Disturbance Situations Research Articles

P-1061 - Holistic approach to conflict in married couple

The paper is a theoretical synthesis of research strategy that had as focus the marital conflict. Central idea of the research is focused on the issue of conflict between members of couple and highlights the key events in its evolution and its implications for family system. The main motivational factor that determined to start this theoretical research has been to try to capture those factors that lead to or facilitate the emergence and perpetuation of conflicts in married couples and their implications on the family environment. We started with the idea that conflict family environment is a tragedy and will inevitably lead to different emergence of deviant and delinquent manifestations from children of such families. This research represents an introduction to conflict within the couple's marriage, for a next work, when we want to propose an integrative investigative model that will take into account personality factors, coping strategies and defense mechanisms. Thus, we assume that the psychotherapeutic approach may be improved by identifying personality variables and coping strategies of the members of a married couple living in disturbing situation. The research tends to clarify the main points of the authors who have had as concern the conjugal couple research, concluding with the assumption that a holistic approach to the phenomenon of marital conflict within couples can not lose sight of the manner the partners relate to the disturbing situation, nor the strategies they use to solve the conflict.

Testing MEDOCC and BOPA indices in shallow soft-bottom communities in the Spanish Mediterranean coastal waters

Abstract The implementation of the European Water Framework Directive has enhanced the development of several indices based on benthic invertebrate communities. Some of them, such as BOPA, simplify the calculation employing the taxonomic sufficiency principle to assess the ecological status of ecosystems since they only consider opportunistic polychaetes and amphipods; others, such as MEDOCC, include all the species found in the community, and assign them to four ecological groups: sensitive, indifferent, tolerant, and opportunistic. Anyway, there is the need for testing, validating and improving these indices in different regions and communities. In this study we test the application of MEDOCC and BOPA along the Spanish Mediterranean coastal waters (Catalonia, Balearic Islands, Valencia, Murcia, and Andalusia regions) in order to investigate whether benthic indices with different taxonomic resolution provide similar ecological status assessment. Shallow fine soft-bottom communities were sampled from 2002 to 2010 in a total of 241 locations. The comparison between both indices demonstrated that the concordance for the studied communities reached up to 79% in some areas, although it was less than 30% in natural and anthropogenically modified ecosystems dominated by stress-tolerant species. Even though BOPA index provides good results, in general it evaluates in higher ecological status than MEDOCC does and it does not always allow discriminating more disturbed situations. The assignation of a same species to different ecological groups (some opportunistic polychaetes of one method are classified as indifferent by the other) and the fact that all the amphipods (except genus Jassa) are considered as sensitive species in BOPA index but not in MEDOCC, could contribute to the observed discrepancies. Some suggestions to improve the agreement between both methods are pointed and discussed.

A Study On The Effects Of Nepotism, Favoritism And Cronyism On Organizational Trust In The Auditing Process In Family Businesses In Turkey

Nepotism, favoritism and cronyism, which can be seen in all sectors of todays business world, have become quite common behavior. The granting of privileges to certain individuals is an extremely disturbing situation to the organizations employees and the lack of trust arising under such conditions negatively affects job satisfaction, organizational loyalty, and individual performance, and can hinder the internal control system in the auditing process. In this study, the effects of nepotism, favoritism and cronyism on organizational loyalty regarding the internal control system in the auditing process in the Turkish textiles sector are examined. In order to uncover the relationships in question, frequency breakdowns, Cronbachs Alpha reliability testing, and regression analysis are performed.

The Design of Ball Mill Control System Base on Two-Cell Immune Controller

Currently, Ball Mill is most used coal grinding equipment of pulverizing system of thermal power plant in China. Because of this system is multivariable, strong-coupling and serious time-delay, and it also has nonlinear, time-varying and distributed parameter characteristics. It is naturally difficult to be effective for such kind system to use PID regulation law and design multi-variable system by single-loop. So try more intelligent control for this kind system. Immune Control has fast response and robustness, especially; the Two-cell Immune Control has integration and memory characteristics, and improve the system to better control effect. It is particularly suitable for solving practical engineering application problems with robustness, adaptability and requirements of dynamic performance. So this paper use Two-cell Immune Control for the Ball Mill Control System, and make a large number of simulation experiments about rated parameter, non-rated parameter and adding disturbance situation, it has made a good dynamic and static performance under various conditions. These results confirm the validity of the design of Ball Mill Control System base on Two-cell Immune Controller.

