Determining Dynamic Positioning capability for an offshore vessel is mandatory to identify the environmental forces system can counteract, together with operability in a specific operational area of interest. Conventional predictions evaluate as maximum sustainable wind speed at predefined encounter angle given wind–wave correlation, not reflecting effective and waves occurrence site. In this r...

BACKGROUND Although working smoke alarms halve deaths in residential fires, many households do not keep alarms operational. We tested whether theory-based education increases alarm operability. METHODS Randomised multiarm trial, with a single arm randomly selected for use each day, in low-income neighbourhoods in Maryland, USA. Intervention arms: (1) Full Education combining a health belief m...

This paper presents an extension to the Stuttgart-Tübingen TagSet, the standard part-of-speech tag set for German, for the annotation of spoken language. The additional tags deal with hesitations, backchannel signals, interruptions, onomatopoeia and uninterpretable material. They allow one to capture phenomena specific to spoken language while, at the same time, preserving inter-operability wit...

In this paper a method for reliability analysis of restorable items is considered. We present the model describing a variation of reliability characteristics of objects and taking into account incomplete repair of operability after failure. The asymptotic solution for the intensity of the geometric process model is obtained. Reliability characteristics of the geometric process model for various...

This paper summarises the experience gained from application of Hazard and Operability Studies (HAZOP) and related techniques to four computer-based systems. Emphasis is placed on working practices and the integration of HAZOP-style analysis into a safety-oriented lifecycle. Two of the case studies are described in some detail. An industrial study is used to investigate working practices, highl...

In this paper, we propose a preliminary framework for accounting for certain surface F0 variations in speech. The framework consists of de®nitions for pitch targets and rules of their implementation. Pitch targets are de®ned as the smallest operable units associated with linguistically functional pitch units, and they are comparable to segmental phones. The implementation rules are based on pos...

Developers and managers of distributed systems today face a difficult choice. To provide for the evolution of their systems, they can either require that the software running on all nodes is inter-operable, or they can shut down the entire system when an upgrade is required. The former complicates the life of system developers, while the latter annoys users. We propose Version Manager, a middle...

This paper presents architectural considerations for a remotely operable laboratory with a mobile robot. The laboratory is used in student education within the MSc programme “Mechatronics” at FernUniversität in Hagen. It forms the practical part of the module “Mechatronics and Robotics”. Main objective of the laboratory is to learn about behaviour based programming, and simultaneously learning ...

The airline industry has a long history of developing and applying optimization approaches to their myriad of scheduling problems, including designing flight schedules that maximize profitability while satisfying rules related to aircraft maintenance; generating cost-minimizing, feasible work schedules for pilots and flight attendants; and identifying implementable, lowcost changes to aircraft ...