risk for the patients involved. However, existing quality assurance programs involving the routine testing of equipment performance using phantoms are limited in their ability to effectively carry out this task. To address this issue, the authors propose the implementation of an ongoing monitoring process that utilizes procedural data to identify unexpected large or small radiation exposures for individual patients, as well as to detect persistent changes in the radiation output of imaging platforms. Methods: Data used in this study were obtained from records routinely collected during procedures performed in the cardiac catheterization imaging facility at St. Andrew's War Memorial Hospital, Brisbane, Australia, over the period January 2008-March 2010. A two stage monitoring process employing individual and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts was developed and used to identify unexpectedly high or low radiation exposure levels for individual patients, as well as detect persistent changes in the radiation output delivered by the imaging systems. To increase sensitivity of the charts, we account for variation in dose area product (DAP) values due to other measured factors (patient weight, fluoroscopy time, and digital acquisition frame count) using multiple linear regression. Control charts are then constructed using the residual values from this linear regression. The proposed monitoring process was evaluated using simulation to model the performance of the process under known conditions. Results: Retrospective application of this technique to actual clinical data identified a number of cases in which the DAP result could be considered unexpected. Most of these, upon review, were attributed to data entry errors. The charts monitoring the overall system radiation output trends demonstrated changes in equipment performance

  14. Monitoring radiation use in cardiac fluoroscopy imaging procedures

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Stevens, Nathaniel T.; Steiner, Stefan H.; Smith, Ian R.; MacKay, R. Jock [Department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences, Business and Industrial Statistics Research Group, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 (Canada); St. Andrew' s Medical Institute, St. Andrew' s War Memorial Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland 4000 (Australia); Department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences, Business and Industrial Statistics Research Group, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 (Canada)

    2011-01-15

    Purpose: Timely identification of systematic changes in radiation delivery of an imaging system can lead to a reduction in risk for the patients involved. However, existing quality assurance programs involving the routine testing of equipment performance using phantoms are limited in their ability to effectively carry out this task. To address this issue, the authors propose the implementation of an ongoing monitoring process that utilizes procedural data to identify unexpected large or small radiation exposures for individual patients, as well as to detect persistent changes in the radiation output of imaging platforms. Methods: Data used in this study were obtained from records routinely collected during procedures performed in the cardiac catheterization imaging facility at St. Andrew's War Memorial Hospital, Brisbane, Australia, over the period January 2008-March 2010. A two stage monitoring process employing individual and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts was developed and used to identify unexpectedly high or low radiation exposure levels for individual patients, as well as detect persistent changes in the radiation output delivered by the imaging systems. To increase sensitivity of the charts, we account for variation in dose area product (DAP) values due to other measured factors (patient weight, fluoroscopy time, and digital acquisition frame count) using multiple linear regression. Control charts are then constructed using the residual values from this linear regression. The proposed monitoring process was evaluated using simulation to model the performance of the process under known conditions. Results: Retrospective application of this technique to actual clinical data identified a number of cases in which the DAP result could be considered unexpected. Most of these, upon review, were attributed to data entry errors. The charts monitoring the overall system radiation output trends demonstrated changes in equipment

  15. A Static Displacement Monitoring System for VLBI Antenna Using Close-Range Photogrammetry

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hyukgil Kim

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available In this study, a static displacement monitoring program was developed to maintain the accurate performance of a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI antenna by monitoring its structural stability. The monitoring program was designed to measure static displacement, among the many displacements of the antenna’s main reflector, which can directly affect its performance. The program measures the position of a monitored object with mm-level accuracy through close-range photogrammetry that uses high-resolution Charge Coupled Device (CCD cameras. The developed program will be used to evaluate the structural soundness of an antenna based on continuous displacement measurements, which can also be used as basic data for repair and reinforcement work in the future.

  16. Principal component analysis-based imaging angle determination for 3D motion monitoring using single-slice on-board imaging.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Ting; Zhang, Miao; Jabbour, Salma; Wang, Hesheng; Barbee, David; Das, Indra J; Yue, Ning

    2018-04-10

    optimized imaging planes, averaged 0.5 mm (range: 0.3-1.0 mm, 95% CI: 0.2-0.8 mm) using an imaging plane perpendicular to the minimal motion component only and averaged 1.3 mm (range: 0.4-2.8 mm, 95% CI: 0.4-2.3 mm) in AP/Lateral orthogonal image pairs. The root-mean-square error of reconstructed displacement was 0.8 mm for optimized imaging planes, 0.6 mm for imaging plane perpendicular to the minimal motion component only, and 1.6 mm for AP/Lateral orthogonal image pairs. When using the optimized imaging planes for motion monitoring, there was no significant absolute amplitude error of the reconstructed motion (P = 0.0988), while AP/Lateral images had significant error (P = 0.0097) with a paired t test. The average surface distance (ASD) between overlaid two-dimensional (2D) tumor segmentation at end-of-inhale and end-of-exhale for all eight patients was 0.6 ± 0.2 mm in optimized imaging planes and 1.4 ± 0.8 mm in AP/Lateral images. The Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) between overlaid 2D tumor segmentation at end-of-inhale and end-of-exhale for all eight patients was 0.96 ± 0.03 in optimized imaging planes and 0.89 ± 0.05 in AP/Lateral images. Both ASD (P = 0.034) and DSC (P = 0.022) were significantly improved in the optimized imaging planes. Motion monitoring using imaging planes determined by the proposed PCA-based framework had significantly improved performance. Single-slice image-based motion tracking can be used for clinical implementations such as MR image-guided radiation therapy (MR-IGRT). © 2018 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

  17. Design and performance Assessment of an Airborne Ice Sounding Radar Front-End

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hernández, Carlos Cilla; Krozer, Viktor; Vidkjær, Jens

    2008-01-01

    The paper describes the design and experimental performance assessment of the RF front-end of an airborne P-band ice sounding radar. The ice sounder design features newly developed components at a centre frequency of 435 MHz, such as, antenna 20% bandwidth at RL ≪ 13 dB, compact high power in...

  18. Guidance on the implementation of a risk based safety performance monitoring system for nuclear power plants

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sewell, R.T.; Kuritzky, A.S.; Khatib-Rahbar, M.

    1997-05-01

    The principal objective of the present study is to review and evaluate existing Performance Indicator (PI) monitoring programs, and to develop and demonstrate an overall PSA-based methodology and framework for the monitoring and use of risk-based PIs and SIs (Safety Indicator), that would enable: Identification of trends and patterns in safety performance at a specific plant and a population of plants; Assessment of the significance of the trends and patterns; Identification of precursors of accident sequences and safety reductions; Identification of the most critical functional areas of concern, especially as they relate to a defense-in-depth safety philosophy; Comparison of safety performance trends at a plant with those at comparable plants; Incorporation of the PIs and SIs into a risk- and performance-based decision process. To support the overall project objective, it is important that information needs and data collection procedures are clearly outlined. Of key significance in this regard is the premise that a performance monitoring system should not be burdened by an excessive number of low-level PIs that may have only a peripheral relationship to safety. Other supporting objectives of the study include: To identify and discuss other issues pertaining to the practical implementation of a safety performance monitoring system (outlining the databases and algorithms needed); and to demonstrate implementation of the preliminary guidance for monitoring and use of the selected set of PIs and SIs, within the proposed framework, via application to the operating history of a NPP having a PSA and readily available event data

  19. A web-based three-tier control and monitoring application for integrated facility management of photovoltaic systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Apostolos Meliones

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available The architecture of a control system can be designed vertically with the distinction between functional levels. We adopt this layered approach for the design and implementation of a network-based control and monitoring application. In this paper we present the design and implementation of a network-based management application for controlling and monitoring the input and output data of remote equipment aiming at performance macro-observation, alarm detection, handling operation failures, installation security, access control, collection and recording of statistical data and provisioning of reports. The main services provided to the user and operating over the public internet and/or mobile network include control, monitoring, notification, reporting and data export. Our proposed system consists of a front-end for field (site-level control and monitoring as well as a service back-end which undertakes to collect, store and manage data from all remote installations. Hierarchical data acquisition methodology and performance macro-observation are according to the IEC 61724 standard. We have successfully used our control and monitoring application for integrated facility management of photovoltaic plant installations; nevertheless it can be easily migrated to other renewable energy generation installations and remote automation applications in general.

  20. DPM PERFORMANCE TESTING USING RASPBERRY PIS

    CERN Document Server

    Regala, M

    2013-01-01

    This is the final report from attending CERN’s Summer Student Programme. The project goal was to do performance testing on the Disk Pool Manager (DPM), a lightweight, reliable, grid-aware storage software used to store and retrieve data produced by CERN’s LHC experiments using the small, low-end ARM powered devices named Raspberry Pis. The idea behind it was to reason if it’s possible to use a cluster of lower-end, under-capable devices to run DPM, and to conclude if it would be more energy efficient than running it on oversized machines, with the same or comparable performance. If this hypothesis was true, the power-hungry machines could be ditched in favour of these small devices, leading to an enormous saving in overall power consumption and hence, overall cost. In this report, I describe what was the initial project goal and intended outcomes, proceeding to explain the underlying technologies used. Afterwards, I’ll explain the setup used, the tests performed, and the conclusions reached. iii

  1. Building an End-to-end System for Long Term Soil Monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Szlavecz, K.; Terzis, A.; Musaloiu-E., R.; Cogan, J.; Szalay, A.; Gray, J.

    2006-05-01

    We have developed and deployed an experimental soil monitoring system in an urban forest. Wireless sensor nodes collect data on soil temperature, soil moisture, air temperature, and light. Data are uploaded into a SQL Server database, where they are calibrated and reorganized into an OLAP data cube. The data are accessible on-line using a web services interface with various visual tools. Our prototype system of ten nodes has been live since Sep 2005, and in 5 months of operation over 6 million measurements have been collected. At a high level, our experiment was a success: we detected variations in soil condition corresponding to topography and external environmental parameters as expected. However, we encountered a number of challenging technical problems: need for low-level programming at multiple levels, calibration across space and time, and cross- reference of measurements with external sources. Based upon the experience with this system we are now deploying 200 mode nodes with close to a thousand sensors spread over multiple sites in the context of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER. www

  2. A framework for cognitive monitoring using computer game interactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jimison, Holly B; Pavel, Misha; Bissell, Payton; McKanna, James

    2007-01-01

    Many countries are faced with a rapidly increasing economic and social challenge of caring for their elderly population. Cognitive issues are at the forefront of the list of concerns. People over the age of 75 are at risk for medically related cognitive decline and confusion, and the early detection of cognitive problems would allow for more effective clinical intervention. However, standard cognitive assessments are not diagnostically sensitive and are performed infrequently. To address these issues, we have developed a set of adaptive computer games to monitor cognitive performance in a home environment. Assessment algorithms for various aspects of cognition are embedded in the games. The monitoring of these metrics allows us to detect within subject trends over time, providing a method for the early detection of cognitive decline. In addition, the real-time information on cognitive state is used to adapt the user interface to the needs of the individual user. In this paper we describe the software architecture and methodology for monitoring cognitive performance using data from natural computer interactions in a home setting.

  3. In-flight spectral performance monitoring of the Airborne Prism Experiment

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Odorico, D' P.; Alberti, E.; Schaepman, M.E.

    2010-01-01

    Spectral performance of an airborne dispersive pushbroom imaging spectrometer cannot be assumed to be stable over a whole flight season given the environmental stresses present during flight. Spectral performance monitoring during flight is commonly accomplished by looking at selected absorption

  4. Feasibility of using fiber optics for monitoring ground water contaminants

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hirschfeld, T.; Deaton, T.; Milanovich, F.; Klainer, S.M.

    1984-06-01

    The report contains the results of the initial feasibility study for a research program undertaken to develop the technology needed to use fiber optics for monitoring groundwater contaminants. The technology appears especially well suited to the requirements of detection monitoring where a few indicator parameters can be measured continuously by sensors placed down small-diameter monitoring wells. Data are generated at a remote, centrally located fluorimeter, connected to the sampling sites by inexpensive optical fibers. The analytical method is laser-induced fluorescence which gives the desired sensitivity. The optrode, a chemical system and/or a mechanical device at the distal end of a fiber optic, furnishes the needed specificity. Various fiber and optrode configurations have been evaluated and their applications to groundwater monitoring are discussed. Feasibility is shown for physical measurements such as temperature, pressure and pH. Chemical detection and quantification of the actinides, inorganic and organic chlorides, sulfates, alcohols, aldehydes, pesticides and tracer materials are presented. Finally, it is shown that the need for smaller diameter wells (as compared to conventional sampling methods), and the ability to make up to 50 unattended in situ measurements, using a reasonably priced centralized fluorometer system connected to the sampling sites by inexpensive optical fibers, results in acceptable economy

  5. Transverse Beam Halo Measurements at High Intensity Neutrino Source (HINS) using Vibrating Wire Monitor

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Chung, M.; Hanna, B.; Scarpine, V.; Shiltsev, V.; Steimel, J.; Artinian, S.; Arutunian, S.

    2015-02-26

    The measurement and control of beam halos will be critical for the applications of future high-intensity hadron linacs. In particular, beam profile monitors require a very high dynamic range when used for the transverse beam halo measurements. In this study, the Vibrating Wire Monitor (VWM) with aperture 60 mm was installed at the High Intensity Neutrino Source (HINS) front-end to measure the transverse beam halo. A vibrating wire is excited at its resonance frequency with the help of a magnetic feedback loop, and the vibrating and sensitive wires are connected through a balanced arm. The sensitive wire is moved into the beam halo region by a stepper motor controlled translational stage. We study the feasibility of the vibrating wire for the transverse beam halo measurements in the low-energy front-end of the proton linac.

  6. Development of a computerized system for performance monitoring and diagnostics in nuclear power plants

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chou, G.H.; Chao, H.J.

    1995-01-01

    An on-line computerized system for thermal performance monitoring and diagnostics has been developed at the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER). It was the product of the ChinShan plant performance Monitoring, Analysis and Diagnostics Expert System (CS-MADES) project sponsored by Taiwan Power Company (TPC). The system can carry out turbine performance monitoring and analysis during normal operation, and yield diagnostic results of component degradation after finding out the missing generation problems. Three subsystems were generated to support the whole system framework. They are Test Data Processing Subsystem (TDPS), On-line Monitoring and Analysis Subsystem (OMAS), and Thermal Performance Diagnostics Expert System (TPDES). Some visible benefits have been gained so far through the prototype system installed at the Chinshan nuclear power station

  7. Monitoring the metering performance of an electronic voltage transformer on-line based on cyber-physics correlation analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Zhu; Li, Hongbin; Tang, Dengping; Hu, Chen; Jiao, Yang

    2017-10-01

    Metering performance is the key parameter of an electronic voltage transformer (EVT), and it requires high accuracy. The conventional off-line calibration method using a standard voltage transformer is not suitable for the key equipment in a smart substation, which needs on-line monitoring. In this article, we propose a method for monitoring the metering performance of an EVT on-line based on cyber-physics correlation analysis. By the electrical and physical properties of a substation running in three-phase symmetry, the principal component analysis method is used to separate the metering deviation caused by the primary fluctuation and the EVT anomaly. The characteristic statistics of the measured data during operation are extracted, and the metering performance of the EVT is evaluated by analyzing the change in statistics. The experimental results show that the method successfully monitors the metering deviation of a Class 0.2 EVT accurately. The method demonstrates the accurate evaluation of on-line monitoring of the metering performance on an EVT without a standard voltage transformer.

  8. Monitoring the metering performance of an electronic voltage transformer on-line based on cyber-physics correlation analysis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhang, Zhu; Li, Hongbin; Hu, Chen; Jiao, Yang; Tang, Dengping

    2017-01-01

    Metering performance is the key parameter of an electronic voltage transformer (EVT), and it requires high accuracy. The conventional off-line calibration method using a standard voltage transformer is not suitable for the key equipment in a smart substation, which needs on-line monitoring. In this article, we propose a method for monitoring the metering performance of an EVT on-line based on cyber-physics correlation analysis. By the electrical and physical properties of a substation running in three-phase symmetry, the principal component analysis method is used to separate the metering deviation caused by the primary fluctuation and the EVT anomaly. The characteristic statistics of the measured data during operation are extracted, and the metering performance of the EVT is evaluated by analyzing the change in statistics. The experimental results show that the method successfully monitors the metering deviation of a Class 0.2 EVT accurately. The method demonstrates the accurate evaluation of on-line monitoring of the metering performance on an EVT without a standard voltage transformer. (paper)

  9. END-OF-USE PRODUCTS IN REVERSE LOGISTICS

    OpenAIRE

    Marta Starostka-Patyk

    2007-01-01

    Reverse logistics is a very useful tool for enterprises which have to deal with end-of-use products. Forward logistics is not able to manage them, because they show up on the beginning of reverse supply chain. That is the reason for growing importance of reverse flows. Reverse logistics is quite new logistics system. This paper presents the idea of reverse logistics and end-of-use products problems.

  10. TU-D-201-00: Use of End-Of-Life Brachytherapy Devices

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2015-01-01

    Brachytherapy devices and software are designed to last for a certain period of time. Due to a number of considerations, such as material factors, wear-and-tear, backwards compatibility, and others, they all reach a date when they are no longer supported by the manufacturer. Most of these products have a limited duration for their use, and the information is provided to the user at time of purchase. Because of issues or concerns determined by the manufacturer, certain products are retired sooner than the anticipated date, and the user is immediately notified. In these situations, the institution is facing some difficult choices: remove these products from the clinic or perform tests and continue their usage. Both of these choices come with a financial burden: replacing the product or assuming a potential medicolegal liability. This session will provide attendees with the knowledge and tools to make better decisions when facing these issues. Learning Objectives: Understand the meaning of “end-of-life or “life expectancy” for brachytherapy devices and software Review items (devices and software) affected by “end-of-life” restrictions Learn how to effectively formulate “end-of-life” policies at your institution Learn about possible implications of “end-of-life” policy Review other possible approaches to “end-of-life” issue

  11. Atmospheric analyzer, carbon monoxide monitor and toluene diisocyanate monitor

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shannon, A. V.

    1977-01-01

    The purpose of the atmospheric analyzer and the carbon monoxide and toluene diisocyanate monitors is to analyze the atmospheric volatiles and to monitor carbon monoxide and toluene diisocyanate levels in the cabin atmosphere of Skylab. The carbon monoxide monitor was used on Skylab 2, 3, and 4 to detect any carbon monoxide levels above 25 ppm. Air samples were taken once each week. The toluene diisocyanate monitor was used only on Skylab 2. The loss of a micrometeoroid shield following the launch of Skylab 1 resulted in overheating of the interior walls of the Orbital Workshop. A potential hazard existed from outgassing of an isocyanate derivative resulting from heat-decomposition of the rigid polyurethane wall insulation. The toluene diisocyanate monitor was used to detect any polymer decomposition. The atmospheric analyzer was used on Skylab 4 because of a suspected leak in the Skylab cabin. An air sample was taken at the beginning, middle, and the end of the mission.

  12. Users’ Perceptions Using Low-End and High-End Mobile-Rendered HMDs: A Comparative Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M.-Carmen Juan

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Currently, it is possible to combine Mobile-Rendered Head-Mounted Displays (MR HMDs with smartphones to have Augmented Reality platforms. The differences between these types of platforms can affect the user’s experiences and satisfaction. This paper presents a study that analyses the user’s perception when using the same Augmented Reality app with two MR HMD (low-end and high-end. Our study evaluates the user’s experience taking into account several factors (control, sensory, distraction, ergonomics and realism. An Augmalpha-lowerented Reality app was developed to carry out the comparison for two MR HMDs. The application had exactly the same visual appearance and functionality for both devices. Forty adults participated in our study. From the results, there were no statistically significant differences for the users’ experience for the different factors when using the two MR HMDs, except for the ergonomic factors in favour of the high-end MR HMD. Even though the scores for the high-end MR HMD were higher in nearly all of the questions, both MR HMDs provided a very satisfying viewing experience with very high scores. The results were independent of gender and age. The participants rated the high-end MR HMD as the best one. Nevertheless, when they were asked which MR HMD they would buy, the participants chose the low-end MR HMD taking into account its price.