Lr-synchronization and adaptive synchronization of a class of chaotic Lurie systems under perturbations

The synchronous control of a class of disturbed chaotic Lurie systems is probed in. The conception of L r -synchronization of drive–respond systems is presented. Via Lyapunov function analysis and comparison principle, L r synchronous controller of the drive–respond systems under perturbation is given and its robustness is also discussed. Barbalat lemma is further used to derive the adaptively synchronous controller for the unknown disturbance situation and the globally asymptotical synchronization is realized. All designed controllers are verified by the simulations and the given controllers are linear, which are convenient and can produce rapid convergence speed of the error systems.

(A13) Effective Proactive Outreach among Disaster Relief Workers (DRW) in an Emergency Mortuary (EM)

BackgroundFollowing the Buizingen train-crash disaster on February 15, 2010, nineteen dead bodies were evacuated to the morgue of the Military Hospital. According to the hospital's emergency incident management system, the reception plan for the deceased was activated and an EM organized. Aim: To determine the psychological impact of exposure to current death and to evaluate the effect of proactive outreach in DRW deployed in an EM.Methods and ResultsFor five consecutive days 62 hospital staff personnel were involved in the daily activities of an EM: disaster victim identification, autopsies, care for the dead, logistic support and reception and mental relief of the families. Besides a critical incident debriefing on day 5, a postal questionnaire survey of these 62 DRW was conducted, including the Davidson Trauma Scale (DTS) – detecting acute post-traumatic stress reactions/symptoms (ASR/S) – and the Symptom Checklist SCL 90 self-report inventory – measuring primary symptoms and global distress – administered 2, 4 and 7 months following the train-crash. Out of these, 35 (56%) initially responded (informed consent), followed by a return rate of 80% (28/35) and 68% (19/28) respectively. Six out of the 35 participants were identified suffering from acute psychological distress according to DTS and SCL 90 and subsequently followed up in the hospital's dedicated Military Centre for Crisis Psychology. In five of them, normalization of symptoms had occurred by the second inquiry and persisted. Ten months post-event, only 1 patient still needs psychological counseling, whereas 34 demonstrated psychological resilience.ConclusionPrevalence of chronification is low (1/35) compared to literature (5 to 10%). Timely detection of acute distress and proactive outreach may effectively counterbalance chronification in tertiary victims following a critical incident. Education and training should help hospital staff deal with ASR/S and improve coping. Hospitals should support professionals in the most disturbing situations.

Alterações eletrocardiográficas na intoxicação aguda por antidepressivo tricíclico e suas implicações clínicas

Introdução: A intoxicação aguda por antidepressivos tricíclicos é comum nas salas de emergência. Anormalidades no eletrocardiograma de 12 derivações (ECG) são associadas a este tipo de intoxicação, com implicações diagnósticas e prognósticas. O ECG pode ter valor incremental principalmente em situações de alteração de consciência, convulsões ou distúrbios do ritmo cardíaco associado. Objetivo: Revisar as principais alterações eletrocardiográficas descritas na intoxicação por antidepressivos tricíclicos e estabelecer suas implicações prognósticas no manejo desta condição clínica. Metodologia: Pesquisa bibliográfica no MEDLINE (PubMEd) limitada aos artigos publicados entre 1980 e 2010 em língua inglesa, utilizando-se unitermos (tricyclic antidepressant overdose OR tricyclic antidepressant intoxication OR tricyclic antidepressant poisoning OR tricyclic antidepressant ingestion AND electrocardiography). Dos 133 artigos identificados, foram selecionados 44 para a revisão. Resultado: Foram identificados como alterações prevalentes com poder diagnóstico em ordem decrescente os seguintes achados: desvio dos 40 ms terminais do QRS para a direita do plano frontal (61,0-83,0%), taquicardia sinusal (40,7-57,7%), prolongamento do QTc (8,2-53,0%),relação R/S em aVR>0,7 (28,8-32,9%), prolongamento do QRS (8,2-21,3%) e padrão Brugada-like (2,3-15,3%). Destes achados, somente o prolongamento do QRS foi prognóstico para morte, convulsão e arritmia e o prolongamento do QTc e a relação R/S em aVR>0,7 para arritmia ventricular. Para o padrão Brugada-like , as evidências são escassas, mas sugestivas de maior chance de convulsão e hipotensão. Conclusão: O ECG é um instrumento de fácil realização na sala de urgência, fornecendo informações diagnósticas e prognosticas para a intoxicação por tricíclicos, devendo ser realizado em todo paciente com suspeita desta intoxicação.

