A Deference to Protocol: Fashioning a Three-Dimensional Public Policy Framework for the Internet Era

The Russian and world offshore oil and gas industry has gained considerable experience in developing the shelf of seas with a temperate climate, but it does not have a developed technology and all necessary tested technical means for large-scale organization of exploration and exploitation in waters of arctic seas. Therefore, at present engineers are intensely searching for optimal designs for creating ice-resistant structures able to operate under harsh arctic conditions and have high reliability and long life. For convenience of analysis of the design features of offshore oil- and gas-field hydrotechnical engineering structures (OOGSs), it is necessary to classify them primarily according to the technological tasks set before them. It is known that the design of OOGSs consists of such components as the platform superstructure (PS), support part (SP), and foundation each of which has fundamental design features. The hydrometeorological factors are the main ones when determining the design features for the support part of OOGSs. Geological-engineering factors affect the selection of the type of OOGSs and are the determining factors of the design of the foundation of the structures. The results of analyzing the problems make it possible to single out the primary scientific-technical problems aimed at the accomplishmentmore » of tasks related to the creation of OOGSs for developing hydrocarbon resources of the arctic shelf.« less

Nuclear power stations have become more efficient and safer inter alia due to learning from valuable operational experience, largely in reaction to major and near accidents. However, dread of rare but possible severe accidents, reliance upon unfailing human performance at various levels, and dependence on social stability, emphasize the importance of further safety improvements, for which challenging criteria were conveyed in Sect. 2.2. To achieve them, key design features (“building blocks”) are viewed and revisited and should be combined in a radically new way, to come up with “revolutionary” or even “exotic” system designs. To check whether such designs are feasible, we track most recent developments of reactor concepts focusing on differing (1) coolants, including liquid metals and molten salt, (2) neutron spectrum from thermal to fast, (3) power level, (4) fundamental design features (architecture) and purpose, and (5) ability to extend fuel reserves and “burn” waste. The designs selected are scored against the set of very stringent, highly ambitious criteria. The results show a high potential for far-reaching improvements compared to most advanced LWRs in use today. Small modular reactors emerge as being the most attractive. However, thus far, none of the candidate concepts fulfill all the criteria convincingly; avoiding criticality induced accidents and maximizing proliferation resistance appears most challenging. There is also a potential for new concept-specific risks to be introduced but this appears manageable. Although caution is warranted, a purely deterministic safety approach is tempting, in that we would like to absolutely exclude the possibility of severe accidents.

EDITORIAL article Front. Psychol., 10 June 2016Sec. Language Sciences Volume 7 - 2016 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00861

Adaptive governance is a concept from institutional theory that has recently emerged from the study of management arrangements for environmental assets and common pool resources in complex adaptive systems. Adaptive governance is defined as 'the evolution of rules and norms that better promotes the satisfaction of underlying human needs and preferences given changes in understanding, objectives, and the social, economic and environmental context'. This establishes an idealised reference point for examining the dynamics of institutional change - akin to the concept of market failure within economics - and provides a useful framework for identifying impediments to desirable changes and developing effective remedies for these impediments.

Public policy scholars have warned that the conventional public policy (CPP) framework is not effective enough to address the post-pandemic problems as it has blatantly failed the litmus test of time. The CPP framework has been criticised on various grounds and blamed for the problems of unsustainability and overarching poverty that plague humanity. The objective of this chapter is to explain a quadric public policy framework (PPI) that has recently been proposed as an efficient alternative public policy framework. The explanation is limited to only one out of the four components of the framework, called the Maqasid al-Shariah component, also known as public interest theory. The findings show that the PPI framework can link policymakers from different sectors and provide a platform for a whole-of-government approach to achieving the SDGs, especially poverty alleviation and eradication.

Why are some tramlines, as human‐made common pool resources, sustained while others are not, even under a similar polycentric governance structure? Do the institutional design principles of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework explain these different outcomes? The National Tramline Program is a national rural infrastructure development project started in 2009 by the research institute of the Department of Agriculture in the Philippines. Using originally collected survey data and employing mixed methods, we examine the determinants of the operational status of tramlines by comparing successful and failed cases. Building upon the IAD framework and polycentric governance for common pool resource management, we demonstrate that in addition to the farmers’ commitment to collective actions, the institutional characteristics of micro‐institutions, namely, the democratic selection of a leader for the farmers’ associations, are key to sustaining tramlines. Furthermore, case studies of both success and failure illustrate that the active involvement of municipal local governments and the presence of coordination among related agencies at various levels are essential for maintaining tramlines as human‐made common pool resources.

The Firm as Common Pool Resource: Unpacking the Rise of Benefit Corporations

Cumulatively developing robots offer a unique opportunity to reenact the constant interplay between neural mechanisms related to learning, memory, prospection, and abstraction from the perspective of an integrated system that acts, learns, remembers, reasons, and makes mistakes. Situated within such interplay lie some of the computationally elusive and fundamental aspects of cognitive behavior: the ability to recall and flexibly exploit diverse experiences of one's past in the context of the present to realize goals, simulate the future, and keep learning further. This article is an adventurous exploration in this direction using a simple engaging scenario of how the humanoid iCub learns to construct the tallest possible stack given an arbitrary set of objects to play with. The learning takes place cumulatively, with the robot interacting with different objects (some previously experienced, some novel) in an open-ended fashion. Since the solution itself depends on what objects are available in the "now," multiple episodes of past experiences have to be remembered and creatively integrated in the context of the present to be successful. Starting from zero, where the robot knows nothing, we explore the computational basis of organization episodic memory in a cumulatively learning humanoid and address (1) how relevant past experiences can be reconstructed based on the present context, (2) how multiple stored episodic memories compete to survive in the neural space and not be forgotten, (3) how remembered past experiences can be combined with explorative actions to learn something new, and (4) how multiple remembered experiences can be recombined to generate novel behaviors (without exploration). Through the resulting behaviors of the robot as it builds, breaks, learns, and remembers, we emphasize that mechanisms of episodic memory are fundamental design features necessary to enable the survival of autonomous robots in a real world where neither everything can be known nor can everything be experienced.