  13. A Low Cost System for Testing and Monitoring the Performance of Photovoltaic Module

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    POPESCU, V.

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to develop a low cost system for testing and monitoring the performance of PV modules in outdoor conditions. In order to do this, we improved and adapted another measuring system. This system was developed by us and enables us to ensure the performance of the PV module through testing and monitoring, as well as saving collected data to a database. This database can be accessed through a graphical interface on a laptop connected to the system using serial interface. The error sources of this system are reduced to minimum because of human operators interfering with the system only through the graphical user interface. The Two Diode Model with series and parallel resistances was used to estimate the parameters of the electrical equivalent circuit for the PV module. This model will be simulated in CASPOC 2009. The performances of PV module were obtained in outdoor conditions and were saved to the database. They will be compared with the performances obtained through simulation, to prove the efficiency of the model.

  14. Nitrate supplementation improves physical performance specifically in non-athletes during prolonged open-ended tests: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Campos, Helton O; Drummond, Lucas R; Rodrigues, Quezia T; Machado, Frederico S M; Pires, Washington; Wanner, Samuel P; Coimbra, Cândido C

    2018-03-01

    Nitrate (NO3 -) is an ergogenic nutritional supplement that is widely used to improve physical performance. However, the effectiveness of NO3 - supplementation has not been systematically investigated in individuals with different physical fitness levels. The present study analysed whether different fitness levels (non-athletes v. athletes or classification of performance levels), duration of the test used to measure performance (short v. long duration) and the test protocol (time trials v. open-ended tests v. graded-exercise tests) influence the effects of NO3 - supplementation on performance. This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted and reported according to the guidelines outlined in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) statement. A systematic search of electronic databases, including PubMed, Web of Science, SPORTDiscus and ProQuest, was performed in August 2017. On the basis of the search and inclusion criteria, fifty-four and fifty-three placebo-controlled studies evaluating the effects of NO3 - supplementation on performance in humans were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis, respectively. NO3 - supplementation was ergogenic in non-athletes (mean effect size (ES) 0·25; 95 % CI 0·11, 0·38), particularly in evaluations of performance using long-duration open-ended tests (ES 0·47; 95 % CI 0·23, 0·71). In contrast, NO3 - supplementation did not enhance the performance of athletes (ES 0·04; 95 % CI -0·05, 0·15). After objectively classifying the participants into different performance levels, the frequency of trials showing ergogenic effects in individuals classified at lower levels was higher than that in individuals classified at higher levels. Thus, the present study indicates that dietary NO3 - supplementation improves physical performance in non-athletes, particularly during long-duration open-ended tests.

  15. Plug-and-play monitoring and performance optimization for industrial automation processes

    CERN Document Server

    Luo, Hao

    2017-01-01

    Dr.-Ing. Hao Luo demonstrates the developments of advanced plug-and-play (PnP) process monitoring and control systems for industrial automation processes. With aid of the so-called Youla parameterization, a novel PnP process monitoring and control architecture (PnP-PMCA) with modularized components is proposed. To validate the developments, a case study on an industrial rolling mill benchmark is performed, and the real-time implementation on a laboratory brushless DC motor is presented. Contents PnP Process Monitoring and Control Architecture Real-Time Configuration Techniques for PnP Process Monitoring Real-Time Configuration Techniques for PnP Performance Optimization Benchmark Study and Real-Time Implementation Target Groups Researchers and students of Automation and Control Engineering Practitioners in the area of Industrial and Production Engineering The Author Hao Luo received the Ph.D. degree at the Institute for Automatic Control and Complex Systems (AKS) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, ...

  16. Performance monitoring and error significance in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Endrass, Tanja; Schuermann, Beate; Kaufmann, Christan; Spielberg, Rüdiger; Kniesche, Rainer; Kathmann, Norbert

    2010-05-01

    Performance monitoring has been consistently found to be overactive in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The present study examines whether performance monitoring in OCD is adjusted with error significance. Therefore, errors in a flanker task were followed by neutral (standard condition) or punishment feedbacks (punishment condition). In the standard condition patients had significantly larger error-related negativity (ERN) and correct-related negativity (CRN) ampliudes than controls. But, in the punishment condition groups did not differ in ERN and CRN amplitudes. While healthy controls showed an amplitude enhancement between standard and punishment condition, OCD patients showed no variation. In contrast, group differences were not found for the error positivity (Pe): both groups had larger Pe amplitudes in the punishment condition. Results confirm earlier findings of overactive error monitoring in OCD. The absence of a variation with error significance might indicate that OCD patients are unable to down-regulate their monitoring activity according to external requirements. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  17. Reducing BWR O and M costs through on-line performance monitoring

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jonas, T.; Gross, R.; Logback, F.; Josyula, R.

    1995-01-01

    Competition in the electric power industry has placed significant emphasis on reducing operating and maintenance (O and M) costs at nuclear facilities. Therefore, on-line performance monitoring to locate power losses for boiling water reactor (BWR) plants is creating tremendous interest. In addition, the ability to automate activities such as data collection, analysis, and reporting increases the efficiency of plant engineers and gives them more time to concentrate on solving plant efficiency problems. This capability is now available with a unique software product called GEBOPS. GE Nuclear Energy, in conjunction with Joint Venture partner Black and Veatch, has undertaken development of the General Electric/Black and Veatch On-line Performance System (GEBOPS), an on-line performance monitoring system for BWR plants. The experience and expertise of GE Nuclear Energy with BWR plants, coupled with the proven on-line monitoring software development experience and capability of Black and Veatch, provide the foundation for a unique product which addresses the needs of today's BWR plants

  18. Comparison of 3MP medical-grade to 1MP office grade LCD monitors in mammographic diagnostic and perceptual performance

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ong, Aaron; Tan, Shu.; Gledhill, Samuel; Hennessy, Oliver; Lui, Belinda; Lee, Alan; Lemish, Wayne; Styles, Colin; Pun, Emma; Padmanabhan, Meenakshi; Pitman, Alexander G.; Tauro, Paul; Waugh, Paul

    2011-01-01

    Full text: Picture archiving and communication systems images designed to be viewed on high-resolution medical-grade monitors are routinely viewed on office-grade monitors on the wards or at home. This study aimed to determine whether a statistically significant difference in diagnostic (cancer detection) and perceptual (microcalcification detection) performance exists between 3MP grade and 1MP office-grade monitors. 3MP Dome medical-grade liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors (Planar, Beaverton, OR, USA) were compared to 1MP Dell office-grade LCD monitors (Dell Inc, Round Rock, TX, USA). Eight radiologists (reader experi ence 8-30 years) read the same set of 100 mammograms (23/100 with proven cancers and 52/100 with microcalcifications) presented in random order on three occasions separated by two time intervals of 12 weeks. Reads 1 and 3 utilised 3MP monitors and formed the baseline read. Read 2 utilised 1MP monitors and constituted the experimental read. Reading conditions were standardised. Readers were aware of which monitors they were using. Mul tivariate logistic regression analysis (to account for reader variability and monitor impact) was performed to assess for statistical significance. At a = 5%, confidence intervals analysis comparing the measured parameters between 1MP to 3MP monitors demonstrated no statistically significant difference in diagnostic and perceptual performance for the reader group. In cancer detection (the diagnostic task), reader accuracy remained high irrespective of monitor type. Regression analysis comparing performance with 1MP against 3MP monitors found P values of 0.693 and 0.324 for diagnostic and perceptual performance, respectively. There were no statistically and clinically significant differences between 3MP and 1MP monitors in mammographic diagnostic and perceptual performance. Comparable performance may be due to compensatory behav iour by readers.

  19. Vibration-based monitoring for performance evaluation of flexible civil structures in Japan

    Science.gov (United States)

    FUJINO, Yozo

    2018-01-01

    The vibration-based monitoring of flexible civil structures and performance evaluation from this monitoring are reviewed, with an emphasis on research and practice in Japan and the author’s experiences. Some new findings and unexpected vibrations from the monitoring of real bridges and buildings are reported to emphasize the importance of monitoring. Future developments and applications of vibration-based monitoring to civil infrastructure management are also described. Many examples are taken from the author’s past 30 years’ experience of research on bridge dynamics. PMID:29434082

  20. Standardizing an End-to-end Accounting Service

    Science.gov (United States)

    Greenberg, Edward; Kazz, Greg

    2006-01-01

    Currently there are no space system standards available for space agencies to accomplish end-to-end accounting. Such a standard does not exist for spacecraft operations nor for tracing the relationship between the mission planning activities, the command sequences designed to perform those activities, the commands formulated to initiate those activities and the mission data and specifically the mission data products created by those activities. In order for space agencies to cross-support one another for data accountability/data tracing and for inter agency spacecraft to interoperate with each other, an international CCSDS standard for end-to-end data accountability/tracing needs to be developed. We will first describe the end-to-end accounting service model and functionality that supports the service. This model will describe how science plans that are ultimately transformed into commands can be associated with the telemetry products generated as a result of their execution. Moreover, the interaction between end-to-end accounting and service management will be explored. Finally, we will show how the standard end-to-end accounting service can be applied to a real life flight project i.e., the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project.

  1. Numerical Study on the Structural Performance of Steel Beams with Slant End-plate Connections

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Farshad Zahmatkesh

    Full Text Available Abstract Thermal effects can be one of the most harmful conditions that any steel structure should expect throughout its service life. To counteract this effect, a new beam, with a capability to dissipate thermally induced axial force by slanting of end-plate connection at both ends, is proposed. The beam was examined in terms of its elastic mechanical behavior under symmetric transverse load in presence of an elevated temperature by means of direct stiffness finite element model. The performance of such connection is defined under two resisting mechanisms; by friction force dissipation between faces of slant connection and by small upward crawling on slant plane. The presented numerical method is relatively easy and useful to evaluate the behavior of the proposed beam of various dimensions at different temperatures. Its applicability is evident through satisfactory results verification with those from experimental, analytical and commercially available finite element software. Based on the good agreement between theoretical and experimental methods, a series of design curves were developed as a safe-practical range for the slant end-plate connections which are depend on the conditions of the connection.

  2. Use of Flowsheet Monitoring to Perform Environmental Evaluation of Chemical Process Flowsheets

    Science.gov (United States)

    Flowsheet monitoring interfaces have been proposed to the Cape-Open Laboratories Network to enable development of applications that access to multiple parts of the flowsheet or its thermodynamic models, without interfering with the flowsheet itself. These flowsheet monitoring app...

  3. Network performance of a wireless sensor network for temperature monitoring in vineyards

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Liscano, Ramiro; Jacoub, John Khalil; Dersingh, Anand

    2011-01-01

    Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are an emerging technology which can be used for outdoor environmental monitoring. This paper presents challenges that arose from the development and deployment of a WSN for environmental monitoring as well as network performance analysis of this network. Different...... components in our sensor network architecture are presented like the physical nodes, the sensor node code, and two messaging protocols; one for collecting sensor and network values and the other for sensor node commands. An information model for sensor nodes to support plug-and-play capabilities in sensor...... networks is also presented....

  4. Integrated System for Performance Monitoring of ATLAS TDAQ Network

    CERN Document Server

    Savu, D; The ATLAS collaboration; Martin, B; Sjoen, R; Batraneanu, S; Stancu, S

    2010-01-01

    The ATLAS TDAQ Network consists of three separate networks spanning four levels of the experimental building. Over 200 edge switches and 5 multi-blade chassis routers are used to interconnect 2000 processors, adding up to more than 7000 high speed interfaces. In order to substantially speed-up ad-hoc and post mortem analysis, a scalable, yet flexible, integrated system for monitoring both network statistics and environmental conditions, processor parameters and data taking characteristics was required. For successful up-to-the-minute monitoring, information from many SNMP compliant devices, independent databases and custom APIs was gathered, stored and displayed in an optimal way. Easy navigation and compact aggregation of multiple data sources were the main requirements; characteristics not found in any of the tested products, either open-source or commercial. This paper describes how performance, scalability and display issues were addressed and what challenges the project faced during development and deplo...

  5. Performance Evaluation of an Intelligent Sensor Platform for Radiation Monitoring Applications

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Nakazawa, Dante; Herman, Cedric; Russ, Bill; Huckins, Robert [Canberra Industries, 800 Research Parkway, Meriden, CT 06450 (United States)

    2015-07-01

    Accurate, rugged, and reliable radiation detection systems are important for area and environmental monitoring applications. The desire for spectroscopic capability has increased in monitoring aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle to provide fast characterization of the radiation profile of a situation, such as the planned or unplanned release of material. The reduction or elimination of having to conduct sampling for laboratory analysis can result in significant cost savings for an industry, government agency, or regulatory body. A new system, comprised of a NaI:Tl scintillator and a G-M tube, has been designed and tested, taking into account the following end-user requirements: ease-of-use, capability to network and supervise multiple units, compact form factor, low power consumption, versatility, and stability. The detector sizes were selected to accommodate a dose rate up to 1 Sv/hr. Several algorithms and analysis routines have been developed to incorporate these key needs without sacrificing on accuracy, dynamic range, nuclide identification, and sensitivity. This presentation will introduce the major hardware and software components of the platform, as well as the user interface and data analysis workflow. Key features of the hardware include an environmentally robust housing, low power signal processing electronics, patented LED-based gain stabilization, and an embedded processor for unattended instrument management and data analysis. New and improved algorithms for determining scintillator gamma dose rates, total integrated dose, and nuclide identification will be introduced. The two detector elements were modeled with MCNP and validated experimentally. The results of the radiological testing shall be presented including energy resolution, throughput, dose response, and minimum detectable activities. The dose response has been evaluated in simulations and with measurements to ensure accurate response with respect to energy spectrum of the dose field and

  6. Sleep/wake scheduling scheme for minimizing end-to-end delay in multi-hop wireless sensor networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Madani Sajjad

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract We present a sleep/wake schedule protocol for minimizing end-to-end delay for event driven multi-hop wireless sensor networks. In contrast to generic sleep/wake scheduling schemes, our proposed algorithm performs scheduling that is dependent on traffic loads. Nodes adapt their sleep/wake schedule based on traffic loads in response to three important factors, (a the distance of the node from the sink node, (b the importance of the node's location from connectivity's perspective, and (c if the node is in the proximity where an event occurs. Using these heuristics, the proposed scheme reduces end-to-end delay and maximizes the throughput by minimizing the congestion at nodes having heavy traffic load. Simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol, by comparing its performance with S-MAC and Anycast protocols. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol has significantly reduced the end-to-end delay, as well as has improved the other QoS parameters, like average energy per packet, average delay, packet loss ratio, throughput, and coverage lifetime.

  7. Optical performance monitoring in high-speed optical fiber communication systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Changyuan; Yang, Jing; Hu, Junhao; Zhang, Banghong

    2011-11-01

    Optical performance monitoring (OPM) becomes an attractive topic as the rapid growth of data rate in optical communication networks. It provides improved operation of the high capacity optical transmission systems. Among the various impairments, chromatic dispersion (CD) is one of major factors limiting the transmission distance in high-speed communication systems. Polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) also becomes a degrading effect in the system with data rate larger than 40 Gbit/s. In this paper, we summarize several CD and PMD monitoring methods based on RF spectrum analysis and delay-tap sampling. By using a narrow band fiber Bragg grating (FBG) notch filter, centered at 10 GHz away from the optical carrier, 10-GHz RF power can be used as a CD-insensitive PMD monitoring signal. By taking the 10-GHz RF power ratio of non-filtered and filtered signal, PMD-insensitive CD monitoring can be achieved. If the FBG notch filter is placed at optical carrier, the RF clock power ratio between non-filtered and filtered signal is also a PMDinsensitive CD monitoring parameter, which has larger RF power dynamic range and better measurement resolution. Both simulation and experiment results show that the proposed methods are efficient on measuring CD and PMD values in 57-Gbit/s D8PSK systems. Delay-tap sampling is another efficient method of measuring residual CD. Amplitude ratio of asynchronous delay-tap sampling plot decreases with CD monotonously, and the amplitude ratio can be obtained by using low bandwidth balanced receiver. The simulated results show that our method is efficient on residual CD measurement in 50-Gbit/s 50% RZ DQPSK systems with a 12-GHz balanced receiver. Since no modification on the transmitter or receiver is required, the proposed scheme is simple and cost effective.

  8. Monitoring individual and joint action outcomes in duet music performance

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Loehr, Janeen; Kourtis, Dimitrios; Vesper, Cordula

    2013-01-01

    We investigated whether people monitor the outcomes of their own and their partners’ individual actions as well as the outcome of their combined actions when performing joint actions together. Pairs of pianists memorized both parts of a piano duet. Each pianist then performed one part while their...

  9. Characterization and performance of the ASIC (CITIROC) front-end of the ASTRI camera

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Impiombato, D., E-mail: Domenico.Impiombato@iasf-palermo.inaf.it [INAF, Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica cosmica di Palermo, via U. La Malfa 153, I-90146 Palermo (Italy); Giarrusso, S., E-mail: Giarrusso@iasf-palermo.inaf.it [INAF, Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica cosmica di Palermo, via U. La Malfa 153, I-90146 Palermo (Italy); Mineo, T., E-mail: Mineo@iasf-palermo.inaf.it [INAF, Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica cosmica di Palermo, via U. La Malfa 153, I-90146 Palermo (Italy); Catalano, O., E-mail: Catalano@iasf-palermo.inaf.it [INAF, Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica cosmica di Palermo, via U. La Malfa 153, I-90146 Palermo (Italy); Gargano, C.; La Rosa, G.; Russo, F.; Sottile, G. [INAF, Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica cosmica di Palermo, via U. La Malfa 153, I-90146 Palermo (Italy); Billotta, S.; Bonanno, G.; Garozzo, S.; Grillo, A.; Marano, D.; Romeo, G. [INAF, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, via S. Sofia 78, I-95123 Catania (Italy)

    2015-09-11

    The Cherenkov Imaging Telescope Integrated Read Out Chip, CITIROC, is a chip adopted as the front-end of the camera at the focal plane of the imaging Cherenkov ASTRI dual-mirror small size telescope (ASTRI SST-2M) prototype. This paper presents the results of the measurements performed to characterize CITIROC tailored for the ASTRI SST-2M focal plane requirements. In particular, we investigated the trigger linearity and efficiency, as a function of the pulse amplitude. Moreover, we tested its response by performing a set of measurements using a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) in dark conditions and under light pulse illumination. The CITIROC output signal is found to vary linearly as a function of the input pulse amplitude. Our results show that it is suitable for the ASTRI SST-2M camera.

  10. Characterization and performance of the ASIC (CITIROC) front-end of the ASTRI camera

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Impiombato, D.; Giarrusso, S.; Mineo, T.; Catalano, O.; Gargano, C.; La Rosa, G.; Russo, F.; Sottile, G.; Billotta, S.; Bonanno, G.; Garozzo, S.; Grillo, A.; Marano, D.; Romeo, G.

    2015-01-01

    The Cherenkov Imaging Telescope Integrated Read Out Chip, CITIROC, is a chip adopted as the front-end of the camera at the focal plane of the imaging Cherenkov ASTRI dual-mirror small size telescope (ASTRI SST-2M) prototype. This paper presents the results of the measurements performed to characterize CITIROC tailored for the ASTRI SST-2M focal plane requirements. In particular, we investigated the trigger linearity and efficiency, as a function of the pulse amplitude. Moreover, we tested its response by performing a set of measurements using a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) in dark conditions and under light pulse illumination. The CITIROC output signal is found to vary linearly as a function of the input pulse amplitude. Our results show that it is suitable for the ASTRI SST-2M camera

  11. USING CONDITION MONITORING TO PREDICT REMAINING LIFE OF ELECTRIC CABLES

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    LOFARO, R.; SOO, P.; VILLARAN, M.; GROVE, E.

