Search results for " Reliability."
showing 10 items of 551 documents
Mechanical and barrier properties of extruded film made from sodium and calcium caseinates
2014
Abstract Over the past few years, much interest has been placed into the investigation of increased barrier and mechanical properties of protein films via a multitude of approaches. Generally, these techniques involve modifications of interactions among protein molecules, such as ionic crosslinking using divalent ions. To evaluate the crosslinking effect of Ca 2+ cations, films were made from calcium caseinate (CaCAS) and/or sodium caseinate (NaCAS). The production of caseinate thin films was carried out in two steps: first thermoplastic pellets were made using a co-rotating twin-screw extruder, then they were transformed into thin films (60 μm) using a classical film blowing machine. Tensi…
Middleware for transparent TCP connection migration : masking faulty TCP-based services
2004
Masteroppgave i informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi 2004 - Høgskolen i Agder, Grimstad Mission critical TCP-based services create a demand for robust and fault tolerant TCP communication. Sense Intellifield monitors drill operations on rig sites offshore. Critical TCP-based services need to be available 24 hours, 7 days a week, and the service providers need to tolerate server failure. How to make TCP robust and fault tolerant without modifying existing infrastructure like existing client/server applications, services, TCP stacks, kernels, or operating systems is the motivation of this thesis. We present a new middleware approach, first of its kind, to allow TCP-based services to survi…
Assessing first-year engineering students' pre-university mathematics knowledge: preliminary validity results based on an item response theory model
2020
The importance of students’ prior knowledge to their current learning outcomes cannot be overemphasised. Students with adequate prior knowledge are better prepared for the current learning materials than those without the knowledge. However, assessment of engineering students' prior mathematics knowledge has been beset with a lack of uniformity in measuring instruments and inadequate validity studies. This study attempts to provide evidence of validity and reliability of a Norwegian national test of prior mathematics knowledge using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach. This approach involves use of an item response theory model followed by cognitive interviews of some students …
Attendibilità dei modelli per la valutazione dei moduli elastici delle murature suggeriti dalle norme tecniche
2012
In this paper the results of an experimental investigation aimed to the assessment of Young moduli, rigidity moduli and other mechanical properties for different types of masonry are shown. The mechanical characteristics predicted by models proposed by some technical codes were compared against experimental data. This study was motivated by the suggestion of the Masonry Standards Joint Committee's (MSJC) code that, while proposing the use of such models, acknowledges the lack of testing in support of their validation. The experimental investigation has included compressive tests on components (blocks and mortar), diagonal compressive tests and ordinary compressive tests (orthogonally to bed…
Measurement uncertainty impact on simplified load flow analysis in MV smart grids
2018
This work is focused on the measurement uncertainty impact on load flow analysis in medium voltage (MV) distribution networks. In more detail, the paper presents the uncertainty evaluation of a simplified load flow algorithm, which is based on the load power measurements at each secondary substation and one voltage measurement at the slack bus (i.e. the voltage at the MV bus bars of the primary substation). To reduce the costs of the monitoring system, the load flow algorithm makes use of LV load power measurements for all the substations except those of MV users, where MV transducers are usually already installed. The uncertainties on the algorithm input quantities (load powers and slack b…
Ideal and physical barrier problems for non-linear systems driven by normal and Poissonian white noise via path integral method
2016
Abstract In this paper, the probability density evolution of Markov processes is analyzed for a class of barrier problems specified in terms of certain boundary conditions. The standard case of computing the probability density of the response is associated with natural boundary conditions, and the first passage problem is associated with absorbing boundaries. In contrast, herein we consider the more general case of partially reflecting boundaries and the effect of these boundaries on the probability density of the response. In fact, both standard cases can be considered special cases of the general problem. We provide solutions by means of the path integral method for half- and single-degr…
On the use of adaptive spatial weight matrices from disease mapping multivariate analyses
2020
Conditional autoregressive distributions are commonly used to model spatial dependence between nearby geographic units in disease mapping studies. These distributions induce spatial dependence by means of a spatial weights matrix that quantifies the strength of dependence between any two neighboring spatial units. The most common procedure for defining that spatial weights matrix is using an adjacency criterion. In that case, all pairs of spatial units with adjacent borders are given the same weight (typically 1) and the remaining non-adjacent units are assigned a weight of 0. However, assuming all spatial neighbors in a model to be equally influential could be possibly a too rigid or inapp…
Probabilistic Flood Hazard Mapping Using Bivariate Analysis Based on Copulas
2017
This study presents a methodology to extract probabilistic flood hazard maps in an area subject to flood risk, taking into account uncertainties in the definition of design hydrographs. Particularly, the authors present a new method to produce probabilistic inundation and flood hazard maps in which the hydrological input (i.e., synthetic flood design event) to a 2D hydraulic model has been obtained by using a bivariate statistical analysis (copulas) to generate flood peak discharges and volumes. This study also aims to quantify the contribution of boundary conditions’ uncertainty in order to evaluate the effect of this uncertainty source on probabilistic flood hazard mapping. Different comb…
Fostering teenagers' assessment of information reliability: Effects of a classroom intervention focused on critical source dimensions
2018
International audience; Increased amounts of information available from the Internet have triggered new demands for students to evaluate information quality. Our study presents an instructional intervention aimed at fostering ninth grade students' critical evaluation of source reliability. The intervention was grounded into theories of multiple text comprehension and used an analytic framework that defines the core source dimensions of author position (competence), author motivation (intention), and media quality (pre-publication validation). Compared to controls, trained students 1) reduced the score assigned to links containing less reliable information in the three critical source dimens…
Experimental determination of the kurtosis of RF noise in microwave low-noise devices
2000
Abstract The degree of the Gaussian nature of the white noise present in microwave low-noise devices is experimentally investigated. The chosen experimental technique consists of simultaneously digitizing four versions of the noise which are amplified by four parallel independent amplifiers. The four independent signals are then used to compute the second, and, to a good approximation, the fourth moment of the noise. The ratio of the fourth moment to the square of the second moment is the kurtosis of the noise. Gaussian processes are characterized by a kurtosis equal to 3. A deviation from this value gives an indication about the degree of non-Gaussian nature of the noise. By using this tec…