Atlantic salmon survival at sea: temporal changes that lack regional synchrony
Spatial and temporal synchrony in abundance or survival trends can be indicative of whether populations are affected by common environmental drivers. In Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.), return rates to natal rivers have generally been assumed to be affected primarily by shared oceanic conditions, leading to spatially synchronous trends in mortality. Here, we investigated the existence of parallel trends in salmon sea survival, using data on migrating smolts and returning adults from seven Canadian populations presumed to share feeding grounds. We analysed sea survival, using a Bayesian change-point model capable of detecting non-stationarity in time series data. Our results indicate that w…
On reliability of systems with moving material subjected to fracture and instability
Abstract The reliability of systems with moving cracked elastic and isotropic material is considered. The material is modeled as a moving plate which continually has a crack on the edge. The plate is subjected to homogeneous tension acting in the traveling direction and the tension varies temporally around a constant value, the set tension. The tension and the length of the crack are modeled by an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process and an exponential Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process, respectively. Failure is regarded as the state at which the plate becomes unstable or fractures (or both) and a lower bound for the reliability of the system is derived. Considering reliability of the system leads to first p…
Optimization and analysis of processes with moving materials subjected to fatigue fracture and instability
We study systems of traveling continuum modeling the web as a thin elastic plate of brittle material, traveling between a system of supports at a constant velocity, and subjected to bending, in-plane tension and small initial cracks. We study crack growth under cyclic in-plane tension and transverse buckling of the web analytically. We seek optimal in-plane tension that maximizes a performance vector function consisting of the number of cycles before fracture, the critical velocity and process effectiveness. The present way of applying optimization in the studies of fracture and stability is new and affords an analytical tool for process analysis. peerReviewed
On stochastic modelling and reliability of systems with moving cracked material
In many industrial processes, such as printing paper, a material travels through a series of rollers unsupported and under longitudinal tension. The value of the tension has an important role in the system behaviour, such as fracture and me- chanical stability. This thesis develops stochastic models for a system in which an elastic, isotropic cracked material travels through a series of spans and studies the probabilities of fracture and instability of the material. The models focus on describing tension variations and initial cracks in the material. Time-dependent tension fluctuations are modelled by the stationary Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, and the occurrence and lengths of the cracks are…
Stochastic analysis of the critical velocity of an axially moving cracked elastic plate
In this study, a probabilistic analysis of the critical velocity for an axially moving cracked elastic and isotropic plate is presented. Axially moving materials are commonly used in modelling of manufacturing processes, like paper making and plastic forming. In such systems, the most serious threats to runnability are instability and material fracture, and finding the critical value of velocity is essential for efficiency. In this paper, a formula for the critical velocity is derived under constraints for the probabilities of instability and fracture. The significance of randomness in different model parameters is investigated for parameter ranges typical of paper material and paper machin…
Estimating Programming Exercise Difficulty using Performance Factors Analysis
This Work in Progress Paper studies student and exercise modelling based on pass/fail log data gathered from an introductory programming course. Contemporary education capitalizes on the communications technology and remote study. This can create distance between the teacher and students and the resulting lack of awareness of the difficulties students encounter can lead to low student satisfaction, dropout and poor grades. In many cases, various technological solutions are used to collect individual exercise submissions, but there are little resources for indexing or modelling the exercises in depth. Exercise specific feedback from students may not be easily obtainable either. In the presen…
Reliability analysis of processes with moving cracked material
Abstract The reliability of processes with moving elastic and isotropic material containing initial cracks is considered in terms of fracture. The material is modelled as a moving plate which is simply supported from two of its sides and subjected to homogeneous tension acting in the travelling direction. For tension, two models are studied: (i) tension is constant with respect to time, and (ii) tension varies temporally according to an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process. Cracks of random length are assumed to occur in the material according to a stochastic counting process. For a general counting process, a representation of the nonfracture probability of the system is obtained that exploits condi…
Stochastic fracture analysis of systems with moving material
This paper considers the probability of fracture in a system in which a material travels supported by rollers. The moving material is subjected to longitudinal tension for which deterministic and stochastic models are studied. In the stochastic model, the tension is described by a multi-dimensional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. The material is assumed to have initial cracks perpendicular to the travelling direction, and a stochastic counting process describes the occurrence of cracks in the longitudinal direction of the material. The material is modelled as isotropic and elastic, and LEFM is applied. For a general counting process, when there is no fluctuation in tension, the reliability of t…
Temporary Allee effects among non‐stationary recruitment dynamics in depleted gadid and flatfish populations
Many considerably declined fish populations have not fully recovered despite reductions in fishing pressure. One of the possible causes of impaired recovery is the (demographic) Allee effect. To investigate whether low-abundance recruitment dynamics can switch between compensation and depensation, the latter implying the presence of the Allee effect, we analysed the stock–recruitment time series of 17 depleted cod-type and flatfish populations using a Bayesian change point model. The recruitment dynamics were represented with the sigmoidal Beverton–Holt and the Saila–Lorda stock–recruitment models, allowing the parameters of the models to shift at a priori unknown change points. Our synthes…
A framework for evaluating student interaction with automatically assessed exercises
Automatic assessment has become a widely used technique in programming courses. Even though modern techniques can practically ensure functional correctness of student solutions, it is less clear how to promote quality interaction between students and the automatic assessment systems. In this article we propose a simple analytical framework for studying student interaction with the automatic assessment systems and use it to study our functional programming course.