    2001-01-01

    Electric cables are passive components used extensively throughout nuclear power stations to perform numerous safety and non-safety functions. It is known that the polymers commonly used to insulate the conductors on these cables can degrade with time; the rate of degradation being dependent on the severity of the conditions in which the cables operate. Cables do not receive routine maintenance and, since it can be very costly, they are not replaced on a regular basis. Therefore, to ensure their continued functional performance, it would be beneficial if condition monitoring techniques could be used to estimate the remaining useful life of these components. A great deal of research has been performed on various condition monitoring techniques for use on electric cables. In a research program sponsored by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, several promising techniques were evaluated and found to provide trendable information on the condition of low-voltage electric cables. These techniques may be useful for predicting remaining life if well defined limiting values for the aging properties being measured can be determined. However, each technique has advantages and limitations that must be addressed in order to use it effectively, and the necessary limiting values are not always easy to obtain. This paper discusses how condition monitoring measurements can be used to predict the remaining useful life of electric cables. The attributes of an appropriate condition monitoring technique are presented, and the process to be used in estimating the remaining useful life of a cable is discussed along with the difficulties that must be addressed

  12. Cluster analysis of received constellations for optical performance monitoring

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Weerdenburg, J.J.A.; van Uden, R.; Sillekens, E.; de Waardt, H.; Koonen, A.M.J.; Okonkwo, C.

    2016-01-01

    Performance monitoring based on centroid clustering to investigate constellation generation offsets. The tool allows flexibility in constellation generation tolerances by forwarding centroids to the demapper. The relation of fibre nonlinearities and singular value decomposition of intra-cluster

  13. Fodder Biomass Monitoring in Sahelian Rangelands Using Phenological Metrics from FAPAR Time Series

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Abdoul Aziz Diouf

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Timely monitoring of plant biomass is critical for the management of forage resources in Sahelian rangelands. The estimation of annual biomass production in the Sahel is based on a simple relationship between satellite annual Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI and in situ biomass data. This study proposes a new methodology using multi-linear models between phenological metrics from the SPOT-VEGETATION time series of Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR and in situ biomass. A model with three variables—large seasonal integral (LINTG, length of growing season, and end of season decreasing rate—performed best (MAE = 605 kg·DM/ha; R2 = 0.68 across Sahelian ecosystems in Senegal (data for the period 1999–2013. A model with annual maximum (PEAK and start date of season showed similar performances (MAE = 625 kg·DM/ha; R2 = 0.64, allowing a timely estimation of forage availability. The subdivision of the study area in ecoregions increased overall accuracy (MAE = 489.21 kg·DM/ha; R2 = 0.77, indicating that a relation between metrics and ecosystem properties exists. LINTG was the main explanatory variable for woody rangelands with high leaf biomass, whereas for areas dominated by herbaceous vegetation, it was the PEAK metric. The proposed approach outperformed the established biomass NDVI-based product (MAE = 818 kg·DM/ha and R2 = 0.51 and should improve the operational monitoring of forage resources in Sahelian rangelands.

  14. Enabling Technology for Monitoring & Predicting Gas Turbine Health & Performance in IGCC Powerplants

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kenneth A. Yackly

    2005-12-01

    The ''Enabling & Information Technology To Increase RAM for Advanced Powerplants'' program, by DOE request, was re-directed, de-scoped to two tasks, shortened to a 2-year period of performance, and refocused to develop, validate and accelerate the commercial use of enabling materials technologies and sensors for coal/IGCC powerplants. The new program was re-titled ''Enabling Technology for Monitoring & Predicting Gas Turbine Health & Performance in IGCC Powerplants''. This final report summarizes the work accomplished from March 1, 2003 to March 31, 2004 on the four original tasks, and the work accomplished from April 1, 2004 to July 30, 2005 on the two re-directed tasks. The program Tasks are summarized below: Task 1--IGCC Environmental Impact on high Temperature Materials: The first task was refocused to address IGCC environmental impacts on high temperature materials used in gas turbines. This task screened material performance and quantified the effects of high temperature erosion and corrosion of hot gas path materials in coal/IGCC applications. The materials of interest included those in current service as well as advanced, high-performance alloys and coatings. Task 2--Material In-Service Health Monitoring: The second task was reduced in scope to demonstrate new technologies to determine the inservice health of advanced technology coal/IGCC powerplants. The task focused on two critical sensing needs for advanced coal/IGCC gas turbines: (1) Fuel Quality Sensor to rapidly determine the fuel heating value for more precise control of the gas turbine, and detection of fuel impurities that could lead to rapid component degradation. (2) Infra-Red Pyrometer to continuously measure the temperature of gas turbine buckets, nozzles, and combustor hardware. Task 3--Advanced Methods for Combustion Monitoring and Control: The third task was originally to develop and validate advanced monitoring and control methods for coal/IGCC gas

  15. Internal monitoring of GBTx emulator using IPbus for CBM experiment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mandal, Swagata; Zabolotny, Wojciech; Sau, Suman; Chkrabarti, Amlan; Saini, Jogender; Chattopadhyay, Subhasis; Pal, Sushanta Kumar

    2015-09-01

    The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment is a part of the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Darmstadt at GSI. In CBM experiment a precisely time synchronized fault tolerant self-triggered electronics is required for Data Acquisition (DAQ) system in CBM experiments which can support high data rate (up to several TB/s). As a part of the implementation of the DAQ system of Muon Chamber (MUCH) which is one of the important detectors in CBM experiment, a FPGA based Gigabit Transceiver (GBTx) emulator is implemented. Readout chain for MUCH consists of XYTER chips (Front end electronics) which will be directly connected to detector, GBTx emulator, Data Processing Board (DPB) and First level event selector board (FLIB) with backend software interface. GBTx emulator will be connected with the XYTER emulator through LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signalling) line in the front end and in the back end it is connected with DPB through 4.8 Gbps optical link. IPBus over Ethernet is used for internal monitoring of the registers within the GBTx. In IPbus implementation User Datagram Protocol (UDP) stack is used in transport layer of OSI model so that GBTx can be controlled remotely. A Python script is used at computer side to drive IPbus controller.

  16. Processing of the WLCG monitoring data using NoSQL

    Science.gov (United States)

    Andreeva, J.; Beche, A.; Belov, S.; Dzhunov, I.; Kadochnikov, I.; Karavakis, E.; Saiz, P.; Schovancova, J.; Tuckett, D.

    2014-06-01

    The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) today includes more than 150 computing centres where more than 2 million jobs are being executed daily and petabytes of data are transferred between sites. Monitoring the computing activities of the LHC experiments, over such a huge heterogeneous infrastructure, is extremely demanding in terms of computation, performance and reliability. Furthermore, the generated monitoring flow is constantly increasing, which represents another challenge for the monitoring systems. While existing solutions are traditionally based on Oracle for data storage and processing, recent developments evaluate NoSQL for processing large-scale monitoring datasets. NoSQL databases are getting increasingly popular for processing datasets at the terabyte and petabyte scale using commodity hardware. In this contribution, the integration of NoSQL data processing in the Experiment Dashboard framework is described along with first experiences of using this technology for monitoring the LHC computing activities.

  17. Processing of the WLCG monitoring data using NoSQL

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Andreeva, J; Beche, A; Karavakis, E; Saiz, P; Tuckett, D; Belov, S; Kadochnikov, I; Schovancova, J; Dzhunov, I

    2014-01-01

    The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) today includes more than 150 computing centres where more than 2 million jobs are being executed daily and petabytes of data are transferred between sites. Monitoring the computing activities of the LHC experiments, over such a huge heterogeneous infrastructure, is extremely demanding in terms of computation, performance and reliability. Furthermore, the generated monitoring flow is constantly increasing, which represents another challenge for the monitoring systems. While existing solutions are traditionally based on Oracle for data storage and processing, recent developments evaluate NoSQL for processing large-scale monitoring datasets. NoSQL databases are getting increasingly popular for processing datasets at the terabyte and petabyte scale using commodity hardware. In this contribution, the integration of NoSQL data processing in the Experiment Dashboard framework is described along with first experiences of using this technology for monitoring the LHC computing activities.

  18. End-use matching for solar industrial process heat. Final report

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Brown, K.C.; Hooker, D.W.; Rabl, A.; Stadjuhar, S.A.; West, R.E.

    1980-01-01

    Because of the large energy demand of industry (37% of US demand) and the wide spectrum of temperatures at which heat is required, the industrial sector appears to be very suitable for the matching of solar thermal technology with industrial process heat (IPH) requirements. A methodology for end-use matching has been devised, complete with required data bases and an evaluation program PROSYS/ECONMAT. Six cities in the United States were selected for an analysis of solar applications to IPH. Typical process heat requirements for 70% of the industrial plants in each city were identified and evaluated in conjunction with meteorological and economic data for each site to determine lowest-cost solar systems for each application. The flexibility and scope of PROSYS/ECONMAT is shown in a variety of sensitivity studies that expand the results of the six-city analysis. Case studies of two industrial plants were performed to evaluate the end-use matching procedure; these results are reported.

  19. 32 CFR 34.41 - Monitoring and reporting program and financial performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... 32 National Defense 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Monitoring and reporting program and financial performance. 34.41 Section 34.41 National Defense Department of Defense OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DoD... ORGANIZATIONS Post-award Requirements Reports and Records § 34.41 Monitoring and reporting program and financial...

  20. Performance of R-GMA based grid job monitoring system for CMS data production

    CERN Document Server

    Byrom, Robert; Fisher, Steve M; Grandi, Claudio; Hobson, Peter R; Kyberd, Paul; MacEvoy, Barry; Nebrensky, Jindrich Josef; Tallini, Hugh; Traylen, Stephen

    2004-01-01

    High Energy Physics experiments, such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, have large-scale data processing requirements, with stored data accumulating at a rate of 1 Gbyte/s. This load comfortably exceeds any previous processing requirements and we believe it may be most efficiently satisfied through Grid computing. Management of large Monte Carlo productions (~3000 jobs) or data analyses and the quality assurance of the results requires careful monitoring and bookkeeping, and an important requirement when using the Grid is the ability to monitor transparently the large number of jobs that are being executed simultaneously at multiple remote sites. R-GMA is a monitoring and information management service for distributed resources based on the Grid Monitoring Architecture of the Global Grid Forum. We have previously developed a system allowing us to test its performance under a heavy load while using few real Grid resources. We present the latest results on this system and comp...

  1. A Strategy for Accomplishing Human-Performance Monitoring of Constructing NPPs

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sung, Chanho; Jung, Yeonsub [KHNP Central Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

    2015-10-15

    The main purpose of HPM(Human performance monitoring) is that no significant safety degradation occurs due to changes in design, procedures, training, or staffing during the plant operation. Accordingly, the strategy for accomplishing HPM should be to maintain the acceptable level of human performance for safety operation. This paper presents a strategy to fulfill HPM effectively for constructing NPPs in Korea. Activities for HPM in constructing plants need to be divided into two large parts on the basis of the fuel loading, which could be a good strategy to accomplish HPM effectively. That is, the activities such as making HPM plan and developing its indexes are performed before the fuel loading, while the activities of maintaining acceptable HP levels are conducted after the fuel loading. This HPM strategy includes not only maintaining the criteria of human performance established during ISV, but also improving human performance through existing activities during the plant operation. Constructing plants will also make actively use of the existing programs for enhancing human performance.

  2. 40 CFR 63.489 - Batch front-end process vents-monitoring equipment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... heater of less than 44 megawatts design heat input capacity is used, a temperature monitoring device in... operator may determine gas stream flow using the design blower capacity, with appropriate adjustments for... are required, each equipped with a continuous recorder. (6) Where a condenser is used, a condenser...

  3. Wireless Infrastructure for Performing Monitoring, Diagnostics, and Control HVAC and Other Energy-Using Systems in Small Commercial Buildings

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Patrick O' Neill

    2009-06-30

    This project focused on developing a low-cost wireless infrastructure for monitoring, diagnosing, and controlling building systems and equipment. End users receive information via the Internet and need only a web browser and Internet connection. The system used wireless communications for: (1) collecting data centrally on site from many wireless sensors installed on building equipment, (2) transmitting control signals to actuators and (3) transmitting data to an offsite network operations center where it is processed and made available to clients on the Web (see Figure 1). Although this wireless infrastructure can be applied to any building system, it was tested on two representative applications: (1) monitoring and diagnostics for packaged rooftop HVAC units used widely on small commercial buildings and (2) continuous diagnosis and control of scheduling errors such as lights and equipment left on during unoccupied hours. This project developed a generic infrastructure for performance monitoring, diagnostics, and control, applicable to a broad range of building systems and equipment, but targeted specifically to small to medium commercial buildings (an underserved market segment). The proposed solution is based on two wireless technologies. The first, wireless telemetry, is used for cell phones and paging and is reliable and widely available. This risk proved to be easily managed during the project. The second technology is on-site wireless communication for acquiring data from sensors and transmitting control signals. The technology must enable communication with many nodes, overcome physical obstructions, operate in environments with other electrical equipment, support operation with on-board power (instead of line power) for some applications, operate at low transmission power in license-free radio bands, and be low cost. We proposed wireless mesh networking to meet these needs. This technology is relatively new and has been applied only in research and tests

  4. Monitoring gradient profile on-line in micro- and nano-high performance liquid chromatography using conductivity detection.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Min; Chen, Apeng; Lu, Joann J; Cao, Chengxi; Liu, Shaorong

    2016-08-19

    In micro- or nano-flow high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), flow-splitters and gradient elutions are commonly used for reverse phase HPLC separations. When a flow splitter was used at a high split-ratio (e.g., 1000:1 or higher), the actual gradient may deviate away from the programmed gradient. Sometimes, mobile phase concentrations can deviate by as much as 5%. In this work, we noticed that the conductivity (σ) of a gradient decreased with the increasing organic-solvent fraction (φ). Based on the relationship between σ and φ, a method was developed for monitoring gradient profile on-line to record any deviations in these HPLC systems. The conductivity could be measured by a traditional conductivity detector or a capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detector (C(4)D). The method was applied for assessing the performance of an electroosmotic pump (EOP) based nano-HPLC. We also observed that σ value of the gradient changed with system pressure; a=0.0175ΔP (R(2)=0.964), where a is the percentage of the conductivity increase and ΔP is the system pressure in bar. This effect was also investigated. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  5. Use of remote monitoring

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Fournel, E; Gouilloux, C

    1977-01-01

    Paper traces the development of remote monitoring devices, since their first appearance for safety purposes. Discusses their uses in coal mines: working and safety (definitions); sources and channels of information (transmission of information by automatic or verbal means); mine control stations; duties and responsibilities of persons in charge. Examines the contribution made by remote monitoring to management in production sector. Gives examples of assistance given to production management showing a very advantageous result on balance, by their use. The use of computers in real time and in batched mode is compared. Discusses their use in monitoring mine atmosphere. Very favorable results have already been obtained in France and abroad. The broadening scope and future of remote monitoring is considered.

  6. Fiber Bragg Grating-Based Performance Monitoring of Piles Fiber in a Geotechnical Centrifugal Model Test

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaolin Weng

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available In centrifugal tests, conventional sensors can hardly capture the performance of reinforcement in small-scale models. However, recent advances in fiber optic sensing technologies enable the accurate and reliable monitoring of strain and temperature in laboratory geotechnical tests. This paper outlines a centrifugal model test, performed using a 60 g ton geocentrifuge, to investigate the performance of pipe piles used to reinforce the loess foundation below a widened embankment. Prior to the test, quasidistributed fiber Bragg grating (FBG strain sensors were attached to the surface of the pipe piles to measure the lateral friction resistance in real time. Via the centrifuge actuator, the driving of pipe piles was simulated. During testing, the variations of skin friction distribution along the pipe piles were measured automatically using an optical fiber interrogator. This paper represents the presentation and detailed analysis of monitoring results. Herein, we verify the reliability of the fiber optic sensors in monitoring the model piles without affecting the integrity of the centrifugal model. This paper, furthermore, shows that lateral friction resistance developed in stages with the pipe piles being pressed in and that this sometimes may become negative.

  7. Congestion Quantification Using the National Performance Management Research Data Set

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Virginia P. Sisiopiku

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Monitoring of transportation system performance is a key element of any transportation operation and planning strategy. Estimation of dependable performance measures relies on analysis of large amounts of traffic data, which are often expensive and difficult to gather. National databases can assist in this regard, but challenges still remain with respect to data management, accuracy, storage, and use for performance monitoring. In an effort to address such challenges, this paper showcases a process that utilizes the National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS for generating performance measures for congestion monitoring applications in the Birmingham region. The capabilities of the relational database management system (RDBMS are employed to manage the large amounts of NPMRDS data. Powerful visual maps are developed using GIS software and used to illustrate congestion location, extent and severity. Travel time reliability indices are calculated and utilized to quantify congestion, and congestion intensity measures are developed and employed to rank and prioritize congested segments in the study area. The process for managing and using big traffic data described in the Birmingham case study is a great example that can be replicated by small and mid-size Metropolitan Planning Organizations to generate performance-based measures and monitor congestion in their jurisdictions.

  8. Design of the AGS Booster Beam Position Monitor electronics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ciardullo, D.J.; Smith, G.A.; Beadle, E.R.

    1991-01-01

    The operational requirements of the AGS Booster Beam Position Monitor system necessitate the use of electronics with wide dynamic range and broad instantaneous bandwidth. Bunch synchronization is provided by a remote timing sequencer coupled to the local ring electronics via digital fiber-optic links. The Sequencer and local ring circuitry work together to provide single turn trajectory or average orbit and intensity information, integrated over 1 to 225 bunches. Test capabilities are built in for the purpose of enhancing BPM system accuracy. This paper describes the design of the Booster Beam Position Monitor electronics, and presents performance details of the front end processing, acquisition and timing circuitry

  9. A novel end-to-end classifier using domain transferred deep convolutional neural networks for biomedical images.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pang, Shuchao; Yu, Zhezhou; Orgun, Mehmet A

    2017-03-01

    Highly accurate classification of biomedical images is an essential task in the clinical diagnosis of numerous medical diseases identified from those images. Traditional image classification methods combined with hand-crafted image feature descriptors and various classifiers are not able to effectively improve the accuracy rate and meet the high requirements of classification of biomedical images. The same also holds true for artificial neural network models directly trained with limited biomedical images used as training data or directly used as a black box to extract the deep features based on another distant dataset. In this study, we propose a highly reliable and accurate end-to-end classifier for all kinds of biomedical images via deep learning and transfer learning. We first apply domain transferred deep convolutional neural network for building a deep model; and then develop an overall deep learning architecture based on the raw pixels of original biomedical images using supervised training. In our model, we do not need the manual design of the feature space, seek an effective feature vector classifier or segment specific detection object and image patches, which are the main technological difficulties in the adoption of traditional image classification methods. Moreover, we do not need to be concerned with whether there are large training sets of annotated biomedical images, affordable parallel computing resources featuring GPUs or long times to wait for training a perfect deep model, which are the main problems to train deep neural networks for biomedical image classification as observed in recent works. With the utilization of a simple data augmentation method and fast convergence speed, our algorithm can achieve the best accuracy rate and outstanding classification ability for biomedical images. We have evaluated our classifier on several well-known public biomedical datasets and compared it with several state-of-the-art approaches. We propose a robust

  10. A Framework for Monitoring Electricity theft in Zimbabwe using Mobile Technologies

    OpenAIRE

    Samuel Musungwini

    2016-01-01

    The capabilities of mobile technology paradigm have indicated that almost every infrastructure, system or device has the potential to capture data and report it to the back-end system in real-time. Utilities need to deliver operational analytics by knowing what is happening across their entire infrastructure. The purpose of the study was to develop a framework for mobile technologies in monitoring electricity theft in Zimbabwe. Using a qualitative research in conjunction with the design scien...