A single observer location method under the scatter signals position disturbance situation: the constraint total least square method

A target position can be estimated using position information from scattered signals in the nonline-of-sight propagation environment in a single observer location system. There is always an error in the final estimated result of the position obtained using scatter signals because measurement noise is inevitable. To reduce the total error of the system, we propose a method of converting the problem of optimizing location into a one of solving the extremes of the constraints. And the problem of how to solve the extremes of the constraints is converted into an unconstrained problem by using the constrained total least squares (CTLS) method. Finally, the Newton iteration method is used to obtain the optimized solution. Simulation results also verify the capability of this method.

On Reverse Control Strategy and Anti-Wind Disturbance Analysis of Automotive EPS System

Under the special situation of lateral wind disturbance, the lateral direction was resulted from the conventional obverse control strategy and influenced the vehicle stability. The 2-DOF full-vehicle model with the lateral wind disturbance and EPS dynamic model were designed. Reverse control strategy was designed where the EPS motor provided active steering control to prevent vehicle deflection with the input signal of steering torque under the lateral wind disturbance. In the EPS working process, the reverse control strategy and obverse control strategy were switched according to the drive situation to obtain the best vehicle stability. Anti-disturbance simulation was executed and the results shown that the yaw rate, the slideslip angle, the lateral acceleration and the lateral displacement have been weakened, and the vehicle stability is enhanced. The design of reverse control strategy has engineering significance to the overall design, function enhancement and optimization and steering manipulation and safety improvement.

A fish-based biotic integrity index selection for rivers in Hechi Prefecture, Guangxi and their environmental quality assessment

This study aims to develop a multi-metric, fish-based Index of Biological Integrity (IBI) for assessing the environmental quality of rivers in Hechi Prefecture, Guangxi Province, South China. Data on fish assemblage were collected via electrofishing We screened 21 candidate metrics representing attributes of fish assemblage. Among these, six metrics were finally selected for the IBI. It was shown that the fish-based biological integrity was good in Xiaohuanjiang River , fair in Hongshuihe, Longjiang and Dahuanjiang Rivers, but poor in Diaojiang River. The results of assessment were consistent with the actual situation of human disturbance. The assessment system constructed by this study could be used or used for reference in the area around Hechi. Biotic integrity assessment was an important means of water environment quality monitoring. To enable the biotic integrity assessment more scientific and more objective, much more research work is required to focus on the relationship between biotic integrity and environmental factors.

The psychological impact of motor vehicle accidents on emergency service workers

Emergency service workers continuously face situations where they are in charge of the lives of others, and this can be a risk factor for their mental health. This study aims to determine the psychological impact of exposure to current death and physical injury events in the context of motor vehicle accidents among emergency personnel and which variables better predict posttraumatic stress disorder. Participants were National Institute of Medical Emergency workers (nurses and medical doctors; n= 59) in the north of Portugal. They filled out a trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder scale (PTSD), a scale that assesses distress (General Health Questionnaire 12), a peritraumatic dissociation scale (Peritraumatic Dissociative Experiences Questionnaire) and a coping scale (Ways of Coping Questionnaire). Participants reported high exposure to events evaluated as traumatic, but low prevalence of PTSD. When the relation between exposure, time in emergency, sex, distress symptoms, peritraumatic dissociation, and PTSD symptoms was examined, peritraumatic dissociation and distress were the only predictors of PTSD symptoms, but beyond their contribution direct coping explains PTSD variance. In conclusion, taking into account the contribution of distress and peritraumatic dissociation to predict psychopathological symptoms, and the contribution of coping to lower PTSD scores, education and training should help the professionals deal with these reactions and improve coping, and organizations should support professionals in the most disturbing situations.

Fundamental standards of humanity – still a useful attempt or an expired concept?

The Fundamental Standards of Humanity were developed in the 1980s to ensure the protection of individuals in situations where international humanitarian law was not applicable, but derogation of human rights was still possible. To date, there is no binding document that has been adopted that is applicable in situations of internal disturbances and tensions. This article examines whether such a binding document is necessary at all, because developments in international law, especially international criminal law, international humanitarian law, as well as human rights law could have narrowed or closed this gap. Therein, a few provisions are scrutinised as to their applicability in all circumstances.

Spatial patterns and interspecific relations analysis help to better understand species distribution patterns in a Mediterranean high mountain grassland

The aim of this study is to investigate distribution patterns of species occurring at definite spatial scales and to address the main ecological factors that structure a Mediterranean high mountain grassland community. Following the protocols of the GLORIA long-term study, four summits were sampled during the year 2006 and 2007 in Sierra de Guadarrama (Spain). The data recorded on two of those summits were analysed for spatial pattern of species, interspecific associations and environmental relationships were determined from the recorded data. This was done by multivariate analyses (ordinations), SADIE analyses (distance indices) and Pearson χ2 test, respectively. Results showed that chamaephyte species were more abundant in less disturbed situations whilst caespitose hemicryptophyte species and mosses were more abundant in disturbed ones. High mountain species were more abundant in less disturbed situations. Higher spatial heterogeneity was detected on northern and eastern slopes, which could be related to the increased environmental severity of northern exposures and to the greater intensity of the disturbances on eastern exposures. The frequent aggregated distribution of a few species may be related to facilitation processes due to their frequent participation in positive interactions. Finally we observed that positive pairwise associations of species were more frequent than negative associations. The relevance of the studied relationships lied in a better understanding of those threats on high mountain biodiversity induced by climate warming.

