Conservatism of the Accident Sequence Evaluation Program HRA Procedure

This paper presents a limited assessment of the conservatism of the Accident Sequence Evaluation Program (ASEP) human reliability analysis (HRA) procedure described in NUREG/CR-4772. The data for this study are derived from simulator examination reports from the NRC requalification examination cycle for nuclear power plant operators. The ASEP procedure was used to estimate human error probability (HEP) values for critical tasks, and the HEP results were compared with the failure rates observed in the examinations. The ASEP procedure was applied by PNNL operator license examiners who supplemented the limited information in the examination reports with expert judgment based upon their extensive simulator examination experience. Comparison of the average of the ASEP HEP values with the fraction of the population actually failed and demonstrated that the ASEP HEP values are larger (conservative) by a statistically significant average factor of two. Partitioning of tasks into subgroups based on the ASEP HEP values and comparison of the subgroup average ASEP HEP values with observed subgroup failure rates showed little or no conservatism for small ASEP HEP values, but considerable conservatism for larger ASEP HEP values.     

The health of university athletes: attitudes, behaviors, and stressors

This study examined several aspects of the health of university athletes. Five areas of concern were targeted for investigation: general health background, use of drugs and alcohol, weight and eating behaviors, stress, and use of helping resources. The authors developed a questionnaire and used it to survey 27 varsity athletic teams at a major private university. The incidence of injuries was high; one third of the 247 student athletes surveyed reported sport-related injuries. Alcohol was much more frequently used than other drugs, and use tended to decrease during the competitive season. Significant differences between men and women athletes were found in off-season alcohol and marijuana use. Anabolic steroid abuse did not appear to be a major problem for this athlete population. Issues of diet, weight, and body image were found to be significantly different for women than for men. Although the incidence of bulimia and anorexia was low for both female and male athletes, it was clear that female athletes brought to their sport heightened concern for body image. The authors discuss the psychological and interpersonal implications that these findings have for the adjustment of female athletes. Injury and academics were perceived as the most stressful factors for both men and women, whereas weight and diet issues were a major stress factor for one third of the women. Given these data, specific recommendations are made for health professionals who work with college athletes.     

Environmentalism and Public Policy: Environmental Justice: Grassroots Activism and Its Impact on Public Policy Decision Making

A growing body of evidence reveals that people of color and low-income persons have borne greater environmental and health risks than the society at large in their neighborhoods, workplace, and playgrounds. Over the last decade or so, grassroots activists have attempted to change the way government implements environmental, health, and civil rights laws. Grassroots groups have organized, educated, and empowered themselves to improve the way government regulations and environmental policies are administered. A new movement emerged in opposition to environmental racism and environmenttal injustice. Over the last decades or so, grassroots activists have had some success in changing the way the federal government treats communities of color and their inhabitants. Grassroots groups have also organized, educated, and empowered themselves to improve the way health and environmental policies are administered. Environmentalism is now equated with social justice and civil rights.     

Stress: the perceptions of social work lectures in Britain

Summary Stress has been a focus of attention for several years amongvarious professional groups, including social work. However,only limited attention has been given to stress experiencedby academics and even less to social work lecturers. This paperexamines job satisfaction, felt pressure and stress amongstsocial work lecturers in the United Kingdom. It looks at demands,supports and constraints, psychological well-being, the impactof the department and the institution, and changes that mightalleviate stress. The results obtained are compared, where possible,with studies of social workers and, in particular, academicsin general. A 60-item postal questionnaire was sent to all social work lecturersin the United Kingdom; 322 responses were received. Respondentsenjoyed undertaking a wide variety of tasks and apparently receivedvarying amounts of support from their managers. The social worklecturers experienced high levels of job satisfaction and stressscores were similar to those of the general United Kingdom population.But a significant proportion - one quarter - of social worklecturers were suffering from borderline levels of anxiety anddepression. Overall, social work lecturers' responses were morefavourable than the responses of other academics and socialworkers. In common with other research on stress, this studysuggests that pressure and stress should not be seen primarilyas individual problems, but as a product of interactions atteam, department and institutional levels, and at the home/workinterface.     

Generalized model for IGC growth in aluminum alloys

A generalized brick wall model is developed to describe intergranular corrosion in Equi-axed AA7178-T6 and Wingskin AA7178-T6 aluminum alloys. The intergranular corrosion rate is highly related to grain size and shape. High strength aluminum alloys are often elongated and anisotropic, with the fastest nominal IGC growth rate in the longitudinal direction (L) or long transverse direction (T) and the slowest in the short transverse direction (S). We propose a three-way intersection model and use it to simulate the corrosion kinetics for each direction. With a proper combination of model parameters, the generalized IGC model provides a good fit to experimental data developed by the foil penetration technique.     

Describing the Dynamics of Attention to TV Commercials: A Hierarchical Bayes Analysis of the Time to Zap an Ad

This paper provides insights into the dynamics of attention to TV commercials via an analysis of the length of time that commercials are viewed before being 'zapped'. The model, which incorporates a flexible baseline hazard rate and captures unobserved heterogeneity across both consumers and commercials using a hierarchical Bayes approach, is estimated on two datasets in which commercial viewing is captured by a passive online device that continually monitors a household's TV viewing. Consistent with previous findings in psychology about the nature of attentional engagement in TV viewing, baseline hazard rates are found to be non-monotonic. In addition, the data show considerable ad-to-ad and household-to-household heterogeneity in zapping behavior. While one of the datasets contains some information on characteristics of the ads, these data do not reveal any firm links between the ad heterogeneity and the ad characteristics. A number of methodological and computational issues arise in the hierarchical Bayes analysis.     

Some tests for detection of faulty inspection

Some heuristic tests for detection of existence of errors in inspection are proposed. Some of these tests are only effective if the sampling fraction ((sample size)/(lot size)) is rather large, and in all cases their application predicates special experiments to provide the requisite data. Feasibility of these experiments will vary according to specific circumstances.     

Sampling from the von Mises distribution via a comparison of random numbers

An algorithm is described for generating von Mises variates using Forsythe's method. The performance is analysed with respect to speed, and compactness. Conclusions are drawn as to when it is preferred to Best and Fisher's envelope rejection method.