  11. Silent Atrial Fibrillation in Elderly Pacemaker Users: A Randomized Trial Using Home Monitoring.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lima, Ceb; Martinelli, M; Peixoto, G L; Siqueira, S F; Wajngarten, Maurício; Silva, Rodrigo Tavares; Costa, Roberto; Filho, Roberto; Ramires, José Antônio Franchini

    2016-05-01

    Pacemaker with remote monitoring (PRM) may be useful for silent atrial fibrillation (AF) detection. The aims of this study were to evaluate the incidence of silent AF, the role of PRM, and to determine predictors of silent AF occurrence. Three hundred elderly patients with permanent pacemaker (PPM) were randomly assigned to the remote group (RG) or control group (CG). All patients received PPM with remote monitoring capabilities. Primary end point was AF occurrence rate and the secondary end points were time to AF detection and number of days with AF. During the average follow-up of 15.7±7.7 months, AF episodes were detected in 21.6% (RG = 24% vs CG = 19.3%, P = 0.36]. There was no difference in the time to detect the first AF episode. However, the median time to detect AF recurrence in the RG was lower than that in the CG (54 days vs 100 days, P = 0.004). The average number of days with AF was 16.0 and 51.2 in the RG and CG, respectively (P = 0.028). Predictors of silent AF were left atrial diameter (odds ratio [OR] 1.2; 95% CI = 1.1-1.3; P pacemaker; left atrial diameter and diastolic dysfunction were predictors of its occurrence. AF monitoring by means of pacemaker is a valuable tool for silent AF detection and continuous remote monitoring allows early AF recurrence detection and reduces the number of days with AF. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  12. The thermal performance monitoring and optimisation system (TEMPO): lessons learnt

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Beere, W.H.Aa.

    2005-09-01

    The goal of condition monitoring, fault detection and diagnosis is to ensure the success of planned operations by recognizing anomalies in a plant. This is achieved by monitoring the condition of equipment and instrumentation, and by detection, identification, diagnosis and removal of faults. The method of using physical modelling for condition monitoring has been investigated at the Institutt for energiteknikk since 1998. The result of this work was the development of the TEMPO (ThErMal Performance monitoring and Optimisation) toolbox. In this toolbox plant wide models are built up of unit sub-models. These are then linked to measurements by using data reconciliation. This enables the comparison of calculated to measured values as well as an indication of the significance of any deviation. It also allows the calculation of unmeasured variables as well as an overall 'goodness of fit' indicator. Since its first release in 2000 the TEMPO toolbox has been used to model the turbine cycles of several NPPs. Installations include Forsmark 3 and Loviisa 2 with feasibility studies for Dukovany, Olkiluoto 2, Almaraz and Paks. The experience from creating and installing TEMPO at these plants has now been collated and is presented in this report. This experience is used to indicate which direction the further development of TEMPO should take. The experience of using TEMPO has shown that the data-reconciliation method can be applied to the turbine cycles of NPPs. Problems that have arose have primarily been connected to the usability of the toolbox. This has prompted a shift in the development emphasis from the task of developing the method to that of developing its usability. A summary of improvement proposals is given in this paper. The reader is welcome to comment on these proposals or to suggest alternative improvements. (Author)

  13. Coating of Ultra-Small Micro End Mills: Analysis of Performance and Suitability of Eight Different Hard-Coatings

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Martin Bohley

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Due to the constant need for better functionalized surfaces or smaller, function integrated components, precise and efficient manufacturing processes have to be established. Micro milling with micro end mills is one of the most promising processes for this task as it combines a high geometric flexibility in a wide range of machinable materials with low set-up costs. A downside of this process is the wear of the micro end mills. Due to size effects and the relatively low cutting speed, the cutting edge is especially subjected to massive abrasive wear. One possibility to minimize this wear is coating of micro end mills. This research paper describes the performance of eight different hard coatings for micro end mills with a diameter <40 µm and discusses some properties for the best performing coating type. With this research, it is therefore possible to boost the possibilities of micro milling for the manufacture of next generation products.

  14. On-line monitoring applications at nuclear power plants. A risk informed approach to calibration reduction

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shankar, Ramesh; Hussey, Aaron; Davis, Eddie

    2003-01-01

    On-line monitoring of instrument channels provides increased information about the condition of monitored channels through accurate, more frequent evaluation of each cannel's performance over time. This type of performance monitoring is a methodology that offers an alternate approach to traditional time-directed calibration. EPRI's strategic role in on-line monitoring is to facilitate its implementation and cost-effective use in numerous applications at power plants. To this end, EPRI has sponsored an on-line monitoring implementation project at multiple nuclear plants specifically intended to install and use on-line monitoring technology. The selected on-line monitoring method is based on the Multivariate State Estimation Technique. The project has a planned three-year life; seven plants are participating in the project. The goal is to apply on-line monitoring to all types of power plant applications and document all aspects of the implementation process in a series of EPRI reports. These deliverables cover installation, modeling, optimization, and proven cost-benefit. This paper discusses the actual implementation of on-line monitoring to various nuclear plant instrument systems. Examples of detected instrument drift are provided. (author)

  15. Home apnea monitor use - infants

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... this page: //medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000755.htm Home apnea monitor use - infants To use the sharing ... portable. Why is an Apnea Monitor Used at Home? A monitor may be needed when: Your baby ...

  16. Redesigned front end for the upgrade at CHESS

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Headrick, R.L.; Smolenski, K.W.

    1996-01-01

    We will report on beamline front-end upgrades for the 24-pole wiggler beamlines at CHESS. A new design for primary x-ray beamstops based on a tapered, water-cooled copper block has been implemented and installed in the CHESS F beamline. The design uses a horizontally tapered open-quote open-quote V close-quote close-quote shape to reduce the power density on the internal surfaces and internal water channels in the block to provide efficient water cooling. Upstream of the beam stops, we have installed a new photoelectron style beam position monitor with separate monitoring of the wiggler and dipole vertical beam positions and with micron-level sensitivity. The monitor close-quote s internal surfaces are designed to absorb the full x-ray power in case of beam missteering, and the uncooled photoelectron collecting plates are not visible to the x-ray beam. A graphite prefilter has been installed to protect the beryllium windows that separate the front end from the x-ray optics downstream. The redesigned front end is required by the upgrade of the Cornell storage ring, now in progress, which will allow stored electron and positron currents of 300 mA by 1996, and 500 mA by 1998. At 500 mA, the wiggler power output will be over 32 kW. copyright 1996 American Institute of Physics

  17. Development of a Field-Deployable Psychomotor Vigilance Test to Monitor Helicopter Pilot Performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McMahon, Terry W; Newman, David G

    2016-04-01

    Flying a helicopter is a complex psychomotor skill. Fatigue is a serious threat to operational safety, particularly for sustained helicopter operations involving high levels of cognitive information processing and sustained time on task. As part of ongoing research into this issue, the object of this study was to develop a field-deployable helicopter-specific psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) for the purpose of daily performance monitoring of pilots. The PVT consists of a laptop computer, a hand-operated joystick, and a set of rudder pedals. Screen-based compensatory tracking task software includes a tracking ball (operated by the joystick) which moves randomly in all directions, and a second tracking ball which moves horizontally (operated by the rudder pedals). The 5-min test requires the pilot to keep both tracking balls centered. This helicopter-specific PVT's portability and integrated data acquisition and storage system enables daily field monitoring of the performance of individual helicopter pilots. The inclusion of a simultaneous foot-operated tracking task ensures divided attention for helicopter pilots as the movement of both tracking balls requires simultaneous inputs. This PVT is quick, economical, easy to use, and specific to the operational flying task. It can be used for performance monitoring purposes, and as a general research tool for investigating the psychomotor demands of helicopter operations. While reliability and validity testing is warranted, data acquired from this test could help further our understanding of the effect of various factors (such as fatigue) on helicopter pilot performance, with the potential of contributing to helicopter operational safety.

  18. EXPERIENCE WITH FPGA-BASED PROCESSOR CORE AS FRONT-END COMPUTER

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    HOFF, L.T.

    2005-01-01

    The RHIC control system architecture follows the familiar ''standard model''. LINUX workstations are used as operator consoles. Front-end computers are distributed around the accelerator, close to equipment being controlled or monitored. These computers are generally based on VMEbus CPU modules running the VxWorks operating system. I/O is typically performed via the VMEbus, or via PMC daughter cards (via an internal PCI bus), or via on-board I/O interfaces (Ethernet or serial). Advances in FPGA size and sophistication now permit running virtual processor ''cores'' within the FPGA logic, including ''cores'' with advanced features such as memory management. Such systems offer certain advantages over traditional VMEbus Front-end computers. Advantages include tighter coupling with FPGA logic, and therefore higher I/O bandwidth, and flexibility in packaging, possibly resulting in a lower noise environment and/or lower cost. This paper presents the experience acquired while porting the RHIC control system to a PowerPC 405 core within a Xilinx FPGA for use in low-level RF control

  19. The LISA Pathfinder DMU and Radiation Monitor

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Canizares, P; Conchillo, A; Gesa, L; Lloro, I; Lobo, A; Mateos, I; Sopuerta, Carlos F [Institut de Ciencies de l' Espai, CSIC, Facultat de Ciencies, Torre C5 parell, 08193 Bellaterra (Spain); Chmeissani, M [Institut de Fisica d' Altes Energies (IFAE), Edifici CN, UAB Campus, 08193 Bellaterra (Spain); Diaz-Aguilo, M; GarcIa-Berro, E; Gibert, F [Institut d' Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), Edifici Nexus, Gran Capita 2-4, 08034 Barcelona (Spain); Grimani, C [Universita degli Studi di Urbino, MFI Department, Via Santa Chiara 27, 61029 Urbino, and INFN Florence (Italy); Nofrarias, M [Max-Planck-Institut fuer Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut), Callinstrasse 38, D-30167 Hannover (Germany); Ramos-Castro, J [Departament d' Enginyeria Electronica, UPC, Campus Nord, Edifici C4, Jordi Girona 1-3, 08034 Barcelona (Spain); Sanjuan, J [Department of Physics, University of Florida, NPB-22258 PO Box 118 440, Gainesville, FL 32611-8440 (United States); Araujo, H M; Wass, P, E-mail: lobo@ieec.fcr.es [High Energy Physics Blackett Laboratory, Prince Consort Road, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BW (United Kingdom)

    2011-05-07

    The LISA Pathfinder DMU (Data Management Unit) flight model was formally accepted by ESA and ASD on 11 February 2010, after all hardware and software tests had been successfully completed. The diagnostics items are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2010. In this paper, we review the requirements and performance of this instrumentation, specially focusing on the Radiation Monitor and the DMU, as well as the status of their programmed use during mission operations, on which work is ongoing at the time of writing.

  20. Control and Interlocking System for Bending Magnet Front-end at Indus-2

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kane, Sanjeev R.; Garg, Chander Kant; Nandedkar, R. V.

    2007-01-01

    We present control and interlock system developed for Indus-2 bending magnet front-end. The paper describes in detail the control of various signals associated with the front-end and the interlocking scheme implemented for the installed front-end. The number of signals associated with each front-end is ˜ 75. A control system is designed for monitoring temperature, pressure, airflow, water flow and control of vacuum gauges, fast shutter, water cooled shutter, safety shutter, pneumatic gate valves, sputter ion pump power supplies, beam position monitor etc. Two independent signals are generated for critical components that are used for software interlock and hard-wired interlock. The front-end control system is VME based and window 2000/XP workstation as an operator console. The CPU used is Motorola 68000-processor board of the VME bus having OS-9 real time operating system. One VME crate serves a cluster of 2-3 front ends. The communication between the VME and the workstation is linked over RS232 serial communication. The sputter ion power supplies are connected over isolated RS485 network. Critical protection features are implemented so that no single failure can render the system unsafe. This is implemented by providing two independent chains of protection (1) Hard wired in which relay logic is used and (2) Software. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) is developed using Lab view Version 7.0.

  1. Control and Interlocking System for Bending Magnet Front-end at Indus-2

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kane, Sanjeev R.; Garg, Chander Kant; Nandedkar, R. V.

    2007-01-01

    We present control and interlock system developed for Indus-2 bending magnet front-end. The paper describes in detail the control of various signals associated with the front-end and the interlocking scheme implemented for the installed front-end. The number of signals associated with each front-end is ∼ 75. A control system is designed for monitoring temperature, pressure, airflow, water flow and control of vacuum gauges, fast shutter, water cooled shutter, safety shutter, pneumatic gate valves, sputter ion pump power supplies, beam position monitor etc. Two independent signals are generated for critical components that are used for software interlock and hard-wired interlock. The front-end control system is VME based and window 2000/XP workstation as an operator console. The CPU used is Motorola 68000-processor board of the VME bus having OS-9 real time operating system. One VME crate serves a cluster of 2-3 front ends. The communication between the VME and the workstation is linked over RS232 serial communication. The sputter ion power supplies are connected over isolated RS485 network. Critical protection features are implemented so that no single failure can render the system unsafe. This is implemented by providing two independent chains of protection (1) Hard wired in which relay logic is used and (2) Software. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) is developed using Lab view Version 7.0

  2. Ambiguity Towards Multiple Historical Performance Information Signals: Evidence From Indonesian Open-Ended Mutual Fund Investors

    OpenAIRE

    Haris Pratama Loeis; Ruslan Prijadi

    2015-01-01

    This study focuses on the behavior of open-ended mutual fund investors when encountered with multiple information signals of mutual fund’s historical performance. The behavior of investors can be reflected on their decision to subscribe or redeem their funds from mutual funds. Moreover, we observe the presence of ambiguity within investors due to multiple information signals, and also their reaction towards it. Our finding shows that open-ended mutual fund investors do not only have sen...

  3. The use of check valve performance data to support new concepts (probabilistic risk assessment, condition monitoring) for check valve program

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hart, K.A.; Gower, D.

    1996-12-01

    The concept of developing an integrated check valve database based on the Nuclear Power Reliability Data System (NPRDS) data was presented at the last Symposium. The Nuclear Industry Check Valve Group (NIC), working in cooperation with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has completed an operational database of check valve performance from 1984 to the present. NIC has committed to the nuclear industry to periodically update the data and maintain this information accessible. As the new concepts of probabilistic risk analysis and condition monitoring are integrated into the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Code, a critical element will be performance data. From check valve performance data, feasible failure modes and rates can be established. When a failure rate or frequency of failures can be established based on a significant enough population (sampling), a more solid foundation for focusing resources and determining appropriate frequencies and testing can be determined. The presentation will give the updated status of the NIC Check Valve Performance Database covering (1) methodology used to combine the original ORNL data; (2) process/controls established for continuing update and refinement of the data; (3) discussion of how this data is being utilized by (a) OM-22 for condition monitoring, and (b) risk-based inservice testing work of Westinghouse Owners` Group; and (4) results/trends of data evaluations. At the 1994 Symposium, ORNL provided an update as of 1991 to their original work of 1984 -1990 which they had performed to characterize check valve degradations and failures in the nuclear industry. These characterizations will be updated to 1995 and additional reviews provided to give insight into the current condition and trends of check valve performance.

  4. The use of check valve performance data to support new concepts (probabilistic risk assessment, condition monitoring) for check valve program

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hart, K.A.; Gower, D.

    1996-01-01

    The concept of developing an integrated check valve database based on the Nuclear Power Reliability Data System (NPRDS) data was presented at the last Symposium. The Nuclear Industry Check Valve Group (NIC), working in cooperation with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has completed an operational database of check valve performance from 1984 to the present. NIC has committed to the nuclear industry to periodically update the data and maintain this information accessible. As the new concepts of probabilistic risk analysis and condition monitoring are integrated into the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Code, a critical element will be performance data. From check valve performance data, feasible failure modes and rates can be established. When a failure rate or frequency of failures can be established based on a significant enough population (sampling), a more solid foundation for focusing resources and determining appropriate frequencies and testing can be determined. The presentation will give the updated status of the NIC Check Valve Performance Database covering (1) methodology used to combine the original ORNL data; (2) process/controls established for continuing update and refinement of the data; (3) discussion of how this data is being utilized by (a) OM-22 for condition monitoring, and (b) risk-based inservice testing work of Westinghouse Owners' Group; and (4) results/trends of data evaluations. At the 1994 Symposium, ORNL provided an update as of 1991 to their original work of 1984 -1990 which they had performed to characterize check valve degradations and failures in the nuclear industry. These characterizations will be updated to 1995 and additional reviews provided to give insight into the current condition and trends of check valve performance

  5. Monitoring road traffic congestion using a macroscopic traffic model and a statistical monitoring scheme

    KAUST Repository

    Zeroual, Abdelhafid; Harrou, Fouzi; Sun, Ying; Messai, Nadhir

    2017-01-01

    Monitoring vehicle traffic flow plays a central role in enhancing traffic management, transportation safety and cost savings. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach for detection of traffic congestion. Specifically, we combine the flexibility and simplicity of a piecewise switched linear (PWSL) macroscopic traffic model and the greater capacity of the exponentially-weighted moving average (EWMA) monitoring chart. Macroscopic models, which have few, easily calibrated parameters, are employed to describe a free traffic flow at the macroscopic level. Then, we apply the EWMA monitoring chart to the uncorrelated residuals obtained from the constructed PWSL model to detect congested situations. In this strategy, wavelet-based multiscale filtering of data has been used before the application of the EWMA scheme to improve further the robustness of this method to measurement noise and reduce the false alarms due to modeling errors. The performance of the PWSL-EWMA approach is successfully tested on traffic data from the three lane highway portion of the Interstate 210 (I-210) highway of the west of California and the four lane highway portion of the State Route 60 (SR60) highway from the east of California, provided by the Caltrans Performance Measurement System (PeMS). Results show the ability of the PWSL-EWMA approach to monitor vehicle traffic, confirming the promising application of this statistical tool to the supervision of traffic flow congestion.

  6. Monitoring road traffic congestion using a macroscopic traffic model and a statistical monitoring scheme

    KAUST Repository

    Zeroual, Abdelhafid

    2017-08-19

    Monitoring vehicle traffic flow plays a central role in enhancing traffic management, transportation safety and cost savings. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach for detection of traffic congestion. Specifically, we combine the flexibility and simplicity of a piecewise switched linear (PWSL) macroscopic traffic model and the greater capacity of the exponentially-weighted moving average (EWMA) monitoring chart. Macroscopic models, which have few, easily calibrated parameters, are employed to describe a free traffic flow at the macroscopic level. Then, we apply the EWMA monitoring chart to the uncorrelated residuals obtained from the constructed PWSL model to detect congested situations. In this strategy, wavelet-based multiscale filtering of data has been used before the application of the EWMA scheme to improve further the robustness of this method to measurement noise and reduce the false alarms due to modeling errors. The performance of the PWSL-EWMA approach is successfully tested on traffic data from the three lane highway portion of the Interstate 210 (I-210) highway of the west of California and the four lane highway portion of the State Route 60 (SR60) highway from the east of California, provided by the Caltrans Performance Measurement System (PeMS). Results show the ability of the PWSL-EWMA approach to monitor vehicle traffic, confirming the promising application of this statistical tool to the supervision of traffic flow congestion.