As a result of considerable advances in the understanding of adaptive control theory as well as in the computer technology, many industrial feasibility studies have been performed and several adaptive controllers are available on the market. In this paper, the authors aim to investigate recent results in the robustness of adaptive control theory from an applicability perspective. Two optimal control laws (LQ and GPC) with a suitable system parametrization (partial state reference tracking) are combined with a robust parameter estimator to provide two practical adaptive control algorithms. The latter are evaluated by application to a flexible system control, involved in a flexible belt transmition system. Particular emphasis is put on those fundamental design features as stability robustness, offset-free performance, control system integrity and implementation simplicity.

The temperature control problem in a rapid thermal processor is addressed using first a conventional PID controller and then a partial state model reference adaptive controller derived via the long‐range predictive control and linear quadratic control approaches. These two algorithms are shown to provide such fundamental design features as offset‐free disturbance rejection and stability robustness with respect to unmodelled and time‐varying dynamics.

This article examines the critical role of Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) in mainframe computing systems. We explore how RAS principles have become fundamental design features in modern mainframes, enhancing their ability to meet the demanding requirements of enterprise-level data processing. The article provides an in-depth analysis of each RAS component, detailing how reliability is achieved through robust hardware self-checking and extensive software testing, availability is maintained via seamless component failover and layered error recovery, and serviceability is ensured through advanced diagnostic capabilities and modular replacement units. We argue that the holistic integration of RAS principles in mainframe architecture not only maximizes system uptime and operational continuity but also significantly impacts application design and overall system efficiency. Through a comprehensive review of current mainframe technologies and industry practices, this article highlights the enduring importance of RAS in an era of increasing computational complexity and datadriven decision making. Our findings suggest that RAS principles will continue to evolve, playing a crucial role in shaping the future of high-performance, mission-critical computing systems.

A positron emission tomograph (PET) for small animals, e.g. rabbits or rats, is under development at the KFA Juelich as a cooperative effort between the Institute of Medicine which includes a PET center, the Central Laboratory for Electronics and the Institute for Thin Film and Ion Technology (ISI). The first version of the scanner uses arrays of small individual Yttrium Aluminium Perovskit (YAP) scintillator crystals coupled to position sensitive photomultiplier tubes. Special hardware has been built for coincidence detection, position detection and real time data acquisition, which is performed by a PC. The single event data are transfered to workstations, where the radioactivity distribution is reconstructed. The fundamental design features have extensively been simulated. Preliminary studies were carried out by using single NaI:Tl crystals coupled to position sensitive photomultiplier tubes. For the reconstruction of the simulated source configurations and measured data a 3D EM-algorithm has been implemented. The main advantage of the animal PET scanner is its high flexibility, allowing the realization of various detector system configurations. The system is capable of either providing good spatial resolution or high sensitivity for dynamic studies of pharmacokinetics. The reconstruction software is flexible and matches the different choices.

Fundamental design features

Fault diagnosis (FD) of man-made systems lies in the core of modern technology and attracts increasing attention by both theoreticians and practitioners. Actually, FD is one of the major concerns in industrial and other technological systems operation. In recent years a great deal of work has been done in the direction of designing systems (hardware and software) that are able to automatically diagnose the faults and malfunctions of an industrial process on the basis of observed data and symptoms. FD provides the prerequisites for fault tolerance, reliability and safety that are fundamental design features in any complex engineering system. Complex automatic industrial and other systems usually consist of hundreds of interdependent working parts which are individually subject to malfunction or failure. Total failure of these systems can present unacceptable economic loss or hazards to personnel or to the system itself. Hence, most modern systems involve: (i) a plan of maintenance which replaces worn parts before they malfunction or fail and (ii) a monitoring mechanism that detects a fault as it occurs, identifies the malfunction of a faulty component, and compensates for the fault of the component by substituting a configuration of redundant elements so that the system continues to operate satisfactorily. FD is actually this monitoring function and involves four subfunctions, namely detection, prediction, identification, and correction of faults during the on-line operation of the technological system at hand.

This paper outlines the fundamental features of the PJM day-ahead energy market and real-time energy market. The Day-ahead market is based on a voluntary least-cost security constrained unit commitment and dispatch with several fundamental design features that ensure the market is robust and competitive. This market offers market participants the option to lock in energy and transportation charges at binding day-ahead prices. The flexibility of the day-ahead market rules provide all participants with equal access to the day-ahead market through consistent price signals and by providing all participants with the ability to submit virtual demand bids and virtual supply offers. These mechanisms promote liquidity in the markets. Economic incentives drive the convergence of the day-ahead and real-time market prices. The real-time energy market is based on security-constrained economic dispatch and is cleared based on the actual system operating conditions. The LMP-based markets support reliable grid operations through efficient price signals.