Should We Protect the Strong or the Weak? Risk, Resilience, and the Selection of Marine Protected Areas

It is thought that recovery of marine habitats from uncontrollable disturbance may be faster in marine reserves than in unprotected habitats. But which marine habitats should be protected, those areas at greatest risk or those at least risk? We first defined this problem mathematically for 2 alternate conservation objectives. We then analytically solved this problem for both objectives and determined under which conditions each of the different protection strategies was optimal. If the conservation objective was to maximize the chance of having at least 1 healthy site, then the best strategy was protection of the site at lowest risk. On the other hand, if the goal was to maximize the expected number of healthy sites, the optimal strategy was more complex. If protected sites were likely to spend a significant amount of time in a degraded state, then it was best to protect low-risk sites. Alternatively, if most areas were generally healthy then, counterintuitively, it was best to protect sites at higher risk. We applied these strategies to a situation of cyclone disturbance of coral reefs on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. With regard to the risk of cyclone disturbance, the optimal reef to protect differed dramatically, depending on the expected speed of reef recovery of both protected and unprotected reefs. An adequate consideration of risk is fundamental to all conservation actions and can indicate surprising routes to conservation success.

Variable-Structure Control of Electronic Throttle Valve

In recent years, the use of electronic throttle valve systems has been very popular in the automotive industry. However, there exist difficulties in controlling the electronic throttle valve because of multiple nonsmooth nonlinearities including stick-slip friction, backlash, and a discontinuous nonlinear spring involved in the system. To alleviate the aforementioned difficulties in controlling the opening angle of a throttle plate and to realize a highly robust controller against uncertainties in the throttle body's mathematical model with limited cost, the variable structure concept is utilized after the employment of feedback backstepping techniques in the intermediate stages of design. Furthermore, the sliding mode observer design technique with equivalent control is exploited in order to estimate the values of necessary states that are not measured. The performance of the proposed controller is evaluated by performing some experiments on the throttle valve setup. First, small scale reference signals that pass through the nonsmooth nonlinearities are tracked even in different disturbed situations by the throttle valve plate, and then, the performance of the controller is tested for large-scale reference signals to observe the reaction time of the controller to sudden changes. For all the cases, the controller works rather well and meets the performance specifications.

Quality of life assessment in clinical research on Chinese medicine: Early experience and outlook.

Patients' own account of the clinical progress is particularly important in situations of pain control, mental disturbances, and chronic problems. Chinese medicine does not directly target against a symptom or pathology, but emphasizes the maintenance of harmony between the vital forces of an individual. To achieve the harmony, usually long-termed treatment is required by consideration of the changing seasons and subject's constitution nature. With such unique requirements in Chinese medicine, the assessment of the quality of life becomes most important. There are obvious similarities between different systems of medical care. Hence the general domains of the quality of life should fit all patients, whether they are receiving conventional, modern medical care on alternative, Chinese medical care. Like different clinical research categories, specific areas (eg, cancer, women's problems) would need special additions of assessment. Chinese medicine is based on a uniquely different philosophy and the approach is not deductive, but individualized treatment is an essential requirement. The symptom/syndrome descriptions and interpretation are different from modern western medicine. Health-related quality of life is not sufficient for clinical trials using Chinese medicine, especially when Chinese medicine experts serve as chief investigators. Early attempts to develop an additional system to cover the need for Chinese medicine have been scanty. A lot of effort needs to be given before a practical instrument taking care of both the general domains of common interests and special feelings on health, relevant to Chinese medicine, could be established and made available. Users of Chinese medicine have to rely on generally acceptable yard-sticks with the addition of self-reporting symptoms unique to Chinese medicine.