  7. Performance Monitoring for Nuclear Safety Related Instrumentation at PUSPATI TRIGA Reactor (RTP)

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zareen Khan Abdul Jalil Khan; Ridzuan Abdul Mutalib; Mohd Sabri Minhat

    2015-01-01

    The Reactor TRIGA PUSPATI (RTP) at Malaysia Nuclear Agency is a TRIGA Mark II type reactor and pool type cooled by natural circulation of light water. This paper describe on performance monitoring for nuclear safety related instrumentation in TRIGA PUSPATI Reactor (RTP) of based on various parameter of reactor safety instrument channel such as log power, linear power, Fuel temperature, coolant temperature will take into consideration. Methodology of performance on estimation and monitoring is to evaluate and analysis of reactor parameters which is important of reactor safety and control. And also to estimate power measurement, differential of log and linear power and fuel temperature during reactor start-up, operation and shutdown .This study also focus on neutron power fluctuation from fission chamber during reactor start-up and operation. This work will present result of performance monitoring from RTP which indicated the safety parameter identification and initiate safety action on crossing the threshold set point trip. Conclude that performance of nuclear safety related instrumentation will improved the reactor control and safety parameter during reactor start-up, operation and shutdown. (author)

  8. Awake Surgery for a Violin Player: Monitoring Motor and Music Performance, A Case Report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Piai, Vitória; Vos, Sandra H; Idelberger, Reinhard; Gans, Pauline; Doorduin, Jonne; Ter Laan, Mark

    2018-02-27

    We report the case of a professional violin player who underwent an awake craniotomy to resect a tumor in the left supplementary motor area, an area involved in motor planning. A careful pre- and intraoperative monitoring plan for music performance and complex motor function was established that could be used in combination with cortical stimulation. The patient suffered an epileptic seizure during cortical stimulation. The monitoring of complex motor and musical functions was implemented with the patient playing the violin while the resection was performed. Almost complete resection was achieved with no notable postoperative deficits contributing to functional impairment. The multidisciplinary approach, involving neurosurgery, neuropsychology, anesthesiology, and clinical neurophysiology, allowed us to successfully cope with the theoretical and practical challenges associated with tailored care for a professional musician. The music and motor monitoring plan is reported in detail to enable other sites to reproduce and adapt it accordingly.

  9. Finite element analysis of an extended end-plate connection using the T-stub approach

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Muresan, Ioana Cristina; Balc, Roxana [Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Faculty of Civil Engineering. 15 C Daicoviciu Str., 400020, Cluj-Napoca (Romania)

    2015-03-10

    Beam-to-column end-plate bolted connections are usually used as moment-resistant connections in steel framed structures. For this joint type, the deformability is governed by the deformation capacity of the column flange and end-plate under tension and elongation of the bolts. All these elements around the beam tension flange form the tension region of the joint, which can be modeled by means of equivalent T-stubs. In this paper a beam-to-column end-plate bolted connection is substituted with a T-stub of appropriate effective length and it is analyzed using the commercially available finite element software ABAQUS. The performance of the model is validated by comparing the behavior of the T-stub from the numerical simulation with the behavior of the connection as a whole. The moment-rotation curve of the T-stub obtained from the numerical simulation is compared with the behavior of the whole extended end-plate connection, obtained by numerical simulation, experimental tests and analytical approach.

  10. Performance evaluation of the analogue front-end and ADC prototypes for the Gotthard-II development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, J.; Andrä, M.; Barten, R.; Bergamaschi, A.; Brückner, M.; Dinapoli, R.; Fröjdh, E.; Greiffenberg, D.; Lopez-Cuenca, C.; Mezza, D.; Mozzanica, A.; Ramilli, M.; Redford, S.; Ruat, M.; Ruder, C.; Schmitt, B.; Shi, X.; Thattil, D.; Tinti, G.; Turcato, M.; Vetter, S.

    2017-12-01

    Gotthard-II is a silicon microstrip detector developed for the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL.EU). Its potential scientific applications include X-ray absorption/emission spectroscopy, hard X-ray high resolution single-shot spectrometry (HiREX), energy dispersive experiments at 4.5 MHz frame rate, beam diagnostics, as well as veto signal generation for pixel detectors. Gotthard-II uses a silicon microstrip sensor with a pitch of 50 μm or 25 μm and with 1280 or 2560 channels wire-bonded to readout chips (ROCs). In the ROC, an adaptive gain switching pre-amplifier (PRE), a fully differential Correlated-Double-Sampling (CDS) stage, an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) as well as a Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM) capable of storing all the 2700 images in an XFEL.EU bunch train will be implemented. Several prototypes with different designs of the analogue front-end (PRE and CDS) and ADC test structures have been fabricated in UMC-110 nm CMOS technology and their performance has been evaluated. In this paper, the performance of the analogue front-end and ADC will be summarized.

  11. 22 CFR 226.51 - Monitoring and reporting program performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-04-01

    ... 22 Foreign Relations 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Monitoring and reporting program performance. 226.51 Section 226.51 Foreign Relations AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION OF... more frequently than quarterly or, less frequently than annually. Annual reports shall be due 90...

  12. The GBT-SCA, a radiation tolerant ASIC for detector control and monitoring applications in HEP experiments

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Caratelli, A.; Bonacini, S.; Kloukinas, K.; Marchioro, A.; Moreira, P.; Oliveira, R. De; Paillard, C.

    2015-01-01

    The future upgrades of the LHC experiments will increase the beam luminosity leading to a corresponding growth of the amounts of data to be treated by the data acquisition systems. To address these needs, the GBT (Giga-Bit Transceiver optical link [1,2]) architecture was developed to provide the simultaneous transfer of readout data, timing and trigger signals as well as slow control and monitoring data. The GBT-SCA ASIC, part of the GBT chip-set, has the purpose to distribute control and monitoring signals to the on-detector front-end electronics and perform monitoring operations of detector environmental parameters. In order to meet the requirements of different front-end ASICs used in the experiments, it provides various user-configurable interfaces capable to perform simultaneous operations. It is designed employing radiation tolerant design techniques to ensure robustness against SEUs and TID radiation effects and is implemented in a commercial 130 nm CMOS technology. This work presents the GBT-SCA architecture, the ASIC interfaces, the data transfer protocol, and its integration with the GBT optical link

  13. A Smart Voltage and Current Monitoring System for Three Phase Inverters Using an Android Smartphone Application.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mnati, Mohannad Jabbar; Van den Bossche, Alex; Chisab, Raad Farhood

    2017-04-15

    In this paper, a new smart voltage and current monitoring system (SVCMS) technique is proposed. It monitors a three phase electrical system using an Arduino platform as a microcontroller to read the voltage and current from sensors and then wirelessly send the measured data to monitor the results using a new Android application. The integrated SVCMS design uses an Arduino Nano V3.0 as the microcontroller to measure the results from three voltage and three current sensors and then send this data, after calculation, to the Android smartphone device of an end user using Bluetooth HC-05. The Arduino Nano V3.0 controller and Bluetooth HC-05 are a cheap microcontroller and wireless device, respectively. The new Android smartphone application that monitors the voltage and current measurements uses the open source MIT App Inventor 2 software. It allows for monitoring some elementary fundamental voltage power quality properties. An effort has been made to investigate what is possible using available off-the-shelf components and open source software.

  14. Complete Web Monitoring Watching Performance, Users, and Communities

    CERN Document Server

    Croll, Alistair

    2009-01-01

    Complete Web Monitoring demonstrates how to measure every aspect of your web presence -- including analytics, backend performance, usability, communities, customer feedback, and competitive analysis -- whether you're running an e-commerce site, a community, a media property, or a Software-as-a-Service company. This book's concrete examples, clear explanations, and practical recommendations make it essential for anyone who runs a website.

  15. Indicators to monitor NPP operational safety performance

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gomez-Cobo, Ana

    2002-01-01

    Since December 1995 the IAEA activities on safety performance indicators focused on the elaboration of a framework for the establishment of an operational safety performance indicator programme. The development of this framework began with the consideration of the concept of NPP operational safety performance and the identification of operational safety attributes. For each operational safety attribute, overall indicators, envisioned as providing an overall evaluation of relevant aspects of safety performance, were established. Associated with each overall indicator is a level of strategic indicators intended to provide a bridge from overall to specific indicators. Finally each strategic indicator was supported by a set of specific indicators, which represent quantifiable measures of performance. The programme development was enhanced by pilot plant studies, conducted over a 15 month period from January 1998 to March 1999. The result of all this work is compiled in the IAEA-TECDOC-1141, to be published shortly. This paper presents a summary of this IAEA TECDOC. It describes the operational safety performance indicator framework proposed and discusses the results of and lessons learned from the pilot studies. Despite the efforts described, it is clear that additional research is still necessary in areas such as plant-specific adaptation of proposed frameworks in order to suit individual data collection systems and plant characteristics, indicator selection, indicator definition, goal setting, action thresholds, analysis of trends, indicator display systems, analysis of overall safety performance (i.e., aggregation or combination of indicators), safety culture indicators, qualitative indicators, and use of additional indicators to address issues such as industrial safety attitude and performance, staff welfare, and environmental compliance. This is the rationale for a new IAEA Coordinated Research Project on 'Development and application of indicators to monitor NPP

  16. Real-time monitoring energy efficiency and performance degradation of condensing boilers

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Baldi, Simone; Quang, Thuan Le; Holub, Ondrej; Endel, Petr

    2017-01-01

    Highlights: • Fully-fledged set of fault detection and diagnosis tools for condensing boilers. • Detection of boiler performance degradation in condensing and noncondensing mode. • Virtual sensing for estimation of water mass flow rate. • Optimal Kalman detection of actuator and sensor faults. • Structural properties for detection and isolation of faults. - Abstract: Condensing boilers achieve higher efficiency than traditional boilers by using waste heat in flue gases to preheat cold return water entering the boiler. Water vapor produced during combustion is condensed into liquid form, thus recovering its latent heat of vaporization, leading to around 10–12% increased efficiency. Many countries have encouraged the use of condensing boilers with financial incentives. It is thus important to develop software tools to assess the correct functioning of the boiler and eventually detect problems. Current monitoring tools are based on boiler static maps and on large sets of historical data, and are unable to assess timely loss of performance due to degradation of the efficiency curve or water leakages. This work develops a set of fault detection and diagnosis tools for dynamic energy efficiency monitoring and assessment in condensing boilers, i.e. performance degradation and faults can be detected using real-time measurements: this real-time feature is particularly relevant because of the limited amount of data that can be stored by state-of-the-art building energy management systems. The monitoring tools are organized as follows: a bimodal parameter estimator to detect deviations of the efficiency of the boiler from nominal values in both condensing and noncondensing mode; a virtual sensor for the estimation of the water mass flow rate; filters to detect actuator and sensor faults, possibly due to control and sensing problems. Most importantly, structural properties for detection and isolation of actuators and sensing faults are given: these properties are

  17. End-of-Discharge and End-of-Life Prediction in Lithium-Ion Batteries with Electrochemistry-Based Aging Models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Daigle, Matthew; Kulkarni, Chetan S.

    2016-01-01

    As batteries become increasingly prevalent in complex systems such as aircraft and electric cars, monitoring and predicting battery state of charge and state of health becomes critical. In order to accurately predict the remaining battery power to support system operations for informed operational decision-making, age-dependent changes in dynamics must be accounted for. Using an electrochemistry-based model, we investigate how key parameters of the battery change as aging occurs, and develop models to describe aging through these key parameters. Using these models, we demonstrate how we can (i) accurately predict end-of-discharge for aged batteries, and (ii) predict the end-of-life of a battery as a function of anticipated usage. The approach is validated through an experimental set of randomized discharge profiles.

  18. A Review of Rock Bolt Monitoring Using Smart Sensors

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gangbing Song

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Rock bolts have been widely used as rock reinforcing members in underground coal mine roadways and tunnels. Failures of rock bolts occur as a result of overloading, corrosion, seismic burst and bad grouting, leading to catastrophic economic and personnel losses. Monitoring the health condition of the rock bolts plays an important role in ensuring the safe operation of underground mines. This work presents a brief introduction on the types of rock bolts followed by a comprehensive review of rock bolt monitoring using smart sensors. Smart sensors that are used to assess rock bolt integrity are reviewed to provide a firm perception of the application of smart sensors for enhanced performance and reliability of rock bolts. The most widely used smart sensors for rock bolt monitoring are the piezoelectric sensors and the fiber optic sensors. The methodologies and principles of these smart sensors are reviewed from the point of view of rock bolt integrity monitoring. The applications of smart sensors in monitoring the critical status of rock bolts, such as the axial force, corrosion occurrence, grout quality and resin delamination, are highlighted. In addition, several prototypes or commercially available smart rock bolt devices are also introduced.

  19. A Review of Rock Bolt Monitoring Using Smart Sensors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Song, Gangbing; Li, Weijie; Wang, Bo; Ho, Siu Chun Michael

    2017-04-05

    Rock bolts have been widely used as rock reinforcing members in underground coal mine roadways and tunnels. Failures of rock bolts occur as a result of overloading, corrosion, seismic burst and bad grouting, leading to catastrophic economic and personnel losses. Monitoring the health condition of the rock bolts plays an important role in ensuring the safe operation of underground mines. This work presents a brief introduction on the types of rock bolts followed by a comprehensive review of rock bolt monitoring using smart sensors. Smart sensors that are used to assess rock bolt integrity are reviewed to provide a firm perception of the application of smart sensors for enhanced performance and reliability of rock bolts. The most widely used smart sensors for rock bolt monitoring are the piezoelectric sensors and the fiber optic sensors. The methodologies and principles of these smart sensors are reviewed from the point of view of rock bolt integrity monitoring. The applications of smart sensors in monitoring the critical status of rock bolts, such as the axial force, corrosion occurrence, grout quality and resin delamination, are highlighted. In addition, several prototypes or commercially available smart rock bolt devices are also introduced.

  20. Monitoring Severe Accidents Using AI Techniques

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    No, Young Gyu; Kim, Ju Hyun; Na, Man Gyun; Ahn, Kwang Il

    2011-01-01

    It is very difficult for nuclear power plant operators to monitor and identify the major severe accident scenarios following an initiating event by staring at temporal trends of important parameters. The objective of this study is to develop and verify the monitoring for severe accidents using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as support vector classification (SVC), probabilistic neural network (PNN), group method of data handling (GMDH) and fuzzy neural network (FNN). The SVC and PNN are used for event classification among the severe accidents. Also, GMDH and FNN are used to monitor for severe accidents. The inputs to AI techniques are initial time-integrated values obtained by integrating measurement signals during a short time interval after reactor scram. In this study, 3 types of initiating events such as the hot-leg LOCA, the cold-leg LOCA and SGTR are considered and it is verified how well the proposed scenario identification algorithm using the GMDH and FNN models identifies the timings when the reactor core will be uncovered, when CET will exceed 1200 .deg. F and when the reactor vessel will fail. In cases that an initiating event develops into a severe accident, the proposed algorithm showed accurate classification of initiating events. Also, it well predicted timings for important occurrences during severe accident progression scenarios, which is very helpful for operators to perform severe accident management

  1. Performance Management and Monitoring of Internal Audit for the Public Sector in Romania

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elena Doina Dascălu

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available Performance management is an on-going process, which has an essential component part, performance measurement, which involves the identification, supervision and communication of performance results, through the relation to a set of performance indicators. Based on the assessment results, corrective measures are established to ensure attainment of targeted results, offering a feedback, essential for the decision grounding enhancement, at all levels: strategic, operational or individual. As concerns performance management in public institutions in Romania, The Code on managerial internal control provides a hierarchy type model, in the framework of which, the head of the public entity, which is on the first level, needs to provide for performance monitoring for each objective and activity, through the intermediary of relevant quantitative and qualitative indicators, including referring to economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. Given the importance of the internal audit in the process of performance management, identifying solutions for continuous improvement of the public internal audit was subject to a study that was based on questioning public sector auditors on how to monitor the performance of public internal audit activity. Considering issues arising, the article proposes a series of directions for improving the monitoring of the performance of public internal audit activity in the public sector.

  2. Therapeutic drug monitoring of nevirapine in saliva in Uganda using high performance liquid chromatography and a low cost thin-layer chromatography technique.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lamorde, Mohammed; Fillekes, Quirine; Sigaloff, Kim; Kityo, Cissy; Buzibye, Allan; Kayiwa, Joshua; Merry, Concepta; Nakatudde-Katumba, Lillian; Burger, David; de Wit, Tobias F Rinke

    2014-09-01

    In resource limited settings access to laboratory monitoring of HIV treatment is limited and therapeutic drug monitoring is generally unavailable. This study aimed to evaluate nevirapine concentrations in saliva using low-cost thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and nevirapine concentrations in plasma and saliva using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) methods; and to correlate nevirapine plasma concentrations to HIV treatment outcomes in Ugandan patients. Paired plasma and stimulated saliva samples were obtained from Ugandan, HIV-infected adults on nevirapine-based ART. Nevirapine concentrations were measured using a validated HPLC method and a novel TLC method. Plasma nevirapine concentrations HPLC were considered subtherapeutic. Negative/positive predictive values of different thresholds for subtherapeutic nevirapine concentrations in saliva were determined. Virologic testing and, if applicable, HIV drug resistance testing was performed. Median (interquartile range, IQR) age of 297 patients was 39.1 (32.8-45.2) years. Three hundred saliva and 287 plasma samples were available for analysis. Attempts failed to determine nevirapine saliva concentrations by TLC. Using HPLC, median (IQR) nevirapine concentrations in saliva and plasma were 3.40 (2.59-4.47) mg/L and 6.17 (4.79-7.96) mg/L, respectively. The mean (coefficient of variation,%) nevirapine saliva/plasma ratio was 0.58 (62%). A cut-off value of 1.60 mg/L nevirapine in saliva was associated with a negative/positive predictive value of 0.99/0.72 and a sensitivity/specificity of 87%/98% for predicting subtherapeutic nevirapine plasma concentrations, respectively. Only 5% (15/287) of patients had subtherapeutic nevirapine plasma concentrations, of which 3 patients had viral load results > 400 copies/mL. Patients with nevirapine concentrations in plasma 400 copies/mL). The low-cost TLC technique for monitoring nevirapine in saliva was unsuccessful but monitoring nevirapine saliva and plasma

  3. Experiments of Nanometer Spot Size Monitor at FETB Using Laser Interferometry

    CERN Document Server

    Walz, D

    2003-01-01

    The nanometer spot size monitor based on the laser interferometry has been developed and installed in the final focus test beam (FFTB) line at SLAC. The beam experiments started in September 1993, the first fringe pattern from the monitor was observed in the beginning of April 1994, then the small vertical spot around 70 nm was observed in May 1994. The spot size monitor has been routinely used for tuning the beam optics in FFTB. Basic principle of this monitor has been well proved, and its high performance as a precise beam monitor in nanometer range has been demonstrated.

  4. Parametric optimization of CNC end milling using entropy ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Parametric optimization of CNC end milling using entropy measurement technique combined with grey-Taguchi method. ... International Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology ... Keywords: CNC end milling, surface finish, material removal rate (MRR), entropy measurement technique, Taguchi method ...

  5. Study on Reactor Performance of Online Power Monitoring in PUSPATI TRIGA Reactor (RTP)

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zareen Khan Abdul Jalil Khan; Ridzuan Abdul Mutalib; Mohd Sabri Minhat

    2014-01-01

    The Reactor TRIGA PUSPATI (RTP) at Malaysia Nuclear Agency is a TRIGA Mark II type reactor and pool type cooled by natural circulation of light water. This paper describe on reactor performance of online power monitoring based on various parameter of reactor such as log power, linear power, period, Fuel and coolant temperature and reactivity parameter with using neutronic and other instrumentation system of reactor. Methodology of online power estimation and monitoring is to evaluate and analysis of reactor power which is important of reactor safety and control. Neutronic instrumentation system will use to estimate power measurement, differential of log and linear power and period during reactor operation .This study also focus on noise fluctuation from fission chamber during reactor operation .This work will present result of online power monitoring from RTP which indicated the safety parameter identification and initiate safety action on crossing the threshold set point trip. Conclude that optimization of online power monitoring will improved the reactor control and safety parameter of reactor during operation. (author)

  6. Using the expected detection delay to assess the performance of different multivariate statistical process monitoring methods for multiplicative and drift faults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Kai; Shardt, Yuri A W; Chen, Zhiwen; Peng, Kaixiang

    2017-03-01

    Using the expected detection delay (EDD) index to measure the performance of multivariate statistical process monitoring (MSPM) methods for constant additive faults have been recently developed. This paper, based on a statistical investigation of the T 2 - and Q-test statistics, extends the EDD index to the multiplicative and drift fault cases. As well, it is used to assess the performance of common MSPM methods that adopt these two test statistics. Based on how to use the measurement space, these methods can be divided into two groups, those which consider the complete measurement space, for example, principal component analysis-based methods, and those which only consider some subspace that reflects changes in key performance indicators, such as partial least squares-based methods. Furthermore, a generic form for them to use T 2 - and Q-test statistics are given. With the extended EDD index, the performance of these methods to detect drift and multiplicative faults is assessed using both numerical simulations and the Tennessee Eastman process. Copyright © 2016 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Monitoring Sintering Burn-Through Point Using Infrared Thermography

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francisco G. Bulnes

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available Sintering is a complex industrial process that applies heat to fine particles of iron ore and other materials to produce sinter, a solidified porous material used in blast furnaces. The sintering process needs to be carefully adjusted, so that the combustion zone reaches the bottom of the material just before the discharge end. This is known as the burnthrough point. Many different parameters need to be finely tuned, including the speed and the quantities of the materials mixed. However, in order to achieve good results, sintering control requires precise feedback to adjust these parameters. This work presents a sensor to monitor the sintering burn-through point based on infrared thermography. The proposed procedure is based on the acquisition of infrared images at the end of the sintering process. At this position, infrared images contain the cross-section temperatures of the mixture. The objective of this work is to process this information to extract relevant features about the sintering process. The proposed procedure is based on four steps: key frame detection, region of interest detection, segmentation and feature extraction. The results indicate that the proposed procedure is very robust and reliable, providing features that can be used effectively to control the sintering process.

