1,720,955 research outputs found
Framework for risk-based management and safety of railroad bridge infrastructure using wireless smart sensors (WSS)
Get PDFTo increase overall profitability, add capacity to rail operations to meet projected needs, and comply with new federal regulations on bridge safety, North American railroads are exploring means and methods to improve the management of their bridge networks. Current maintenance, repair, and replacement (MRR) decisions are informed by bridge inspections and ratings. Inspection and rating practices recommend observing the response of bridges under revenue traffic. However, an objective relationship between bridge responses and the impact to railroad operations has yet to be established. Moreover, measuring responses while trains are on the bridge can be quite challenging and sometimes may not be possible. As a result, current MRR decisions are not optimal and in general conservative, prioritizing safety to overcome the uncertainty of consequences of inaction. If the consequences of MRR decisions could be better determined, then the railroads could more effectively allocate their limited resources. This dissertation addresses this issue by developing an approach for consequence-based management of bridge networks, adopted from the field of seismic risk assessment, for making MRR decisions on a network-wide basis. The proposed framework assesses bridge service state condition based on fragility relations. Fragility curves are developed relating bridge responses under revenue service traffic to service condition limit states. Additionally, this research conducted specific Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) campaigns for railroad bridges employing Wireless Smart Sensors (WSS). Wireless strain gages installed in the rail measured real-time trainloads and speeds, while wireless accelerometers and magnetic strain gages measured associated bridge responses. The sensing system was deployed and validated on multiple railroad bridges in North America under different types of traffic and capacity. The measured bridge data can be used to update periodically the fragilities to have more accurate estimates of the bridge condition. The expenses associated with these service conditions estimate the total costs of a given MRR policy. In this way, MRR decisions can be prioritized minimizing negative consequences to railroad operations. This framework provides a consistent approach for intelligent management of railroad bridges, and more specifically, for the prioritization of railroad bridge MRR decisions. Using this framework the rail owner can identify the most efficient use of a limited budget while maintaining safe railroad operations.Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2015-07-22 without embargo termsThe student, Fernando Moreu-Alonso, accepted the attached license on 2015-04-21 at 16:51.The student, Fernando Moreu-Alonso, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2015-04-21 at 16:58.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2015-04-23 at 12:00.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #7998 on 2015-07-22 at 10:33:09Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-22T22:17:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Previous issue date: 2015-04-232 year embargo requested by author and approved by L. Spradlin at [email protected]. Documentation recorded in archived OTRS ticket # 2015111228000092.
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
New Chinese Code of Structural Health Monitoring for Large Bridges
No full textThe tittle of Fernandos PhD thesis is Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of Railroad Bridges using Wireless Smart Sensors Networks. The object of this research is to develop strategies for managing railroad bridge infrastructure that will minimize expenses, while maximizing the line capacity and maintaining safe rail operations. Fernando wants to recommend how to instrument railroad bridges for safety that matches railroads needs and concerns. There are no regulations as of today in North America regarding SHM of infrastructure. China is the technology and implementation leader in SHM in the planet. The Chinese Ministry of Transportation has published the worlds first standard for SHM, but it is only available in Chinese at this moment. This past summer Fernando Moreu was an exchange student studying Chinese at the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) under the Center of Global Studies FLAS fellowship. Invited by Prof. Li Hui from HIT, Fernando was able to become familiar with the new SHM code and also civil engineering Chinese terminology. His experience allowed him to not only benefit from the University environment, but also technical visits to bridge construction sites where he listened to field engineers about the technical difficulties related to bridge management in China.Submitted by Kayla Hays ([email protected]) on 2015-04-23T18:59:27Z
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Previous issue date: 2015Ope
New Chinese Code of Structural Health Monitoring for Large Bridges
No full textThe tittle of Fernandos PhD thesis is Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of Railroad Bridges using Wireless Smart Sensors Networks. The object of this research is to develop strategies for managing railroad bridge infrastructure that will minimize expenses, while maximizing the line capacity and maintaining safe rail operations. Fernando wants to recommend how to instrument railroad bridges for safety that matches railroads needs and concerns. There are no regulations as of today in North America regarding SHM of infrastructure. China is the technology and implementation leader in SHM in the planet. The Chinese Ministry of Transportation has published the worlds first standard for SHM, but it is only available in Chinese at this moment. This past summer Fernando Moreu was an exchange student studying Chinese at the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) under the Center of Global Studies FLAS fellowship. Invited by Prof. Li Hui from HIT, Fernando was able to become familiar with the new SHM code and also civil engineering Chinese terminology. His experience allowed him to not only benefit from the University environment, but also technical visits to bridge construction sites where he listened to field engineers about the technical difficulties related to bridge management in China.Ope
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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