Geometric connectivity of vehicular ad hoc networks: Analytical characterization

Advances in wireless communications are facilitating the development of inter-vehicle communication systems that will benefit mobility and safety objectives. Recently, these systems, referred as vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), are gaining significant prominence from both government agencies and private organizations. VANETs are characterized by high vehicle mobility, unexpected driver behavior and variable traffic environment which bring forth challenges to maintain good connectivity. This study considers VANETs as a nominal system with disturbance. Under the nominal system, the traffic space headway is assumed to follow an approved traffic flow distributions, such as exponential distribution. Disturbance is then used to capture a set of uncertain traffic flow events caused by driver behavior and changes in traffic flow. In addition, robustness factor is incorporated to present the impact of probabilistic disturbance events that disrupt the node connectivity. Under constant disturbance conditions, the lower bound of reachable neighbors for each vehicle to maintain a high connectivity is analytically derived. Furthermore, we obtain the relationship between the number of nodes in a VANET and the reachable neighbors under which the network is asymptotically connected. Finally, in variable disturbance situations, the interaction between robustness factor and macroscopic traffic parameters are investigated based on the simulation data. The validation results demonstrate that the proposed analytical characterization can approximate VANET connectivity very well. Our results facilitate the understanding of VANET connectivity on a freeway segment under different traffic conditions.

Information quality of environmental and chemical databases exemplified by high production volume chemicals and pharmaceuticals

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to establish that data on chemicals detected in the environment are urgently needed to comply with the future environment and chemicals policy in the European Union. The availability of data on chemicals can be evaluated by environmetrical and chemometrical methods.Design/methodology/approachThe Hasse Diagram Technique (HDT) which originated in discrete mathematics is applied in this paper. It is a multi‐criteria evaluation method which can be used to measure information quality and is therefore also applicable for decision making. The study evaluated 15 environmental and chemical free internet databases with respect to the existence of data on chemicals in these resources. Two test‐sets were used first, 12 high production volume chemicals and, second 12 pharmaceuticals which are proven to enter the environment in considerable concentrations.FindingsThe evaluation indicates a rather disturbing situation in the data availability on existing chemicals, an especially bad result concerning the data availability on pharmaceuticals and hence an alarming signal concerning the chemicals policy of the EEC.Originality/valueThe information gap, especially for pharmaceuticals entering the environment, is demonstrated with a mathematically recognised method. The Hasse Diagram Technique can be applied to different questions in science when several objects are to be ranked by several criteria at the same time. Concerning the topic of the data availability on chemicals, the gaps are identified and should inspire future research to generate new and valuable data.

Soil water content and yield variability in vineyards of Mediterranean northeastern Spain affected by mechanization and climate variability

The objective of this paper was to analyse the combined influence of the Mediterranean climate variability (particularly the irregular rainfall distribution throughout the year) and the land transformations carried out in vineyards of northeastern Spain on soil water content evolution and its influence on grape production. The study was carried out in a commercial vineyard located in the Anoia–Alt Penedes region (Barcelona province, northeastern Spain), which was prepared for mechanization with important land transformations. Two plots were selected for the study: one with low degree of transformation of the soil profile, representing a non-disturbed situation, and the second one in which more than 3 m were cut in the upper part of the plot and filled in the lower part, representing the disturbed situation. Soil water content was evaluated at three positions along the slope in each plot and at three depths (0–20, 20–40, 40–60 cm) during the period 1999–2001, years with different rainfall characteristics, including extreme events and long dry periods. Rainfall was recorded in the experimental field using a pluviometer linked to a data-logger. Runoff rates and yield were evaluated at the same positions. For the same annual rainfall, the season of the year in which rainfall is recorded and its intensity are critical for water availability for crops. Soil water content varies within the plot and is related to the soil characteristics existing at the different positions of the landscape. The differences in soil depth created by soil movements in the field mechanization give rise to significant yield reductions (up to 50%) between deeper and shallow areas. In addition, for the same annual rainfall, water availability for crops depends on its distribution over the year, particularly in soils with low water-storage capacity. The yield was strongly affected in years with dry or very dry winters. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

3207 ステアリングギヤ比と操舵トルクの変化に対するドライバ操舵挙動の解析(OS3-1 人間機械系シミュレーション,OS3 交通・物流システムのダイナミクスと制御,TRANSLOG 2006)

Recently, intelligent steering systems using the Electric Power Steering (EPS) system are developed. In order to improve driver's maneuver and vehicle response, steering gear ratio and steering reaction torque are very important issues. Therefore, various steering control systems are proposed. However, ideal characteristic between steering torque and steering angle is not clear. This study proposes the optimal character of steering system in lateral wind disturbance situation. The desirable steering characteristic is investigated in the relation of the steering gear ratio and the steering reaction torque for EPS. Evaluation index is proposed for each driver's performance and vehicle performance. Numerical simulations are conducted and the desirable value for the steering gear ratio and the reaction torque, which minimize by the evaluation, is obtained.