  8. Correlating Internet Performance Changes and Route Changes to Assist in Trouble-shooting from an End-user Perspective

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Logg, C

    2004-03-08

    With the growth of world wide data intensive scientific collaborations, there is a need to transfer large amounts of data to and from data repositories around the world. To effectively enable such transfers, high speed, predictable networks are needed. In turn, these require performance monitoring to ensure their quality. One tool/infrastructure that has been successfully used for the analysis and monitoring of critical paths is IEPM-BW. Based on experience gained from the achievable throughput monitoring in IEPM-BW, we developed ABwE, a tool to enable quick (< 1 second), low impact (40 packets) measurements of available bandwidth. Using ABwE we have been able to quickly detect significant changes in available bandwidth on production links up to 1Gbps, and report this information to the appropriate Network Operations Centers (NOCs) for repair, as such changes are often associated with route changes. This paper discusses this set of tools and their effectiveness together with examples of their utilization.

  9. Performance Assessment Monitoring Plan for the Hanford Site Low-Level Waste Burial Grounds

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    SONNICHSEN, J.C.

    2000-01-01

    incorporate and implement conditions specified in the statement. The plan must meet the following criteria. The site-specific performance assessment and composite analysis shall be used to determine the media, locations, radionuclides, and other substances monitored. The environmental monitoring program shall be designed to include measuring and evaluating releases, migration of radionuclides, disposal unit subsidence, and changes in disposal facility and disposal site parameters that may affect long-term performance. The environmental monitoring programs shall be capable of detecting changing trends in performance to allow application of any necessary corrective action before exceeding the performance objectives stated in the order

  10. Ambiguity towards Multiple Historical Performance Information Signals: Evidence from Indonesian Open-Ended Mutual Fund Investors

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Haris Pratama Loeis

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available This study focuses on the behavior of open-ended mutual fund investors when encountered with multiple information signals of mutual fund’s historical performance. The behavior of investors can be reflected on their decision to subscribe or redeem their funds from mutual funds. Moreover, we observe the presence of ambiguity within investors due to multiple information signals, and also their reaction towards it. Our finding shows that open-ended mutual fund investors do not only have sensitivity towards past performance information signals, but also have additional sensitivity towards the ambiguity of multiple information signals. Because of the presence of ambiguity, investors give more consideration to negative information signals and the worst information signal in their investment decisions. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

  11. Telomere dynamics, end-to-end fusions and telomerase activation during the human fibroblast immortalization process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ducray, C; Pommier, J P; Martins, L; Boussin, F D; Sabatier, L

    1999-07-22

    Loss of telomeric repeats during cell proliferation could play a role in senescence. It has been generally assumed that activation of telomerase prevents further telomere shortening and is essential for cell immortalization. In this study, we performed a detailed cytogenetic and molecular characterization of four SV40 transformed human fibroblastic cell lines by regularly monitoring the size distribution of terminal restriction fragments, telomerase activity and the associated chromosomal instability throughout immortalization. The mean TRF lengths progressively decreased in pre-crisis cells during the lifespan of the cultures. At crisis, telomeres reached a critical size, different among the cell lines, contributing to the peak of dicentric chromosomes, which resulted mostly from telomeric associations. We observed a direct correlation between short telomere length at crisis and chromosomal instability. In two immortal cell lines, although telomerase was detected, mean telomere length still continued to decrease whereas the number of dicentric chromosomes associated was stabilized. Thus telomerase could protect specifically telomeres which have reached a critical size against end-to-end dicentrics, while long telomeres continue to decrease, although at a slower rate as before crisis. This suggests a balance between elongation by telomerase and telomere shortening, towards a stabilized 'optimal' length.

  12. Data warehouse model for monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) using goal oriented approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abdullah, Mohammed Thajeel; Ta'a, Azman; Bakar, Muhamad Shahbani Abu

    2016-08-01

    The growth and development of universities, just as other organizations, depend on their abilities to strategically plan and implement development blueprints which are in line with their vision and mission statements. The actualizations of these statements, which are often designed into goals and sub-goals and linked to their respective actors are better measured by defining key performance indicators (KPIs) of the university. The proposes ReGADaK, which is an extended the GRAnD approach highlights the facts, dimensions, attributes, measures and KPIs of the organization. The measures from the goal analysis of this unit serve as the basis of developing the related university's KPIs. The proposed data warehouse schema is evaluated through expert review, prototyping and usability evaluation. The findings from the evaluation processes suggest that the proposed data warehouse schema is suitable for monitoring the University's KPIs.

  13. A pixel chamber to monitor the beam performances in hadron therapy

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bonin, R.; Boriano, A.; Bourhaleb, F.; Cirio, R.; Donetti, M.; Garelli, E.; Giordanengo, S.; Marchetto, F. E-mail: marchetto@to.infn.it; Peroni, C.; Sanz Freire, C.J.; Simonetti, L

    2004-03-01

    In this paper we describe the design, construction, and tests of a parallel plate ionization chamber with the anode segmented in (32x32) square pixels. The performance of the read out and data acquisition systems is also discussed. The design of the chamber has been finalized to be used as a beam monitor for therapeutical treatments. Position and flux resolution obtained with a carbon ion beam are presented.

  14. Evolving markets and new end use gas technologies

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Overall, J.

    1995-01-01

    End use gas technologies, and products for residential, commercial, and industrial uses were reviewed, and markets and market drivers needed for end use technologies in the different types of markets were summarized. The range of end use technologies included: gas fireplaces, combination heating/water heating systems, integrated appliance such as heating/ventilation units, gas cooling, and space cooling for commercial markets. The present and future status of each product market was discussed. Growing markets such as cogeneration, and gas turbine technology also received attention, along with regulatory and environmental concerns. The need to be knowledgeable about current market drivers and to introduce new ones, and the evolution of technology were emphasized as means by which the industry will continue to be able to exert a decisive influence on the direction of these markets

  15. End-to-end simulation of the C-ADS injector Ⅱ with a 3-D field map

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Zhijun; He Yuan; Li Chao; Wang Wangsheng; Liu Shuhui; Jia Huan; Xu Xianbo; Chen Ximeng

    2013-01-01

    The Injector II, one of the two parallel injectors of the high-current superconducting proton driver linac for the China Accelerator-Driven System (C-ADS) project, is being designed and constructed by the Institute of Modern Physics. At present, the design work for the injector is almost finished. End-to-end simulation has been carried out using the TRACK multiparticle simulation code to check the match between each acceleration section and the performance of the injector as a whole. Moreover, multiparticle simulations with all kinds of errors and misalignments have been performed to define the requirements of each device. The simulation results indicate that the lattice design is robust. In this paper, the results of end-to-end simulation and error simulation with a 3-D field map are presented. (authors)

  16. JACoW Automatic PID performance monitoring applied to LHC cryogenics

    CERN Document Server

    Bradu, Benjamin; Marti, Ruben; Tilaro, Filippo

    2018-01-01

    At CERN, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) cryogenic system employs about 5000 PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) regulation loops distributed over the 27 km of the accelerator. Tuning all these regulation loops is a complex task and the systematic monitoring of them should be done in an automated way to be sure that the overall plant performance is improved by identifying the poorest performing PID controllers. It is nearly impossible to check the performance of a regulation loop with a classical threshold technique as the controlled variables could evolve in large operation ranges and the amount of data cannot be manually checked daily. This paper presents the adaptation and the application of an existing regulation indicator performance algorithm on the LHC cryogenic system and the different results obtained in the past year of operation. This technique is generic for any PID feedback control loop, it does not use any process model and needs only a few tuning parameters. The publication also describes th...

  17. Electronic adherence monitoring device performance and patient acceptability: a randomized control trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chan, Amy Hai Yan; Stewart, Alistair William; Harrison, Jeff; Black, Peter Nigel; Mitchell, Edwin Arthur; Foster, Juliet Michelle

    2017-05-01

    To investigate the performance and patient acceptability of an inhaler electronic monitoring device in a real-world childhood asthma population. Children 6 to 15 years presenting with asthma to the hospital emergency department and prescribed inhaled corticosteroids were included. Participants were randomized to receive a device with reminder features enabled or disabled for use with their preventer. Device quality control tests were conducted. Questionnaires on device acceptability, utility and ergonomics were completed at six months. A total of 1306 quality control tests were conducted; 84% passed pre-issue and 87% return testing. The most common failure reason was actuation under-recording. Acceptability scores were high, with higher scores in the reminder than non-reminder group (median, 5 th -95 th percentile: 4.1, 3.1-5.0 versus 3.7, 2.3-4.8; p 90%) rated the device easy to use. Feedback was positive across five themes: device acceptability, ringtone acceptability, suggestions for improvement, effect on medication use, and effect on asthma control. This study investigates electronic monitoring device performance and acceptability in children using quantitative and qualitative measures. Results indicate satisfactory reliability, although failure rates of 13-16% indicate the importance of quality control. Favorable acceptability ratings support the use of these devices in children.

  18. Monitoring severe accidents using AI techniques

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    No, Young Gyu; Ahn, Kwang Il [Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); Kim, Ju Hyun; Na, Man Gyun [Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, Chosun University, Gwangju (Korea, Republic of); Lim, Dong Hyuk [Korea Institute of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Control, Daejon (Korea, Republic of)

    2012-05-15

    After the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, there has been increasing concern regarding severe accidents in nuclear facilities. Severe accident scenarios are difficult for operators to monitor and identify. Therefore, accurate prediction of a severe accident is important in order to manage it appropriately in the unfavorable conditions. In this study, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as support vector classification (SVC), probabilistic neural network (PNN), group method of data handling (GMDH), and fuzzy neural network (FNN), were used to monitor the major transient scenarios of a severe accident caused by three different initiating events, the hot-leg loss of coolant accident (LOCA), the cold-leg LOCA, and the steam generator tube rupture in pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The SVC and PNN models were used for the event classification. The GMDH and FNN models were employed to accurately predict the important timing representing severe accident scenarios. In addition, in order to verify the proposed algorithm, data from a number of numerical simulations were required in order to train the AI techniques due to the shortage of real LOCA data. The data was acquired by performing simulations using the MAAP4 code. The prediction accuracy of the three types of initiating events was sufficiently high to predict severe accident scenarios. Therefore, the AI techniques can be applied successfully in the identification and monitoring of severe accident scenarios in real PWRs.

  19. Monitoring severe accidents using AI techniques

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    No, Young Gyu; Ahn, Kwang Il; Kim, Ju Hyun; Na, Man Gyun; Lim, Dong Hyuk

    2012-01-01

    After the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, there has been increasing concern regarding severe accidents in nuclear facilities. Severe accident scenarios are difficult for operators to monitor and identify. Therefore, accurate prediction of a severe accident is important in order to manage it appropriately in the unfavorable conditions. In this study, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as support vector classification (SVC), probabilistic neural network (PNN), group method of data handling (GMDH), and fuzzy neural network (FNN), were used to monitor the major transient scenarios of a severe accident caused by three different initiating events, the hot-leg loss of coolant accident (LOCA), the cold-leg LOCA, and the steam generator tube rupture in pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The SVC and PNN models were used for the event classification. The GMDH and FNN models were employed to accurately predict the important timing representing severe accident scenarios. In addition, in order to verify the proposed algorithm, data from a number of numerical simulations were required in order to train the AI techniques due to the shortage of real LOCA data. The data was acquired by performing simulations using the MAAP4 code. The prediction accuracy of the three types of initiating events was sufficiently high to predict severe accident scenarios. Therefore, the AI techniques can be applied successfully in the identification and monitoring of severe accident scenarios in real PWRs.

  20. Control of framed structures using intelligent monitoring networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Foti Dora

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper proposes the integration of structural monitoring with Building Management Systems for electricity and gas distributions. To assess the state of damage of existing buildings the technics of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM is adopted. SHM as well as to record the occurrence of sudden structural damage resulting from exceptional events (earthquakes, explosions, shocks and collisions with vehicles, etc., allows the monitoring of the progressive damage and structural performance under operating conditions through the extraction of the modal parameters of the structure. This approach requires time to process acquired data that, depending on the size of the building and the number of monitored points, varies from minutes to hours. In this paper, an intelligent system is proposed to immediately communicate during an earthquake the overrun of a certain ground shaking threshold so that gas delivery and selected power loads are interrupted, as suggested by current national regulations on structures. The use of low-cost and reduced size accelerometric sensors integrated with Energy Monitoring Systems is proposed in both highrisk earthquake centers and in all “strategic” buildings that must ensure their operation use immediately after the earthquake. The procedure for calibrating the horizontal and vertical acceleration threshold is also sketched.

  1. Early-age monitoring of cement structures using FBG sensors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Chuan; Zhou, Zhi; Zhang, Zhichun; Ou, Jinping

    2006-03-01

    With more and more broad applications of the cement-based structures such as neat cement paste, cement mortar and concrete in civil engineering, people hope to find out what their performances should like. The in-service performances of cement-based structures are highly affected by their hardening process during the early-age. But it is still a big problem for traditional sensors to be used to monitor the early curing of cement-based structures due to such disadvantages as difficulties to install sensors inside the concrete, limited measuring points, poor durability and interference of electromagnetic wave and so on. In this paper, according to the sensing properties of the Fiber Bragg Grating sensors and self-characters of the cement-based structures, we have successfully finished measuring and monitoring the early-age inner-strain and temperature changes of the neat cement paste, concrete with and without restrictions, mass concrete structures and negative concrete, respectively. Three types of FBG-based sensors have been developed to monitor the cement-based structures. Besides, the installation techniques and the embedding requirements of FBG sensors in cement-based structures are also discussed. Moreover, such kind of technique has been used in practical structure, 3rd Nanjing Yangtze Bridge, and the results show that FBG sensors are well proper for measuring and monitoring the temperature and strain changes including self-shrinkage, dry shrinkage, plastic shrinkage, temperature expansion, frost heaving and so on inside different cement-based structures. This technique provides us a new useful measuring method on early curing monitoring of cement-based structures and greater understanding of details of their hardening process.

  2. EFFECTIVE INDICES FOR MONITORING MENTAL WORKLOAD WHILE PERFORMING MULTIPLE TASKS.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hsu, Bin-Wei; Wang, Mao-Jiun J; Chen, Chi-Yuan; Chen, Fang

    2015-08-01

    This study identified several physiological indices that can accurately monitor mental workload while participants performed multiple tasks with the strategy of maintaining stable performance and maximizing accuracy. Thirty male participants completed three 10-min. simulated multitasks: MATB (Multi-Attribute Task Battery) with three workload levels. Twenty-five commonly used mental workload measures were collected, including heart rate, 12 HRV (heart rate variability), 10 EEG (electroencephalography) indices (α, β, θ, α/θ, θ/β from O1-O2 and F4-C4), and two subjective measures. Analyses of index sensitivity showed that two EEG indices, θ and α/θ (F4-C4), one time-domain HRV-SDNN (standard deviation of inter-beat intervals), and four frequency-domain HRV: VLF (very low frequency), LF (low frequency), %HF (percentage of high frequency), and LF/HF were sensitive to differentiate high workload. EEG α/θ (F4-C4) and LF/HF were most effective for monitoring high mental workload. LF/HF showed the highest correlations with other physiological indices. EEG α/θ (F4-C4) showed strong correlations with subjective measures across different mental workload levels. Operation strategy would affect the sensitivity of EEG α (F4-C4) and HF.

  3. Analysis of Joist Masonry Moisture Content Monitoring

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ueno, Kohta [Building Science Corporation, Westford, MA (United States)

    2015-10-08

    There are many existing buildings with load-bearing mass masonry walls, whose energy performance could be improved with the retrofit of insulation. However, adding insulation to the interior side of walls of such masonry buildings in cold (and wet) climates may cause performance and durability problems. Some concerns, such as condensation and freeze-thaw have known solutions. But wood members embedded in the masonry structure will be colder (and potentially wetter) after an interior insulation retrofit. Moisture content & relative humidity were monitored at joist ends in historic mass brick masonry walls retrofitted with interior insulation in a cold climate (Zone 5A); data were collected from 2012-2015. Eleven joist ends were monitored in all four orientations. One limitation of these results is that the renovation is still ongoing, with limited wintertime construction heating and no permanent occupancy to date. Measurements show that many joists ends remain at high moisture contents, especially at north- and east-facing orientations, with constant 100% RH conditions at the worst cases. These high moisture levels are not conducive for wood durability, but no evidence for actual structural damage has been observed. Insulated vs. non-insulated joist pockets do not show large differences. South facing joists have safe (10-15%) moisture contents. Given the uncertainty pointed out by research, definitive guidance on the vulnerability of embedded wood members is difficult to formulate. In high-risk situations, or when a very conservative approach is warranted, the embedded wood member condition can be eliminated entirely, supporting the joist ends outside of the masonry pocket.

  4. Routine environmental monitoring schedule, calendar year 1997

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Markes, B.M., Westinghouse Hanford

    1996-12-10

    This document provides the Environmental Restorations Contractor (ERC) and the Project Hanford Management Contractor.(PHMC) a schedule in accordance with the WHC-CM-7-5, Environmental Compliance` and BHI- EE-02, Environmental Requirements, of monitoring and sampling routines for the Near-Field Monitoring (NFM) program during calendar year (CY) 1997. Every attempt will be made to consistently follow this schedule; any deviation from this schedule will be documented by an internal memorandum (DSI) explaining the reason for the deviation. The DSI will be issued by the scheduled performing organization and directed to Near-Field Monitoring. The survey frequencies for particular sites are determined by the technical judgment of Near- Field Monitoring and may depend on the site history, radiological status, use, and general conditions. Additional surveys may be requested at irregular frequencies if conditions warrant. All radioactive wastes sites are scheduled to be surveyed at least annually. Any newly discovered wastes sites not documented by this schedule will be included in the revised schedule for CY 1998. The outside perimeter road surveys of 200 East and West Area and the rail survey from the 300 Area to Columbia Center will be performed in the year 2000 per agreement with Department of Energy. Richland Field Office. This schedule does not discuss staffing needs, nor does it list the monitoring equipment to be used in completing specific routines. Personnel performing routines to meet this schedule shall communicate any need for assistance in completing these routines to Radiological Control management and Near-Field Monitoring. After each routine survey is completed, a copy of the survey record, maps, and data sheets will be forwarded to Near-Field Monitoring. These routine surveys will not be considered complete until this documentation is received. At the end of each month, the ERC and PHMC radiological control organizations shall forward a copy of the Routine

  5. End-to-End Multimodal Emotion Recognition Using Deep Neural Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tzirakis, Panagiotis; Trigeorgis, George; Nicolaou, Mihalis A.; Schuller, Bjorn W.; Zafeiriou, Stefanos

    2017-12-01

    Automatic affect recognition is a challenging task due to the various modalities emotions can be expressed with. Applications can be found in many domains including multimedia retrieval and human computer interaction. In recent years, deep neural networks have been used with great success in determining emotional states. Inspired by this success, we propose an emotion recognition system using auditory and visual modalities. To capture the emotional content for various styles of speaking, robust features need to be extracted. To this purpose, we utilize a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to extract features from the speech, while for the visual modality a deep residual network (ResNet) of 50 layers. In addition to the importance of feature extraction, a machine learning algorithm needs also to be insensitive to outliers while being able to model the context. To tackle this problem, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks are utilized. The system is then trained in an end-to-end fashion where - by also taking advantage of the correlations of the each of the streams - we manage to significantly outperform the traditional approaches based on auditory and visual handcrafted features for the prediction of spontaneous and natural emotions on the RECOLA database of the AVEC 2016 research challenge on emotion recognition.

  6. 40 CFR 63.2994 - How do I verify the performance of monitoring equipment?

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... equipment? (a) Before conducting the performance test, you must take the steps listed in paragraphs (a)(1) and (2) of this section: (1) Install and calibrate all process equipment, control devices, and... evaluation results. (b) If you use a thermal oxidizer, the temperature monitoring device must meet the...

  7. Environmental benefits of electrification and end-use efficiency

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    McMenamin, J.S.; Monforte, F.A.; Sioshansi, F.P.

    1997-01-01

    Significant reductions in greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants can be achieved through continued substitution of clean, efficient electrotechnologies for fossil fuel-based technologies. Continued improvements in the efficiency of electrical appliances already in use will further increase the environmental benefits of electricity. Over the last several decades, electricity use in the US has grown strongly. Over a 35 year period 1960-95, electric utility sales increased more than fourfold, from under 700 billion kWh (BkWh) to almost 3,000 BkWh. This increase was due, in part, to a growing economy, but it also reflects the increasingly broad application of electricity to provide comfort, convenience, entertainment, safety and productivity. Reflecting this expanding role, energy used for electricity generation by utilities has nearly doubled, increasing from 19 percent of US primary energy use in 1960 to about 36 percent in 1995. Environmental factors have also provided support to policies that promote improved end-use efficiency. More efficient end-use equipment allows consumers to obtain the same level of end-use services with less electricity. Reduced electricity consumption levels imply reduced generation requirements and therefore, lower levels of emissions associated with generation. Beginning in the mid-1970's, and stimulated by abrupt increases in fossil fuel prices, both government and utility policies began to emphasize end-use efficiency

  8. Quality control of CT systems by automated monitoring of key performance indicators: a two-year study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nowik, Patrik; Bujila, Robert; Poludniowski, Gavin; Fransson, Annette

    2015-07-08

    The purpose of this study was to develop a method of performing routine periodical quality controls (QC) of CT systems by automatically analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs), obtainable from images of manufacturers' quality assurance (QA) phantoms. A KPI pertains to a measurable or determinable QC parameter that is influenced by other underlying fundamental QC parameters. The established KPIs are based on relationships between existing QC parameters used in the annual testing program of CT scanners at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. The KPIs include positioning, image noise, uniformity, homogeneity, the CT number of water, and the CT number of air. An application (MonitorCT) was developed to automatically evaluate phantom images in terms of the established KPIs. The developed methodology has been used for two years in clinical routine, where CT technologists perform daily scans of the manufacturer's QA phantom and automatically send the images to MonitorCT for KPI evaluation. In the cases where results were out of tolerance, actions could be initiated in less than 10 min. 900 QC scans from two CT scanners have been collected and analyzed over the two-year period that MonitorCT has been active. Two types of errors have been registered in this period: a ring artifact was discovered with the image noise test, and a calibration error was detected multiple times with the CT number test. In both cases, results were outside the tolerances defined for MonitorCT, as well as by the vendor. Automated monitoring of KPIs is a powerful tool that can be used to supplement established QC methodologies. Medical physicists and other professionals concerned with the performance of a CT system will, using such methods, have access to comprehensive data on the current and historical (trend) status of the system such that swift actions can be taken in order to ensure the quality of the CT examinations, patient safety, and minimal disruption of service.

  9. Quality control of CT systems by automated monitoring of key performance indicators: a two‐year study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bujila, Robert; Poludniowski, Gavin; Fransson, Annette

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to develop a method of performing routine periodical quality controls (QC) of CT systems by automatically analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs), obtainable from images of manufacturers' quality assurance (QA) phantoms. A KPI pertains to a measurable or determinable QC parameter that is influenced by other underlying fundamental QC parameters. The established KPIs are based on relationships between existing QC parameters used in the annual testing program of CT scanners at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. The KPIs include positioning, image noise, uniformity, homogeneity, the CT number of water, and the CT number of air. An application (MonitorCT) was developed to automatically evaluate phantom images in terms of the established KPIs. The developed methodology has been used for two years in clinical routine, where CT technologists perform daily scans of the manufacturer's QA phantom and automatically send the images to MonitorCT for KPI evaluation. In the cases where results were out of tolerance, actions could be initiated in less than 10 min. 900 QC scans from two CT scanners have been collected and analyzed over the two‐year period that MonitorCT has been active. Two types of errors have been registered in this period: a ring artifact was discovered with the image noise test, and a calibration error was detected multiple times with the CT number test. In both cases, results were outside the tolerances defined for MonitorCT, as well as by the vendor. Automated monitoring of KPIs is a powerful tool that can be used to supplement established QC methodologies. Medical physicists and other professionals concerned with the performance of a CT system will, using such methods, have access to comprehensive data on the current and historical (trend) status of the system such that swift actions can be taken in order to ensure the quality of the CT examinations, patient safety, and minimal disruption of service

  10. Monitoring and forecasting Etna volcanic plumes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    S. Scollo

    2009-09-01

    Full Text Available In this paper we describe the results of a project ongoing at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV. The objective is to develop and implement a system for monitoring and forecasting volcanic plumes of Etna. Monitoring is based at present by multispectral infrared measurements from the Spin Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager on board the Meteosat Second Generation geosynchronous satellite, visual and thermal cameras, and three radar disdrometers able to detect ash dispersal and fallout. Forecasting is performed by using automatic procedures for: i downloading weather forecast data from meteorological mesoscale models; ii running models of tephra dispersal, iii plotting hazard maps of volcanic ash dispersal and deposition for certain scenarios and, iv publishing the results on a web-site dedicated to the Italian Civil Protection. Simulations are based on eruptive scenarios obtained by analysing field data collected after the end of recent Etna eruptions. Forecasting is, hence, supported by plume observations carried out by the monitoring system. The system was tested on some explosive events occurred during 2006 and 2007 successfully. The potentiality use of monitoring and forecasting Etna volcanic plumes, in a way to prevent threats to aviation from volcanic ash, is finally discussed.

  11. Auditory N1 reveals planning and monitoring processes during music performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mathias, Brian; Gehring, William J; Palmer, Caroline

    2017-02-01

    The current study investigated the relationship between planning processes and feedback monitoring during music performance, a complex task in which performers prepare upcoming events while monitoring their sensory outcomes. Theories of action planning in auditory-motor production tasks propose that the planning of future events co-occurs with the perception of auditory feedback. This study investigated the neural correlates of planning and feedback monitoring by manipulating the contents of auditory feedback during music performance. Pianists memorized and performed melodies at a cued tempo in a synchronization-continuation task while the EEG was recorded. During performance, auditory feedback associated with single melody tones was occasionally substituted with tones corresponding to future (next), present (current), or past (previous) melody tones. Only future-oriented altered feedback disrupted behavior: Future-oriented feedback caused pianists to slow down on the subsequent tone more than past-oriented feedback, and amplitudes of the auditory N1 potential elicited by the tone immediately following the altered feedback were larger for future-oriented than for past-oriented or noncontextual (unrelated) altered feedback; larger N1 amplitudes were associated with greater slowing following altered feedback in the future condition only. Feedback-related negativities were elicited in all altered feedback conditions. In sum, behavioral and neural evidence suggests that future-oriented feedback disrupts performance more than past-oriented feedback, consistent with planning theories that posit similarity-based interference between feedback and planning contents. Neural sensory processing of auditory feedback, reflected in the N1 ERP, may serve as a marker for temporal disruption caused by altered auditory feedback in auditory-motor production tasks. © 2016 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

  12. Development of wide-area radiation monitor using an optical fiber

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kawata, Naoki; Kato, Masatoshi; Baba, Mamoru; Yamadera, Akira; Miura, Takako

    2002-01-01

    We have developed a method for radiation distribution measurement by combining an optical fiber of wave-length shift type with a plastic scintillator, and studied its properties to apply as a wide-area radiation monitor. The detector employs two photomultipliers in both ends of the fiber and locate the radiation position by using the difference of light arrival time from scintillators. We tested the detector with gamma-rays and neutrons concerning with the position-response and pulse-height response of the detector. From the experiment, we confirmed the proper operation of the detector and position response with spatial resolution of 30-60 cm

  13. SU-F-T-76: Total Skin Electron Therapy: An-End-To-End Examination of the Absolute Dosimetry with a Rando Phantom

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Cui, G; Ha, J; Zhou, S; Cui, J; Shiu, A [University Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)

    2016-06-15

    Purpose: To examine and validate the absolute dose for total skin electron therapy (TSET) through an end-to-end test with a Rando phantom using optically stimulated luminescent dosimeters (OSLDs) and EBT3 radiochromic films. Methods: A Varian Trilogy linear accelerator equipped with the special procedure 6 MeV HDTSe- was used to perform TSET irradiations using a modified Stanford 6-dual-field technique. The absolute dose was calibrated using a Markus ion chamber at a reference depth of 1.3cm at 100 cm SSD with a field size of 36 × 36 cm at the isocenter in solid water slabs. The absolute dose was cross validated by a farmer ion chamber. Then the dose rate in the unit of cGy/Mu was calibrated using the Markus chamber at the treatment position. OSLDs were used to independently verify the dose using the calibrated dose rate. Finally, a patient treatment plan (200 cGy/cycle) was delivered in the QA mode to a Rando phantom, which had 16 pairs of OSLDs and EBT3 films taped onto its surface at different anatomical positions. The doses recorded were read out to validate the absolute dosimetry for TSET. Results: The OSLD measurements were within 7% agreement with the planned dose except the shoulder areas, where the doses recorded were 23% lower on average than those of the planned. The EBT3 film measurements were within 10% agreement with the planned dose except the shoulder and the scalp vertex areas, where the respective doses recorded were 18% and 14% lower on average than those of the planned. The OSLDs gave more consistent dose measurements than those of the EBT3 films. Conclusion: The absolute dosimetry for TSET was validated by an end-to-end test with a Rando phantom using the OSLDs and EBT3 films. The beam calibration and monitor unit calculations were confirmed.

  14. [Reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatograph--application to serum aluminium monitoring].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoshino, H; Kaneko, E

    1996-01-01

    High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with the reversed-phase partition mode separation (including ion-pair one) towards metal chelate compounds prepared in an off-line fashion (precolumn chelation) is most versatile in terms of high sensitivity with base-line flatness, unique selectivity and cost effectiveness. The extraordinary toughness to the complicated matrices encountered in clinical testing is exemplified by the successful application to the aluminium monitoring of human serum samples. The A1 chelate with 2,2'-dihydroxyazobenzene is efficiently chromatographed on a LiChroCART RP-18 column using an aqueous methanol eluent (63.6 wt%) containing tetrabutylammonium bromide as an ion-pair agent. The serum concentration level of A1 down to 6 micrograms dm-3 is readily monitored without influences from iron, chyle and haemolysis.

  15. Thermal performance monitoring and assessment in Dukovany nuclear power plant

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Madron, F. [Chemplant Technology s.r.o., Hrncirska 4, 400 01 Usti nad Labem (Czech Republic); Papuga, J. [CEZ a.s., JE Dukovany, 675 50 Dukovany (Czech Republic); Pliska, J. [I and C ENERGO a.s., Prazska 684, 674 01 Trebic (Czech Republic)

    2006-07-01

    Competition in the European electricity market forces generators to achieve - in compliance with safety and environmental standards - efficiency of production as high as possible. This efficiency or heat rate is an important indicator of both the condition of the plant equipment and the quality of plant operation. Similar thermal performance indicators can also be calculated for components of the plant equipment such as heat exchangers. However, it is not easy to quantify these indicators with sufficient precision so that the results can be used for conduct of plant operation in near-real time and for predictive maintenance. This paper describes a present state of the system monitoring and evaluating thermal performance of the reactor units in Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant. The system provides information on actual and desirable (should-be) values of thermal performance indicators for control room operators, performance engineers and maintenance planners. The system is designed to monitor steady states and has two main functions: data validation and process simulation. Data validation is based on data reconciliation methodology and carried out with Recon software by Chemplant Technology. A detailed model of the secondary side for mass and heat balancing has been made up by means of the Recon's graphical editor; now it contains roughly 300 flows and employs data of about 200 measurements. Main advantages of the data reconciliation are: - reconciled data are consistent with the model, - reconciled data are more precise than data directly measured with consequence that the thermal power of steam generators is determined with substantially lower uncertainty than before - data reconciliation represents a solid basis for detection and identification of data corrupted by gross errors. Simulation is performed with a different analytical model of plant components configured into secondary side. The model has been developed by I and C Energo. Main purposes of simulation

  16. Radiological and environmental surveillance in front-end fuel cycle facilities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Khan, A.H.; Sahoo, S.K.; Tripathi, R.M.

    2004-01-01

    This paper describes the occupational and environmental radiological safety measures associated with the operations of front end nuclear fuel cycle. Radiological monitoring in the facilities is important to ensure safe working environment, protection of workers against exposure to radiation and comply with regulatory limits of exposure. The radiation exposure of workers in different units of the front end nuclear fuels cycle facilities operated by IREL, UCIL and NFC and environmental monitoring results are summarised

  17. End-to-end network models encompassing terrestrial, wireless, and satellite components

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boyarko, Chandler L.; Britton, John S.; Flores, Phil E.; Lambert, Charles B.; Pendzick, John M.; Ryan, Christopher M.; Shankman, Gordon L.; Williams, Ramon P.

    2004-08-01

    Development of network models that reflect true end-to-end architectures such as the Transformational Communications Architecture need to encompass terrestrial, wireless and satellite component to truly represent all of the complexities in a world wide communications network. Use of best-in-class tools including OPNET, Satellite Tool Kit (STK), Popkin System Architect and their well known XML-friendly definitions, such as OPNET Modeler's Data Type Description (DTD), or socket-based data transfer modules, such as STK/Connect, enable the sharing of data between applications for more rapid development of end-to-end system architectures and a more complete system design. By sharing the results of and integrating best-in-class tools we are able to (1) promote sharing of data, (2) enhance the fidelity of our results and (3) allow network and application performance to be viewed in the context of the entire enterprise and its processes.

  18. A Wireless Sensor Network for Structural Health Monitoring: Performance and Experience

    OpenAIRE

    Paek, Jeongyeup; Chintalapudi, Krishna; Caffrey, John; Govindan, Ramesh; Masri, Sami

    2005-01-01

    While sensor network research has made significant strides in the past few years, the literature has relatively few examples of papers that have evaluated and validated a complete experimental system. In this paper we discuss our deployment experiences and evaluate the performance of a multi-hop wireless data acquisition system (called Wisden) for structural health monitoring (SHM) on a large seismic test structure used by civil engineers. Our experiments indicate that, with the latest sensor...

  19. Project management metrics, KPIs, and dashboards a guide to measuring and monitoring project performance

    CERN Document Server

    Kerzner, Harold

    2013-01-01

    Today, with the growth of complex projects, stakeholder involvement in projects, advances in computer technology for dashboard designs, metrics, and key performance indicators for project management have become an important focus. This Second Edition of the bestselling book walks readers through everything from the basics of project management metrics and key performance indicators to establishing targets and using dashboards to monitor performance. The content is aligned with PMI's PMBOK Guide and stresses "value" as the main focal point.

  20. Sensor Deployment for Air Pollution Monitoring Using Public Transportation System

    OpenAIRE

    Yu, James J. Q.; Li, Victor O. K.; Lam, Albert Y. S.

    2015-01-01

    Air pollution monitoring is a very popular research topic and many monitoring systems have been developed. In this paper, we formulate the Bus Sensor Deployment Problem (BSDP) to select the bus routes on which sensors are deployed, and we use Chemical Reaction Optimization (CRO) to solve BSDP. CRO is a recently proposed metaheuristic designed to solve a wide range of optimization problems. Using the real world data, namely Hong Kong Island bus route data, we perform a series of simulations an...

  1. Using the PAW/PEM monitoring systems to support operations at Point Lepreau

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    MacDonald, S.; McIntyre, M.; Dai, H.

    1997-01-01

    The plant data logger was brought on-line at the Point Lepreau Generating Station (PLGS) in 1992 in order to record information from instruments throughout the plant. Using the System Engineers Data Extraction (SEDE) utility, current plant data is at the fingertips of anyone with a network connection. System engineers can monitor the performance of their systems at any time and take pro-active measures to avoid problems with performance, as well as monitor behaviour during tests and plant upsets. Nuclear Safety personnel gather data for use in simulation and analysis validation, as well as to ensure that plant parameters are kept within the safe operating envelope. The PLGS operational safety group embarked on a project to develop a data management system. The project and the monitoring process has come to be known as the Plant Analysis Workbench (PAW). When the need for complex monitoring of safety system signals was identified, this led to a similar project called the Plant Expert Monitor (PEM). In this paper we present an overview of the functionality of both PAW and PEM, outlining in particular the expert system architecture in PEM and giving an example of its day-to-day use

  2. Monitor and Control for PEFP System using EPICS

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Choi, Hyun Mi; Hong, I. S.; Song, Y. G.; Cho, Y. S.

    2005-01-01

    The construction of PEFP project whose final objective is to build 100 Mev proton accelerator started in 2002 and expected to finish in 2012. In 2005, we have performed 20mA proton beam of 20Mev. For developing the control systems of the 20Mev accelerator as well as 100 Mev accelerator, we chose EPICS(Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System) as the most suitable tool. We have studied EPICS applications for various situation and as the application we developed vacuum control system using EPICS base3.14.4 as the core software and EPICS extensions (e.g., EDM(Extensible Display Manager), MEDM(Motif Editor and Display Manager) etc.) as the user interface. There are a number of projects using EPICS for a broad spectrum of applications. EPICS began as a collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1991, building on work that was initially done at the ground test Accelerator. It is now running on accelerators that have as many as 180 distributed front-end controllers and control rooms with 20 consoles and a gateway to make system parameters available to offices, web site, and other remote control stations. It is also used at single controller and one workstation systems. We use the EPICS tool kit as a foundation of the control system. We developed a vacuum monitor, RFQ, DTL Turbo pump control system for use Ethernet Multi Serial Deice Severs on PEFP control system. The control system now shows stable and reliable characteristics enough to meet our control requirement. However, the control system is continuously being upgraded to accommodate additional control requirements such as vacuum device control

  3. Monitoring supports performance in a dual-task paradigm involving a risky decision-making task and a working memory task

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bettina eGathmann

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available Performing two cognitively demanding tasks at the same time is known to decrease performance. The current study investigates the underlying executive functions of a dual-tasking situation involving the simultaneous performance of decision making under explicit risk and a working memory task. It is suggested that making a decision and performing a working memory task at the same time should particularly require monitoring - an executive control process supervising behavior and the state of processing on two tasks. To test the role of a supervisory/monitoring function in such a dual-tasking situation we investigated 122 participants with the Game of Dice Task plus 2-back task (GDT plus 2-back task. This dual task requires participants to make decisions under risk and to perform a 2-back working memory task at the same time. Furthermore, a task measuring a set of several executive functions gathered in the term concept formation (Modified Card Sorting Test, MCST and the newly developed Balanced Switching Task (BST, measuring monitoring in particular, were used. The results demonstrate that concept formation and monitoring are involved in the simultaneous performance of decision making under risk and a working memory task. In particular, the mediation analysis revealed that BST performance partially mediates the influence of MCST performance on the GDT plus 2-back task. These findings suggest that monitoring is one important subfunction for superior performance in a dual-tasking situation including decision making under risk and a working memory task.

  4. Markov chain-based mass estimation method for loose part monitoring system and its performance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sung-Hwan Shin

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available A loose part monitoring system is used to identify unexpected loose parts in a nuclear reactor vessel or steam generator. It is still necessary for the mass estimation of loose parts, one function of a loose part monitoring system, to develop a new method due to the high estimation error of conventional methods such as Hertz's impact theory and the frequency ratio method. The purpose of this study is to propose a mass estimation method using a Markov decision process and compare its performance with a method using an artificial neural network model proposed in a previous study. First, how to extract feature vectors using discrete cosine transform was explained. Second, Markov chains were designed with codebooks obtained from the feature vector. A 1/8-scaled mockup of the reactor vessel for OPR1000 was employed, and all used signals were obtained by impacting its surface with several solid spherical masses. Next, the performance of mass estimation by the proposed Markov model was compared with that of the artificial neural network model. Finally, it was investigated that the proposed Markov model had matching error below 20% in mass estimation. That was a similar performance to the method using an artificial neural network model and considerably improved in comparison with the conventional methods.

  5. A compact CCD-monitored atomic force microscope with optical vision and improved performances.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mingyue, Liu; Haijun, Zhang; Dongxian, Zhang

    2013-09-01

    A novel CCD-monitored atomic force microscope (AFM) with optical vision and improved performances has been developed. Compact optical paths are specifically devised for both tip-sample microscopic monitoring and cantilever's deflection detecting with minimized volume and optimal light-amplifying ratio. The ingeniously designed AFM probe with such optical paths enables quick and safe tip-sample approaching, convenient and effective tip-sample positioning, and high quality image scanning. An image stitching method is also developed to build a wider-range AFM image under monitoring. Experiments show that this AFM system can offer real-time optical vision for tip-sample monitoring with wide visual field and/or high lateral optical resolution by simply switching the objective; meanwhile, it has the elegant performances of nanometer resolution, high stability, and high scan speed. Furthermore, it is capable of conducting wider-range image measurement while keeping nanometer resolution. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  6. Using LSTM recurrent neural networks for monitoring the LHC superconducting magnets

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wielgosz, Maciej; Skoczeń, Andrzej; Mertik, Matej

    2017-09-01

    The superconducting LHC magnets are coupled with an electronic monitoring system which records and analyzes voltage time series reflecting their performance. A currently used system is based on a range of preprogrammed triggers which launches protection procedures when a misbehavior of the magnets is detected. All the procedures used in the protection equipment were designed and implemented according to known working scenarios of the system and are updated and monitored by human operators. This paper proposes a novel approach to monitoring and fault protection of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) superconducting magnets which employs state-of-the-art Deep Learning algorithms. Consequently, the authors of the paper decided to examine the performance of LSTM recurrent neural networks for modeling of voltage time series of the magnets. In order to address this challenging task different network architectures and hyper-parameters were used to achieve the best possible performance of the solution. The regression results were measured in terms of RMSE for different number of future steps and history length taken into account for the prediction. The best result of RMSE = 0 . 00104 was obtained for a network of 128 LSTM cells within the internal layer and 16 steps history buffer.

  7. CODA Performance in the Real World

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    D.J. Abbott; W.G. Heyes; E. Jastrzembski; R. W. MacLeod; C. Timmer; E. Wolin

    2000-01-01

    The most ambitious implementation of the Jefferson Lab data acquisition system (CODA) to date is for the CLAS spectrometer in Experimental Hall B. CLAS has over 40,000 instrumented channels and uses up to 30 front-end (FASTBUS/VME) crates in the DAQ subsystem. During the initial experiments we found that performance of the fully instrumented DAQ system did not scale as expected based on single point to point benchmarks. Over the past year we have been able to study various performance bottlenecks in the CLAS DAQ system including front-end real time performance, switched 100BaseT Ethernet data transport, and online data distribution and recording. Performance tuning was necessary for components on both real time (VxWorks) and UNIX (Solaris) operating systems. In addition, a new efficient Event Transfer System (ET) was developed to provide faster online monitoring while having minimal impact on data throughput to storage. We discuss these issues and efforts to overcome the real world problems associated with running a high performance DAQ system on a variety of commercial hardware and software

  8. CODA performance in the real world

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Abbott, D.J.; Heyes, W.G.; Jastrzembski, E.; MacLeod, R.W.; Timmer, C.; Wolin, E.

    1999-01-01

    The most ambitious implementation of the Jefferson Lab data acquisition system (CODA) to date is for the CLAS spectrometer in Experimental Hall B. CLAS has over 40,000 instrumented channels and uses up to 30 front-end (FASTBUS/VME) crates in the DAQ subsystem. During the initial experiments the authors found that performance of the fully instrumented DAQ system did not scale as expected based on single point to point benchmarks. Over the past year the authors have been able to study various performance bottlenecks in the CLAS DAQ system including front-end real time performance, switched 100BaseT Ethernet data transport, and online data distribution and recording. Performance tuning was necessary for components on both real time (VxWorks) and UNIX (Solaris) operating systems. In addition, a new efficient Event Transfer System (ET) was developed to provide faster online monitoring while having minimal impact on data throughput to storage. They discuss these issues and efforts to overcome the real world problems associated with running a high performance DAQ system on a variety of commercial hardware and software

  9. Run II performance of luminosity and beam condition monitors at CMS

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Leonard, Jessica Lynn [DESY, Hamburg (Germany)

    2016-07-01

    The BRIL (Beam Radiation Instrumentation and Luminosity) system of CMS consists of instrumentation to measure the luminosity online and offline, and to monitor the LHC beam conditions inside CMS. An accurate luminosity measurement is essential to the CMS physics program, and measurement of the beam background is necessary to ensure safe operation of CMS. Many of the BRIL subsystems have been upgraded and others have been added for LHC Run II to complement the existing measurements. The beam condition monitor (BCM) consists of several sets of diamond sensors used to measure online luminosity and beam background with a single-bunch-crossing resolution. The BCM also detects when beam conditions become unfavorable for CMS running and may trigger a beam abort to protect the detector. The beam halo monitor (BHM) uses quartz bars to measure the background of the incoming beams at larger radii. The pixel luminosity telescope (PLT) consists of telescopes of silicon sensors designed to provide a CMS online and offline luminosity measurement. In addition, the forward hadronic calorimeter (HF) delivers an independent luminosity measurement, making the whole system robust and allowing for cross-checks of the systematics. An overview of the performance during 2015 LHC running for the new/updated BRIL subsystems will be given, including the uncertainties of the luminosity measurements.

  10. Performance indicators: A tool for continuous quality improvement

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nidhi M Bhatnagar

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: Performance monitoring is an important tool which can be used for setting priorities for process improvement. At our centre, we have been monitoring every step in the processes, right from inventory of consumables (both critical and routine to number of donors reactive for TTI. We conducted a study to measure the impact of monitoring Performance Indicators and how it could be used as a tool for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI. Materials and Methods: The present study was a retrospective study where the performance indicator (PI data of blood bank was analyzed for over four years. For certain parameters, benchmarks or thresholds were set that represented warning limits or action limits. The yearly data were collated from monthly data. "Shifts" or "Trends", if any, were identified and Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA taken accordingly. At the end, outcomes of the analysis were charted. Results: After the yearly data evaluation, outcomes obtained were used to plan, correct and amend processes and systems in the blood center. It was observed that the workload of the center showed an upward trend. This helped us to plan for the purchase of consumables and management of manpower. The monitoring of usage and discard of blood helped in the efficient management of blood stocks. The need for any new equipment could also be judged by the trends in workload. Conclusion: Performance indicators are indispensible tools which various stakeholders in the Blood Transfusion centres should implement to improve on quality performance.

  11. Performance indicators: A tool for continuous quality improvement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bhatnagar, Nidhi M; Soni, Shital; Gajjar, Maitrey; Shah, Mamta; Shah, Sangita; Patel, Vaidehi

    2016-01-01

    Performance monitoring is an important tool which can be used for setting priorities for process improvement. At our centre, we have been monitoring every step in the processes, right from inventory of consumables (both critical and routine) to number of donors reactive for TTI. We conducted a study to measure the impact of monitoring Performance Indicators and how it could be used as a tool for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). The present study was a retrospective study where the performance indicator (PI) data of blood bank was analyzed for over four years. For certain parameters, benchmarks or thresholds were set that represented warning limits or action limits. The yearly data were collated from monthly data. Shifts or Trends, if any, were identified and Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) taken accordingly. At the end, outcomes of the analysis were charted. After the yearly data evaluation, outcomes obtained were used to plan, correct and amend processes and systems in the blood center. It was observed that the workload of the center showed an upward trend. This helped us to plan for the purchase of consumables and management of manpower. The monitoring of usage and discard of blood helped in the efficient management of blood stocks. The need for any new equipment could also be judged by the trends in workload. Performance indicators are indispensible tools which various stakeholders in the Blood Transfusion centres should implement to improve on quality performance.

  12. Using Servers to Enhance Control System Capability

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bickley, M.; Bowling, B. A.; Bryan, D. A.; Zeijts, J. van; White, K. S.; Witherspoon, S.

    1999-01-01

    Many traditional control systems include a distributed collection of front end machines to control hardware. Backend tools are used to view, modify, and record the signals generated by these front end machines. Software servers, which are a middleware layer between the front and back ends, can improve a control system in several ways. Servers can enable on-line processing of raw data, and consolidation of functionality. It many cases data retrieved from the front end must be processed in order to convert the raw data into useful information. These calculations are often redundantly performance by different programs, frequently offline. Servers can monitor the raw data and rapidly perform calculations, producing new signals which can be treated like any other control system signal, and can be used by any back end application. Algorithms can be incorporated to actively modify signal values in the control system based upon changes of other signals, essentially producing feedback in a control system. Servers thus increase the flexibility of a control system. Lastly, servers running on inexpensive UNIXworkstations can relay or cache frequently needed information, reducing the load on front end hardware by functioning as concentrators. Rather than many back end tools connecting directly to the front end machines, increasing the work load of these machines, they instead connect to the server. Servers like those discussed above have been used successfully at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to provide functionality such as beam steering, fault monitoring, storage of machine parameters, and on-line data processing. The authors discuss the potential uses of such servers, and share the results of work performed to date

  13. Benefit-Risk Monitoring of Vaccines Using an Interactive Dashboard: A Methodological Proposal from the ADVANCE Project.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bollaerts, Kaatje; De Smedt, Tom; Donegan, Katherine; Titievsky, Lina; Bauchau, Vincent

    2018-03-26

    New vaccines are launched based on their benefit-risk (B/R) profile anticipated from clinical development. Proactive post-marketing surveillance is necessary to assess whether the vaccination uptake and the B/R profile are as expected and, ultimately, whether further public health or regulatory actions are needed. There are several, typically not integrated, facets of post-marketing vaccine surveillance: the surveillance of vaccination coverage, vaccine safety, effectiveness and impact. With this work, we aim to assess the feasibility and added value of using an interactive dashboard as a potential methodology for near real-time monitoring of vaccine coverage and pre-specified health benefits and risks of vaccines. We developed a web application with an interactive dashboard for B/R monitoring. The dashboard is demonstrated using simulated electronic healthcare record data mimicking the introduction of rotavirus vaccination in the UK. The interactive dashboard allows end users to select certain parameters, including expected vaccine effectiveness, age groups, and time periods and allows calculation of the incremental net health benefit (INHB) as well as the incremental benefit-risk ratio (IBRR) for different sets of preference weights. We assessed the potential added value of the dashboard by user testing amongst a range of stakeholders experienced in the post-marketing monitoring of vaccines. The dashboard was successfully implemented and demonstrated. The feedback from the potential end users was generally positive, although reluctance to using composite B/R measures was expressed. The use of interactive dashboards for B/R monitoring is promising and received support from various stakeholders. In future research, the use of such an interactive dashboard will be further tested with real-life data as opposed to simulated data.

  14. Input data requirements for performance modelling and monitoring of photovoltaic plants

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gavriluta, Anamaria Florina; Spataru, Sergiu; Sera, Dezso

    2018-01-01

    This work investigates the input data requirements in the context of performance modeling of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) systems. The analysis focuses on the PVWatts performance model, well suited for on-line performance monitoring of PV strings, due to its low number of parameters and high......, modelling the performance of the PV modules at high irradiances requires a dataset of only a few hundred samples in order to obtain a power estimation accuracy of ~1-2\\%....

  15. Web Based Room Monitoring System Using Webcam

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tole Sutikno

    2008-04-01

    Full Text Available A security has become very important along with the increasing number of crime cases. If some security system fails, there is a need for a mechanism that capable in recording the criminal act. Therefore, it can be used for investigation purpose of the authorities. The objective of this research is to develop a security system using video streaming that able to monitor in real-time manner, display movies in a browser, and record a video as triggered by a sensor. This monitoring system comprises of two security level camera as a video recorder of special events based on infrared sensor that is connected to a microcontroller via serial communication and camera as a real-time room monitor. The hardware system consists of infrared sensor circuit to detect special events that is serially communicated to an AT89S51 microcontroller that controls the system to perform recording process, and the software system consists of a server that displaying video streaming in a webpage and a video recorder. The software for video recording and server camera uses Visual Basic 6.0 and for video streaming uses PHP 5.1.6. As the result, the system can be used to record special events that it is wanted, and can displayed video streaming in a webpage using LAN infrastructure.

  16. Real time kernel performance monitoring with SystemTap

    CERN Multimedia

    CERN. Geneva

    2018-01-01

    SystemTap is a dynamic method of monitoring and tracing the operation of a running Linux kernel. In this talk I will present a few practical use cases where SystemTap allowed me to turn otherwise complex userland monitoring tasks in simple kernel probes.

  17. A passive acoustic monitor of treatment effectiveness during extracorporeal lithotripsy

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fedele, F; Coleman, A J; Thomas, K; Ryves, S; Phillips, D; Leighton, T G

    2011-01-01

    Although extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) has now been in the clinic for at least three decades, there has been little advance in efforts (i) to estimate the efficacy of the treatment whilst it is in progress, or (ii) to determine the end-point of a treatment session in terms of the degree of stone fragmentation achieved. Previous in vitro experimentation and clinical trials have shown that a passive acoustic monitor has the potential to provide evidence of the effectiveness and end-point of lithotripsy. The system exploits secondary emissions generated during shock-tissue interaction, whose features depend on the quality of tissue at the beam focus. This prototype was developed into the first commercially available clinical ESWL treatment monitor (Precision Acoustic Ltd, Dorchester, UK), and a unit has been acquired and tested in the clinical routine by urologists at Guy's and St Thomas NHS Trust in March 2009. This paper critically assesses the performance of the new system for the first 25 treatments monitored. The ESWL monitor correctly predicted the treatment outcome of 15 of the 18 treatments that were followed-up clinically. In addition, it was noted that the measure of treatment effectiveness provided by the monitor after 500 shocks was predictive of the final treatment outcome (p < 0.001). This suggests that the system could be used in pre-assessment; indicating if the stone is susceptible to ESWL or if the patient should be sent for surgery.

  18. A passive acoustic monitor of treatment effectiveness during extracorporeal lithotripsy

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Fedele, F; Coleman, A J [Medical Physics Department, Guy' s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, Westminster Bridge Road, SE1 7EH, London (United Kingdom); Thomas, K; Ryves, S; Phillips, D [Urology Department, Guy' s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, Great Maze Pond, SE1 9RT, London (United Kingdom); Leighton, T G, E-mail: fiammetta.fedele@gstt.nhs.uk [Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, Highfield, S017 1BJ, Southampton (United Kingdom)

    2011-02-01

    Although extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) has now been in the clinic for at least three decades, there has been little advance in efforts (i) to estimate the efficacy of the treatment whilst it is in progress, or (ii) to determine the end-point of a treatment session in terms of the degree of stone fragmentation achieved. Previous in vitro experimentation and clinical trials have shown that a passive acoustic monitor has the potential to provide evidence of the effectiveness and end-point of lithotripsy. The system exploits secondary emissions generated during shock-tissue interaction, whose features depend on the quality of tissue at the beam focus. This prototype was developed into the first commercially available clinical ESWL treatment monitor (Precision Acoustic Ltd, Dorchester, UK), and a unit has been acquired and tested in the clinical routine by urologists at Guy's and St Thomas NHS Trust in March 2009. This paper critically assesses the performance of the new system for the first 25 treatments monitored. The ESWL monitor correctly predicted the treatment outcome of 15 of the 18 treatments that were followed-up clinically. In addition, it was noted that the measure of treatment effectiveness provided by the monitor after 500 shocks was predictive of the final treatment outcome (p < 0.001). This suggests that the system could be used in pre-assessment; indicating if the stone is susceptible to ESWL or if the patient should be sent for surgery.

  19. A passive acoustic monitor of treatment effectiveness during extracorporeal lithotripsy

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Fedele, F; Coleman, A J [Medical Physics Department, Guy' s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, Westminster Bridge Road, SE1 7EH, London (United Kingdom); Thomas, K; Ryves, S; Phillips, D [Urology Department, Guy' s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, Great Maze Pond, SE1 9RT, London (United Kingdom); Leighton, T G, E-mail: fiammetta.fedele@gstt.nhs.uk [Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, Highfield, S017 1BJ, Southampton (United Kingdom)

    2011-02-01

    Although extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) has now been in the clinic for at least three decades, there has been little advance in efforts (i) to estimate the efficacy of the treatment whilst it is in progress, or (ii) to determine the end-point of a treatment session in terms of the degree of stone fragmentation achieved. Previous in vitro experimentation and clinical trials have shown that a passive acoustic monitor has the potential to provide evidence of the effectiveness and end-point of lithotripsy. The system exploits secondary emissions generated during shock-tissue interaction, whose features depend on the quality of tissue at the beam focus. This prototype was developed into the first commercially available clinical ESWL treatment monitor (Precision Acoustic Ltd, Dorchester, UK), and a unit has been acquired and tested in the clinical routine by urologists at Guy's and St Thomas NHS Trust in March 2009. This paper critically assesses the performance of the new system for the first 25 treatments monitored. The ESWL monitor correctly predicted the treatment outcome of 15 of the 18 treatments that were followed-up clinically. In addition, it was noted that the measure of treatment effectiveness provided by the monitor after 500 shocks was predictive of the final treatment outcome (p < 0.001). This suggests that the system could be used in pre-assessment; indicating if the stone is susceptible to ESWL or if the patient should be sent for surgery.

  20. Aircraft Gas Turbine Engine Health Monitoring System by Real Flight Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mustagime Tülin Yildirim

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Modern condition monitoring-based methods are used to reduce maintenance costs, increase aircraft safety, and reduce fuel consumption. In the literature, parameters such as engine fan speeds, vibration, oil pressure, oil temperature, exhaust gas temperature (EGT, and fuel flow are used to determine performance deterioration in gas turbine engines. In this study, a new model was developed to get information about the gas turbine engine’s condition. For this model, multiple regression analysis was carried out to determine the effect of the flight parameters on the EGT parameter and the artificial neural network (ANN method was used in the identification of EGT parameter. At the end of the study, a network that predicts the EGT parameter with the smallest margin of error has been developed. An interface for instant monitoring of the status of the aircraft engine has been designed in MATLAB Simulink. Any performance degradation that may occur in the aircraft’s gas turbine engine can be easily detected graphically or by the engine performance deterioration value. Also, it has been indicated that it could be a new indicator that informs the pilots in the event of a fault in the sensor of the EGT parameter that they monitor while flying.